Helena Burnley vs Professor Endtimes: Part 5 - A Reunion of Sorts

                "First things first then.” Professor Endtimes said. Sat at the end of his basement conference table, he faced the Stunner with an expectant, excited gaze. “How far have you come along with your original Super Stunner model? Do you have blueprints?"
                "Um, no.” The Stunner told him. She’d not expected to have anyone else involved in making the Super Stunner, let alone critiquing her designs. “I have a collection of materials in my hideout though, and the radio mast from freedom pirate radio. I'm working on the coil at the moment and trying to sort out how to power everything up without electrocuting myself." She listed, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing, and like it didn’t make her feel sick.
                "Yes, that would be rather a shame. How tall is your mast?"
                The Stunner thought for a few moments.
                "About as tall as a van is long." She finally answered.
                "Ah. And you intend to use that to control a whole city block?" The professor asked, in the primary school teacher voice which offers someone a sporting chance to retract their ridiculous answers.
                "... yep." The Stunner persisted, sticking to her guns.
                "Interesting. I admire your efforts Stunner but we may have to just tidy up a few of your ideas here. There's some practical reality to inject into your plans from my experience with high voltage electricals. You can't be blamed for not having it yourself at your age." He said diplomatically. Whether he was trying to placate The Stunner or convince himself of that was, as yet, unclear.
                "Erm, OK. Yes. Good. Thank you." The Stunner said. She hadn't been sure of how to reply, so she tried several responses in the hope that one of them would be appropriate.
                "I'll send a team of henchmen with you to measure up and assess your Super Stunner as it stands, and then we can work out what still needs to be done."
                "Of course." She agreed uneasily.
                "Until then, why don't we talk through some of the design principles and cover why eight feet of radio tower won't bring a whole district to its knees?"
                The Stunner nodded politely and Helena sighed deeply to herself. Electronics lectures had not been something she'd signed up to.  
 
                Over the course of her short but illustrious career, The Stunner had made reasonable efforts to understand how to make her Supper Stunner work. After all, it had to be convincing enough to fool Professor Endtimes. She had, therefore, thought her half-constructed initial model to be pretty good, especially for an amateur. After the several hours that the professor had spent explaining complex theories and designs, talking about transformers, coils, cores, ground-points and industry standard insulation thicknesses, however, it felt like a spark plug. Made of plasticine. The professor seemed to be taking every single piece of her design in turn and thoroughly tearing it apart using petty technicalities such as ‘physics’ and ‘best practice’.
                “My original idea would work though, right?” The Stunner said wearily. It was a point she had been trying to clarify for the last couple of ice ages. Helena genuinely believed that the professor had been talking to her about electrical circuitry for longer than the theory of electricity had existed.
                “As I said, Stunner, it would only technically do what you’re expecting. And that’s just in theory, and under perfect conditions, and probably only once.” He repeated with tired patience.
                “But that’s still a yes!” She fired back. Despite not wanting to see it in action, The Stunner had grown protective and defensive over her original design, although if pushed to give a reason why that was, she would have struggled.
                “Not really. It’s a very good effort but unless you have exactly the right humidity and distribution of victims it won’t work once, let alone twice, so it doesn’t do the job.” He told her diplomatically. There were far shorter and more accurate responses which he could have given, such as ‘No, not at all.’
                “That’s not the point! I still designed something pretty good without having to know all of this extra detail. You’re just overcomplicating things.” The Stunner argued, entirely wrongly.
                “I’m fairly sure that what I said is exactly the point because your plans can’t progress if the Super Stunner doesn’t work.” The beginnings of frustration were starting to creep into the professor’s voice.
                “But it would work.” The Stunner barked, letting her annoyance flow out in full force. “Stop trying to make me look stupid!”
                “Calm down, Stunner. It’s only a redesign.”
                “Only a redesign? I’ll need to steal another two towers and strip down half the canning machines for parts!”
                “Which I will help you with, but not while you’re this worked up.” He said gruffly, nostrils flared. The professor closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then continued. “Go and get a cup of tea, and bring one back for me if you would be so kind.” He instructed. His primary school teacher voice was back.
                “Ugh, fine!” The Stunner snapped, half her age apparently seeping away from her body. After standing sharply enough to cut steel, she marched out of the control room. Back up the stairs she stomped, kicking the disgusting rug for good measure as she went past, and stormed into the clean, bright kitchen. Sunlight was pouring in through the bay window and reflecting painfully into from the polished work surfaces. ‘The old git probably did that on purpose. Spitefully cleaned the kitchen until it was shiny enough to make me suffer.’ She thought.
                Roughly, she filled the kettle and slammed it back onto the base, before picking up their usual two mugs in a huge strop; ‘Nevado del Huila’ for him and the pink unicorn for herself.
                “Ordering me around just because he pays me.” She muttered to herself. “Taking over my Super Stunner just because it’ll work better his way.” She seethed while fetching the tea bags and milk.
                The Stunner watched the kettle as it boiled, lost in her own angry spiral.
                “Just because his design would let the Super Stunner re-fire, and just because he’s going to help, and just because he has explained why it’s better his way for frigging ages...” She muttered. Her gaze drifted through the kettle until nothing was in focus.
                “I mean, maybe it’s not a terrible idea to make modifications, but he could at least have made it a bit more obvious that… well, he did make everything clear to be fair, but…” the adrenaline started to fade away, taking her frustration with it, like a guest at a hotel taking the complementary bath taps.
                “I suppose he was pretty patient with me too. And he’s trying to help The Stunner complete her own plans like he promised he would, despite needing to get on with his own operations…” The quiet gurgling over the kettle formed fitting soundtrack to her stream of consciousness. Finally, it ‘clicked’.
                “Ohhhh, crap. I’ve been a moron. Helena you idiot!” She plunged her head into her hands. “Why do you even care how it’s designed?! You just need to keep him on side and play along, but oh no, you have to let your pride get in the way and argue with him.”
                Looking up, she saw the kettle steaming silently after a job well done.
                “If you’ve aggravated him and put him off The Stunner then the case is blown. You let your mind drift away from the task at hand. Sloppy work Agent Burnley, sloppy work.”
                Helena lifted her gaze to the ceiling, pulling her neck back as far as her heavy rubber and leather suit would allow it to go, and rested her hands on the kitchen counter. She kicked herself for being so stubborn about Professor Endtimes’ advice. From the tumultuous depths of her memory, she remembered rejecting Commissioner Harmon’s advice about getting too carried away with her undercover operation, and now the army was hunting her. ‘You don’t always know best.’ She told herself.
                The Stunner snapped out of her melancholic spiral and poured hot water into the two mugs. Operational regrets would have to wait; she needed to get back to Professor Endtimes and pray that he wasn’t too mad.
                With the necessary milk and sugar duties taken care of, The Stunner walked back down to the basement control room gingerly, doubly so due to the piping hot tea in her hands, and pushed the door handle down with one elbow. The professor was looking down at the plans still, relieving The Stunner of risky and awkward eye-contact whilst walking along the room. Quietly she placed the mugs down onto the conference table and took her seat.
                “I’m sorry professor. Not sure what came over me. Your redesign makes sense.” Her stomach was tense and her legs were shaking, awaiting a stern telling-off. The professor looked up at her with a warm smile.
                “Not a problem. You might be a super-villain but you’re also human, and you are allowed to act that way sometimes.” He said with understanding. “I knew you’d come around once you’d cooled off. We’ll speak no more of it. Thank you for the tea.”
                “You’re welcome.” The Stunner said timidly, with relief. Agent Burnley had rarely got off so lightly from Commissioner Harmon after a misdemeanour on the job. Helena silently thanked a pantheon of private gods and resolved never to lose sight of her final goal again. On that note, she and the professor still had to discuss how to connect the Super Stunner to the mains supply.
                “So” she said after a few moments of contemplative silence. “Shall we discuss the route to getting power?”
 
                Over the following days The Stunner and Professor Endtimes spent the majority of their time revising the Super Stunner design, working out the correct materials to use, and identifying specific locations for mounting towers. The remainder was spent drinking tea, eating cake, and discussing how pleasant and agreeable all of the professor’s associates were. Much to Helena’s chagrin there had been no further mention of Operation Fuzzykins, but her impatience was tempered by newly reinforced discipline. She couldn’t force the issue, but was at least consoling herself in the knowledge that Professor Endtimes’ trust in her was growing. Every step they took towards completing the Super Stunner network was building up her reputation as someone who followed through, and every task she completed cemented her as an indispensable achiever. Helena just hoped that the professor would never try to make her fire the network in anger.
                One lunchtime, after discussing in far too much detail how to bolt one length of steel framing to another without causing all manner of unforeseen consequences, Professor Endtimes and The Stunner sat at the conference table with a selection of sandwiches. Alongside morning baking, it transpired that the professor enjoyed making catering-quantities of lunch for his guests and hench-people. The Stunner wondered how he had time to get any super-crimes done at all.
                “So now that we know how to hold the frame up” The Stunner said through a mouthful of smoked salmon “we can de-select some of the potential mounting locations, right?”
                “Quite correct Stu-” Professor Endtimes started, but he was interrupted by the shrill beeping of his pager. “Pardon me for one second please.” He said as he unclipped it from his belt. The Stunner nodded politely and waited, whilst Helena tried to keep her shock hidden. Garagio had said that no-one contact the professor; he always found other people when he wanted them. She suspected that The Chauffeur may have had a direct line to him, but somehow couldn’t see news of an impending guest sparking the kind of concerned expression which had grown over the professor’s face like an invasive lichen. Sudden guests would have caused a far worse reaction in Helena, of course, but that was for her own hermitic reasons. Whatever was going on with the professor, it must have been important.
                “Everything OK Professor?” The Stunner asked in the tone of voice reserved for when the questioner knows perfectly well that everything is anything but OK.
                “I expect so.” He replied half-heartedly. “You know that I’m a worrier, probably just getting my knickers in a twist over nothing.” Professor Endtimes said. He was addressing The Stunner but speaking towards his pager; another blow to Helena’s self-esteem. “I’m afraid that this will require my urgent attention out of the house regardless. Never can be too sure.” He told her with grave solemnity, appropriate for someone who had just found out that they couldn’t stay indoors all day with a plate of cake. “But it would be a shame to interrupt this work just when we were getting somewhere…”
                Helena could see the wheels turning in Professor Endtimes’ mind, weighing up an important decision such as cheesecake versus crumble or buttercream versus jam. There was too much cake on Helena’s mind for her to be thinking clearly. Her experience and training in negotiation was resilient against cake-based distractions however, and it reminded her that this was one of the times when it was best to stay silent. If she let the cogs turn on their own, they would end up where she wanted them.
                “I suppose the hench-people know you well enough now not to mind you being here without me, and you’ve proven yourself to me sufficiently to be left alone.” He concluded eventually with a brave attempt at a confident smile. “Why don’t you keep working on these plans while I’m taking care of things, and we’ll catch up on your progress tomorrow?”
                This was the Holy Grail for which Agent Burnley had been waiting. She was trusted to be alone in the house with only a dozen or so hench-people to keep an eye on her.
                “That works for me. If you’re sure that it doesn’t bother you?” she said, putting on a show to seal the deal.
                “Of course not, Stunner. If you’re willing to steal a bath for me and talk for days about electronics then you’re committed. Keep going with the site selection and we’ll discuss our choices once I’m done with this little matter.”
                “Sounds like a plan. And if you need any support then you know where to find me.” She replied, hoping to score some more points.
                “You are a real diamond in the rough, you know that? I just hope not to be too much a thorn to your rose.” The professor said with slightly sickening familiarity. “Until tomorrow, Stunner.”
                “Yeah, see you then.”
                With his familial smile, he stood up and walked from the conference room.
 
                Suspecting that the professor might have had some pottering, doddering, or other such non-specific actions to take care of before leaving the house, The Stunner forced herself to continue working on the Super Stunner plans for a while. Even after she heard what she hoped was the front door closing, but stood an outside chance of being a bin lorry ramming the house, she kept going for a while longer. If she had stopped working straight away then the hench-people might have grown suspicious of her.
                Whilst leaning over a map and choosing the best locations for tools to indiscriminately cripple the city’s civilian and law-enforcement populations, Helena’s guilt somehow found reasons to take offence at her intentions again. ‘You can’t let his happen.’ It whispered to her. ‘How could you live with yourself if you help to electrocute all the nurses in the city simultaneously?’ It asked quite reasonably. ‘It’s not too late to sabotage the plans.’ The nagging voice of conscience was persistent, and Helena eventually gave in.
                Staring at the set of Super Stunner sites, Helena ran the whole schematic through her mind searching for some way to introduce a flaw. Everything about the structure itself was being pored over and examined by Professor Endtimes; she’d never get away with altering any of it. He seemed to notice everything, down to frustrating, fusty old-man levels of detail. But for the moment he was away from the table, and he had trusted her with choosing appropriate sites. Each tower would have limited effective range and the city was a big place; surely it wouldn’t be too unbelievable if the selection of suitable mounting locations left blind spots? Helena could leave an avenue of safety in the network, and avoid critical buildings like the hospital or the orphanage or the pizzeria. They would all need to be justifiable omissions, of course, but Helena had heard enough tenuous arguments in her time to make a case for anything. If Iron Can could justify stealing tin-openers, then she could justify not strapping several tonnes of metal to the rooves of old buildings.
                Heart beating fast at the prospect of attempting to deceive Endtimes on paper, Helena gritted her teeth and started fashioning the city a safe haven from herself.
 
                Once she was done contriving reasons to discount perfectly good locations, The Stunner felt that she’d been scratching away at the plans for long enough. There was no way that anyone could question her motives for stopping now. Laying her pen to rest, she took to watching Professor Endtimes’ employees flitting around the lair and searched for an opportunity to gain intelligence away from the professor’s prying eyes. There was constant motion; everyone was busy doing something with a determined but non-threatening look in their eye, and a typically “Endtimes” smile on their face. With a warm feeling, The Stunner also realised that she also recognised many of the faces as Confectionites from the strike at Tooth’s Bane.
                Whilst all the activity provided plenty of entertainment, it unfortunately meant that there was no way she’d be able to sneak into any of the other cellar rooms unseen. It was unlikely that the ‘I was just looking for the toilet’ argument would fly too well, either.
                After observing the hench-people’s behaviour for a length of time, however, it soon became clear that whilst they were not idle, they weren’t exactly busy either. There could only be so many times that papers needed to move around the cellar, or dials needed to be adjusted, or empty trollies needed to be pushed from one room to another. If they were only moving equipment around in an effort to look busy then they can’t have been thinking about work too hard. If they weren’t concentrating, then they were probably bored and listening into whatever was going on. Perhaps, Agent Burnley reasoned, their eavesdropping would let them know something more than just the paper migration schedules.
                One of the side doorways, leading to what she believed was either a bathroom or a printing room based on the material going in, opened up as grey-uniformed henchman strode through clutching a ream of paper.
                "Excuse me?" The Stunner asked as he tried to march purposefully by. Wearing the blankly impressionable expression of the archetypal henchman, he stopped and faced her. He didn't speak, but waited patiently for instruction.
                "Er, how are you?" The Stunner asked.
                His amenable expression dropped into one of fear. This wasn't within the normal henchman remit.  They were cannon fodder, faceless and nameless. Professor Endtimes certainly cared about them as a dutiful employer, but that didn't mean just anyone could engage in humanising conversation.
                "I’m… ready to carry out your orders, The Stunner." He finally settled on, trying to steer her back to a normal interaction and cumbersomely using her full name.
                "I don't have any orders, I have a question." She clarified.
                "Ready to answer, then." He revised, relaxing a little. This was far more like it.
                "What happened with the Colombia job? Seems to have the professor displeased."
                "The Colombia job? I have no idea what you’re asking about. It must have been before I started working for Professor Endtimes." The henchman answered curtly.
                "Oh, right. Well what about Operation Fuzzykins? You excited to get going with that at last?" The Stunner asked, trying to sound conversational in a misguided effort to get him to open up.
                The henchman’s discomfort visibly grew again. She wasn’t supposed to ask about his excitement; that implied she thought of him as a person with emotions that mattered, which could scarcely be further from his job description.
                "Not been told anything about it." He said stiffly. Every muscle in his body was tensing up. The Stunner thought he might tear his important papers in half if his grip grew any tighter, but upon closer inspection the papers appeared to be blank. Perhaps he was filling the printer.
                'Damn it.' Agent Burnley cursed to herself. ‘He knows nothing.’
                "Fair enough.” The Stunner said. “It'll be something to look forward to then. What do you normally do around here anyway?" she continued, trying not to look like she was only talking to him for information. He, conversely, wanted that to be the case more than anything.
                "Can I go now please?" He asked, his face rapidly becoming a broth of discomfort, frustration, and impatience.
                "Oh, yeah fine. Nice to talk to you." The Stunner said as brightly as possible.
                He marched away swiftly to avoid having to either lie to or correct her in response.
                ‘Well that was worthless.’ Helena thought. She sat and idly flicked through the Super Stunner plans whilst watching the doors.
                As the afternoon trundled by, The Stunner pounced on any lone hench-person who entered the room, but the answers didn’t get much better.
                “Colombia job was before my time. Don't know anything about really, except that something presumably went wrong.” A long, black-haired woman told her, just as uncomfortably as the first chap.
                “Colombia? Is that a kind of embezzlement? Probably before my time.” Another man told her, despite a serious misunderstanding of a key word in the question.
                “Unless you’re talking about the time Colombia won Eurovision I don’t know anything about it.” A middle-aged woman with ruddy cheeks and some serious jowls informed her. The Stunner wanted desperately to understand what the woman thought she was being asked about; she must have had a lot of respect for Professor Endtimes if she thought that he could rig for a non-entrant to win the song contest, but knew that Colombian Eurovision confusion had to wait until another day.
                It was the same story from everyone she asked; none of them had been around during the Colombia job, Professor Endtimes had given no details away about it, and no-one had been told of Operation Fuzzykins. In fact, all that Helena had learned from Professor Endtimes’ hench-people was that he seemed to have had an incredibly high hench-person turnover rate since the Colombia job. For no-one to have been directly involved was one thing, but for no-one to have heard of it at all? It was beyond strange. Legendary acts of villainy, even failed ones, should have spread like the smell of untrustworthy milk throughout the ranks of Endtimes’ workforce, and then propagated further as new staff came into the fold. Back at the station, the first thing any new officer of the ministry heard about was the time that Commissioner Harmon took down a petty thief with nothing but a yo-yo, and that had happened a clear decade before any of the current staff had worked there. Stories always hung around long after the staff, handed down from mouth to ear to mouth, but not as un-hygienically as it sounds.
                Sitting up to give visual gravitas to a sudden epiphany, it dawned on Helena that it could only mean there had been no staff crossover at all. All of them had been replaced. The job must have gone so badly that he’d fired everyone and started over again, maybe working towards the same goal; Professor Endtimes didn’t seem like the type to give up on something. If he kept records somewhere of his hench-people and how long they had served then maybe Helena could find out when the Colombia job had happened. She couldn’t remember any reports of international super-villainy coming from Colombia, but that meant nothing. It may have gone so badly that no-one noticed anything, or perhaps the Colombians could have covered it up, or she might have simply missed it all. It wasn’t much to go on yet, but it had the feel of a solid potential lead.
 
                The usual end of the workday came around and still Professor Endtimes had not returned from his urgent business. As a unified force the hench-people finished their routine busywork and began packing up, changing out of their uniforms, and leaving in inconspicuous sequence under the somehow correct assumption that no-one would question thirty people leaving a two bedroom house. More important than the lack of observational reasoning applied by the professor’s neighbours, however, was the rare opportunity to snoop around the cellar unseen which The Stunner had been afforded. She suspected that the CCTV coverage wasn’t limited to only the outside world, however. As desperate as she was to get into the office, she needed to be careful about it.
                There were still a few of the hench-people carrying papers in and out of Endtimes' office and looking rushed. Leaving aside how there could possibly be any urgency in the obviously pointless work they were doing, The Stunner recognised her opportunity. Snatching up some papers of her own, she leapt up from the table and dashed across the room at ramming speed whilst deliberately looking the wrong way. Like a rubber freight train she crashed into a henchwoman papers-first, sending reams of blank paper and Super Stunner plans flying out in a parchment tornado as the woman fell onto her generous bottom.
                "Oof!" Said the henchwoman by way of summarising her feelings.
                "I am so sorry." Apologised The Stunner insincerely.  She lacked The Apologiser's raw empathic grunt, but thought she sounded convincing enough. "Let me help you up."
                "Thank you. I must have not been looking where I was going." The woman said, taking The Stunner's offered hand. Despite the acceptance of responsibility in her words, her eyes had their own opinion on the matter. Her bottom was too distracted by feeling bruised to form any strong position either way.
                "Oh! My papers!" She then cried as if she’d only just realised, eyes wide and rubbing her sore buttocks. As she started to lean down and pick up the mess, The Stunner placed a hand on her shoulder.
                "Please let me. It was my fault, and you should be heading home. I can put these back into the professor's office for you."
                "Well if you're sure. Bye." She said with sudden upbeat energy, scurrying away before The Stunner could say anything to the contrary. Helena started to suspect that she wasn't so deeply committed to her role after all. Still, it had made things much easier than she'd expected. In her head she’d been formulating a whole speech about not being able to let anyone see the top secret plans she’d dropped, hence why the henchwoman shouldn’t try to help out with sorting or picking them up. Now that she didn’t have to use it, she felt robbed.
                Taking care not to look around herself for any other hench-people or cameras, The Stunner made a show of carefully gathering up the papers and separating them out on the long conference table. Occasionally she’d also sigh, to indicate to any potential observing cameras that this was the last thing she’d wanted to happen.
                Once sufficient theatrics and sorting had taken place The Stunner gathered up Professor Endtimes’ blank papers, turned to his office door, and did the best she could to make her body language say ‘I think I’d better return these important blank sheets of paper to the professor’s office directly’. It was something of a mouthful, which was rendered all the more difficult by not being able to employ the mouth.
                Trying to feign the confidence of someone who is doing the right thing whilst holding the uncertainty of someone doing very much the wrong thing, The Stunner strode across the floor of the conference room. At the professor’s door she stopped and knocked for no good reason, and then proceeded to invite herself in when no answer was forthcoming. No sooner had her foot hit the floor inside the professor’s sanctum than a shrill beeping rang out and filled the room. The Stunner jumped in surprise, then realised once again that she’d been shocked by the sounding of her own pager at a time when she should have been expecting to receive a message.
                Bang on time, as ever, it was her normal message from The Chauffeur notifying her that he was outside. The Stunner closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm herself, taking an indulgent moment to promise herself that next time she engaged in subterfuge at this house, it wouldn’t be at the time of her imminent departure.
                Ignoring the summons for the moment, The Stunner hurried over to the large silver desk standing proudly opposite her. A decadent black leather chair was sitting behind it, partially obscured by the pair of computer monitors on the desk’s surface.
                Quite unlike the office upstairs, this one was clean, uncluttered and clinical. The professor had taken a degree of pride in the appearance of the hidden office down in the cellar, and none in the upstairs office which someone might conceivably witness when installing a smoke alarm or auditing the carpets. In fairness, it was unlikely that many people would have a chance to enter Endtimes’ home, but it still struck Helena as unusual. Less so when she then considered that the cellar office is where he was likely to spend the majority of his time.
                Agent Burnley, having talked herself out of a throwaway observation regarding interior design priorities, carefully placed the papers onto Professor Endtimes' desk and moved around to the front of the computer. Its quiet hum told her that it had been left running, although whether that was because the professor's plan involved wasting power to destroy the environment, or whether he had simply forgotten to turn it off whilst rushing out, was still undetermined.
                With a wiggle of the mouse on the jet-black mouse-mat the monitors slowly bloomed into life, a blue glow building in intensity as the desktop display assembled itself in front of Helena. Professor Endtimes’ lack of password protection was a stroke of luck, but considering that he’d also kept the pager numbers of dangerous criminals on post-it notes in the house, his complacent attitude to computer security was consistent and fairly unsurprising.
                Unfortunately there were no applications running or folders currently open. Helena would have to go snooping the old-fashioned way, and there was no telling how long it might take to find anything of use. The Chauffeur wouldn’t expect to wait for long at all and Agent Burnley harboured concerns about how astute he could be. She snatched up her pager and messaged back.
                “Professor is still out so I’m clearing my papers away. Had some others to put back too. Will be on the way very shortly. Sorry for making you wait.”
                Her words served the dual purposes of reinforcing her cover for being in the office sanctum and buying a little more time, which made her particularly proud of how quickly she’d thought of them. There was a cheesecake reward for that kind of performance, her stomach decided with a vested interest.
                The thought of impending dessert gave Agent Burnley a burst of energy to start her search, browsing through the professor’s strangely defined file structure. The folder ‘humans’ contained sub-folders dedicated to ‘super-humans’ and ‘still-good-in-their-own-way humans’, in a heart-warming demonstration of acceptance. Helena chose the latter for information on the hench-people and found yet more sub-folders: ‘lovely’, ‘tremendous’, ‘hard workers’, and the superlative ‘lovely and tremendous hard workers’. Once again pointing to the hardened public enemy number one’s soft underbelly, the final folder held entries on all but one of the hench-people. There were documents describing the work assignment for each hench-person, how much annual leave to which they were entitled, and their work bank account aliases, which was likely to be everything that Helena needed to arrest them, but it held no temporal data.
                Incidentally, the one unlucky soul who wasn’t worthy of triple-praise resided in the ‘lovely’ folder, so at least the professor didn’t hold anything against ‘henchwoman 32’ on a personal level.
                Helena navigated back out of the ‘humans’ folder with a strong desire to give the professor a hug, and tried the ‘boring necessities’ folder instead. This time the folder yielded a series of confirmation emails from M. Bezler’s Bank; it was exactly what Agent Burnley had been hoping for. Opening each of them in rapid succession, the emails popped up on the screen over the top of one another with the same letterhead and ‘We keep your money!’ tagline shining out at her from each one. Taking an interest in the empty details surrounding ‘available balance’ column for the very first time in her life, Helena scanned through for a date-stamp on the first message. 23rd May, two years earlier. Professor Endtimes had been operating for over two years, right under the ministry’s nose, and they had never noticed.
                Shaking off her shock, Agent Burnley opened the next file: 17th May, the same year. The third was also from 23rd May, and the next four fell within a fortnight either way. With a pang of pity, Helena saw that even ‘henchwoman 32’s’ account had been opened on the same date, and in two years she hadn’t managed to sway the professor to view her as either tremendous or a hard worker. Equally, it may have said something more about how unwilling the professor was to make his henchpeople redundant.
                Helena checked the time in the corner of the screen and, to her alarm, found that she’d been on the computer for a full ten minutes since telling The Chauffeur that she would be ‘on the way very shortly”. It was all too obvious that ten minutes was more than enough time to move some paper and then walk the length of a house, especially to someone as quietly observant as The Chauffeur, and The Stunner had a reputation for getting things done. Dashing out of the sanctum office, through the conference room, and up the stairs to the living room, Agent Burnley desperately tried to think of an acceptable excuse; she could only hope that a quick-fire line as good as the one she’d paged ten minutes ago would come to her.
 
                A highly awkward journey back to the Cannery later, having told The Chauffeur that there had been a ‘toilet emergency which had required her full concentration and a lot of prayer’, Helena ran into the abandoned office and dropped her face into her hands. Not only had The Chauffeur been forced to remind her of when it was socially acceptable to call on people’s homes, carried her twice while unconscious, and fished her out of a pond into which she’d crashed a helicopter, now he probably thought she had serious bowel-control problems or, even worse, bowel-planning problems. Running the line over in her head and cringing every time, Helena flopped backwards onto the sofa in the hope that she could somehow duck underneath the thick cloud of embarrassment following her. She could not.
                Returning from a comfort shopping-trip with as many cheesecakes as she could reasonably fit into a duffle bag, Helena tried to distract herself from the earlier embarrassment by tuning in her police radio and listening for any activity whilst enjoying a dessert or ten. It was rapidly becoming an evening ritual for her; having spent the day facilitating crime, she took comfort in listening to her colleagues trying to fight it overnight. Although she could scarcely do anything to help, it pleased her to hear justice being done and also kept her up to speed. Above all, it made her feel like she hadn’t abandoned her colleagues fully. Unfortunately, it was too risky to keep taking the radio out on nights as The Stunner; if any of The Professor’s associates saw it then they’d either suspect that she was a double agent or try to use it for themselves, and neither of those outcomes was desirable. Ever since that first job with Roger Toilet and Windy Bill, her radio had been tucked away out of sight when she was out working.
                Over the past week she’d vicariously enjoyed the investigation of the Frederick Montgomery Memorial Airport for evidence of where Confectionista had run to. From what the radio chatter had told her, there was little by way of a trail for the ministry to follow away from the airport, and nothing left inside except for the manufacturing equipment itself. Confectionista must have done a superlative job of clearing up after herself. Or, The Stunner had briefly thought with a bough-wave of irritation, she’d not run the machinery at all after all that hassle to get it.
                It wasn’t all fun, games, and forensic confectionery however. Worrying murmurs and undertones of subversion were rife throughout the conversation, with ministry personnel being side-lined by military police on the orders of General Montsourcil. From what Helena could make out the ministry was being used as a tool to perform investigative leg-work, and as soon as any discovery was made the army would swoop in and take over. Commissioner Harmon was reliably rumoured to be displeased with how things were proceeding but, just as he had predicted, he was powerless to stop anything. If even the uniformed officers were losing faith in the commissioner’s power to influence the case then things must have been bad.
                Wriggling herself in between the familiar jutting springs and worn padding of the sofa, fork in hand and belly filling, Agent Burnley listened to that night’s discussion of how to get all the equipment back to Tooth’s Bane. The lab techs had already visited the airport to analyse what they could of any traces left on the manufacturing machines, so there was no more need to keep them as evidence. One-by-one a selection of HGVs were reported to have arrived at the airport, along with winches and fork-lifts for heavy lifting, but by the sounds of it there were fewer resources than Professor Endtimes had found for The Stunner. It was either a shocking statement about the under-funding of the ministry, or an even more terrifying suggestion that the ministry had grossly overestimated how many industrially sized sugar cauldrons could fit into a lorry. Helena suspected with disgust that, like a coward after grocery shopping, they were going to have to make two trips.
                By Helena’s estimation, the equipment extraction was not going smoothly. Debates dragged on over the best way to secure chains to a candy-floss maker. Arguments raged regarding why someone had chosen to move the equipment at the back of the terminal first, trying to drag it past everything else and over to the door. Above all, no-one was happy about the advertised prices of bon-bons in the abandoned sweet shop, with several officers promising the arrest of those responsible.
                Like a beacon of light in the gloom, however, Officer Dunner’s voice drifted through the radio.
                “Whoever got all this stuff in here must have been a genius; it would take a masterpiece of planning and logistics.”
                Helena smiled. Allowing the static and occasional mention of tagliatelle from the radio to dissolve quietly into the background, she started planning the next day’s hunt for evidence of what happened two years earlier with the Colombia job. Officer Dunner was right, she was a logistical genius, and she would find a way to get what she needed on both Colombia and Operation Fuzzykins. If she could sneak into the professor’s sanctum office once then she could do it again, and with enough time to find evidence of every crime the kindly, caring old man had committed. She tried to recall the professor’s array of peculiar folder names in order to plot the best starting point and, largely due to the thrilling nature of memorised file structure against a backing of soothing radio white-noise and a stomach brimming with creamy cake, Helena soon fell into a deep sofa-bound sleep.
 
                “So, how far did you manage to dive into the details yesterday?” Professor Endtimes asked at the conference table. He was nursing a cup of tea and looking eagerly into The Stunner’s eyes for an answer. The next stacks of paper plans from the day before were sitting, apparently undisturbed, on the desk where she’d left them. Helena silently hoped that The Chauffeur hadn’t mentioned that she’d been delayed by clearing papers away, since these stacks of obviously not-cleared-away documents would provide some convincing evidence to the contrary. If the professor suspected anything he wasn’t showing it.
                “Erm, moderately far. I’ve discounted a few more Super Stunner locations based on the mounting criteria, which leaves us with about twenty good candidates, Professor.” She replied. She spread out the plans from the stack and opened the map of mounting locations in front of them both.
                “Marvellous work, Stunner. From the look of it” he said, examining the map “we get a reasonable coverage of the city from these locations, but there are still areas out of range. Are you convinced there’s nowhere suitable in any of them?”
                The Stunner leaned over the maps again and pretended to be thinking hard in order to buy time. As ever with situations that leave adequate time for planning, no preparation of her response to that perfectly expected question had been performed. The professor was always going to pick up on the huge weaknesses in the Super Stunner network’s coverage, but Helena had given far more focus to the array of desserts that the evening had promised. She harboured very few regrets about that.
                “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” she finally said “The mounting criteria culled a lot of places with older roofing or structural weaknesses. I can run through them each with you if you want to check my reasoning?” She answered, not actually offering any information but putting the ball back into his court to question her.
                “Oh… well, no that’s fine. I’m sure you’re quite capable of making the right calls here.” Professor Endtimes said. He clearly did want to have a run-through of the logic, but he was far too polite to say so.
                “And some of them, I will admit, were because they overlapped the hospital as well. If the Super Stunners hit anyone in there then… well, we don’t want to kill people.” She continued with genuine concern in her voice and exaggerated sympathy on her face.
                “Oh goodness, no.” the professor agreed. “We’re not barbarians, and some things have to be sacred. I’m glad that you see things the same way I do, Stunner. Must be why I like you so much.”
                “So you’re sure you wouldn’t like me to run through each rejected location in turn or…”
                “No, no that’ll be alright. Nothing is ever perfect!” The professor said with an amiable finality. Agent Burnley breathed a sigh of relief which steamed the inside of her mask, giving her a soggy nose.
                “I was thinking, though, that it might be prudent to check each of the rooves in person to make sure there’s nothing in the way. City maps and building plans don’t give us all the information here and we can’t afford to get this wrong. I can go out today and check them all.” The Stunner suggested. Helena was desperate to get away and check old news articles for anything on Colombia two years ago, but she needed an excuse to not be planning with the professor.
                “Hmm. We still have work to do with the plans, Stunner. We’re close to finished but not quite there yet.” He answered, obviously not convinced.
                “I understand, but if any of these locations won’t work then we need to know now. We can make do with the current level of coverage, but if we find that… this one for instance” The Stunner pointed to a location on the map “doesn’t work out then there’ll be a gaping hole rather than a little blind spot in the network. It’s too important to put off, and it’ll be crippling if one of the pylons collapses.” She persisted.
                “Crippling indeed. It would be another Colombia…” The professor muttered solemnly and quietly. “I can have the henchpeople go out and check them though. Your efforts are better spent here.”
                “I disagree.” She said. The words dropped out before she could stop them, hanging in the air like a gun pointed at the professor’s face.
                “Why so?” he asked, narrowing his eyes slightly. “The henchpeople do excellent work.”
                “Yes, they’re all tremendous” she answered diplomatically, borrowing one of his own words “but they haven’t been privy to all the planning. Plus, I can climb discretely on my own. If a team of henchpeople go out they’ll need cherry-pickers or ladders or something. It’ll be too much of a scene. There’ll be enough trouble with that when we finally set the pylons in place.”
                “I think I see what’s going on here.” The professor said darkly. “You don’t have these concerns and we both know it, Stunner.”
                The Stunner swallowed reflexively and her heart rate spiked. He was on to her, she knew it. The Chauffeur had told him everything about her suspicious lateness, and he must have seen videos of her snooping through the computer. Sweat beaded on her scalp and ran between her head and her mask, creating a slick and unpleasant layer across her face. She fidgeted her hands, bit the inside of her mouth, and tried to keep her composure.
                “And what’s that?” she managed in strangled tones. Her eyes darted about the room to check for approaching henchpeople. If she had to fight her way out then she couldn’t afford any surprises, especially since she never carried her hammer or her whip down to the conference room.
                “You want to get away.” He muttered, his eyes losing their fatherly glint and sinking deeper into his skull, twin abysses of merciless, narcissistic, calculation.
                “Away?”
                “Out of the conference room for a day.” He said, slamming an open palm on to the table. The Stunner jumped so hard she nearly fell of her chair, and Professor Endtimes burst into laughter. “And I think it’s a wonderful idea! We’ve both been working on this without a break, so I can understand you wanting to get out into the open air for a day. You go ahead and check the mounting points Stunner. I’ll see you back here tomorrow instead.” His warm smile was back, accompanied by a healthy appetite for mischief. “I really had you worried there though! I thought you’d know better by now.” He added with a chuckle.
                The Stunner panted heavily as the shock refused to drain away from her body.
                “Y-yeah. Good one! You got me.” She managed with an approximation of a smile, thanking every higher-power going for the mask obscuring much of her face.
                “Have fun up there and I’ll take care of some other business down here.” He winked.
                The Stunner nodded, gave him an awkward thumbs up, and left, hoping that all the cheesecake wouldn’t come back to haunt her.
                Still attempting to recover her breathing and more than a little worried that she’d wet herself, The Stunner picked up her bag from just inside the front door and left Professor Endtimes’ house, immediately climbing up to the rooftops. Hidden from prying eyes she quickly changed out of her costume whilst cursing the high-altitude breeze, and then surveyed her rooftop kingdom as a roof-bound Helena Burnley. There were a few of the identified mounting points nearby, so she could keep true to her word with Endtimes and check them on her journey. Happy to be having some time back on the true objective of the case, Helena dashed across the rooftops for a day of research at the City Library.
 
                Helena dropped discretely down to street level, crushing someone's dropped phone in the process, and emerged onto the high street. The City Library loomed ahead of her, seeming somehow lonely now that there were no teams of police stationed outside waiting for The Librarian. A billboard by the door was advertising an anniversary collection of Poirot novels, bringing Helena's blood to boiling point. Had these people no shame? It would be bad enough under normal circumstances but with what happened to Agent Katter so fresh in everyone’s mind, parading Poirot around like that was reprehensible. She told herself that The Librarian must have set it up as a sick joke before she was captured and that the other staff won’t have known a thing, but it did little to dampen the blow.
                The A-frame billboard folded shut and collapsed to the street under a sturdy impact from Agent Burnley’s foot as she walked towards the sliding library doors. Warm air carrying the musk of plastic-coated books billowed out as she entered, bringing with it the memory of a literary assault most foul. She pushed the thoughts down and strode through the children’s section, arriving in what used to be the ‘Historical Fiction’ section but was now simply a second rack of the expansive, and staggeringly popular, ‘Linoleum Hero/Heroine’ section. To her left, beyond classic fiction and cookery, lay the crime section; the very place Katter had finally fallen. With horror Helena saw that there were still bloodstains on the floor, but they had been cordoned off in caricature body-outlines and mock police tape. Whatever soulless demon had been spawned to take charge of this place had made the scene of the ministry’s tragedy into a cheap decorative gimmick.
                Agent Burnley drove her fingernails in the palms of her hands, flared her nostrils, and seethed the breath out of herself. Even a certain Belgian detective who didn’t deserve to be named wouldn’t have stooped to these levels of depravity. She wanted to grab every novel she could see and throw them to the ground. She wanted to flip the shelves over and take all the wooden dowels. She wanted to electrocute every member of staff at the library with her battery hammer and make them quake in fear at the name of The Stunner, until they all renounced Agatha Christie’s eldritch abomination and his pencil moustache.
                Instead, she turned away. The rest of her life was still there for vengeance. Right now she had a job to do.
                Three PCs sat on a desk against the back wall of the building, ironically claiming to be a gateway to the future despite being antiques themselves. Blocky-lettered prime-coloured posters boasted of the library providing internet access, Wi-Fi, capability to surf the web, and options to browse the net. Those posters which didn’t focus on lying about synonyms being different things made audacious claims that the library computers were an adequate alternative to having a broadband connection in one’s own home. All of the wall media was part of the library’s misguided attempt to attain relevance in the modern age, by completely altering the services for which it was known. One of the junior librarians had once suggested that those in charge should entertain the possibility of acquiring a larger and more diverse selection of books, so that they could continue to satisfy their own niche in the community rather than competing badly to provide a service no-one needed. It was a sensible idea and so, naturally, no-one listened.
                Helena pulled up one of the hideously uncomfortable stools and sat at the PC on the far right. It wasn’t a reflection of her political stance, but provided her with a measure of privacy since it would be walked behind the least. A message was proudly flickering on the screen.
                ‘Welcome to the City Library Web Portal!’ it proclaimed. Helena clicked ‘Let’s get surfing!’ rather than ‘I’m stuck in a mental prison of my own making, sealing me into a harrowing vision of the past where nothing may progress and all is ignorance and darkness’, for no better reason than the huge button required to accommodate text that long was flat-out ugly. The message box disappeared and Helena opened the newspaper archive application situated on the desktop, but before she was able to start searching through, another box popped up.
                ‘Do you need a surf-instructor to show you the way through these net waves?’ Helena sighed irritably and clicked ‘I am the Poseidon of the web’.
                ‘Are you sure? Drowning claims more and more victims every year. Don’t be a Bloated Billy, be a Respiring Richard.’ Countered the computer, alongside two deeply disturbing pixel-art images of children at the beach. Helena stared at the message for a few moments, eyebrows peaked into a mountain of bemusement. Pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand, she closed her eyes drew a few deep breaths. City Library could only have been put on this earth to test her, but she would best it. Opening her eyes again, she clicked ‘I don’t need no air, man, I’ve got web-gills’ and hoped that these messages were nothing more sinister than a way-off-the-mark attempt at appealing to the younger generation. Or anyone else, for that matter.
                ‘Then may the inky depths claim your soul like so many others.’ Flashed a final message, which barely stayed on the screen long enough to be read.
                More uncomfortable than she’d been for the last few days, including during the assault that the sofa springs had made on her buttocks, Helena started searching through the newspaper articles for anything from Colombia around the time of the professor’s hiring spree.
                What became immediately obvious was that the Colombian media had been fascinated by lanterns around that time. At least half of the headlines were in relation to which style of lantern had been chosen by a particular celebrity or political figure, with deep analysis of what the subtle lighting differences of each lamp might imply about the personality or lifestyle of that person. Although drawn in by the frankly insane theories being posited by the journalists in each case, Helena was able to escape a near-infinite lantern-reading pit by not knowing who any of the people were. Had the articles related to her colleagues from the station or other super-villains from Endtimes’ operation then she might never have broken free.
                The remaining half of the articles enjoyed a far greater diversity of subject matter and relevance to any aspect of real life. Latest among the non-lantern articles, chronologically, was a story on the presidential election result, with the Republica de las Costuras winning a convincing victory over the Partido Socialista para los Botones. Helena read through the complete piece but it was impossible to determine if any of the events leading up to the election were suspicious. At least, suspicious and indicative of super-villainy, rather than the normal kind of suspicious for political movements. The best Agent Burnley could say was that the election timeline and sequence of events presented in the article was convincing.
                Next was a story from the previous day regarding the crumbling medical services and a last minute pledge by the Partido Socialista para los Botones to solve the problem; apparently, their promises hadn’t held enough weight or appeal. The column was full of speculation over what might happen both in the election and to the nation’s sick, and unless Professor Endtimes had been siphoning funds from Colombian hospitals Helena had no reason to believe that he was involved. The same was true of an article regarding an average increase in wages for retail workers throughout the country; it just didn’t seem like the kind of dastardly plot which would fail and leave Professor Endtimes’ so bitter. As much as he was probably in favour of living wages, Helena had seen no evidence of him attempting to affect salary trends.
                Agent Burnley shifted her weight on the stool in an effort to stop, or at least slow the progress of, her leg going numb. There were still several hours available before the library would close for the evening, and there was no way of telling how far she would have to dig to find her answers. With a deep breath, she closed the article on retail wages and scrolled down to the next page. There was a lot of Colombian news to go.
 
                With only a latest-date to work from, Helena had been forced to start at the point of Professor Endtimes’ hiring spree and work backwards. Consequentially, she was now subjecting herself to a reverse chronology of Colombian events by searching through the news records. One piece at a time, she had constructed a timeline of events in the months prior to Professor Endtimes’ recruitment drive. Latest of all, and presumably after the failure of the Colombia job, were the election results, in which the favoured party won a reasonable majority. Before that had come the crumbling healthcare system and pledges to fund it, which in turn had been a consequence of the hospitals struggling to cope with a sudden influx of natural disaster victims. In and among a particularly dense period of lantern articles there had been information on ‘many more’ survivors being found in a number of villages in the mountains of South-West Colombia.
                Having come from an ineptly written local paper, the article made mention of ‘the eruption’ from a fortnight prior but made no effort to identify the volcano in question. It was the same situation in many of the earlier articles too; it seemed that the aftermath had been dragging on for so long that no-one even needed to mention what had caused the devastation in the first place. It was a victory for efficient reporting, but highly inconvenient for Agent Burnley.
                Answers finally came from papers written around the time of the eruption itself; there had been a sudden, unexpected, and catastrophic eruption of Nevado del Huila, a volcano in the Colombian mountains. Agent Burnley stared at the words on the screen. She knew that she recognised the name of the volcano, but the connection wouldn’t form in her mind.
                Reading further back beyond the eruption, there were several articles covering the concerns of Republica de las Costuras regarding foreign environmental companies conducting research on Nevado del Huila. There were claims that ‘unidentified experts’ were expressing fears that any invasive activity on the volcano could trigger an eruption, but many of these claims were laughed off as straw-clutching by the opposition to scaremonger the voters and win support. Fair counter-points that measuring the temperature of the volcano’s crater and surveying for mountain butterflies weren’t strictly invasive, nor were they likely to trigger a seismic event. The adage that the flap of a butterfly’s wings could cause a hurricane across the world was dismissed without question.
                Just as she was reading about exactly why the mountain butterflies were important, someone coughed quietly into Helena’s ear. It was the ‘hu-hem’ of a person who thought they were pulling a polite and tactful veil over their condescension, but were, if anything, erecting a neon-sign to point straight at it. Half an hour earlier than the advertised closing time, a librarian clad in tweed so thick that it was a miracle she could bend her elbows stood behind Helena. She could smell the ‘Overdue’ stamp ink on her devil claws already.
                “Yes?” Helena said with forced brightness whilst turning away from her research. She had, after trawling through lantern articles without number, managed to find something useful, and now yet another librarian was seeking to stand in the path of justice.
                “I don’t know if you’ve seen the time but I will be locking up in five minutes. I know how you people get sucked into these…” she wiggled her head from side-to-side slightly and her lips puckered into a restrained grimace “…machines with their shiny colours and gimmicks. Very distracting and appealing, no doubt. Please finish off whatever it is you’re doing and depart the premises.”
                Helena looked the woman in the eye without adjusting her expression. She’d spent much of the day reading about the lighting choices of South American ‘celebrities’, and it had left her feeling anything but illuminated. In her darkness, exacerbated by the callous treatment of Agent Katter’s kidnapping site, Agent Burnley felt her gaze drop to the woman’s knees. They were right there, uncovered and unguarded, ripe for the shooting. The Librarian had escaped with her ability to walk intact, but this woman was likely an accomplice, perhaps some kind of henchwoman given her tasteless decorations and Poirot-heavy offers. Helena’s trigger finger itched, but thankfully her revolver was nowhere nearby. Firearm violence against civilians, even those as disgusting as the one in front of her, could be avoided for a while longer.
                “Do you understand me? Have I spoken too quickly?” The woman asked with a sneer.
                “Yes. No. In that order. I’ll shut it down now.”
                The woman stood and waited, looking expectantly at the screen.
                “You don’t need to watch me do it.” Helena snapped.
                “I wish I could be so sure.” The librarian replied, oozing derision.
                Helena sighed and closed the articles. Snatching up her bag from under the desk she slid off the stool and walked away from the librarian without another glance.
 
                On her walk back to the cannery Helena ran through what she’d learned in her mind. There had been a sudden eruption a few weeks before Professor Endtimes had replaced his whole staff, and that had happened towards the end of the Colombian Presidential election. The response to the eruption had been a huge debate point in all the political articles published thereafter, as if it were being leveraged to sway voter support one way or the other. In the end, Eduardo Garcia had won the election and Hernandez O’Hara, the outside multi-ethnic candidate, had lost. Was that significant? Did either candidate have any links with Professor Endtimes? Nevado del Huila definitely did, but she couldn’t place what it was. There was still a mountain of questions, and Agent Burnley couldn’t answer them yet. She needed more data and more time.
                The radio that night made for worrying listening. As Commissioner Harmon had predicted, the military were slowly taking over operations at the ministry and he was struggling to assert his own command. The communication was becoming more regimented than before, more disciplined but not necessarily more effective. That was why Commissioner Harmon had always allowed a degree of informality; letting people speak each other’s language ensured that they understood one another, but those pragmatic measures seemed to have been disregarded.
                Each agent was being instructed to hand over their cases to the army, judging by the terse instructions being radioed back and forth regarding new reporting lines and chains of command. If Agent Burnley knew her colleagues as well as she thought she did, there was no way they’d be willing to let go easily. But if she also knew the mayor like she was fearing she might, then it would only end badly for them if they resisted. Their jobs and responsibilities were being stripped away, and it was all her fault for getting too involved with Endtimes too quickly. She would make it right though. Somehow.
                She lifted The Stunner’s pager and looked into the blank screen. Typing quickly, lest her nerve fail her, she typed ‘Nevado del Huila, Colombia, 2015’ and sent it to The Librarian’s number. It was all she could do.
 
                The clinking of tea mugs being carried down the cellar stairs drifted into The Stunner’s ears as she discussed what little mounting point recon she’d conducted the previous day. She was also making up details about many other mounting points as a cover story, and that was thirsty work.
                “So basically, we’re going to lose one of the points on Chapman Road, but otherwise we’re secure. It’s got a lot of overlap too, so we won’t see a significant reduction in efficiency.” She summarised.
                “Good catch there, Stunner. Measure twice, cut once as someone always used to tell me. Thoroughly checked work is the key to success. I am terribly glad that you talked me into it.” The professor told her proudly.
                “Me too. I’ll admit it was nice to be roaming the rooftops as well.” The Stunner added, remembering the professor’s assumptions from yesterday.
                Faint clicking latch sounds reached them as the conference room door opened, and a henchman carrying a tray of tea and biscuits entered, bringing a bough wave of happiness with him.
                “And I’ll admit that it will be nice to enjoy tea and biscuits with you again.” The professor said, rubbing his hands eagerly at the approaching treats. “Thank you.” He told the henchman as he laid the tray down on the conference table.
                “Thanks, it will.” The Stunner agreed, lunging in towards her pink unicorn mug. The professor picked up his own cup of tea, neglecting the handle in favour of wrapping hand around the pleasantly warm ceramic. The words ‘del Huila’ were still visible, protruding beyond his fingertips. The Stunner’s mouth fell open. She’d seen it every day, which was why it felt so familiar. She’d read it so many times. But now she finally knew where it was from. Professor Endtimes had been there, at Nevado del Huila, on the volcano. Had the sudden eruption scuppered his plans? What were they in the first place?
                Agent Burnley wracked her brain, trying to think of what could possibly make sense. Maybe he’d been trying to use it as a power source. Maybe he wanted to harvest some lava. Maybe he was trying to influence the election with the threat of an eruption.
                “Are you OK Stunner? You don’t seem to be moving as much as usual.” Professor Endtimes observed.
                “Yeah… yeah I’m fine.” She said, still lost in her thoughts. There had been an unnamed ‘foreign environmental group’ on Nevado del Huila just before it erupted. All the articles had been sketchy on details but several journalists had expressed confusion over the quantity of material being transported up the volcano; counting butterflies wasn’t considered a capital-intensive exercise, traditionally. Was that his organisation? What could they have been up to?
                “I don’t like to contradict you, but you still aren’t moving. Your arm will get tired like that and you might spill your tea.” The professor said with mounting concern.
                The Stunner drew her arm in closer to herself and hovered her mug just above the table. One of the major political parties had been worried about the activities on the volcano and the other had dismissed those fears as needless scaremongering. Had the professor been conducting work on the volcano to give a political party an excuse to win the public over to their side? Empty promises were traditionally a more cost-effective tactic for voter confidence than natural disasters, but perhaps unorthodox times had called for unorthodox measures. Professor Endtimes was certainly known for those, but emulating a foreign environmental group didn’t sound like his style; it was far too much in the public eye and he liked to operate in the shadows. And the concerned party had gone on to win the election, so why would he consider the job a failure, especially enough of one to fire his whole staff afterwards?
                “Sorry, professor. I just… something on my mind.” She jabbered disjointedly. How many people had he cut-off from his operation after the Colombia job? Probably as many as he currently had here as a baseline estimate, but that would leave a lot of people disgruntled enough to become whistle blowers. The professor was too careful to let that happen, and too much of an enigma for it to have happened already. Maybe, then, he’d never bothered to hire henchmen for the Colombia job, Helena supposed for the first time. It was the simplest answer. Everything had become so overcomplicated, but perhaps it didn’t have to be that way. She was considering the prospect of a man setting up a volcano base, buying an election for a Colombian politician with no obvious gain to himself, and then firing a whole staff of henchmen, all without ever drawing notice to himself. It was preposterous.
                The Colombia job could have been a failure all of his own, with no henchmen involved. Perhaps he’d infiltrated the environmental research group for some reason but not succeeded in his objective. Perhaps he had even been a part of it; he was a professor after all, and they were known for getting involved in research.
                There were too many unknowns and too many possible theories. Her data still didn’t get her to a solid answer, but she had the best potential source of information in front of her right there and then.
                “Do you need a moment to yourself, Stunner?” He asked.
                “No, no it’s fine. Thank you. I think I just needed this cup of tea more than I’d anticipated.” The Stunner replied. Professor Endtimes smiled silently, worry etching away at the mask of happiness he wore. “Nevado del Huila; that’s in Colombia isn’t it?” she asked suddenly, trying to make it sound like she was changing the subject for her own mental wellbeing.
                “Hm?”
                “Your mug is from Nevado del Huila, which is in Colombia.” She clarified.
                “Oh, yes of course. Yes, it’s in Colombia. I stayed near the volcano for a short while, and I thought this souvenir mug was rather snappy.” He told her with a thinner smile than usual.
                “Lots of memories attached to it?”
                “Something like that, yes. I like to have a reminder around at all times, put it that way.” Professor Endtimes said distantly.
                “A reminder of the… what did you call it? The Colombia job?” The Stunner probed more boldly.
                “Wits that sharp are dangerous, Stunner. Put them in the wrong person’s hands and you might find them cutting you.” He warned.
                “I didn’t mean any offence, Professor. I just recalled you mentioning it once or twice as if something went wrong. If there’s any advice you have for me based on that, so that the Super Stunner network runs more smoothly then I’m all ears.”
                “No offence taken. It’s something of a sore spot in my past, but rest assured that if there is anything within my power to stop it being repeated, I will make you aware. Playing with forces of nature like volcanoes, and electricity for that matter, is not to be taken lightly.” He said knowledgably.
                “No, of course not.” The Stunner accepted. With excitement hidden behind The Stunner’s eyes, Helena’s heart raced. It was tantamount to confirmation that he had been involved with the Nevado del Huila eruption, and that she was following the right trail. If he’d had a hand in fixing an election or directing a lava flow to destroy a town, then the ministry would have him completely. They might find it hard to believe that someone would go from rigging elections to covering rats in jam, but in fairness, much of the ministry’s job was hard to believe anyway.
                “Now, I think the tea and biscuits deserve far more of our attention than we are giving them.” He said, brightening up and taking a custard cream from the neat display on the plate.
                “Definitely.” She agreed.
                “Windy Bill sends his regards, by the way. I had contact with him yesterday whilst you were out.” Professor Endtimes said, covering his mouthful of biscuit with one hand.
                “Oh, that’s good. Is he doing well?”
                “Very. Just managed to win a great fly-tipping victory on Clyde Avenue; got 4 mattresses onto the pavement and made his escape before anyone could call the police. Add that to the hold up of a fan shop last week and he’s making quite the impact.”
                “Wow. Has there been any ministry backlash on him?” The Stunner asked.
                “None that I’m aware of, but these are dangerous times, so I have warned him to keep a low profile none-the-less.”
                The Stunner nodded and bit into a garibaldi. Dangerous times indeed.
 
                In stealth and silence, another fortnight passed. If someone had asked Helena where the time had gone, she wouldn't have been able to tell them. All she knew was that it wasn't there anymore.
                On another couple of occasions she had managed to sneak days away from Professor Endtimes to spend researching at the library, digging up as much detail as she could on the circumstances surrounding the Nevado del Huila eruption. As was typical for Professor Endtimes, he had kept a profile so low that even the desperate local media had overlooked him. All details on the environmental group’s activity had been speculative, the political landscape was typically coloured by bias and therefore undecipherable, and not a single article mentioned the tastes of a European professor when it came to interior lighting.
                On her days with Endtimes, however, she had been embroiled in procuring parts for the Super Stunner network. With the plans finalised and mounting points selected, the professor had committed a terrifying amount of resources to making the network a reality. Insistent as The Stunner was that she could steal much of the necessary equipment, Professor Endtimes raised the frustratingly logical point that if he had the money to buy it in, then it was far less risky to just do so. Why give the police or the ministry a reason to look for something when it could be purchased legitimately and lost in the noise of genuine trade.
                However, in order to avoid drawing suspicion for bulk orders of electrical goods it was necessary to buy the parts in small batches via different shell companies and suppliers. It naturally fell to The Stunner, legendary logistical mastermind of the Tooth’s Bane equipment move, to organise the shipments. Using a network of intermediaries, even more pagers, and even a fax machine in one case, The Stunner arranged each purchase individually. Orders were placed at arbitrary times of day or night, quantities were varied, and nothing new was bought until the previous shipment had arrived. In short, it was a lot of tedious, hard work.
                Her radio became a dangerous tool; inside information allowed her to schedule deliveries for her Super Stunner components either away from ministry scrutiny or directly under it, depending on what she needed. If a win was necessary to keep the professor happy then she would get a lorry load of rigging dropped off at Daubenton’s Cannery whilst ministry operations went on elsewhere. Alternatively if her conscience ever got too loud, or it seemed like the professor’s operation was working too well, then a shipment would come across ministry agents or be scrutinised by VAT officers and confiscated. Getting the balance of failures to successes right was exhausting. She needed to ensure that she appeared to have neither insider knowledge nor ulterior motives. This was doubly difficult because she in fact had both.
                One night however, after a long day of organising deliveries, the radio was particularly interesting for other reasons. Sitting in the darkness of the cannery, Agent Burnley visualised the ongoing incident relaying through the radio; there had been an attempted break-in at the police station. Distorted voices of officers on the scene speculated to one another that it was someone hoping to copycat the late notices of The Librarian, but Helena found that to be doubtful. Although The Librarian’s career had been relatively successful, very few people outside of the force would have heard about her late notices.
                One by one the areas around the station were reported to be clear as the officers tried to set up a cordon and catch the fleeing perpetrator, but there had been no sightings and no success. It seemed that whoever it was had manged to get away.
                Helena begged silently for one of them to look at the site and report on how the perpetrator had tried to get in, or give a description of any evidence at the scene. She was desperate for something that might give her an idea of who to look out for. Any number of villains would love to taunt and toy with the ministry by breaking into the station, but they were mostly too ill-equipped or intimidated to go through with it. Besides, it wasn’t terribly whimsical to assault a police station and be immediately arrested, not least of all because it leaves very little in the way of scope for pun-based combat. Any information on how the break-in had been attempted would then point to one of only a few supervillains, those capable of committing such a high profile crime. And high profile crimes were something the professor would usually have a hand in. Unfortunately for Agent Burnley’s attempt at vigilante justice, not one of the officers mentioned an examination of the crime scene.  Helena was left empty-handed, save for a training seminar topic to deliver when she returned to active duty.
 
                At dawn the next morning Helena was awoken by the cacophonous ringing of her pager. It was the same short page from Professor Endtimes sent over and over.
                “Get your equipment ready, please. The Chauffeur is on the way. Urgent. Best wishes.”
                Helena made a valiant effort to convince herself that the professor’s message was nothing to do with the incident she’d heard about on the police radio, but it was doomed to failure from the start.
                Fearing the worst, The Stunner armed herself with her full arsenal; battery hammer lashed to her back, whip on her belt, stun-darts loaded, and pockets stuffed with batteries of all sizes. She was barely finished when she heard The Chauffeur pull up outside. Taking two stairs at a time she descended from the office and ran out of the door to meet the waiting vehicle.
                The Chauffeur wasn’t even waiting outside the limo this time. The Stunner opened her own door, like a peasant with somewhere to be, and leapt into the back seat, feeling the limousine pull away before she’d managed to get her belt on.
                “What’s going on?” she asked, trying to gauge how much danger she or the undercover operation could be in. If The Chauffeur was taking her into a war with the ministry then she needed to find a way out of it.
                “I don’t know much about it, ma’am.” The Chauffeur’s voice was hurried. “I just know that one of the professor’s associates who went off the grid is rumoured to be back, but the ministry is on him. Professor Endtimes needs you to get him out before he can be arrested.”
                “Who?”
                “I don’t know.”
                “Right.”
                The limousine screamed through the early morning streets of the city, blowing out red lights, tearing across roundabouts, and utterly disrespecting the advisory maximum speed for the sharp bend nearby to the train station. Being thrown from side to side with every lurch the limo made, The Stunner started to regret filling all of her many pockets with hard, uncomfortable objects. Having a hammer lashed to her back did little to make her seat more pleasant, either.
                “Where are we heading?” she asked in one of scant moments of stability.
                “Eventually, to a house in Aspey. Need to make some other pick-ups first though.”
                Helena looked at the surrounding streets accelerating past herself. They were heading towards Scrubwick.
                In far fewer minutes than the journey should have taken, The Chauffeur pulled up outside Confectionista’s flat. Within moments she was bounding out of the door, looking excited with all of her not-so-sweet pouches brimming with various poisons, hallucinogens, and other sweet treats. Watching her red and white stripes move so quickly was somewhere between hypnotic and nauseating.
                “Hi sweetie.” She said as she hurled herself into the back seats next to The Stunner.
                “Hey.” The Stunner replied as her head was jerked backwards into the seat. The Chauffeur had pulled away again.
                “It’s great to work with you again. Where are we going sugar?” Confectionista asked with a smile.
                “Aspey. We’re running a rescue of some sort. An associate of the professor is in danger from the ministry.” The Stunner said. She swallowed hard and hoped that somehow, in some way she couldn’t possibly conceive, she didn’t have to see any more of her friends on either side of the fight getting hurt.
                “The dream team from Tooth’s Bane can handle anything.” She said with a twinkle in her eye. There was the outside chance that it was edible glitter, but The Stunner didn’t look hard enough to confirm.
                “You’re damn right we can. We’ll be in and out like a lightning strike.” She grinned.
                “Chauffeur, sweetheart; this isn’t the way to Aspey.” Confectionista observed.
                “I know. One more pick-up.”
 
                Windy Bill clambered into the limousine with his wind-gun on his lap, rather than his back. He’d thought through the fact they’d be travelling in a car far more than The Stunner had.
                “Ladies.” He said with a nod and a welcoming grimace.
                “Morning Bill.”
                “Hi treacle.”
                “What’s the situation? I had a message from Endtimes to kit up but nothing else.”
                “Rescue mission in Aspey.” Confectionista leapt in before The Stunner could speak.
                “Who are we rescuing from Aspey? Someone trapped in a mews court by loose Chihuahuas?”
                “We don’t know.” The Stunner answered. “One of the professor’s associates is holed up there somewhere and the ministry is after them.”
                “Interesting. If we don’t know who we’re supposed to be saving then how will we know when we’ve found them?” he asked sensibly.
                “I, erm, just kind of guessed it would be obvious. I mean, the three of us kind of stand out in a crowd.” The Stunner observed. Windy Bill took a look at Confectionista and The Stunner, then shrugged with an accepting grimace.
                “We also know where he’s hiding.” The Chauffeur offered from the front. “There should only be so many super-villains at a single house in Aspey.”
                “That is also a fair point.” The Stunner conceded.
                “What’s the plan of action then?” Windy Bill demanded.
                “Depends on where the ministry is. If they aren’t at the house yet we need to get in quickly and grab the target before they arrive. If they’re already investigating the house then we might have to sneak around them.”
                “And if they’ve already found him or her then we’ve got a fight on our hands. I certainly won’t mind paying them pack for taking my airport away.” Confectionista said with a little more enthusiasm than The Stunner was comfortable with.
                “Let’s not invite more retaliation if we can help it.” The Stunner said, trying to de-escalate the engagement before it had even started. “We’ll strike hard when we can, but until then we should probably not give the military too many excuses.”
                “How many excuses do you think they need? We’re already super-villains.” Windy Bill counter-pointed.
                “Yes, granted, but we won’t make it any better for ourselves with spite.” The Stunner persisted.
                “Of course we will! They’ll be crippled!” Bill shot back, incredulously.
                “And hallucinating.” Confectionista added.
                “Not the whole lot of them! I highly doubt we’ll be facing down the whole army, and they’ll have plenty of replacements for any we injure.” The Stunner argued, but keeping a solid logical stance was difficult when lurching into her opponents at every corner. The Chauffeur’s driving was only getting more aggressive.
                “Well if anyone gets in my way then they’ll feel my mighty winds.”
                “And I’ll give them sweet dreams.”
                “We’re getting side-tracked.” The Stunner said, trying to change the subject. “How sure are we that the target is at this house Chauffeur?”
                “Completely. They’re hiding somewhere on that property, but we don’t know where exactly. If the ministry is there it will change everything though.”
                “Right. We need to assess the situation as we arrive then. Confectionista, what have you got on you?”
                “Allsorts.” She said with a wink.
                “Good one.” Windy Bill complimented with an impressed grimace.
                “Anything more specific?”
                “I don’t want to give everything away just yet; we have the whole job for that. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.” Confectionista winked.
                “Are you even old enough to remember Marathon bars?” Windy Bill asked dubiously.
                “Getting side-tracked again. Can you at least tell me if you’ve got your special sherbet?”
                “Of course! Wouldn’t leave the house without it.”
                “Hallucinogenic strawberry laces? Tranquilising lollipops?” The Stunner pushed.
                “That’s not what I’m calling them, but yes I have both of them honey, and an awful lot more.”
                “OK, perfect.”
                “Some of us don’t need so many toys to sew mayhem. Me and my wind gun can withstand anything.” Windy Bill said, slightly defensively.
                “Or you can’t think of anything else to make.” Confectionista sniped playfully.
                “OK, let’s nip this in the bud.” The Stunner said, trying to place herself between the gazes of her accomplices. Sitting in the middle seat of the rear of a limousine rendered that fairly easy. “We’ve all got what we’ve got and will be perfectly well equipped to deal with the situation.”
                Both of the others tutted, having had their fun ruined.
 
                Tyres left black stripes on the tarmac as the limousine screeched to a halt, throwing the three super-villains in the back off their seats.
                “They’re here already. Police and military vehicles.” The Chauffeur announced. He didn’t mention the helicopter circling around, but the noise of its rotors meant there was no need to.
                “How far from the house?” The Stunner asked.
                “They’re literally right outside it; number ninety-six. There are a lot of vehicles and officers there too; police and military.” The Chauffeur informed her. His eyes were scanning up and down the street, taking in everything they could about the unfortunate amount of company in which they had found themselves.
                “Damn it, how are we supposed to we break through that?” Confectionista asked.
                “We blow them all down.” Windy Bill said menacingly.
                “Might work if they weren’t armed, but I don’t think that your wind gun can stop a bullet.” The Stunner advised.
                “Hold on.” The Chauffeur ordered suddenly. The engine growled and the limousine shot forwards, turning hard to one side and bouncing up onto someone’s drive way.
                “What are you doing?!”
                “Just hold on.”
                Scraping against brickwork on either side, their limousine forced itself along the sideway between two of the detached houses. It slammed through a garden gate, leaving wooden fragments dangling from distorted hinges, and emerged on a pristine lawn. On the bright side, it had finally stopped the bottom of the gate scraping against the driveway.
                Spinning the wheel hard to the left, The Chauffeur skidded the limousine around by ninety degrees, carving deep tyre-trenches in the soft earth, crushing several ornaments, and side-swiping a newly built shed with the rear of the car. With another thunderous revving sound The Chauffeur rammed through the fence, sending splinters of wood across another neatly mown garden and severely inhibiting the support offered by a wooden trellis on the other side. Mud sprayed up high over the limousine’s windows as the wheels churned through a lovingly planted flower bed, and yet another fence fell victim to The Chauffeur’s unique take on urban path-finding.
                As the fence panel fell away, however, a solid looking concrete barbeque pit loomed into view, flanked by a brickwork patio and a deep pond. Thumping his foot down on the brakes, The Chauffeur was able to turn a potentially devastating crash into an only moderately agonising impact, catapulting The Stunner, Confectionista and Windy Bill forwards again as the barbeque pit stood its ground.
                Airbags shot from the floor of the limousine, catching the flying passengers in a heap of limbs, batteries, fans, and confectionery. Miraculously, they were uninjured.
                “Ow, Christ!” Windy Bill exclaimed. His lack of significant injury didn’t mean his fall was pleasant.
                “Everyone alright back there?” The Chauffeur shouted back.
                “Still alive, I think.”
                “Sweet as peaches.”
                “OK, good. Get out there and get to ninety-six. Should be... three gardens over. I’m going to get out of here and pull the limo around to the front in five minutes. I’ll probably have a dedicated following by that point, so please be ready.” He instructed confidently.
                “You’re not expecting this thing still to run, surely?” The Stunner questioned.
                “It’s made of sterner stuff than that, ma’am. I can’t drive through that lot, but this was made to withstand anything the ministry might throw at Professor Endtimes. It’ll run just fine, and I would recommend that you do the same.”
                “You heard the man.” Windy Bill said, throwing the door open and leaping out. Confectionista followed right behind.
                “Five minutes.” The Chauffeur reminded them.
                “Got it.”
                The Stunner clambered out and slammed the door shut. She, Confectionista and Windy Bill vaulted onto the patio, leaving muddy footprints on the recently cleaned paving slabs, and The Chauffeur’s limousine shot backwards. Windy Bill pulled his wind gun onto his back and wiggled his shoulders until it was sitting comfortably.
                “Stand back.” He told the others, approaching the fence. With as much of a smirk as he could pull through his grimace, he fired the wind gun at full power, tearing several fence panels from their posts and scattering them over the next garden. “The wind’s old foe falls yet again.” He growled triumphantly.
                Together the three of them leapt through the new opening and trampled whatever fell into their path, dashing towards number ninety-six. Windy Bill led the way with his weapon raised, firing short bursts of wind to tear panels out and clear a path. Even when the panels were low enough to jump over, he fired regardless to cause as much damage as possible. In no time at all they found themselves on either side of a ruined aperture in the fence-line, looking over the wreckage of several fence panels into the garden of number ninety-six, whilst also standing in a child’s sandpit.
                “Cease your resistance!” A gruff voice shouted somewhere at the bottom of the garden.
                “Never!” A maniacal cry cackled in response. There was something familiar about it; The Stunner had heard that voice before. She definitely knew it.
                “Bag him, lads.” The first voice ordered more quietly.
                “There!” Confectionista whispered, pointing to the end of the garden. Through a knot of apple trees she could see a cluster of men in military uniforms.
                “Crap, sounds like they’ve already got him. Confectionista, get over to the house and stop anyone else coming out. If they’re getting backup then holler. Bill, with me.” The Stunner ordered.
                “Got it, sugar.”
                Confectionista ran towards the house, and The Stunner and Windy Bill ran towards the end of the garden, pushing through the foliage and low-hanging fruit with the helicopter’s racket covering the noise of their approach. They emerged from the miniature orchard to see a group of five soldiers standing in a ring around something vaguely man-shaped on the ground. Just beyond them and the prone gentleman was a red-brown garden shed with the door hanging open. The Stunner skidded to a halt on the grass as she caught a better glimpse of the man on the ground, tearing a pair of short holes in the lawn. His welly clogs were tied to his trousers with frayed, dirty baling twine. His green and brown fleece was shredded, damp, and wound with green garden wire. One of the soldiers was trying to get a black canvas bag over his head, but struggling on account of the sizeable wooden helmet he was already wearing. A helmet in the shape of a classical garden shed.
                “Shedder…” The Stunner muttered to herself in disbelief. He was back.
                “Stunner! Come on!” Windy Bill shouted, lifting his wind gun into firing position. “Can’t chat lads, we’re in a hurry-cane!”
                A forceful gale erupted from Windy Bills’ gun, taking the soldiers by surprise and knocking them all off balance. More than one of them fell onto Shedder, which was probably counter-productive, but overall their destabilisation was a net benefit.
                Face down, hands bound behind his back with cable ties, and lying underneath a muscular squaddie, Shedder was completely helpless. The Stunner knew she could finish what she’d started weeks before and put a hole in his knee with one of the soldiers' guns, finally giving him adequate payback for trying to burn an innocent garden store attendant to death. He deserved nothing but hurt for what he had done. But Windy Bull was one witness too many. Word would get back to Professor Endtimes that The Stunner had shot the man she was supposed to be rescuing, and for seemingly no reason. His time will come she told herself, gritting her teeth and arming her stun darts.
                “Shocked to see us?” she asked, mostly rhetorically, as she opened fire from her wrists.
                With Windy Bill keeping the squad incapable of fighting back using his wind gun, The Stunner was free to dance around the soldiers, firing darts and lashing out with her whip until they were all electrically incapacitated.
                "Shedder, Endtimes sent us to get you out. Can you walk?" The Stunner asked once her business was concluded, kneeling down beside the prisoner.
                "Endtimes? And here I had shed all my hopes that he would help. Cut my hands free."
                "I don't have a blade."
                "Take my Secret-eurs. Left knee pocket." He instructed, wiggling his leg unnecessarily to indicate which one was on the left.
                Reluctantly The Stunner plunged her hand in, and found a pair of perfect ordinary secateurs with the word 'secret' written on the handle. They were also covered in an unreasonable quantity of dust and sand from Shedder's pocket. Unless he was trying to smuggle ballast around, there was really no excuse for it.
                With a quick snip the cables ties were off and Shedder pushed himself back to his feet, among the throng of disoriented soldiers.
                "Thanks. They must have caught me off guard-en" Shedder said. Even when talking quietly his voice had a strained mania which set Helena’s teeth on edge.
                "Hurry up, we need to get back to Confectionista." The Stunner told him sharply, ushering him back towards the hole in the fence.
                Windy Bill led the way with Shedder limping behind him and The Stunner bringing up the rear. As they pushed back through the apple tree foliage they saw Confectionista on a grey-slate patio, pirouetting in a cloud of not-so-sweets. A set of glass patio doors had been slid open, and from it there were soldiers and officers of the ministry racing out to deal with the commotion.
                A pair of officers were rolling around on the edge of the patio with strawberry laces plastered over their faces, and mumbling something entirely incoherent. Sherbet dusted the walls, leaving a man-shaped silhouette on the brickwork. Shouts echoed through the house, and men were piling out of the patio doors. Nimble and poison-laden as she was, Confectionista was being overwhelmed.
                “Damn it! We’re on the way!” The Stunner shouted across the garden.
                Confectionista tried to hop away from an angrily kicked combat boot but slipped on a fallen lollipop, sending her stumbling backwards into a collection of flower pots. Overbalancing she toppled off the edge of the patio and plummeted for just over one foot onto the lawn below. When she tried to sit up again, she found herself looking down the barrel of an unfriendly looking rifle.
                “Blast them!” The Stunner ordered Windy Bill as they dashed towards the patio beatdown.
                “We’re still too far. We need to assail them with a gale not cool them with a breeze!”
                “Ugh. HOLD ON!” The Stunner shouted to Confectionista, just in case she was on the verge of giving up. With a gun pointed at one’s face when only armed with a selection of confectioner’s goods, giving up is about the only viable option.
                “Leave her, we need to get out of here.” Shedder protested, curving towards the gap in the fence.
                “If you even think it Shedder…” The Stunner threatened, her panting breath taking away some of the menace.
                “HALT, ALL OF YOU, OR SO HELP ME I WILL ORDER MY MEN TO SHOOT!” Bellowed the commanding tones of an officer, standing in the middle of the patio and sporting eyebrows the size of a generous coniferous forest. Had he used them as a barrier, rather than employing an overly long threat, then perhaps it would have given the villains more cause to pause. As it was, The Stunner and Windy Bill kept charging the patio down.
                “Just a few more seconds and I’ll be in range.” Windy Bill said as quietly as he could.
                “We’re unarmed! You can’t fire on us!” The Stunner shouted over, hoping to use battlefield ethics against the officer. His many medals marked him as a man of experience, and his epaulets declared him to be highly ranked indeed. It must have been General Montsourcil.
                “YOU HAVE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. STAND DOWN. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.” The general bellowed, red-faced. Helena couldn’t tell if his cheeks were always that ruddy, or if he was just particularly displeased by the loss of his prisoner; she made a mental note to ask one of the other agents once she’d brought Endtimes down.
                A cracking sound rang out to the side of The Stunner. Looking over she saw Shedder tripping forwards, his foot having passed through, and wedged itself in, one of the fallen fence panels. Despite the danger all around, she smiled; he wouldn’t be running off without them just yet.
                “Help me!” Confectionista screamed suddenly from the ground. The Stunner was almost offended; she must have known that they were on the way to save her, even if Shedder was being a craven traitor. A reminder like that was scarcely necessary.
                “Weapons free men.” The general started to say, before a strong right-hook sent him down to the patio. Shouts of confusion rose up across the patio, and the guns which had been trained on Confectionista and her associates were soon swung away.
                “What the hell is going on?!” One of the soldiers shouted as he grappled with an officer of the ministry, hallucinogenic laces stuck limply to the officer’s face.
                “I must save the princess!” the ministry officer declared, his pupils dilated. He knew that she was over the precipice of the castle wall somewhere, and this ogre had been threatening her.
                “You’re a real sweetheart.” Confectionista said with a wink, hopping up to her feet.
                “What happened?!” The Stunner asked incredulously as Confectionista sprinted their way.
                “Hallucinogenic laces!” She cackled gleefully. “They worked even better than I thought!”
                “Back through the fence, come on. We can link back up with The Chau-” The Stunner started, before the crack of rifle fire cut her off. A bullet slammed into the sandpit in which they were once again standing.
                Although disruptive, the hallucinating officers were only two men against a dozen, and they were quickly brought under restraint. Once again, an array of rifle barrels was trained on the villains.
                “Stand down.” General Montsourcil ordered, a trickle of blood flowing down his cheek. “We have you this time Stunner. Lay down your weapons and get on the ground.”
                “Back away slowly.” Windy Bill whispered. “And keep him talking.”
                “We were just shedding home, actually. Can’t stay any longer.” Shedder called to the general, taking Windy Bill’s advice and creeping backwards.
                “Not another step!” The general demanded.
                “Don’t make a murder out of this assault and battery.” The Stunner weighed in, inching away from number ninety-six. They were clear of the sandpit.
                “Blow off!” Windy Bill shouted, aiming his wind gun down at the sandpit and blasting it at full power. A frenzied sandstorm surged forwards, shredding at the soldiers on the patio and blinding them to the fleeing super-villains.
                “Nice one.” The Stunner complimented as they ran back through the already distressed gardens of Garbaldisham Road. Confectionista was throwing lolli-POPs behind herself to cover their escape, punctuating their desperate flight with loud bangs and the occasional string of stray shrapnel. The flowers which were busy trying to recover from their first trampling found further boots crushing them, gnomes were punted far and wide, and Windy Bill blew out even more fence panels for no immediately obvious reason. As much as The Stunner preferred to minimise collateral damage, she was in no mood to stop running and tell anyone off; there was far too much angry shouting going on behind them for that.
                Confectionista vaulted athletically through a broken fence and onto the raised patio which had helped to block The Chauffeur’s entrance earlier. Windy Bill lurched up after her, followed quickly by The Stunner. On either side of the house, wide pathways led onto the road, one blocked only by a thin wooden gate, and the other by a fence. At least, they had been blocked until that very moment, when a squad of ministry officers introduced the thin slats of wood to their robustly manufactured boots.
                “Police coming from the road!” Confectionista yelled back. “Get a move on.”
                “Trying.” Windy Bill wheezed, his voice starting to live up to his name. He wasn’t much of a sprinter, unlike the officers heading towards them.
                "Help!" Shedder cried from behind. The Stunner skidded to a halt and turned around, seeing Shedder pulling and thrashing against a trellis at the edge of the fence gap. The garden wire around his torso and baling twine around his welly boots had somehow both become entangled in the protruding edges of the trellis, binding him to the fence.
                “We need to move!” Confectionista shouted back to them both.
                The Stunner told herself she could leave him there. The ministry was closing in from the side and the military from behind, in much greater strength than any of them had anticipated. Taking the time to go back for Shedder would risk them catching up and put everyone all at risk. Surely the Professor wouldn't want for his right hand woman to be taken down over someone like Shedder?
                She could spin it to the professor, but Windy Bill and Confectionista were right there. They would know that she hadn’t even tried to go back for him, and then Endtimes would find out the truth.
                "Uch!" She grumbled, running back to disentangle the shed menace. Boot-steps thundered along the side of the house, rapidly approaching. Not contented with trespassing and vandalism, the ministry officers were now causing a racket outside the windows in the early hours of the morning; it was a PR nightmare.
                “We’ll hold them as long as we can.” Windy Bill shouted.
                “So don’t take long!” Confectionista added.
                The Stunner grabbed at the tangled wire and tried to unhook it from the trellis.
                "If you stopped pulling at it this would be much easier.” The Stunner snapped, trying to contort the wire as Shedder continued to thrash.
                “Just hurry up! They’re getting closer!” He told her, eyes wider than the hole that Windy Bill had made in the fence.
                “I’m aware of that but you’re still moving!”
                “Get me off it!” Shedder wailed over the sounds of Windy Bill’s wind gun powering up again.
                “Right, fine. Screw this.” The Stunner said finally, letting go of the wires and taking a step back.
                “What are you doing?!” Shedder shrieked. “You can’t leave me here.”
                In a single smooth motion The Stunner unsheathed her battery hammer and slammed it into the trellis, splintering it across the flowerbed.
                “You nearly hit me!” Shedder cried, missing the point as entirely as the Stunner had missed him.
                “I will hit you next time.” The Stunner told him. “Oof.” She added when he pushed her backwards into the fence to gain some ground and get ahead.
                “Don’t know what I expected.” She muttered to herself, regaining her balance and hopping back up onto the patio. Immediately she was greeted by the sight of Shedder head-butting Officer Springer, followed shortly after by Officer Clarke striking him in the spine with a truncheon. The Stunner lashed out with her whip repeatedly, the end sparking with the rapid succession of discharges and blows, and shooed away the nearest officers for a moment.
                Grabbing the wire around Shedder’s torso, The Stunner dragged him away from the melee of ministry officers before she had to electrocute any more of her colleagues. Not letting go, she ran across the patio to Confectionista and Windy Bill. If The Stunner didn’t know better, she would have sworn they were actually enjoying themselves, using Bill’s wind gun and a bag of Confectionista’s irritant sherbet together as a snow machine. Conversely, the officers along the pathway being assailed by the stinging blizzard were having anything but a wonderful time.
                “OK we’re good, get moving.” The Stunner barked.
                “We were just starting to have fun.” Complained Confectionista.
                “So I saw.”
                With a shrug, Confectionista, fished a lolli-POP from her bag and tossed it towards the officers chasing from behind as Shedder jumped off the patio and into the barbeque pit. With a deceptively strong kick he broke the hose off the grill and lifted the gas bottle out.
                “What are you doing!? We need to run!” The Stunner said, hopping down and fleeing from the sugary, stunned officers.
                “I’m doing some to-pyre-y” Shedder told her cryptically, producing a flint and tinder from his pocket.
                “What? We don’t have time for games.” Windy Bill said.
                “Topiary! Like hedge trimming. But with a pyre.” Shedder clarified as he struck a spark.
                “Why with” was as far as The Stunner got.  Shedder threw the gas bottle down and sprinted through to the next garden, an intense blue flame burning at the severed end of the hose and resting on the broken fence panels.
                “Holy crap!” Confectionista shouted, joining Shedder in his flight. Fire had quickly taken on the dry fence panel, spreading up its length and significantly reducing the chance that it could be easily put back in place.
                Shedder snatched the sherbet bag from Confectionista as he ran past and tossed it backward. The bag soared through the air, leaving a cloud of powder along its trail and bursting open on the fence panel. Almost immediately the whole cloud went up in a huge air-burst of flame, setting the remaining fence and much of the nearby lawn ablaze.
                “Let’s see them chase us now!” Shedder cried, kicking a rotary washing line which wasn’t even slightly in his way.
                “You could have killed someone you maniac!” The Stunner shouted at him. It seemed that despite his heavy garden and shed leanings, he was also fairly fond of fires.
                “It did the job though.” Windy Bill said, tossing a handheld fan over his head as he fled.
                The Stunner felt too sick from flashbacks of the garden centre to respond.
 
                Along the muddy tyre tracks left by The Chauffeur ran the four of them, all out of breath. Some of them were covered in sherbet, and one of them was still wearing sections of shattered trellis, so blending in along the street was highly unlikely. Coupling that with the elaborate costumes and the fact that the post-dawn street was otherwise deserted, and the unlikelihood was multiplied by several times.
                “Any sign of The Chauffeur?” The Stunner asked breathlessly as they reached the road.
                “Not that I can see.” Confectionista replied. The sound of engines was audible in the distance, but nothing nearby.
                “Crap. Well at least he didn’t crash or get arrested just out here.”
                “Get to the end of the street before those ministry guys get up and come after us.” Windy Bill advised. With no better plans from which to work, they begrudgingly started to run again. As they neared the corner of the road a jet black saloon car screamed past them from the direction of ninety-six. Once ahead of them it squealed around in a handbrake turn, tyres smoking as they skidded along the tarmac, and rocked from side-to-side slightly as it came to an abrupt halt.
                “Someone else wants to feel the gales, I see.” Windy Bill said, somewhat needlessly.
                From the driver’s seat of the car stepped a man with short, sandy hair, a rounded but narrow jaw, and a taste for bad-smelling microwaved food. Covering his eyes were a pair of large safety goggles.
                “Hand over Shedder, Stunner.” Agent Porter ordered humourlessly. He raised his service revolver, the spitting image of Helena’s own, to face the group of villains. “Now.”
                “He’s too far away for the wind gun.” Muttered Bill.
                “I’m out of lolli-POPs too.” Added Confectionista. “And my sherbet won’t work; his eyes are covered!” she said with shocked dismay, having never encountered the new-world technology of goggles before.
                “We need to do something! Quickly!” Shedder pleaded, sidling himself behind Windy Bill in case the agent decided to fire.
                “Not going to happen.” The Stunner shouted back. “Not like this.” She followed up, trying to catch his eye. His expression remained impassive.
                “You’ve got until the count of three, and you’ll notice I’m not aiming for the knees.” His voice was devoid of emotion but his tone was telling. “I’m willing to let you three go, as long as you give me Shedder.”
                “Doesn’t work that way, agent.” The Stunner told him, standing her ground. Her eyes pleaded with him to make contact and see the subtext, the implications of what she was saying. She would find a way to get Shedder to justice, but it couldn’t be like this. “We didn’t save him just to give him back. There are bigger plans in motion here.”
                “That’s delightfully expositional but not good enough. You have until the count of three, and then I’ll start firing. One.”
                “Someone do something!” Shedder begged.
                “Two.”
                “Anything!”
                “Three.”
                The Stunner fired both wrist darts directly at Agent Porter’s chest, but instead of the usual electro-dance, he merely flinched slightly.
                “I’m afraid that I’m one step ahead of you there, Stunner. You’ve made the mistake of thinking that no-one else in the world has thought of rubber clothing.” Agent Porter sneered back. “There’s only so many innocent people and police officers you can electrify before we start taking it seriously.”
                The Stunner looked along the wires of her darts to an agent she respected, the man who had helped her to bring down DJ Disaster and The Librarian. How could he be doing this? He knew what her mission was and what she’d sacrificed to do it. If he couldn’t see or didn’t believe that there was a reason for the horrible things that she was being forced to do… it made her wonder what General Montsourcil was turning the ministry into.
                “I can’t let you jeopardise this when we’re so close to victory.” The Stunner warned, Helena’s thoughts screaming at Agent Porter to understand.
                “I worry what it is that you people consider to be a victory these days.” His revolver was still levelled directly at The Stunner.
                A crescendo of engine noise and a tyre squeal echoed along the street as a rather battered looking limousine lurched around the corner. Agent Porter span around to face the source of the noise, just in time to see The Chauffeur’s limo heading directly towards him.
                “No!” Helena screamed reflexively, pulling hard on her stun-dart cables. Wedged in the thick rubber of Porter’s insulating armour, they heaved him out of the limo’s path just far enough to miss the bonnet, but The Chauffeur artfully opened his door as he came past. It slammed into the agent’s back and sent him spiralling to the ground limply. Stamping on the brakes, The Chauffeur pulled up alongside the waiting villains with pinpoint precision.
                “Everybody in!” he shouted, but they were already on the case, all leaping in through the same door. The Stunner disconnected her dart wires and spared a glance towards Agent Porter with a deep pang of guilt. He was moving and trying to get up; good enough. The Chauffeur didn’t even wait for her to close the door before driving away.
 
                The Chauffeur’s limousine tore back through the city, weaving around traffic and drifting around corners with squad cars and the helicopter in close pursuit.
                “Why the hell do they want you so much!?” Windy Bill demanded of Shedder.
                “Because I’m the lands-caperer. I run a campaign of shock and lawn against the world. I am Shedder!” He spoke with grandeur, which was slightly eroded by the erratic vehicular movements throwing him around.
                Confectionista sighed, due equally to the lack of information in Shedder’s reply and his tenuous wordplay.
                “You’re going to have to be more specific there, sugardrop.”
                “It’s because of Shedder’s Garden Centre of the Damned.” The Stunner growled.
Shedder looked into the Stunner's face with a cold intensity. His eyes narrowed as if he was noticing something he'd never seen before, and she turned away when she saw a glimmer of familiarity, something on the way to recognition.
                “Chauffeur, are we alright? Can we lose them?” she called up to the front.
                “This is only a fender-bender.” He replied, inspired into the pun game by Shedder’s outburst. The limo turned a corner onto a long, straight road. “I can tidy up most of the trouble without concern.”
                The Chauffeur accelerated hard, which seemed to be the only way he knew, and then flipped open a cover of his central control panel. Without looking, he pushed a small grey button, and The Stunner heard a latch opening at the rear of the vehicle. She sincerely hoped he wasn’t making a daring attempt to refuel at speed.
                From a compartment in the bumper, a collection of nails, screws, and broken glass fell onto the road in a wide spread. It wasn’t so much like something from a cartoon as literally something from a cartoon. The Stunner stared out of the rear window, nursing the abused remains of her perception of reality versus fiction, and worried about the flicker of comprehension she’d seen on Shedder’s face. He was the only person in Professor Endtimes’ operation who had seen her out of her disguise, and that meant he was the biggest threat to her safety. She was busily wishing that Agent Porter hadn’t made so many quiet allusions to her real identity when two squad cars sped over the detritus in the road and promptly swerved out of control. The shock of The Chauffeur’s plan actually working jolted her back into the moment and she turned back into the limousine.
                “Does… does that happen often?” she asked.
                “Not really, ma’am. I’ve had all this kit for a while now and never used it. This is very exciting for me.” The Chauffeur admitted.
                “Unless you have something left to deal with the helicopter, sugar, I think it’s going to get more exciting than you want.” Confectionista pointed out.
                “Oh, that’ll deal with itself, miss.” He reassured her, with his usual calm professionalism.
                The Stunner bristled that Confectionista was called miss and she herself was called ma’am. She wasn’t that much older than Confectionista and certainly didn’t look bad for it.
                “You might like to make it deal with itself sooner rather than later.” Windy Bill suggested. “Otherwise we’re going to have more cars on us very shortly.”
                “We’re nearly there, sir.” The Chauffeur placated.
                Quite where ‘there’ was, The Stunner didn’t know. She’d not paid much attention to the route they’d taken from Garbaldisham Road, and she didn’t recognise the present surroundings. It certainly wasn’t the way back to Endtimes’ lair, though.
                The Chauffeur swerved the limo abruptly into a multi-storey car park, bouncing over speedbumps and crunching the bodywork against the tarmac. Knowing exactly where to go, he turned the wrong way into the one-way circuit and descended along the ascension ramp, heading towards the basement levels. His commitment to villainy in his driving style, even during trying times like these, was laudable.
                A staff only shutter door covered a private garage, with faded yellow diamond markings to keep the front clear. Naturally, someone had decided that this was the perfect place to park their car, orienting it parallel to the door so that it blocked as much of the entrance as possible. The Chauffeur hit another button on his control panel and the door slowly groaned open, rolling upwards with a mechanical clattering and grinding. Without slowing he ploughed the front of his limo into the badly parked car and pushed it sideways into the garage with him.
                Even with another car pressed into its bonnet, the limousine fit easily into the generous garage space. Once the whole thing had ground to a halt, The Chauffeur switched off the engine and turned to face his passengers.
                “Everyone out, quickly.”
                He twisted back and stepped briskly out of the driver’s door. The four villains did as they were told and piled out after him, moving around the rear of the vehicle to join him by a wooden door in the side of the garage. Running up each wall were shallow recesses about a foot wide, two on each side. The Stunner’s gaze followed them upwards from the floor, reaching a ceiling with an unusual quantity of reinforcing and diagonal girders.
                “This way, please.” The Chauffeur said, unlocking the wooden door with his car keys and pushing it open. His villainous guests walked into a warmly lit lounge area, complete with soft arm chairs, sofas, a tasteful dining table, and even a water fountain. Once everyone else was inside he followed suit, before pressing a button next to the doorway. A series of electric motors somewhere above whirred into life, shaking the room slightly as floor of the garage started to descend, taking the limousine and its newly acquired bonnet ornament with it.
                Not willing to be outdone, the ceiling joined in. It lowered itself down through the room, sliding surprisingly smoothly along the rails, and carrying its own precious cargo of tools and miscellaneous car-repair sundries. Within twenty seconds everything was calm and still once more; a whole new garage was in place, and their tracks were hidden.
                “That’s… impressive.” The Stunner said admiringly. The Chauffeur nodded.
                “Courtesy of one ‘The Great Garagio’.” He said. “Quite the masterpiece.”
                The Stunner’s gaze crossed over to Shedder, who had collapsed himself onto an arm chair. He was staring back at her, and his expression had solidified at the mention of his temporary former ally.
                “Looks that way. He must have been pretty useful.”
                “Everyone the professor enters into business with is useful, I assure you. Why don’t you take a seat, ma’am?” The Chauffeur said, holding arm towards the various seats in the room.
                “We’re just going to hide out here? They saw us come in.” The Stunner questioned.
                “Only briefly. I will be informing Professor Endtimes of our progress and confirming our next steps.”
                “Right, well I think it’s best if we don’t delay longer than we absolutely have to.” She said, making sure he was fully aware of her feelings on the matter.
                “What’s wrong Stunner? Don’t want to spend any time with your colleagues? Afraid we’ll drain your batteries?” Shedder challenged.
                “More concerned that might you get yourself stuck or arrested yet again, which wouldn’t come as a shock to me. We won’t always be around to turf the ministry out and save you.” The Stunner riposted, meeting his aggressive puns willingly.
                “Ha! And yet there wasn’t a single pun when you were talking to that ministry dog.” Shedder probed. “Feeling run-down were you? Discharged?”
                “Cut it out, Shedder.” Confectionista told him.
                “Just remember where you’d be if I hadn’t broken you free of that trellis.” The Stunner fired back through gritted teeth, her brow pinched so hard into a ‘V’ that it might break free and rush down the length of her nose.
                “We might have had to get into even more of a scrap! Oh terrifying day! The big brave Stunner can take down some wood and shout at Shedder but she’s scared of the ministry.” He mocked, the shed helmet on his head rocking loosely as he did so.
                “I seem to recall that it was you pleading with anyone else to do something when we were at gunpoint.”
                “And when The Chauffeur finally did you pulled him out of the way of the car! He was going to get wiped out until you saved him.”
                “I still got him.” The Chauffeur reminded.
                “But only enough to knock him down.” Shedder lamented.
                “To be fair, Stunner, you did stop me from taking out the mayor when I had a chance.” Windy Bill remembered.
                “Do you not understand that there’s a handful of us and a literal army out there trying to hunt us?” The Stunner asked, frustrated.
                “Guys. Stop it. I’m not getting drawn in to the honey-trap of pride and nor should any of you.” Confectionista demanded with surprising authority. “We’re all here to work together.” Shedder’s gaze stayed focused on The Stunner, trying to take a direct flight into the business lounge of her head and explore the various amenities therein.
                “You’re right.” The Stunner said, turning away and sitting on the edge of one of the sofas.
                Windy Bill shrugged and rested his wind gun on the table, scratching the varnish. He examined the scratch with a guilty grimace, then covered it with a coaster.
                “Shedder, would you please join me?” The Chauffeur asked, directing Shedder back into the newly descended garage.
                “Into a garage again?” he said with genuine disgust. “Don’t you have a shed?”
                “These are trying times for us all.” The Chauffeur answered diplomatically.
                “Fine. This time.”
                Like a stroppy adolescent, Shedder laboriously stood up from his armchair and stomped towards the garage. He gave The Stunner another sideways glance as the door closed, and then he was out of sight. In direct contradiction of established knowledge, however, he wasn’t out of mind.
 
                The villains sat in silence, looking at anything but each other and recovering from the copious running and fighting the morning had already held. The Stunner was lost in thought, trying to assess how much Shedder really knew about her, versus the degree to which he was just a cretin. She still needed to deliver him to Endtimes, but after that she could deal with the situation properly. Starting her preparation early wouldn’t hurt.
                “Confectionista?” she said. The blonde girl looked up.
                “Yes honey?”
                “Could I borrow a few of those laces, and some of the tranquilising lollies, please?”
                “What do you want them for?” she asked, a little suspiciously must mostly out of curiosity.
                “Nothing specific, but they’re damned good. They could certainly bail me out in a sticky situation.” The Stunner answered casually.
                “Well they only ever make things stickier” she said with a grin “but of course you can. Anything for you sugarplum.”
                Confectionista stuck a hand in various pouches and pulled out fistfuls of not-so-sweets, depositing them quickly into an array of pockets around The Stunner’s cargo trousers.
                “Thanks. You might just have saved me.”
                “Well you definitely saved me at the airport. I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you about that advice. Don’t want to leave you bitter.” Confectionista said, sounding a little embarrassed.
                The Stunner chuckled. “I don’t think you know the meaning of the word.”
                Confectionista winked and sat back down.
 
                “We will be leaving shortly.” The Chauffeur said to the stoic villains as he emerged through the garage door. He and Shedder had been talking for twenty minutes or so.
                “Ready when you are.” Replied The Stunner.
                “Please help yourselves to water from the cooler as you desire.”
                No-one moved. The Chauffeur then helped himself to two cups in case everyone else was being polite, but nothing changed. The silence was finally broken by a beep from The Chauffer’s pager.
                “OK, we’re ready. Let’s go.”
                The party of villains left the lounge area through a second door at the side of the room which, by a series of turns and corridors which definitely didn’t add up properly in The Stunner’s mind, led back into the multi-storey car park.
                In the closest bay to the door was burgundy estate car. The windows were tinted black, but otherwise it was singularly unremarkable. Attesting to that fact, no-one remarked on the car at all as they got in.
                The Chauffeur calmly pulled the car out of the space and wove his way to the street entrance. Where The Stunner had been anticipating a full roadblock of squad cars, there was nothing. No rotors were audible above them. There was no team loitering in the road and monitoring the exit. In fact, many specific cases could be glossed over by making the blanket statement that the road was deserted, as one might it expect it to be in the early morning.
                “Did I just come down from a sugar rush? Where is everyone?” Confectionista asked, echoing everyone else’s thoughts through a cavern of sucrose related phrases.
                “They will have made their way after our limousine. Or rather, five which look just like it.” The Chauffeur said simply.
                “Decoys?” The Stunner asked, stating what was already fairly obvious.
                “Decoys.” The Chauffeur confirmed needlessly. “Professor Endtimes’ henchmen are dedicated to the health of the organisation, and his costume maker is terribly convincing. The ministry will fully believe that they are chasing each of us isolation, and we will be lost in our non-descript vehicle among the morning traffic.
                “That’s some intense forward planning.” The Stunner surmised.
                “Then the prof must have known what we were walking into.” Windy Bill inferred angrily. “He could have got us killed!”
                “Not quite so, sir. This is one of a few such sites around the city. We keep some henchmen on retainer for these jobs, and a full selection of costumes on hand for any associate of the organisation. When Professor Endtimes plans ahead, he goes far enough that no-one can see it coming.”
                It was a strangely lyrical turn of phrase for The Chauffeur, but Helena couldn’t think of any better phrase for it. The intricacy of Professor Endtimes organisation seemed to increase every time she looked at it. But judging by Agent Porter’s actions earlier, if she didn’t start pulling the threads soon then there might be nothing left to go back to.
 
                The Chauffeur’s driving on the route back couldn’t have been more different to his earlier urgency. He was the model road-user, steadily progressing through the building morning traffic with an infectious calm. The tension in the back of the car hadn’t fully dissipated, but it was eased. Unfortunately, his moderation also meant that the journey took at least twice as long as it had earlier.
                Windy Bill was dropped off first, exiting the car with a respectful nod to everyone else. Next they cruised through Scrubwick, locking the doors immediately when they entered the area, and deposited Confectionista outside her flat. She gave The Stunner a short hug, said a terse goodbye to Shedder, and blew The Chauffeur a kiss; all over there was more of a personal touch than Windy Bill had offered.
                “Since Shedder is currently without accommodation, Professor Endtimes has requested that he joins you in Daubenton’s Cannery for the moment, until it’s time for the next job to start.” The Chauffeur said when they set off again.
                The Stunner tensed up in her seat. Having to be around Shedder at all was bad enough, but inviting him into her safe-house was too much. It was a huge presumption on the professor’s part.
                “Is there nowhere more suitable?” she asked.
                “Not that we have been able to make ready.”
                “Trying to get away from me, Stunner?” Shedder sniped.
                “You keep making remarks like that. Can you blame me?”
                “Heh, yeah. I’m sure that’s the reason.” Shedder said sarcastically.
                “I will fill you in on the details of the job when we are at the cannery.” The Chauffeur said, ignoring the conflict in the rear of the vehicle.
                The remainder of the journey passed in silence. When they finally pulled up the cannery The Stunner exited the vehicle as quickly as possible, standing between Shedder and her sanctuary.
                “I think we should talk down on the manufacturing floor. There are some chairs we can pull up.” She said.
                “As you wish ma’am.”
                “Yeah, you wouldn’t want me snooping around through your secret lair, I’m sure.” Shedder mocked.
                ‘I wouldn’t want you, full stop’ Helena thought.
                Inside the cannery there was an unusual chill. The area of the manufacturing floor which had previously been used for constructing the first Super Stunner was now empty, the assembled pieces long since moved into position for easy mounting when the time was right. The Stunner had been against it, but Professor Endtimes wouldn’t budge; he wanted each piece of the network to be ready for raising at a moment’s notice as soon as it was ready. Without the piles of scrap metal and stolen radio masts, a draft was free to blow through the old factory floor. It didn’t help that the cannery was picking up on The Stunner’s mistrustful and frosty attitude towards Shedder, either.
                “As you may be aware, Shedder has been staking out the police station over the last few nights.” The Chauffeur started. “It seems that Agent Burnley has gone to ground, since there’s no evidence of her having been at her desk for some time.”
                “Agent Burnley?” The Stunner asked in slightly strangled tones.
                “Yes, the star ministry agent. The cow who ruined my Garden Centre of the Damned. Her desk’s a paper dump now. Guess they’ve all forgotten about her. Or written her off for dead. Or maybe she just quit because she couldn’t take the strain.” Shedder speculated without breaking eye contact.
                “So she’s out of the picture. That’s a good thing isn’t it?” The Stunner asked, not liking where the conversation was going.
                “Not good enough. I nearly had her! But that oaf Garagio let me down, and Professor Endtimes was going to take it out on me.” Helena couldn’t imagine Professor Endtimes taking anything out on anyone, at least not with more severity then giving them a slightly stale cake instead of a fresh one. “I was going to catch and deliver Burnley to finally make good on my promise to capture an agent for the professor, but the harlot’s disappeared.”
                “Shedder here has, however, offered an interesting proposition to make amends. He might not be able to deliver Agent Burnley but he can undo some of her damage, and Professor Endtimes has asked that you help him out.” The Chauffeur interjected, attempting to keep the discussion moving along.
                “What are we talking about, exactly?” The Stunner asked warily.
                “You might not like it. It involves attacking the dreaded ministry with their smart uniforms. I understand if you want to wet yourself.” Shedder sneered.
                The Stunner ignored him, partially because, now that he’d mentioned it, she did rather need the loo.
                “Shedder believes that he has a way of breaking into the station where Burnley’s arrested villains are being kept. We’ll break out Garagio, Gatekeeper, The Glazier, The Librarian, and anyone else we find.”
                “And it’ll bring all the other agents running. With so many of us they won’t stand a chance. What do you say, Stunner? Ready to get some blood on your hands?” Shedder goaded, licking his lips in a manner which was entirely unnecessary. It reinforced her desire to punch him.
                “Killing isn’t the professor’s style.” The Stunner shot back, hoping to convince herself as much as anyone else.
                “Generally not, no. But he understands that missions such as this carry an inherent risk.” The Chauffeur said, disconcertingly. “I’ll leave you to discuss details; I’m afraid I need to make arrangements of my own for tonight.” He stood up.
                “You go for it, Chauf. We’ll have a lovely time on our own here.” Shedder said, winking. Helena wanted to punch him even more.
                “Thanks Chauffeur. I’ll page with any updates.” Said The Stunner, ignoring Helena’s extreme discomfort.
                “Welcome as ever, ma’am. Sir.” With a nod to both of them he turned his back and made his exit. The Stunner and Shedder sat opposite one another on uncomfortable metal chairs in silence. Neither one wanted to make the first move for conversation; Helena couldn’t bear to discuss strategy for capturing all of her friends and colleagues and Shedder was back to staring at The Stunner’s eyes.
                Discussion finally started when The Stunner decided to try to get as many details out of Shedder as she could regarding the break-in. That way she could warn the ministry somehow or at least improve security on her return. Predictably, however, he was obstinate and unhelpful. Every question was met with a taunt or vague answer, every suggestion was slapped down, and he wouldn’t stop staring at her eyes. After two hours of trying and learning nothing, The Stunner finally gave up.
                “Got anything to drink around here? A nice water feature would really slake my thirst.” Shedder asked as soon as The Stunner had flopped her head into her hands in resignation.
                “I need the loo. Wait here.” She told him without answering the question. She’d been trying not to leave him alone, but the need to go had been building during their whole conversation. Given that speaking to him at all made her want to vent everything from her body at the same time, it had been a close-run battle against her own biological needs.
                “I’ll be still as a statue. Grass would grow further than I’ll go.” He said with mock sweetness. She briefly considered peeing in a bucket and pouring it on him, but that would make a mess of her floor. His time would come, eventually.
 
                Upon returning from the loo, despite rushing as much as she dared, Shedder was gone. Footprints through the dusty floor led towards the staircase; towards the office.
                The Stunner cursed and dashed to the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. It clattered angrily under the strain and echoed through the cavernous cannery, but the cacophony wasn’t a patch on her own rage. Shedder was snooping around, digging through her things. If he found the radio or any of her personal effects then he would have proof of who she really was.
                The office door was open. She ran forwards through it, and was immediately caught in the throat by an extended arm. The Stunner fell hard on her back, driving the wind from her body, as Shedder stood over her.
                “Nice try, Agent Burnley.” He sneered. A muddy boot stepped onto her chest. “You can’t fool me. I could identify a sub-species of dandelion from a hundred yards. Spotting you through that pathetic disguise is child’s play.”
                “You’re wrong.” The Stunner managed to wheeze, struggling to get air back into her body under the compression of Shedder’s boot.
                “Oh am I? Or was it wrong to bring your wallet to your secret hideout? I can’t believe my luck! Professor Endtimes has sent me the person that I want to send back to him. It’s perfect.” Shedder laughed, the mania in his eyes stained with murderous intent.
                The Stunner grabbed and pushed against Shedder’s leg with both hands, trying to lift the weight away, but he just leaned harder.
                “Oh I wonder what he’ll do to you. And what he’ll think when he finds out that The Stunner turned out to be his nemesis after all!” he swiped up a mug from the desk. “Maybe he’ll turn all your fun sparky toys against you. I think you’d look good frying.” Slowly he positioned the mug over The Stunner’s head, then he dropped it.
                The Stunner grunted in pain as the ceramic shattered against her forehead.
                “Whoops!” Shedder said theatrically, before twisting his leg violently and driving it onto her chest harder.
                The Stunner’s hands were torn away and fell back to her sides. She couldn’t reach any of the not-so-sweets Confectionista had given her, and she’d unsheathed her battery hammer downstairs. It was a trial to draw breath, and Shedder was delighting in her suffering.
                “You could have just burned to death in my garden centre you know. It would have been so much better for both of us. I wouldn’t have had to hide in mouldy sheds for weeks!” he punctuated the end of his sentence by stepping his other foot onto one of her forearms. The Stunner made what little noise she could.
                Scrabbling around with her free hand, she found the shattered handle of the mug Shedder had dropped on her. With a quick swing she plunged it into his calf, driving the ceramic far enough in to support its own weight and stay in place. Shedder stumbled backwards and howled, releasing his foot as he staggered around in pain. Air rushed into Helena’s lungs, a cold breeze into a burning chest. She rolled to one side and panted heavily, her senses recovering from their suffocation, before grabbing the doorway and pulling herself up to her feet. Immediately Shedder rammed a shoulder into her back as he ran past, slapping her against the door frame and dropping her back down to her knees. Clutching Helena’s wallet, complete with driver’s license and pizzeria loyalty card, he vaulted over the edge of the gantry outside the office, landing with a loud bang and springing off towards the door.
                Impressed and livid in equal measure that the mug handle hadn’t slowed him down, The Stunner sped out of the door after him as fast as her breathless state would allow. Holding onto the gantry rail, she flipped over it and dangled down, before dropping the remaining distance to the ground. Shedder was just visible disappearing out to the road, and The Stunner gave chase, her chest protesting in the strongest possible terms. She hopped over abandoned pieces of canning machine, and bolted through the doorway into the dazzling light of day behind Shedder and her threatened identity. Ahead she saw that his wires had once again entangled him, this time on the hole in her chicken-wire fence, but he was quickly able to free himself.
                “Get back here you rat!” she screamed, in a poorly thought out waste of what little air she had in her body.
                “The professor will see this Burnley. You’re finished! Dead!” Shedder cried back, pounding away down the street. The Stunner skidded through the hole and scrabbled after him.
                Shedder had far more stamina than Helena expected. Although they had both expended a lot of energy with the morning’s escape, he was able to give her a worthy chase through the mid-morning streets. He was also headed directly for the high-street, into the public eye. Helena couldn’t allow that wallet to be seen by anyone.
                Every time she thought she was gaining ground, Shedder managed to pull away again. He dodged through traffic like a madman, which on several levels he was, and soon enough they emerged into a row of shops and banks. Realistically it was more of a ‘just-off-the-ground’ street than a high street as such; the services on offer were little better than just doing the task in question oneself, and manufacturing the retailers’ goods personally would usually result in a higher quality product, but it was the best the area had to offer.
                The Stunner could feel herself tiring. She wouldn’t be able to catch him at this rate, but she couldn’t afford to let him get away. She slid to a halt, reached into a pocket and drew out a handful of batteries. With a wing and a prayer she pulled her arm back and flung the heavy nine-volt cells forwards, a shotgun blast of metal projectiles. As demanded by statistics, one of the batteries landed squarely on Shedder’s head, knocking him off balance despite his helmet. He staggered sideways into a billboard outside a barber’s, which bravely claimed that haircuts received within would be ‘competently performed 80% of the time’, and fell to the ground.
                Within seconds The Stunner was on him. A small crowd started to gather around them as she snatched the wallet away from him with one hand, whilst raining a series of frantic punches down with the other. Once she had the wallet in a pocket, she turned it into a double-fist beating.
                “You cow!” he wailed furiously, but his body was caught in the billboard frame and he was unable to fight back. The Stunner wrenched him onto his back, bending his arm unnaturally within the billboard frame, and continued throwing blows out at Shedder’s head. His shed helmet was now distinctly worse for wear, splintering apart a little more with each blow and exposing his jaw.
                “This is what happens to people who betray the professor!” she growled, laying the desperate framework of a cover story for what she was doing.
                “Imposter! She’s Hele-” Shedder wailed despite the rain of fists, his sentence cut off when an uppercut closed his jaw for him.
                “Trying to lure us into the station! How stupid do you think I am?” She spat. Left after right after left her fists fell onto Shedder in an effort to shut him up.
                “Manipulator! Liar! The Stunner is Agen-” Shedder started, before The Stunner stuffed a handful of hallucinogenic laces into his mouth. “Aiignnt brrrnnnlll” he managed through the strawberry jelly.
                “Chew Shedder.” She snarled at him. In one hand she crushed the head of a tranquilising lolly. She pushed his forehead backward and pinched his nose to force his mouth open, then poured the lolly dust into his mouth and nose. Shedder spluttered and snorted, his head shaking against her in an effort to spit the drugged not-so-sweets out, but The Stunner had her hands clamped over his mouth. She made a mental note to wash them particularly well later.
                “Adugghj” he responded, which The Stunner took to mean ‘Yes, OK. Good idea. I’ll chew and swallow it all.’
                The crowd was keeping a safe distance at the sight of the notorious Stunner, but many were already on the phone; the ministry would soon be on them. Shedders pupils were starting to dilate and his eyelids drooped; Confectionista’s products were startlingly effective as it was, but The Stunner had given Shedder her whole stash in one go. She questioned how moral it was to forcibly overdose someone in the course of justice, but he knew too much. She needed to keep him silent for a while, or at least intoxicated enough that no-one would take him seriously when he blurted out her real identity, but it was only temporary solution. A very temporary solution.
                There could be no more stalling, no more waiting, no more biding her time. As soon as Shedder was lucid her cover would be gone. The military would hunt her and punish the ministry for their deceit. They would publish wanted posters, expose her dual identity, and set the public against her. Endtimes would find out and his organisation would become a threat again. It was time to start moving against the professor while she still could.
                She stood up from Shedder once he had swallowed the laces and took her whip in one hand. Limply dangling the tip against Shedder’s knee, she winked at Shedder’s unseeing eyes and pulsed the power on, making him jerk violently.
                “No-one betrays me;” The Stunner shouted to the crowd “not like this. Remember it.”
                Without another word, she leapt up onto a shop awning and scrambled to the rooftops. Pager in hand she ran back towards the cannery to get her equipment ready.
                “Shedder betrayed us. His plan was a trap. Ministry has him again. Need to talk to Endtimes immediately.” She sent to The Chauffeur. The timer was ticking.