Helena Burnley vs Professor Endtimes - Part Three: A Bathtub Too Far

               The Stunner snuck into the Daubenton’s Cannery under cover of darkness as always; her pattern of behaviour was starting to give the abandoned industrial building a self-confidence complex. She had been so enthusiastic about taking it over at first, battling Iron Can, roaming around its cavernous production floor, and setting up shop in the office, but ever since then it was darkness, shadows, creeping and subterfuge. She hadn't even hung a name tag up. Even now, driving in with a van full of radio antennae, she flicked off the headlights and quieted the engine to prevent anyone from noticing that she was associated with the cannery. It was all the building could do to restrain itself from creaking the rafters and showering her with dust.
                Oblivious to the devastation she was wreaking on the cannery's feelings, The Stunner hauled her newly requisitioned mast from the van and dragged it carefully along the factory floor. Still soaked from the storm, she left wet footprints in the thick dust and carved out a canal with the legs of the mast. Whilst most of the water on her suit had run off easily and soaked into the seats of the van, her hair still dripped and her skin was cold and damp. It seemed that she had a habit of getting herself doused in cold water every time she tried to acquire radio equipment.
                In the centre of the cannery, she had cleared a wide space in which to work on her Super Stunner. The canning machinery had been dismantled or dragged to one side, leaving a patch of bare floor with an unstable pile of useful components and scrap metal at one edge. Soaked and scraped, the radio mast now took pride of place, ready for the rest of the Super Stunner to form up around it.
                The cannery didn't appreciate The Stunner's clean-up efforts; far from taking it as an apology, it considered the move as an attempt to change who it really was, all for The Stunner’s own benefit. It wouldn't have minded so much if it had been asked, because then they could have worked together, but The Stunner was just taking over and making it all about her. Unfortunately, the cannery didn't take the time to consider that its feelings of underappreciation might have been altering its own perceptions of the Stunner's actions; industrial buildings are rarely known for their grasp of psychology.
                "This ought to keep Professor Endtimes’ attention." The Stunner said to no-one in particular whilst looking at her stash of materials. Her radio was still chattering about the arrests of DJ Disaster and The Librarian. "And that will keep Commissioner Harmon's attention. Helena's too."
                With her night's work completed, The Stunner changed back out of her suit, and Helena hurried home. Her mind was buzzing with excitement long into the night, between the thrill of avoiding her daytime colleagues, having climbed up yet another building, and thinking about the buy-one-get-one-free offer her local pizzeria would be running the next day. Add to that the false progress she could make on the Stunner case by investigating her own van hire and the very real progress she would make with The Librarian, and all round things were looking up.
 
                When Helena rolled into the station the next morning, tired as she always was after a night as The Stunner, Officer Dunner hurried over excitedly. She’d not even had time to remove her coat.
                “Agent Burnley! Fantastic news! We got The Librarian last night. Your operation was a success!” He was smiling from ear-to-ear, across the front of his head as is traditional. Anyone who smiles from ear-to-ear via the back of their head should seek expert medical or circus advice. “DJ Disaster too. They’d been fighting and both put each other into a pretty rough state by the time the team busted in, so they went down easily.”
                “That’s brilliant!” Helena said with genuine excitement but mock surprise. “Where are they now? We’ll need to start the interrogations as soon as possible.”
                “Agent Porter is already on it with DJ Disaster, they’re in interrogation room two at the moment. Commissioner Harmon is in the observation room and listening in, but he’ll want to be there for The Librarian so you’d best hold off until he’s ready.”
                Helena didn’t want to wait for anything, but accepted that she should be patient for just a little while longer. The anticipation of finally getting to grips with The Librarian, late-notice purveyor of ill-repute, had made her forget all about her tiredness and aches from the night’s work. She’d even stopped worrying that someone might have made a report of seeing The Stunner loading a radio mast into a panel van. All that mattered at that moment was getting some solid intelligence out of The Librarian. Her stomach grumbled loudly. Breakfast mattered a fair amount too.
                Commissioner Harmon emerged from the observation room half an hour and one croissant later, looking pensive but pleased about whatever he’d heard in the DJ Disaster interrogation. Taking a cigar from the top pocket of his white shirt, he waited outside the interrogation room door for Agent Porter. Helena practically leapt from her seat and strode over to join him.
                “Morning sir. Sounds like last night’s operation was an unqualified success.” She said cheerfully.
                “That it was, Burnley. Even without the agent who organised it in attendance.” The commissioner shot her a sideways glance with a raised eyebrow, but Helena could see that he wasn’t genuinely reprimanding her. There was finally some humour back in him. “I take it you were otherwise engaged? We didn’t have any other reports of super-villainous activity in the city.”
                “Yes sir. I was taking care of things elsewhere.” Helena said, allowing him to draw his own, far more positive, conclusions over what she must have been doing. “I think the operation will make great progress very soon.”
                “Glad to hear you’re finally getting on top of it all, Burnley. We need a win on Professor Endtimes one way or another, and hopefully The Librarian will hold some further answers.”
                “Definitely. I’ve arranged for the interrogation to begin as soon as you are ready, sir.”
                There was a bang on the door next to them, and Commissioner Harmon unlocked it, swinging it open to allow Agent Porter his freedom. He looked as if he’d been up all night, but was smirking; the interrogation must have gone well.
                “Morning Agent Porter.” Helena said with a smile.
                “Agent Burnley.” He replied with a nod.
                “Fine work in there, Porter. That’ll be enough to send him away and keep the streets quiet for a while.” Commissioner Harmon congratulated.
                “What did we get?” asked Helena, eager to get up to speed.
                “Full confessions to dozens of theft gigs and an admission that he was trying to raise an army of brainwashed dancers to perform heists for him. There were a few wild claims about him being a revolutionarily good musician as well, but those are probably just red herrings.” Porter told her. When Helena thought back to what she’d heard at Burlington Unrefined Milk, she decided that no herring of any colour could conceal the deceit behind those claims.
                “Wow, how’d you get him to admit to all that?”
                “I bet him that he had nothing up his sleeve and was far less impressive than we’d assumed. Turns out, he’s a bit of an idiot and took the bait. Told us everything there and then.”
                “It was perfectly executed, Agent Porter.” Commissioner Harmon said authoritatively. “Now, shall we see if we can enjoy the same successes with The Librarian, Agent Burnley?”
                Helena nodded, heart pounding excitedly. It was time.
 
                “Recognise this?”
                With a heavy thud a transparent plastic bag containing a bloodied and battered copy of ‘The Complete Works of Agatha Christie’ slammed onto the table between The Librarian and Helena. As a precaution, The Librarian’s hands had been handcuffed and shackled to the steel bar on the table; putting her favoured weapon within arm’s reach could have had potentially devastating consequences otherwise. Poirot had enough blood on his hands as it was.
                “Of course I recognise it.” The Librarian said with a sneer. “Agatha Christie is one of the most famous writers in the genre, a standard against which others are to be judged.” Her voice was whisper quiet. Through horn rimmed glasses her eyes were trained judgementally on Helena, expecting her to over-bend a paperback spine or dribble on a page at any second.
                “And this copy specifically? The one you used to savagely beat Agent Katter in cold blood?” Helena goaded back, the edge of her own voice decidedly a hardback.
                “It’s no way to treat a book, but martyrdom is its own form of respect.” The Librarian answered with defiance.
                “Martyrdom to the cause of following Professor Endtimes.” Helena proclaimed directly.
                “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The Librarian lied quietly and badly, as criminals in interrogations tended to do.
                “You’re facing an awfully long time inside. Over a dozen recorded unprovoked assaults in the street, multiple threats sent to the ministry, actual bodily harm against an agent of the ministry, aiding with the kidnapping of an agent of the ministry, assaulting a DJ… the list goes on. I’m sure that prison libraries are wonderful though. A whole 6 books and some of them only have half the pages torn out.”
                “You can’t scare me.” The lie was better this time.
                “Oh, I can.”
                Helena rooted through a bag at her feet, then dropped a Sherlock Holmes anthology on the table. Pinching the cover so that it bent and creased, she yanked it open and revealed the laminated pocket which had been stuck onto the first page. A City Library record card sat in the pocket, poorly filled-in. The few lines which did have initials in the ‘checked-out’ box had no partner in the ‘checked-in’ box opposite, most of the writing was in a diagonal line across the row, and it seemed that it had been filled in with a blunted crayon.
                “You’re sick.” The Librarian seethed in a murmur.
                “You lost your right to call anyone sick when you wielded Poirot in anger.” Helena told her bluntly. She licked the tips of her fingers, leaving them shimmering and wet, then carelessly swiped them across the page, flipping several over and crumpling them. “I think I could have accepted it more easily if you’d used Kathy Reichs, or even one of the Brother Cadfael books, but Poirot is a new low. Have you no shame? It’s practically a dirty weapon. A chemical attack. A war crime.” She dog-eared a page to mark her place.
                The Librarian flinched, but kept her resolve. “Kitty kat should be honoured. It’s the closest he’ll ever come to a competent detective.”
                Helena’s face momentarily flickered into rage. Looking The Librarian in the eye she opened the paperback up farther and farther, forcing the covers to open wider than their binding would allow. The spine strained to stay together under the pressure and the glue was stressed to breaking point. With a quiet crackling, she pulled the two covers farther still, until they touched, face-to-face.
                “The only thing worse than Poirot is you.” She whispered, never breaking eye contact. With the pages still splayed out into three-hundred and sixty degrees of deductive logic, in a vain attempt to keep up with one or other of the covers, Helena casually and deliberately dropped the book.
                Unable to control herself in the face of such brutality, The Librarian attempted to lunge forwards and catch the book before it hit the table. A rattling of handcuff chains became a solid clink as they pulled taut, leaving her hands a few inches short of saving the abused collection of stories. She was forced to watch powerlessly as the thin sheets of paper folded under the weight of the book when it hit the table.
                “No!” She shrieked almost silently. “You’re a monster!”
                “Tell us about your connection with Professor Endtimes. We know that The Glazier was working for him, trying to send us a message, and we know that you were the one to capture Agent Katter in the first place. Tell us everything you know and perhaps the rest of Mr Holmes’ escapades will be safe.” Helena demanded.
                “You only caught me because of dumb luck and the help of that musical dunderhead. You’ll never get to Professor Endtimes, no matter how much I tell you.”
                “Dumb luck that we had a team waiting outside the library he used as a venue was it?” Helena asked leadingly, raising an eyebrow and fixing The Librarian with a smirk.
                “You… you knew… is there no move too low for you people!?” The Librarian was incensed. “You must be lying. There’s no way you would have let that happen under your noses.”
                “And there was no way that you would let it continue happening for long either, was there? But we already know the details of your humiliating defeat and arrest.” Helena goaded. She knew it was counter-productive, but hurting The Librarian felt like vengeance for Agent Katter. “What I’m interested in is the connection between you and Professor Endtimes.”
                “He manipulated me far better than you did. You’re outclassed.” The Librarian sneered, an air of regret just discernible under a cloud of stubborn resistance.
                “Enough of the rhetoric. Whilst it might go against your nature, talk.”
                “I’m the mistress of silence, agent. ‘Against my nature’ doesn’t quite cover it. It’s a miracle you can work out how to get out of bed, let alone track down villains. Oh, wait, other villains have to do that for you, don’t they? Like the DJ. You must be proud that he can outthink you all and succeed in drawing me out.” The Librarian had bypassed ‘passive’ and gone straight through to being aggressive-aggressive. But mentioning villains finding other villains reminded Helena of something highly important. A question she had to ask despite already knowing the answer.
                “If you don’t want to talk about the professor, then why don’t you tell me about the connection between you and The Stunner?”
                Coming out of the blue, the question completely blindsided The Librarian. Her anger and confrontational attitude dissipated to make way for confusion.
                “Who or what is The Stunner?” She spat.
                “Don’t play games. You set her on DJ Disaster at Burlington Unrefined Milk to stop him causing too much noise in the city. She gave him a message from you and slapped one of your labels on him. We found it at the scene so don’t try to worm out of it.” Helena persisted. Part of her felt guilty for enjoying framing another woman for her own crimes, but the rest of her felt ecstatic that this particular other woman was The Librarian.
                “I have never heard of any Stunner, nor of that DJ before last night. Your incompetence is delivering you to false conclusions, agent.”
                “Our incompetence, or Professor Endtimes laying a trail? Maybe he’s had enough of you. Perhaps you’ve disappointed him by leaving us so much evidence to link you to the kidnap of Agent Katter.” Helena suggested.
                “Nice try.”
                “What am I trying, exactly, Librarian? We know that you kidnapped Agent Katter on Professor Endtimes’ orders, and we know that you fouled up with covering your tracks. We know that The Stunner has been courted by Professor Endtimes recently. We know that she attacked DJ Disaster on your orders, or orders to say she was from you, from the testimony of DJ Disaster. And we know that both you and DJ Disaster are now in custody while Professor Endtimes and The Stunner are walking free. Am I trying to fool you, or are you already a fool for believing that Professor Endtimes is still interested in you?”
                The Librarian was shaking, fists clenched into tiny judgemental balls. If she’d had a rubber ‘Overdue’ stamp in her hand she could have broken clean through the table, but no words left her mouth. She remained silent for a minute or so, weighing up the situation and considering all the ‘facts’ laid in front of her.
                Helena’s heart was pounding in her secret petrification. This part of the plan carried all the risks and danger, and she was nowhere near as confident in it as she’d made out to Commissioner Harmon in days gone by. If The Librarian had more conviction in Professor Endtimes, or more suspicion of the ministry than Helena had anticipated, then it could all still fall apart. Agent Burnley forced herself to keep a mask of outward calm while she waited for the villain’s reaction. Finally and suddenly The Librarian spoke again.
                “He set me up! He manipulated all of us!” She ‘shouted’, almost reaching the volume of casual conversation.
                “And he’ll get away with it if you don’t start talking.” Helena added, forcing the point home as a wave of relief swept through her body. She had to check momentarily that the relief wasn’t due to accidentally wetting herself.
                “He first approached me after I’d been operating for a few months. I found a note from him in one of the late-returns files promising me support and singing my praises. It promised resources to keep all libraries permanently silent and all books perfectly preserved.”
                “In other words, everything you wanted.” Helena probed.
                “Yes, obviously. With the support of the professor I was able to outfit myself with more durable tweed, stickier labels and a rapid fire label gun. He even helped me to infiltrate your pathetic security to leave late notices for you. After all, if we don’t leave things in front of your faces you seem to have great difficulty in noticing them.” Helena ignored the jab and kept asking questions.
                “What is Professor Endtimes trying to achieve? Helping you to silence people in the street doesn’t sound like it would help him at all.”
                “I don’t know and I don’t care to know. He’s the only person who seemed to have the resources and the inclination to help me retake the libraries, and he’s not the sort of person whose motives you question. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t have contacted him to ask the question.”
                Helena tried to cover up her frustration at the lack of information coming her way, but didn’t do a very good job.
                “You must know something! He trusted you with his strike back at the ministry, and I can’t believe he’d just throw that job out there to someone who wasn’t in his confidence.”
                “You’re chasing shadows, agent. All I know is that Professor Endtimes has given help to those that society has branded villainous for standing up for something.”
                “Every shadow is cast by something, Librarian, and I’ll find whatever it is. Tell me about the attack on Agent Katter.”
                “Everything was going well with the silencing thanks to Professor Endtimes’ support, so when he asked me to set up an ambush for your agent I couldn’t refuse. There wasn’t much explanation of why, but it sounded like retaliation for something or other you goons had done. So I put together the bogus book offer, laid in wait behind classical fiction, and struck when he wandered in like the sheep he is. It was all too easy. Once I had him, The Glazier turned up with his loud mouth and filthy hands to take him away.” Every word The Librarian spoke was slathered in derision at the rest of humanity.
                “You must have had to notify someone when you had Agent Katter. How?”
                “I was given a pager to be used one time and then discarded. I was all too glad to be rid of it too, wretched machine.”
                “A pager? I’m sorry, did you plan this in 1994?” Helena laughed.
                “If we did then we still outsmarted you, didn’t we?” The Librarian shot back with a sarcastic smile.
                “Where did you dispose of it?” Helena pushed on.
                “Where do you think? The bin.”
                “The bin? Without disabling or breaking it at all?” Helena asked, barely restraining a smirk.
                “Of course not! That would waste time. It’ll be crushed in the waste lorry anyway won’t it?”
                “Of course, of course. Which one did you put it in?” Her lips were quivering with the effort of not smiling.
                “Good gracious… the bin in the library that never gets bloody well emptied because we can’t afford to employ cleaning staff!” The Librarian snapped indignantly.
                “Then… there’s still a good chance that the pager will still be there, or in the dumpsters outside?” Helena finally unleashed the wry grin from its shackles.
                “I… perhaps.” Reluctantly admitted The Librarian.
                “Thank you, Librarian. You might just have given us a direct line to Professor Endtimes.”
                Helena rose from her chair and banged on the door to exit, satisfied that she had what she needed.
                “You mean you're going to get on your hands and knees and dig through rubbish?” The Librarian asked incredulously after the exiting agent.
                “We're already used to handling trash like you.” Helena riposted with a smile.
                “Go to hell.”
                “I’m in your company aren’t I? By my estimation that means I’m already there.” Helena winked at The Librarian, blew her a kiss, and left the room.
                Immediately upon exiting she directed one of the uniformed officers to take a full statement and confession from The Librarian, then ordered a team to sweep through the bins and the dumpster around the City Library. If they were lucky then the pager might be found within the day. The boys and girls in the lab could potentially trace the pager back to its point of origin and point of sale and then they’d have their first piece of evidence tangibly linked to Professor Endtimes.
                After receiving Commissioner Harmon’s terse but heartfelt congratulations, as well as a stern word about antagonising suspects, Helena sat at her desk and dealt with the nightmarish administrative process cried out for by the night’s events. Such was the scale of the bureaucratic burden, Helena was wading through paperwork until the late afternoon; between summarising the operation, transcribing the outputs of the interrogation, and justifying why she was sending officers to dig through the rubbish bins of local council services, she had probably written as many words as were contained in the library itself. Just as Helena was bidding her colleagues goodbye for the night, her desk phone rang shrilly into the office. The pager had been found.
                Riding the endorphins of success, and in a more real sense her bicycle, Helena returned to the flat; despite the enticing investigation into the pager she needed to get ready for the night and return to the cannery. If Professor Endtimes had been watching last night, which Helena suspected was the case, then she expected a message to be waiting.
 
                The cannery saw her coming in late again, without any word to say where she'd been all day or what she'd been up to. It honestly didn't know why it bothered worrying anymore. Every night was the same; she would creep in through that hole in the fence rather than using the main gate, slip in through the back door rather than the front, and then sneak like a thief into the office with her disguise. No amount of rubber and leather could hide her lack of consideration for the cannery’s feelings.
                Helena switched on the flickering office light and saw, sitting on the end table right where they always appeared, a letter on the familiar paper used by Professor Endtimes. This time, however, it was far longer than his previous communications. Eagerly she ran across the room and snatched it up.
                "The Stunner,
                It seems that although I was impressed with your performance, I may still have underestimated you. Please forgive the brevity of my previous missives, but I can't spend as long as I would like getting in contact with everyone I wish to. In your case, I now see that it is clearly worth the investment of time.
                Your manipulation of DJ Disaster in setting him against The Librarian was certainly skilfully executed; a perfect cover for your heist of the Freedom Pirate Radio mast. I'll bet no-one has noticed that yet, other than me and the pirates of course.
                Impressed as I am, I must confess to harbouring grave concerns, however, that you seem incapable of cooperating with, or even tolerating, other members of our underground community. Iron Can, The Apologiser, Paraceta-mole and DJ Disaster would be an impressive arrest record for an agent of the Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes, let alone an up and coming villain like yourself. It makes me nervous, understandably I hope, that your considerable skills are being plied to the cause of incapacitating other villains rather than focusing on your own agenda.
                It was a source of worry for me before, a niggling concern in the back of my mind, but I had was willing to overlook my concern with those conflicts. The Librarian, however, was one of my more trusted companions. That sort of strike so close to my heart brings worries from the back of my mind right up to the front. Now don't misunderstand me, I am not seeking retribution for her downfall. She got herself into this mess by taking such obvious bait from DJ Disaster. But I need to know that you can work alongside the other members of my society rather than against them, and so I have a test for you.
                Some associates of mine are planning to steal the bathtub from the mayor’s house, as a punishment for his campaign against super-villainy. If he wants to, and I quote, ‘clean up the city’, then he’ll have to do it without cleaning himself. My associates require help and guidance in this endeavour, however. Work with them to complete the job without electrocuting either of them, beating them into a pulp, or leaving them to be arrested, and it will confirm to me that you are at least capable of teamwork, even if you don’t seek it out. I need people I can rely on; ambition alone is not enough.
                Your colleagues will meet you outside the ‘Plumbing The Depths’ bathroom supply shop at midnight, Wednesday morning.
                All the best,
                Professor Endtimes”
                Helena read and re-read the letter in an attempt to comprehend exactly what she was being asked to do. The Stunner, whom the mayor had already declared to be his nemesis and number one target, would now have to break into his house and steal his bath. Helena anticipated that the mayor would not appreciate that one bit. As if he could be any more nuclear over The Stunner as it was, she was going to be launching a personal attack on him. Her thoughts turned to how she was possibly going to lay an evidence trail for this one which didn’t immediately lead to her own arrest, but that was a secondary concern. The mayor was welcome to be angry at Helena for not capturing The Stunner yet, but not taking on the job for Endtimes was simply not an option.
 
                "You want to rob the mayor?!" Commissioner Harmon blustered, barely restraining the volume of his voice. Helena had harboured suspicions that he wouldn’t be a fan of the plot, so it was good to see that her intuition was proven accurate.
                "I don't, sir. And neither does The Stunner particularly, but that's the whole point. The Professor wants proof that The Stunner can work alongside and support other villains. We both knew that something like this would have to happen eventually." She stood in the commissioner’s office with open palms, trying to appear as non-confrontational as possible whilst proposing that she break into someone’s house under the nose of the ministry.
                "Something like this, yes, but not breaking into the mayor's home. It was bad enough after Gatekeeper's assault on the town hall, but his house? It’s too personal, Burnley." He said with a shake of his head. The cigar in his mouth was rapidly showing an increasing number of worried tooth-marks.
                "I know, sir, but the mayor has brought attention to himself with his campaign against villainy. At least this way I can make sure that The Stunner limits the damage, and try to keep these associates of the professor's in line, but if I act against them too strongly or if I refuse the job then it'll blow our shot at infiltration. It really sounds like Endtimes is weighing me up to join his operation in earnest. We might never get an opportunity like this again."
                "Or Endtimes might never get another shot at the mayor. The Stunner is being used to make a high profile hit, plain and simple. You know as well as I do what happened with The Librarian, Helena. She served her purpose and Professor Endtimes cut her off completely. He didn't even try to intervene and save her at the library."
                "It's only been just over a day since her arrest, sir. Don't forget that The Glazier's demands included the release of Gatekeeper."
                "And he's gone a long way to try and break him out again, hasn't he?" Commssioner Harmon rebuffed.
                "Point taken, sir, but these are the risks we need to take to bring him down. It was never going to be safe or easy. If this is just a ruse to strike out at the mayor and Professor Endtimes has no intention of inviting The Stunner into his inner sanctum then I will accept the consequences. It’s a chance I’m willing to take to bring down his operation. The mayor will understand eventually." Agent Burnley said, standing her ground. She’d put too much work into getting this chance; there was no way it could be ignored.
                "No, Helena. You're not going any further with this madness. There is such a thing as going too far for a case, and we have very much found the line. If you do this then the mayor will be uncontrollable in his campaign against The Stunner. He won’t hesitate to disband the ministry branch here or take it over with his own people, and everyone you work with, me included, will lose our jobs. If that happens then no-one will be able to competently stand up to super-villainy.”
                “I think that’s a bit of a worst case scenario, sir.”
                “It’s worst case and all too possible, agent. Trying to bring Professor Endtimes down like this would run the risk of making him more powerful than ever by crippling the ministry, and at the same time you will bring the mayor’s unstable wrath down upon yourself. You could be killed for God’s sake! Even if you want to be flippant with your own life, I’m not going to stand by and allow you to do it. You’re the best we have, Helena; you don’t have the right do throw yourself away on a whim." Somehow, it was worse that the commissioner wasn't apoplectic with rage this time. He was angry but it was a quiet, muted, anger. Helena looked into his eyes as he pled with her not to take the risk, and she knew that the price of taking on Endtimes’ job wouldn't just be disobeying a direct order or committing insubordination, it would be disappointing a tired, dedicated servant of justice.
                “I understand, sir.” Helena said quietly, calling herself a liar inside her own head a she did so. She knew that the price was high, but it was one she had every intention of paying.
 
                Plumbing The Depths was an accurate name; it seemed that no level of quality was too low for their window display. Where sinks were often made of ceramic, these were plastic, tin, and in one case what looked suspiciously like papier-mâché. The floor was littered with taps and plugs, showers with completely rigid pipes jutted at awkward angles across walkways, and for some reason the majority of the suites on display were a particularly dowdy olive green. The Stunner shuddered to think about any home blighted with these 'goods', or more accurately 'awfuls'.
                Carried away with her morbid curiosity over the water leak redistribution systems on offer, The Stunner didn’t notice Professor Endtimes' associates arriving until they were standing right next to her, joining in with the window shopping.
                "I quite like that green double-bowled crapper." A voice said next to The Stunner's ear.
She jumped to one side and instinctively reached for her whip.
                "Who the hell are you?" she demanded.
                "Who do you think he is? Not many people want to hang around bathroom shops in the middle of the night." Came another voice from behind The Stunner. She span around to face it.
                "You're Professor Endtimes' associates?" she asked suspiciously.
                "That would be us, yes. And you must be The Stunner. I thought you'd be less jumpy though. Hardly the scourge of the night time are you?" Critiqued the second man.
                "I had my guard down because I was expecting you." She tried to explain.
                "You were expecting us, so we made you jump?"
                "I wasn't expecting you quite that suddenly." She clarified.
                "Well suddenly we're here. You have the honour of working tonight with the infamous Windy Bill." The second man said, standing proudly with fists balled at his hips and chest puffed out. The Stunner hoped she wasn't downwind. "Everyone knows my name and my face!"
                "I'm sure I've been living under a rock." The Stunner said dismissively, but she had to admit that his face wasn't one she'd soon forget; the whole time they'd been talking, Windy Bill's expression had been contorted into a strangely expressive grimace. Possibly, she thought, it was due to the gigantic fan strapped to his back and the impressive length of air-conditioning hose leading from it. Carrying such a heavy load would make her grimace too. "And what's your name?" she asked the first man.
                "I'm the en-suite nightmare, the commode criminal, the crapper-napper; you stand next to none other than Roger Toilet!" It took all the strength of every fibre of The Stunner's being not to laugh. It seemed that the Professor's associates weren't as terrifying as she had feared they could be.
                "Windy Bill and Roger Toilet. Wonderful to meet you both." The Stunner said flatly. Neither of them thought she sounded particularly happy to meet them, but welcoming tones of voice weren't commonplace among the super-villain underground. It tended to tread on the toes of maintaining a cold, distant mystique.
                "And you too, little lady." Windy Bill replied with a patronising grimace.
                "Call me 'little lady' again and you'll find out why the professor wants me on his side." she snapped back. Roger Toilet raised his hands up to show that he meant no trouble, even though she’d not been addressing him, and Windy Bill chuckled with an amused grimace.
                "We'll just have to see the truth of that as we get on with the job. We need to run like the wind and get this blow on the road."
                The Stunner gave him a confused squint for a few moments.
                "Did… you just swap out 'show' for 'blow'?" she asked.
                "Did it not work out so well? It's a work in progress that one.” He said with a shrug. “Let's get on with it. Roger?"
                "Got it, Windy. I'll be one second." he said, before jogging around the side of the shop.
                "Where's he going?" The Stunner asked unsurely.
                "He needs to stock up before the job. Why do you think we met here?" Bill replied.
                "Right." The Stunner replied simply. She didn’t feel like explaining herself to the human grimace.
                They stood in awkward silence for a minute or so, until Roger Toilet reappeared with a green, double-bowled toilet in his arms. On closer inspection, it was the same one he’d been admiring a moment ag.
                "OK, I'm good to go." He said, with a slight strain in his voice from carrying a weighty lump of ceramic.
                "How did you steal that without breaking in?" The Stunner demanded.
                "I've got a key. I used to be the assistant manager." He announced proudly.
                "Used to be, huh? I wonder what happened." The Stunner said sarcastically, but Roger missed the point.
                "It was a summer evening, towards the end of my shift. I-"
                "There’s no time for that right now, we need to get moving to the mayor’s place. Come on, both of you." Windy Bill interrupted, starting to walk away.
                “Oh, yeah.” Said Roger, starting to waddle along after Bill with the toilet in his arms. The Stunner shook her head and followed after them.
 
                Through the dark streets the three of them stalked towards the mayor's house. The Stunner moved in stealth and secrecy, her cape billowing as she leapt from shadow to shadow. Windy Bill and Roger Toilet on the other hand strode nonchalantly along the pavement, one wearing a huge fan backpack and the other carrying a toilet. The raw horror radiating from the poorly designed porcelain would have stood out even in the shadows, The Stunner supposed, but that was no excuse to walk so brazenly in public.
                “Will you two please at least try not to be seen?” She chastised them from the shade of a bus stop.
                “Who’s going to be watching the pavement at night?” Roger asked over the toilet.
                “Anyone could be!”
                “Stop worrying so much. The world should be scared of seeing us, not the other way round.” Windy Bill said with misplaced self-confidence. “Everyone’ll know it was you when you leave your calling card anyway, won’t they?”
                “Calling card? I don’t leave calling cards. And the problem isn’t being scared, it’s that someone might call the police before we even get to the mayor’s house.” She hissed.
                "You don't have a calling card?!” Windy Bill was aghast. “Everyone needs a calling card if they're gonna be taken seriously, kid."
                "I haven't come across many in my time." The Stunner replied defensively.
                "Then you have been dealing with amateurs." Windy Bill told her with an authority he hadn’t earned.
                The Stunner thought about Gatekeeper waving his badger-on-a-stick around and couldn't help but concede that point.
                "What's yours then?" she asked as they filed past a van parked on the pavement.
                "I either leave a toilet seat, or I steal a toilet seat. Depends on what's practical at the time." Roger Toilet answered from ahead. The Stunner had been asking Bill, but didn’t press the matter.
                "Nice, nice." Windy Bill assessed with an impressed grimace as they emerged back onto clear pavement. It seemed that whatever emotion Windy Bill wanted to portray, it would be expressed via a grimace. The Stunner briefly wondered if it was trapped gas, but put that question to the side for the time being.
                “You didn’t know already? I thought you two worked together?” The Stunner asked, a little surprised.
                “Nah, this our first job together. But we’re both veterans you see, so we understand each other.” Bill told her. Roger nodded, although it might also just have been a bob from carrying the weight of a toilet.
                “And you’re both already in Professor Endtimes’ employ?” she probed.
                “Well, yeah. There’s that too.” Windy Bill replied. “In a manner of speaking anyway. He gives us some help here and there, and we work for him when he needs us.”
                “What’s your card then, Bill?” Roger asked, cutting across The Stunner’s line of enquiry and still not quite grasping the appropriate social conventions for conversation.
                “One of these.” Windy Bill said, pulling a handheld fan from his pocket. “Leave it at the scene of the crime with the propellers running. Must drive the coppers mad.”
                The Stunner thought about all the unsolved cases she’d been told about, but didn’t recall any with handheld fans present, let alone running.
                “What’s your normal M.O. then?” she asked, hoping to learn more about which cases he’d been involved in.
                “M.O.?” Windy Bill repeated with a confused grimace, as if The Stunner had been speaking a foreign and highly insulting language.
                “Mast Obsession?” Roger Toilet guessed wildly.
                “I’m not obsessed with masts and I think you know that perfectly well.” Bill chastised him.
                “Modus operandi. What do you usually do?” The Stunner clarified with considerable frustration.
                “Speeding, mostly.” Bill told her matter-of-factly. “Not in school zones though; I’m not a monster.”
                “Then you leave your calling card by…”
                “Dropping it out of the window.”
                “Speeding and fly-tipping! Nice one, Windy!” Roger congratulated, genuinely impressed.
                “Would you please keep it down!” The Stunner begged again, attempting to constrain Roger’s enthusiasm.
                “I think we both know perfectly well that I won’t.” Roger replied, mimicking Bill’s turn of phrase in the hope that it would make him sound more professional.
                “No seriously, do. This is the mayor’s place.” Bill said. They were standing next to a high wall which ran forbiddingly along the street, hiding everything which lay beyond. A pair of gothic towers flanked either side of a set of black iron gates, comprised almost entirely of sharp spear-tips, which must have brought back harrowing memories of Gatekeeper every time the mayor saw them. The Stunner wondered why he still kept them around.
                “Huh. Snuck up on us!” Roger declared, alleviating the trio of all blame for not paying attention. The Stunner ignored him.
                “I’ve done some research and the best way into the house is through the windows round the back. We get inside the walls, sneak along the boundary until we get to the sitting room windows, and then climb up the rear of the house. The bathroom is directly above the sitting room, so we can hop in, grab the bath, and then lower it down. We open the gates, walk out into the street and then high-tail it to the getaway vehicle.” The Stunner directed with authority and efficiency. Roger looked confused.
                “Where’s it parked?” Windy Bill asked.
                “I… you mean you didn’t bring a getaway car?” The Stunner asked back.
                “No-one told us to.” Bill protested.
                “I can’t drive.” Roger added. Neither of the others paid attention.
                “How the hell were you going to pull this off without a getaway car?” The Stunner demanded in exasperation.
                “I don’t know, you tell me!” Bill shouted.
                “This is your heist!” The Stunner shouted back.
                “So? Doesn’t mean we’ve got everything planned down to a tee. True villains can improvise.” Windy Bill told her spitefully, meaning every implication of those words. Roger looked on with a good-willed smile, enjoying the lively conversation. The Stunner looked at Bill blankly for a few moments.
                “You mean that you’re just going to steal a van don’t you.” She said, making no effort to hide how unimpressed she was.
                “…Yeah.” Bill admitted sheepishly.
                “Right. Well why don’t you get on with that while Roger and I get the bathtub?”
                “Why am I doing the friggin’ donkey work here?” He argued.
                “Because you can blow away the evidence using your fan once you’ve broken the car’s window.” The Stunner mocked.
                “Good point. Nothing can withstand the mighty gusts of Windy Bill.” He answered, missing her sarcasm. “I won’t be long, so hurry up. I’ll back the van up to the bathroom window once I’ve got it so that we don’t waste time lugging a bath out to the street.”
                “Right. Fine.” She said, lacking the motivation to argue. It wasn’t like their argument had been quiet, so if he really did use his fan to blow around some broken glass then it would probably seem inconspicuous by comparison. “Let’s get moving Roger.”
                Bill scarpered off down the road in search of roadside treasure. The Stunner considered mentioning that they’d passed a van barely a few minutes earlier as Bill jogged in the opposite direction, but decided to leave him to his own devices. It wasn’t worth the interaction.
                “How are we getting in then? Blast a hole through the wall? Burrow underneath?” Roger asked excitedly.
                “I was going to use the keypad to unlock the gate, actually.” The Stunner told him underwhelmingly. The mayor had given Helena his security code after the attack on the town hall, in case any villains should make a strike at his home. The irony hung over her as she prepared to use the code to allow two other villains into his property.
                “Oh. That might work I guess. We’ll have to bust into it though, right?” Roger asked, eager to get down to business. Before The Stunner could tell him no, he swung the lid of the cistern into the keypad with surprising accuracy and brute force. The corner of the ceramic lid chipped into a burst of ceramic dust and the keypad buckled under the impact.
                “There you go, Stunner. Hotwire away!” he announced.
                “No!” she exclaimed far too late. The keypad was now distinctly concave with the buttons jutting out at a variety of exciting angles. She gave a couple of them a test push, but they’d been packed in with copious amounts of dust from the cheap cistern lid. “You… I was going to enter the code! You can’t hotwire these kinds of pads.” She lectured him through gritted teeth.
                “Oh, right. Whoops! What’s the new plan then?” he asked brightly, either oblivious or uncaring that The Stunner was angry.
                She looked at Roger silently, restraining her own urge to give him the stunning of a lifetime, whilst thinking. There was a second keypad on the inside of the gate which would still work, but she would need to get in to use it somehow. The Stunner glanced at the walls and quickly ruled out scaling them; they were rendered brickwork which didn’t offer any kind of handholds. That left the gate of many spikes.
                “I guess I need to climb over the gate and use the other keypad.” She spoke slowly and deliberately, worried that allowing two words to get too close to each other would lead to a catastrophic loss of temper.
                “But what if there are cameras?”
                ‘Oh, so now he stops and asks questions before acting.’ She seethed to herself. “He won’t have anyone watching them.” She said without believing it herself. If Commissioner Harmon had informed the mayor of a plot against his bathtub then he may have stepped up security.
                “What do I need to do?” Roger asked eagerly.
                “You need to stay right there and not break anything else with your toilet.” The Stunner snapped.
                “Fair enough. I’ll wait here then.” Roger said, somewhat deflated at being told yet again in his life not to touch anything.
                The Stunner sighed despite herself.
                “I need you to keep a look out. Shout if you see someone coming.” The Stunner ordered him. Having something to do to feel useful brought his smile back.
                “Got it.” He said seriously.
                Taking a grip on the thick iron bars of the gate, The Stunner slowly and carefully began her ascent. Being rather a fan of gothic architecture and personal security, the gates were a nest of spiked ends which could easily puncture a rubber suit or misplaced foot. The Stunner was rather attached to all of her costume and limbs, so she took extra caution to avoid perforating them.
                “All clear still.” Roger hissed up to her. Barely ten seconds had passed.
                “Good work Roger.” She replied distractedly.
                It didn’t take long to complete her ascent. All her recent practice of climbing buildings to stalk rooftops, steal radio masts, or indulge in similar villainous pursuits had made the tall gates feel decidedly short by comparison. At the end of her climb, however, came the delicate process of swinging her leg over the perilous spear-tipped top of the gate. The last foothold was almost a leg-length away, leaving very little scope to manoeuvre herself over the various impaling risks.
                “Be careful! There’s still no-one here.” Roger told her helpfully.
                “Thanks. Keep looking.” She told him, hoping that his attention could be held by the empty road. It certainly seemed like keeping track of nothing moving could have outfoxed him.
                The Stunner gripped two of the spikes near the top and slowly raised her right leg upwards, gradually rotating it over the line of spikes. The resistance of her hips and the rubber leggings threatened to pull it back down prematurely onto the bladed gate, but thankfully her strength held out. With a sense of relief she placed her right boot into a foothold on the opposite side of the gate.
                “Looking good! Do that with your other leg now.” Roger advised.
                “Good idea. I won’t split myself in two that way.” The Stunner replied sarcastically. Roger smiled.
                “Exactly.” He tapped the side of his head with one fingertip to imply that he’d had to think about that one a lot.
                Returning her attention to the row of pointed iron bars which lingered uninvitingly around her thighs, The Stunner leaned her weight towards the inner side of the gate and repeated the leg-lifting process with her left side. With her hips burning and complaining at being splayed out in such unfavourable circumstances, The Stunner carefully pulled her left leg over the sharp spikes, her core shaking with the effort. Mercifully her left leg was also spared a shanking, and The Stunner was able to lower herself down the gate on the opposite side with a deep exhalation of relief.
                The security keypad on the inside of the gate was neither broken nor stuffed with ceramic dust, which was exactly how The Stunner liked it. Against her better judgement, she entered the code and allowed Roger Toilet to have further input into the heist.
                “Nice one.” Roger said as he lugged he olive green toilet into the gardens.
                “Thanks.” The Stunner said mechanically. “This way.”
                Together, The Stunner and Roger Toilet crept along the edge of the wall to stay in the cover of its shadow. The garden had been heavily landscaped by the mayor’s husband with beds of what were presumably attractive flowers, heavily pruned bushes, and small trees scattered around according to some kind of arcane logic. The Stunner stealthily weaved around these beds and bushes wherever she had to. Roger, on the other hand, took the most direct route available to him, regardless of what he trampled on or became entangled in. The sounds of wooden twigs scraping along a toilet bowl were piercing and offensive, just another noise in the long list of Roger’s crimes against remaining inconspicuous.
                Once they had punished their way through the gardens and reached the rear window of the house The Stunner called Roger to a halt.
                “OK, that window up there on the first floor is the bathroom. I was hoping it’d be left slightly open, but no such luck. I’ll try to pick the lock when I’m up there.”
                A light flicked on behind a window further along the house. The Stunner thought back to the floorplan of the mayor’s house, and then her heart sank. It was the bedroom.
                “Crap. I think they heard you. They’re getting up to investigate.” The Stunner speculated with a slight panic. “We need to get in there quickly.”
                “Leave it to me.” Roger said with unexpected confidence. “Stand back.”
                The Stunner jogged out of the way whilst keeping an eye on the bedroom window. Silhouettes were moving urgently behind the curtains.
                Roger shifted his grip on the toilet so that he was cupping either side of the double-bowl in his open palms and holding the cistern away from himself. Swaying his whole torso from side-to-side he built up some initial momentum and then started to spin himself around in a circle, shuffling his feet to turn his body in a tight circle. The Stunner was deeply concerned with what she was seeing, but felt enough of a morbid curiosity to let it play out.
                Roger was building up speed in his rotations, his arms tensing under the strain of withholding the toilet’s momentum. Then his mouth opened.
                "ROOOO" He started to shout as he pranced forwards, insofar as one can prance whilst holding a toilet. "GEEERRRRRR" He continued, his shouts growing louder. He was spinning like a hammer thrower who had taken a career change into plumbing. "TOILET!" He bellow as he let go.
                It was undeniable that Roger was a master of his craft. The toilet curved gracefully through the air, soared up and over the window boxes, and crashed through the bathroom window dead in the centre. His throw was perfect, and it was completely in keeping with his previous attitudes to stealth.
                "God damn it... come on! We need to hurry. Nice throw Roger." The Stunner said with mixed emotions. Even if the mayor hadn’t heard them before there was no way he’d have missed the shattering of a window.
                The Stunner scrambled up the wall easily thanks to its window boxes, hanging basket brackets and elaborate windowsills, and disappeared into the bathroom through the gaudy purple curtains. Roger, however, was less nimble. A few more crushed flowerbeds, several smashed window boxes and a lot of cursing later, Roger had managed to haul himself up to the bathroom window with graceless brute force.
                The Stunner had already dashed across the room and locked the door to buy them some time. Deeper into the house she could hear hurried footsteps and muffled shouts; as expected, the sound of a toilet crashing through a window had alerted the mayor and his husband that something was afoot.
                The Stunner turned away from the door and surveyed the bathroom. It was a picture of faux decadence and misplaced belief in one's own taste; anything which could have been gold or chrome plated shone out under the small chandelier which provided light to the room. The floor tiles were speckled with golden glitter and the wash basin was encrusted with coloured gems. Among the various displays of bad taste, the free-standing bathtub fit in perfectly in the centre of the room. The two taps were golden mermaids which spewed water from their mouths, the plug was a tiny anchor with a round end, and the rim was gilded in obsidian. The Stunner could only assume that it was the product of Captain Ahab’s fever dreams.
                "Grab the other end of the bath Roger. We need to get it out of here quickly." The Stunner directed when she saw him crunching his way across the remains of the window.
                "I wish Bill was here to blow away all these bits of broken glass." He said as he took up a grip on the near edge of the bathtub. "I suppose it would ruin the paintwork though."
                "Yeah, probably your skin too when it bounced around everywhere." The Stunner replied as she lifted the opposite side.
                "I reckon I'd be alright."
                "Of course you do."
                They carried the bathtub over to the window and rested one pair of its legs on the windowsill. It looked like a terrifyingly huge concave dog, staring out of the window and preparing for an excited dash to freedom. The bathtub had been able to see the wide world outside for so long but never been given a taste of the open space. That would all soon change.
                "We need to lower it down carefully." The Stunner told Roger as she looked around the room. She didn't much like thinking out loud, but felt that it was best to say something and stop Mr Toilet before he threw the bath out of the window.
                "Grab that curtain!" She ordered him, pulling the other one off its rings with a harsh tug.
                "Yeah! These'll be worth-"
                "And tie it around the back legs of the tub, Roger." She finished very deliberately, before he could get carried away with his poorly drawn conclusions. Roger obeyed silently.
                Scraping and banging against the wall of the house, the mayor’s bathtub undertook a gradual descent towards the ground, suspended by a rope made from the previously expensive and now ruined bathroom curtains. With feet braced against the inside of the windowsill, Roger and The Stunner fought against the considerable weight of the gaudy tub. The curtains hadn’t been made with grip in mind, so it took an even more impressive effort to prevent the purple fabric from slipping through their fingers.
                A rattling of the bathroom door-handle was followed by numerous loud bangs on the bathroom door and shouting voices.
                “WHO’S IN THERE!? GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!” The mayor didn’t sound his happiest.
                The loud noises, whilst not entirely unexpected, took Roger by surprise and caused his grip to momentarily fail. Without Roger’s support, the weight of the bathtub swung downwards and jerked The Stunner forwards, almost pivoting her around her feet to the soundtrack of a bath shattering a ground floor window.
                “MY WINDOWS!” If anything, the mayor was now angrier. He’d brought it on himself by startling Roger, but The Stunner didn’t feel like mentioning that to him. She was far more preoccupied by not being pulled out of a window by a crime against bathroom décor.
                “Help me Roger!” The Stunner pleaded, as Roger scrabbled at the curtain in an attempt to re-establish his grip.
                “Sorry! Sorry. I’ve got it.” He told The Stunner, before turning his head around towards the door. “DON’T FLUSH AWAY THIS CHANCE TO TANGLE WITH ROGER TOILET!”
                “What are you doing?!” The Stunner cried with disbelief. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than bantering!” The mayor hammered on the door again.
                “Like the bathtub, you mean?” Roger asked earnestly. The Stunner sighed.
                “Yes, like the bathtub. It can’t be far off the ground now.” The Stunner panted, her arms burning from supporting the weight of a modest amount of bathroom furniture.
                “WHO THE HELL IS ROGER TOILET?!” The mayor shouted furiously through the door. The Stunner wished the mayor would stop encouraging him.
                “Reckon we should just drop it so we can banter more?” Roger asked excitedly.
                “No, we just need to hold it for a little longer.”
                “Right you are. IF YOU DARE COME IN HERE YOU’LL END UP IN PULL-CHAINS!”
                “For Christ’s sake, Roger. Pull-chains?” The door was now constantly shaking under the blows of the mayor’s fists. He didn’t seem to be taking the hint that they weren’t going to let him in.
                “Pretty good, right?” Roger beamed at her. “I think I’ve got him with that one.”
                With a dull thud, the bathtub hit one of the flowerbeds which Roger had crushed earlier. Relief washed through The Stunner’s muscles as she released the curtain and allowed it to flow out of the window.
                “At last. We should get out. Bill had better be back soon.”
                “Hang on, I need to get my toilet back.” Roger said, hopping over to his erstwhile projectile. “It’s my best weapon.”
                “Of course it is. What could be more practical than a smooth lump of porcelain?”
                Roger didn’t hear her, because he was too busy launching the olive-green cistern back out of the window. The Stunner flung herself out of the way just in time.
                “Shame that the bowl shattered.” He said in a pile of toilet debris, his foot in the centre of the cracked green seat. “Now just to leave my calling card.”
                “There’s no time, Roger! Just let that one you’re standing in be it.”
                “Nah, I’ll grab the mayor’s. It won’t take a sec- wow! Look at this beauty!” He said, interrupting his own sentence. He had noticed the mayor’s toilet for the first time and was staring lustfully at it. The bowl was brilliant white with inlaid pearls around the rim. The lid was encrusted with diamonds, the flush was shaped into a mermaid’s tail, and the cistern was complete with golden cherub’s wings. If the society of Ancient Greek gilded iconographers had a toilet, then surely it would be the one sitting the mayor’s bathroom.
                “I’ve gotta have this. It’s coming with us. The green crapper can be my card.”
                From outside, the sounds of an engine being harassed up the road drifted in.
                “How are you going to get it out? It’s stuck to the floor and plumbed in. We need to get out of here before the police or the ministry arrive!”
                “There’s not a toilet made which could resist the pull of Roger Toilet.” He boasted, puffing out his chest and striding towards the lavatory. The Stunner glanced over at the door, shaking and rattling as the mayor made his continued displeasure known. Then, for a brief instant, an even louder banging echoed from the garden walls outside and filled the room; it was exactly the kind of sound one might expect from a tradesman’s van crashing through a set of cast iron gates and sending them spiralling to the ground.
                “WHAT THE BLAZES?!” came another shout from the mayor. It was followed immediately by thundering footsteps away from the door.
                “He’ll be able to head us off outside, Roger! We need to go now! Bill’s here!” The Stunner shouted urgently.
                Roger was hugging the cistern with his arms carefully threaded around the wings.
                “I’ll be there in a second. You go ahead if you’re worried.” He said distractedly. The Stunner looked from him to the window, and then back to him. If she abandoned him up here and something should happen, then Professor Endtimes would never let her into his inner sanctum.
                “I can’t leave you behind!”
                “And I can’t leave this.” Roger countered. Roaring with a savage vigour, he tightened his bear-hug and pushed with his legs, pulling the cistern hard. The Stunner could see the pipes bending and straining, but they held.
                “For goodness sake!” The Stunner shouted, before rushing over to help. She crouched on the opposite side of the cistern, threaded her arms around Roger’s and looked him in the eye. “For your sake I hope they clean this properly. On three?”
                “One, two, THREE!”
                Together, The Stunner and Roger Toilet heaved at the ornate cistern, its copper pipework creaking and screeching under their efforts to tear it from the wall. Porcelain rattled against porcelain as the lid shook, Roger grunted in ways which made The Stunner deeply uncomfortable, pipe brackets pinged off the wall, and Bill slammed on the horn of the van outside. Stealth was decidedly unachieved. Despite the excessive force being applied to the lavatory pipes, their hold on the wall stayed firm, if warped.
                "It's not working Roger. We are going now!" The Stunner ordered, letting go of the cistern. It dangled limply from the wall, lifted from the body of the toilet and supported by stretched and distorted pipes.
                "Not when we're so close to having it!” Roger argued. “We just need to break the pipes. Let me use your hammer."
                The Stunner raised a hand up to her battery sledge hammer and unsheathed it from her back. It was definitely a bad idea to arm Roger.
                "Stand aside." She barked, and for once he listened.
                She raised her weapon high into the air with both hands, lining her eye up to the warped pipe. This was the price of working with others, she supposed; plumbing on the job. Swinging down with all the force she could muster, The Stunner crashed her hammer into the stressed copper and broke it easily, sending the cistern toppling forwards and narrowly missing her foot as a spray of high-pressure water burst into the room. Raised voices were audible from outside.
                Uncaring about the water, she swung again and crushed the waste pipe at the rear of the toilet bowl, freeing it from its earthly shackles.
                "There you go, now COME ON" She shouted.
                "Nice one." Roger said brightly. He peeled the toilet free from its sealant on the floor, re-seated the cistern on top, and lifted the whole thing into his arms.
                The Stunner was already climbing back down the wall to help Windy Bill with loading the van, which transpired to be neon green. These two accomplices of hers seemed unable to tolerate any kind of subtlety, but Bill had at least had the presence of mind to leave the engine running. More pressing than the van, however, was the raised voice coming from inside the house, shouting something terrifyingly like "I will shoot you."
                "Oh, blow it out your rear." Windy Bill replied, his giant fan pipe aimed into the broken window.
                "On your knees, right now, with your hands up." By the sounds of it the mayor had armed himself. Illegally, at that.
                "Tornadon't even try it." Came the response.
                The Stunner quickly decided that Windy Bill’s words were by far the most criminal thing which had happened that night, and then returned her mind to the task at hand. She shimmied to the side and dropped down where the mayor wouldn’t be able to see her.
                “Nice of you to join me.” Windy Bill said sourly. “Let’s get loaded up and run like the wind.”
                “Don’t hurt the mayor. We’re not here to cause casualties.” She muttered, staring him in the eye.
                “I’ll just let him shoot me then, shall I?” Bill spat back.
                “I told you to get on your knees!” The mayor barked again.
                “Don’t gale-force me to do something we’ll both regret, mayor.” Windy Bill wasn’t backing down. “All I have to do is flick this switch and you’ll find yourself in a world of hurri-pain. Strong winds and shattered glass versus your flesh.”
                “You break into my house, vandalise my property, throw my bath out of the window, and then threaten me! Mark my words this whole city will descend on you if you harm me, you filth. You’ll never get away with it.” The mayor wailed.
                “You can’t catch the wind.” Bill’s finger drifted towards the fan’s power switch.
                “This is your last chance. Get down, or I will open fire. You have had due warning.”
                “Blow off.”
                A flash of black slammed into Windy Bill, knocking him over sideways before he could unleash his mighty winds. Leaping off him the instant he hit the ground, the black shape took a diving roll through the window and sprang to its feet inside the mayor’s lounge. On opposite sides of a luxurious armchair, The Stunner and the mayor faced each other directly at last. Standing in his government-issued mayoral pyjamas and dressing-gown of office, the mayor’s expression morphed from confusion, to shock, to anger, as he realised who was standing in his home.
                “I should have known you were behind this.” He said, disgust dripping from his voice. The hunting shotgun he shouldn’t have had was rising up to point at her.
                A shock of gold and a loud thud flying from the window above pulled the mayor’s attention away for little more than a heartbeat, but it was enough.
                “You owe me for this.” The Stunner said darkly, firing a stun dart into his shoulder and grabbing the barrel of the shotgun as he began to convulse.
                “Myargh, my… toilet?!” the mayor screeched through the electric shocks while The Stunner unloaded his shotgun.
                “It’s Professor Endtimes’ toilet now.” She corrected him, before cutting off the power to her dart and running back out of the window.
                Windy Bill was back on his feet and not looking pleased.
                “You treacherous little cow!” His wind machine was aimed at her, and he stared at her with a betrayed grimace.
                “I saved you from getting shot!”
                “I had the upper hand and we both know it. You were saving the mayor. What’s your game here?”
                “Not to be wanted for murder, that’s my game! This is a heist not an assassination. You didn’t even tell him your origin story for Christ’s sake, so how can you claim that you were comfortable or had the upper hand?! You were getting trigger happy, and I stopped things getting worse. Now come on and help me get this bath into the van.”
                The sounds of approaching vehicles found The Stunner’s ears. She looked over Bill’s shoulder, much to his continued disapproval, just in time to see a jet-black ministry car and a pair of police vans accelerate through the broken gate and into the walled garden.
                “IT’S THE MINSTRY!” She screamed.
                The black car raced across the lawn towards them, not showing any sign of slowing down, any attempt to drive around the various flowerbeds, or any regard for the driver’s own safety. Her heart sinking, The Stunner knew that Lisa was in there.
                “Get the bathtub, now.” Bill ordered, his annoyance forgotten for the moment. He casually threw a portable fan from his pocket into the broken window as he ran over to the bathtub, and The Stunner heard a whimper of pain as it struck the mayor on the forehead. The two of them lifted the bath from either side and started to shuffle it along the grass, but before they had made it even half of the way to the van, it was too late.
                As Lisa’s car bounced along the grass towards them the driver’s door burst open like an aluminium party-popper. Lisa rolled out onto the grass and back up to her feet, and the car carried on forwards until the corner of the mayor’s house assisted it in stopping.
                The two vans made steadier progress across the garden, but were not far behind. They pulled up on the grass, forming a vague blockade between the getaway van and the gate, and spilled a dozen officers in full riot gear onto the lawn.
                “Hurry up!” Bill shouted redundantly as they lugged the weighty bath over to the van.
                “Hurry down!” Agent Carmichael shouted in response, sprinting towards them with fists clenched.
                “Crap! Bill drop the tub.” The Stunner advised, doing the same and turning to face Lisa. She recognised the feral look in the agent’s eye and wasn’t thrilled about being on the receiving end, even if Lisa should have known who was really behind the mask. With a deft flick of the wrist, The Stunner grabbed the handle of her whip and cracked it on front of herself, threateningly.
                “Missed!” Lisa shouted, not understanding what was going on but barrelling towards Windy Bill. He raised his wind gun and switched it on with a satisfied grimace.
                A mechanical roar emanated from Windy Bill’s back-mounted fan as it span rapidly into life, directing a surge of air at Agent Carmichael’s face. The stream hit her like a super-sonic pillow, pushing her face backwards into her neck, providing her with 3 more chins, and robbing her of nearly all her forward momentum.
                “Wwarggh” she managed through the intense blustering, leaning into the force of the wind and trudging forwards. The toes of her boots dug into the earth, ruining the mayor’s pristine lawn as she struggled to press onwards, but she was still getting closer.
                “You think you can stand against the mighty winds of Windy Bill?!” He mocked. “I could push mountains back into the sea with my interminable gusts.”
                Agent Carmichael tried to frown, but the wind was pushing her eyebrows back upwards into forced surprise. The Stunner simply watched in dumb uncertainty, not wanting to whip Agent Carmichael but terrified of what would happen if they lost more time and the uniformed officers were allowed to draw much closer. Fortunately, she was spared the burden of choosing an action. A cracked olive green toilet seat frisbee’d through the air and struck Agent Carmichael on the side of the head, knocking her off balance. The force of the wind then sent her sausage-rolling back along the grass.
                “Nice shot, Roger.” Bill shouted. Roger stood at the bathroom window and bowed. “Now get down here, quickly.” The uniformed officers, complete with riot gear, were marching slowly towards them in formation. They were a wall of Perspex shields, muttering pasta recipes to themselves as a perverse battle mantra.
                “We’ll never get the tub into the van before they’re on us.” The Stunner assessed pessimistically.
                Roger Toilet thudded to the ground gracelessly, and then stooped to pick up the mayor’s gilded lavatory.
                “Roger, give The Stunner a hand with the bathtub.” Bill instructed. Roger dropped the toilet into the tub and then took up a grip where Bill had been previously.
                “You can’t fight a dozen men!” The Stunner pleaded with Bill.
                “Look at them. All those shields. They’re a human sail! This is what I was made for.” He said with grimacing excitement. “I can buy you enough time to get the van loaded, then I’ll run over. Get on with it.”
                “Right you are.” Roger said. The Stunner had no choice but to go along with it.
                As The Stunner and Roger Toilet lifted their now even-heavier load, Windy Bill took up a braced squat and aimed his wind gun at the riot officers.
                “I was once as foolish as you!” he bellowed, switching on the fan and bowling two of the officers straight over. “I thought I could best the mighty winds which assail us. Working as a ceiling fan repair-man I sought to constrain wind, shackle it into the servitude of man.” He swept along the line of officers, jerking them all to a halt as the beam of wind hit them. “I would strut in, so arrogant and sure of myself, and manipulate these fans into silence. Force them to limit themselves to only a gentle breeze. Indenture them to the will of a thin pull-cord. But my hubris would be my downfall.” With such a wide line of officers to fire on, Bill was unable to push them all back together. Try as he might, the riot-wall was gradually and patchily closing in.
                “But one night, as I sought to make the perfect ceiling fan, one which would run not only silently but automatically and with almost no power consumption, I tripped over a discarded fan-blade. It sent me falling into the path of a radioactive wind, being blown by my own prototype ceiling fan. As I thrashed on the ground to get myself out of the way, I hit the power switch for a second fan, changing the direction of the wind and securing my metamorphosis into the grimacing titan you see now!”
                The Stunner and Roger made it to the van and heaved the bathroom suite into the back, its weight lowering the chassis by a terrifying amount.
                “We’ve got it! Come on Bill!” Roger shouted, running around the van to the driver’s seat. The Stunner made her way to the passenger’s side, then remembered something that Roger had said earlier.
                “Get out of the driver’s seat! You can’t drive!” she shouted in frustration.
                Windy Bill started to sidle towards the van, still desperately blasting his winds at the line of officers. They were almost on him.
                “Imbued with the power of wind, I now unleash its mighty fury upon the world. No more will it be the slave of man!” He shouted, finishing his story and turning to run for the van. The Stunner watched as the riot officers started to run after him, but Windy Bill had just enough of a head start on them. ‘He’s going to make it.’ She told herself. But she was wrong.
                The physical manifestation of fury, Agent Carmichael lunged as if from nowhere and caught Windy Bill with a right hook. He crumpled to the floor, tangled in the pipe of his own wind gun.
                “No!” The Stunner shouted in dismay. “They got him.”
                “He knew the risks. We’ve got to go.” Roger Toilet said with surprising callousness.
                “We can’t just leave him there! Agent Carmichael is an animal” She almost felt guilty for saying it, but not quite.
                “We can’t take that many of them.” Roger tried to protest, but The Stunner was already gone.
                Lisa knelt on Windy Bill’s chest and slammed her fists into him. Bill tried to shield himself with his arms but her bestial vigour was too intense.
                “No-one rolls me around with wind!” she screamed in vengeful anger. It had been too long since she’d given someone a good pummelling.
                “Think you’ve won?” The Stunner asked. Lisa looked up and saw a battery hammer almost touching her head. “Then this’ll really shock you.”
                The Stunner jabbed at Agent Carmichael with the end of her hammer, blasting Lisa way with a powerful discharge of lightning. She spiralled into the air, spinning and smoking, and once again rolled away across the lawn, this time swiping out the legs of one of the approaching riot officers. They had formed a tight semi-circle, marching ominously in step with one other, and were closing around the two villains. The Stunner stood over Bill protectively, brandishing her hammer threateningly.
                “Lighting and wind together make a thunderstorm.” She told them, cringing internally as soon as she’d said it. “Get up, Bill.”
                “Lower your weapon, Stunner.” One of the officers said. She couldn’t recognise any of them through the Perspex visors of their riot helmets in the darkness of the night, and for that she was grateful.
                “Am I under arrest? Because what are the charges?” she said, finally happy to be able to use that pun legitimately as she swung her hammer around. The head crunched into one shield and glanced off a couple more, sweeping a wide arc and causing a bough wave in the riot officers’ formation. It was all she could do to keep them at a distance as Bill clambered to his feet.
                “Thanks.” He said quietly, standing at The Stunner’s side. The police were so close now that if The Stunner swung again or if Bill raised his gun then they’d leave themselves open to attack. Instead they simply stood there, brandishing the hammer, grimacing with determination, and waiting for events to unfold.
                “What do we do?” The Stunner muttered, eyes scanning across the line of riot officers.
                “We get to the van, I guess.” Bill answered. He took a single step backwards, breaking the stasis and spurring the police into action. They charged forwards with shields held high, one falling under The Stunner’s hammer before a baton crashed into her shoulder. Windy Bill flicked the power on to his wind gun and allowed it to blow around wildly without holding on, robbed of enough space to aim it properly.
                Side by side, The Stunner and Windy Bill struggled against the superior numbers of officers. For every stun dart that she landed and every time her hammer connected, another strike or grappling hand would make it past The Stunner’s guard and crunch into her body. Windy Bill’s wind gun provided a measure of disruption, randomly pushing at officers, villains and weapons alike, but it wasn’t enough to hold the assault back.
                In the heat of the moment and the noise of the melee, they’d not heard the van door being opened roughly, or the grunting sounds of a struggle. But as they thrashed against the law-enforcement, a familiar sound wound up from the background.
                “ROOOOGGGEEEEERRR TOILET!”
                The war-cry rang out loud from the direction of the van. All together the riot officers, Windy Bill and The Stunner turned to face the sound, and saw a toilet of godly countenance soaring through the air on cistern-wings of gold. Shields came up to meet it, but the divine loo was too heavy and too determined. In slow motion, The Stunner saw the heraldic lavatory slam into a pile of officers, sending them flying into the air and crumpling backwards, pushed over by airborne porcelain. Seeing them all distracted or otherwise indisposed, The Stunner grabbed Windy Bill by the arm and together they leapt through the passenger door of the van. Roger clambered in after them with a proud grin on his face as Bill shimmied into the driver’s seat.
                “I knew that’d come in handy.” Roger said proudly.
                “You’re a legend Roger and we will never question you again.” The Stunner told him. “Now drive, Bill!”
 
                There was a distinct lack of pursuit as the getaway van tore through the city streets. Presumably, it was the consequence of a typically short-sighted response from Agent Carmichael, who had assumed that she could punch her problems away so efficaciously that no further chase would be necessary. Unfortunately for the causes of logic and good preparation, her poor assumptions were usually correct.
                Roger and Bill laughed and cheered at the terrific escape they’d made from the ministry and the police force; a full riot squad had been shaken off in the nick of time, wordplay had been thrown around, origin stories had been relayed, and they’d got away with the mayor’s bathtub.
                The Stunner’s heart pounded in her chest, her arms felt weak, and she felt the beginnings of serious mask-hair. Her hands were sore from lifting the bath and heaving at the toilet. Her shoulders ached where riot batons had found their target. Growing smaller in the distance was the home of the mayor, the man to whom she’d made a promise to bring down The Stunner and serve the city. Remaining the same size in the back of the van was his bath, torn away amid broken windows, flooded bathrooms, and weaponised toilets.
                Commissioner Harmon had forbidden her to take on this assignment from Professor Endtimes; he’d said she was getting too carried away with her undercover alias and acting outside of the ministry’s jurisdiction. She only hoped that Agent Porter hadn’t made significant strides with a method of monitoring her non-invasively. Either way, the mayor would tell the commissioner that The Stunner had personally attacked him before assaulting Agent Carmichael as she tried to apprehend one of her two accomplices. Eventually, she would have to walk back into the station and face up to what she’d done.
                Her attention refocused onto the road and where they were going. Windy Bill had been given an address to which the bath had to be delivered; one of Professor Endtimes’ safe houses. The Stunner scanned her surroundings and tried to recognise where they were, lost in a sea of high-walled buildings and a dearth of tacky neon signs. Every dark facia was identical to the one before, avenues of anonymity swallowing up any chance of recognising where she was. Until, that is, they reached a junction and she was able to read the road signs. The whole mysterious vibe was seriously eroded at that point.
                Windy Bill’s driving had calmed down as they grew farther from the scene of the crime. Without squad cars in pursuit there was little point in speeding since it would only draw more attention to them, and the neon green paintwork was doing a perfectly good job of making them stand out on its own. Their mood had also started to relax. The Stunner finally felt able to concentrate on staying in character and contributing to conversation.
                “How about 'I'll cis-tern you into a pulp'?” Roger asked. “I thought it might be a good threat for the start of a brawl.”
                “Yeah, I get what you mean with it. Doesn’t quite sound right though does it.” Windy Bill answered.
                “Hm, no maybe not.”
                “What do you think of 'I'll make you regret your ex-cistern-ce'?” The Stunner offered.
                "Like, existence?" Clarified Roger, eager to understand exactly what he would be saying.
                "Yeah. Gets the whole word in there. No need to waste the cis part."
                "Nice, nice. Good work kid." Windy Brill praised with an impressed grimace. “I’ve been thinking about ‘Ashes to ashes, gust to gust’ myself, but I’d need to torch something to use it, which is the only problem. I’m not really a burner, myself. More of a blower."
                "Yeah, no. I get your problem." The Stunner sympathised. “It’s good though. Maybe if you find a fire and stoke it up with your wind gun it’d work?”
                “Yeah, true. I reckon that’d be good. Then I’ll still only have used my mighty winds.”
                The Stunner was pleased to have helped, but then realised that she’d encouraged someone to exacerbate an arson attack and reined herself in again.
                Despite their luminescence, no-one was watching as they rolled serenely into the driveway of Totally Trustworthy Self Storage, headlights illuminating the large cardboard advertisements for various containment services. The VIP package offered unbeatable storage volume per pound, apparently, but for the yearly cost it seemed more economical to simply buy a tract of land and build a warehouse on it. If Professor Endtimes could afford to keep a safe house open here then he must have had access to even greater wealth than the ministry anticipated.
                Deep into the darkness the driveway extended, well out of the reach of the streetlights. Chain-link fencing on one side and the wall of the building on the other channelled the van into the body of the warehouse plot, until it finally opened up into the car park and loading bay. A temporary set of floodlights flared into life as they rounded the corner, pointing them into an otherwise empty storage garage at the rear of the car park.
                “Who turned that light on?” Windy Bill asked, squinting into the darkness but seeing nothing past the glare of the floodlights.
                “Probably someone.” Roger offered. It was the best he could come up with.
                “I’m with Roger.” The Stunner agreed. “We’re being watched from somewhere, rather than it being an automated response.” She clarified in response to the withering grimace with which Windy Bill was furnishing her.
                “Hm. Well the professor didn’t mention anyone coming to meet us; only that we were to drop the bath off at this location.” Windy Bill grumbled.
                “Then we drop it off and get going.” The Stunner said flatly.
                Bill slowed the van down to a crawl, turned it around and backed up to the garage. Inside, the metal walls were perfectly blank and free of identifying features, but a duct-taped rectangle on the floor showed exactly where they were to deposit the bathtub.
                “That’s a very specific place to want the bath.” The Stunner assessed curiously.
                “It’s a very specific bathtub to want stolen.” Shrugged Windy Bill. She couldn’t argue with his logic, mostly because it was a statement of fact.
                They flung the rear doors of the van open and lifted the bathtub out, Roger and The Stunner taking the heavier end with the taps and Windy Bill taking the other. As The Stunner had come to expect, the duct-taped markings were perfectly aligned with the feet of the bathtub; it was another display of Professor Endtimes’ hauntingly accurate knowledge of things in which he had an interest. As the three of them placed the tub on the ground a mechanical latching sounded from above, and five rows of brightly coloured bunting fell down amid a cloud of confetti. Hanging in gentle curves from the ceiling, they each had the word “CONGRATULATIONS” printed on them with one letter in each triangular flag. It was quaint and jarring; a stunning attention to detail and commitment to congratulation from a criminal mastermind who was judging their performance.
                “Well that’s just lovely!” Roger said with a beaming grin on his face. “The professor certainly knows how to look after his people.” His words sounded like cumbersome propaganda, but Helena couldn’t help recognising that Commissioner Harmon had never made this much fuss over even her most significant victories. She shook herself out of those thoughts; she was The Stunner right now, not Helena, and the commissioner was certainly a better man than the professor.
                “It’s certainly sweet.” She admitted. “Although payment would probably be nicer.”
                “It’ll be in your account, Stunner.” Windy Bill told her matter-of-factly.
                “What account? I didn’t give him any account information.” The Stunner said, suspicious and uncertain. If the Professor had access to accounts then he’d have her name and the whole gambit would be over.
                “You'll have an account and there will be money in it.” Windy Bill assured her. She decided not to mention that she hadn't discussed payment at all with the Professor, just in case Bill or Roger laughed at her.
                “Nice as this is, we should get moving. The longer we spend here the more chance there is that someone else will spot us.” Bill pointed out.
                “Sound sensible.” The Stunner agreed.
                “Hang on, what’s that?” Roger asked. He was pointing to a small square of paper which was suspended from a string and hanging between the rows of bunting.
                “Looks like a note of some sort.” The Stunner answered, unpeeling the sticky tape which held the paper to the string. It had ‘The Stunner’ written on the back in the unmistakable paper cut-out hand of Professor Endtimes. She unfolded it and scanned through the text quickly before looking up again.
                “It says that you two should go on ahead and I should wait here.” She said uncertainly. “It’s from the professor.”
                They both remained silent for a few moments, exchanging glances with one another. It seemed that Windy Bill understood the content of those glances far better than Roger Toilet did, but they both seemed contented in their own ways.
                “I’m not going to argue with the professor. It’s been a pleasure, Stunner. We’ll meet again.” Windy Bill said with a concerned grimace.
                “Until we flush together once more.” Roger Toilet added with a nod. The Stunner was fairly sure that his sentence was complete nonsense, but understood what he was trying to say.
                “Good to work with you, guys. See you later.” She said.
                The Stunner sat on the edge of the bathtub whilst Windy Bill and Roger Toilet drove away in their neon green monstrosity. Once the engine had faded into the distance, an uncertain silence fell over the storage facility. She hoped that she hadn’t misread the note, because it would be a long and cold night sitting alone on a stolen bath otherwise.
                In the bare garage Helena worried about her meeting with Commissioner Harmon and The Stunner worried about her meeting with Professor Endtimes. The job had gone perfectly, which meant that one of them would be thrilled and the other abhorred. She’d obeyed the whims of Professor Endtimes with precedence over the explicit orders from Commissioner Harmon; did that mean she respected him more? Did she need his approval more? No, she told herself. She was just committed to taking down a dangerous criminal mastermind, more so than she was committed to obeying orders from an arbitrary chain of command. A flare of red hot guilt immediately shot from her stomach up into her throat at calling Commissioner Harmon, a man she respected, an arbitrary authority.
                The Stunner’s spiral of self-questioning was interrupted by soft footsteps along the concrete outside, approaching the garage. With the floodlights pointing in she was practically blind to anything happening outside the door, and she instinctively took up a defensive position behind the bathtub. Her right hand hovered over the handle of her whip, and her left wrist was primed to fire a stun dart if necessary. She might have been cornered, but there would be no ambush without a fight.
                The soft, even footsteps continued to grow closer to the garage until they yielded a silhouette against the blinding floodlight. It was a man for certain, his tall, straight posture showing him to be of great discipline and his peaked hat implying a uniform of some capacity. He continued walking forwards confidently but not arrogantly, as if he was following a path he’d trodden for centuries without wavering. With close proximity The Stunner was able to decipher details from the shadow, seeing a grey suit, well-pressed trousers, polished black shoes and a Chauffeur’s cap.
                “The Stunner?” Asked the man. He was well-spoken and polite in his tone, asking the question out of professional courtesy rather than any need for an answer.
                “That’s me. Who are you?” The Stunner countered.
                “My name, ma’am, is The Chauffeur, and I am in the employ of Professor Endtimes. To lay your mind to rest, I can tell you that I was once an ordinary Chauffeur for a luxury limousine hire company when, on one fateful hen-do, I drove a limousine with a radioactive clutch pedal, which had recently been fitted to the vehicle by mistake. From then on I found myself compelled to a life of transporting only the most evil and dastardly clientele.”
                “So, you pretty much just stayed with hen-dos, then?” The Stunner probed.
                “For a time, yes, until Professor Endtimes took notice of me. The professor has asked that I invite you to visit him in his lair; the address is in this envelope” he handed a paper envelope to The Stunner “but it is requested that you allow me to bear you to your destination. The address is simply a gesture of goodwill.”
                The Stunner’s heartrate spiked. She could feel it beating in her stomach.
                “Are we leaving now?” she asked, forcing evenness into her voice.
                “It is the middle of the night, ma’am. The professor will be asleep, as most people are.” The Chauffeur replied slightly patronisingly. “He would prefer for you to meet him during the day tomorrow. When you are ready, please contact me using this.” He handed her a pager from his pocket. It was identical to The Librarian’s pager, salvaged from the bins and sitting in an evidence bag on Helena’s desk, only with less of an aroma of rubbish about it. “My number is already saved in the memory, under The Chauffeur.”
                “Oh. Right, OK then.”
                “I will also take you back to your place of residence; would that be the Daubenton’s Cannery?” He asked with the slightest edge of uncertainty and disbelief.
                “Uh, yes. Please.”
                “Certainly ma’am. Please wait here and I shall bring the car around.”
                “Thanks.” The Stunner said, sitting back down on the edge of the bath as The Chauffeur walked away.
               
                Helena’s mind was abuzz with the possibilities of what the next day might hold and how she would fit it in around making her apologetic report to the commissioner. She didn’t stop thinking about it for the duration of the silent drive back to the cannery, nor during the subsequent walk back to her flat. Even then, it only stopped when she entered her living room and someone else turned the light on before she could get to it.
                “Productive night?” Commissioner Harmon sounded exhausted.
                “Sir? How did you get in here?” Helena asked, shocked.
                “More politely than you got into the mayor’s bathroom.” He replied evenly. He was standing next to the doorway with slumped shoulders and looked as if he’d never slept.
                “I know it looks bad sir, but it worked! The operation wasn’t a trick. I’m meeting the professor tomorrow!”
                “You’re right, Helena. It does look bad. And that’s because it is bad. You disobeyed a direct order.” His voice was quiet and dejected, even more than it had been when he’d forbidden the bathtub job.
                “What I did is awful, and I will face the consequences, sir. But before that, we can bring down Professor Endtimes. Please, just let me finish this one last operation and I will hand myself in. I honestly believe that bringing down the professor is more important right now”
                “I hope you’re right. The mayor is not best pleased that The Stunner is not only still free, but able to break into his home and steal the majority of his bathroom suite without getting captured. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he is justifiably livid.” Commissioner Harmon stared at the floor as he spoke.
                “I have a lot of explaining to do to him, and I will do it.” Helena offered.
                “As will everyone else, Agent Burnley. Or Helena. Or The Stunner. Whichever you prefer these days. The ministry is going to have some… help in its operations in the city.” Helena’s mouth opened to say something, but no words followed. There was something about the depressed tone that Commissioner Harmon had used when saying ‘help’ that hadn’t sat right. “It seems that because we were not able to produce any results, the mayor has called in some favours. The same kind of favours which allowed the air force to launch an assault against The Stunner’s civilian helicopter.”
                “What are you saying, sir?”
                “I’m saying that the military is, effective immediately, taking over the case against The Stunner, and the Ministry of Extraordinary Crimes is to dedicate all required resources to tracking her down.” Commissioner Harmon allowed his words to soak into the night, permeating every facet of their interaction. It was the kind of news which can saturate the atmosphere like an over humidified room and introduce even more difficulties for breathing. “I am not here to shout at you, Agent Burnley. You’ve disobeyed my direct instructions yet again, you’ve broken dozens of laws, you’ve assaulted your fellow agents, and you’ve aided super-villains, but I believe that you thought you were doing the right thing, so I’m not here to unleash the hammer of discipline upon you. I’m here to warn you, because I am terrified of what will happen in the coming days.” Sombrely he crossed the room to the Helena’s wall of apprehended criminal pictures by the bins.
                “We’ll find a way around it, sir. Once we’ve completed the operation against Professor Endtimes even the mayor will have to take notice. We can make The Stunner disappear into the ether.”
                “You’re the best of the best, you know that?” the commissioner said, his eyes tracing along the rows of mugshots, action snaps of Helena shooting kneecaps, and unmasked villains which formed the roster of Helena’s victories. “If The Stunner were anyone else you would have caught her by now. But that’s exactly why the operation against The Stunner, against you, scares me now. Because you didn’t catch her when the mayor asked you to he’s called in a level of response that I’m struggling to comprehend. I’m not sure that even you can keep yourself out of harm’s way when the army is marching against you, Helena. There will be eyes and ears everywhere, and those eyes and ears will be armed.” He spoke as gravely as someone would if they’d seen a set of eyes or ears with arms.
                “I can look after myself, sir. Besides, the professor has resources beyond anything we anticipated, and he’s kept himself under wraps for goodness only knows how long. If I’m in his inner sanctum then I’ll be safe until I can take him down.”
                Commissioner Harmon took a photo off the wall and looked deep into it in silence. His eyes were focused somewhere behind the actual picture. “Varnisher; your first case as an official agent of the ministry. Do you remember it?” He asked.
                “Of course. The perpetrator had owned a furniture restoration shop before exposure to radioactive varnish. How many people did he lacquer before we got him? Ten?”
                “Eleven if you count the officer he varnished during the attack against him. Took the lab technicians hours to strip it off and get him articulated again.”
                “He had a mirror sheen though.”
                The commissioner gave a tired chuckle. “That he did. He was the brightest member of the force, except for you of course.” He sighed heavily and looked Helena in the eye. His moustache drooped with his mouth, accentuating the strange depression which had come over him. “The other agents won’t give you up to the army, Agent Burnley, I’ve made sure of that, but we won’t be able to cover up your new tracks very well. We’ll be scrutinised intensely and I won’t have any power to stop the military from moving against you even if I try. My command hasn’t been formally stripped, but I’ll be a puppet underneath General Montsourcil when it comes to it. Promise me you’ll be careful and end this as soon as you can.”
                Helena could have sworn there were tears in his eyes. He was so out of sorts that he hadn’t even been chewing a cigar.
                “You have my word, sir.”
                “Thank you, Helena. I will be advising anyone who asks that you’ve had to take a medically enforced sabbatical from the city, on account of your recent head wounds, the car crash at Frederick Montgomery, and the stress of the case against The Stunner. It’s too risky for you to be embedded in Professor Endtimes’ operation and also trying to act within the ministry. It means you’ll have to pack up and get out of this place tonight, though. You can’t come back here for a while.” He crossed over to the front doorway as he spoke.
                “I… yes, sir. I understand. Thank you.”
                “I need to go and make further preparations. Good luck Agent Burnley. I’m sorry that the case has come to this. Thank you for your dedication to the cause of justice.” Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and left.
 
                Helena barely slept. Being up all day working and up all night kidnapping bathing equipment was certainly tiring enough to make her sleepy, but after her nocturnal visit from Commissioner Harmon there was no way she could drift off into a slumber. Being hunted by the army was pretty bad, and having her place of work taken over by the military because of her actions was decidedly awful, but having caused Commissioner Harmon to become so depressed was worst of all. He was a man made for shouting and bellowing, not for muttered confessions of fear and pleas for safety.
                Taking the commissioner’s advice to heart and playing along with his story regarding a foreign assignment, Helena didn’t even consider heading into the station. She instead packed a bag of clothes, essentials, and equipment, locked her flat, and fled under cover of darkness back to the Daubenton’s Cannery. In the darkness of dusk she lay awake on the sofa in the old office, staring at the ceiling. After giving up on the idea of sleep she started planning her next moves. When that vein of distraction ran dry, she wrote a coded message for Commissioner Harmon and then crammed it into her pocket, hoping that she would work out a secure means of getting it to him soon. She needed to explain to him what she had learned and how she could pass on any further information to the ministry without endangering herself. There was so much they could have discussed during the night, but neither of them had been in a clear state of mind, so it was for the best that they hadn’t. The important conversations should never be had in the early hours of the morning after breaking and entering, hand-to-hand combat, furniture theft, arguments with the military, and emotional reunions, as Helena had always said.
                The cannery, at least, was pleased that Helena had finally decided to spend a night there. It was the first time, aside from that instance when she’d been carried in soaked and injured. She might have crept in like a thief at an ungodly hour, but at least she had come home to the cannery. Having a nice cleared space full of radio and electrical generation equipment was flattering, but this show of affection with an actual presence was the best gift of all.
                When the sun shone as far into the Daubenton’s Cannery as it could through the murky windows and industrial machinery, Helena was roused from the meagre amount of dozing she’d been able to achieve and decided to press on with the day. Her mind knew that laying around and thinking about it any longer wouldn’t help at all, even if a significant portion of her body was highly insistent on giving it a go anyway.
                Helena looked at her watch to verify that the hour was sociable enough to summon The Chauffeur and got herself ready, or as ready as she could get herself without any functional plumbing. Every now and again she’d finger the folded note in her pocket and ponder how to get it to the commissioner. If payphones had still existed it would have made the whole affair much easier; they must have been the glory days of anonymous tips. She supposed she could make a dummy email account, but there was no way it’d get through the spam filter. In an age which had done all it could to identify any communicators, and silence those for whom identification was impossible, the truly anonymous message was a dying breed. Delivering the physical note would also be dangerous, since anyone else could read it over the commissioner’s shoulder or take it when his back was turned. She continued pondering as she paged The Chauffeur to pick her up.
                It seemed that The Chauffeur was worth whatever Professor Endtimes was paying him, since he was at the cannery within minutes of receiving The Stunner’s message. In the desolate streets surrounding the cannery it was easy to hear a single vehicle pulling up outside, so by the time her antiquated communications device beeped to inform her that transportation was ready, she was half-way down the staircase. Masked-up, armed, and teeth cleaned using bottled water, The Stunner stepped into the light of day, prepared to deal with whatever Professor Endtimes might throw at her.
                “Good morning ma’am.” The Chauffeur said as she approached. He was standing by the rear door of his iron grey limousine, awaiting her arrival with an open hand to take her bag.
                “Morning.” She replied. Reluctantly she handed her duffle bag of supplies over and entered the vehicle as The Chauffeur held the door open. His well-defined features were handsome but unobtrusive, blue eyes sitting either of side of a straight nose, which led the eye down to a strong clean-shaven jawline. His expression was simultaneously welcoming and devoid of presumptuous emotions, allowing whomsoever he was serving to place their confidence in him as a means of transportation, rather than a man. The Stunner wondered how many secrets he had overheard by virtue of his inconspicuous nature, whilst he placed her bag in the boot and entered through the driver’s door.
                “Are you prepared to go to Professor Endtimes’ lair, or do you need to make any other stops first?” he asked with effortless courtesy as he fastened his seat belt and started the engine.
                “I think I’m ready, thank you. Please just take me straight there.”
                “Certainly ma’am.”
 
                Another journey passed in silence. The Stunner was preoccupied with worrying over the future of the ministry and defending herself against the military to make small talk, and The Chauffeur was too much of a professional to force the issue. Helena kept her gaze focused out of the window to keep track of the route they were taking and any landmarks on the route, just in case she had to retrace her steps through an unfamiliar landscape.
                The Chauffeur finally pulled over on a residential street of terraced housing. Red bricks had clearly been either fashionable or cheap at the time of construction, but the overwhelming quantity of monochrome masonry didn’t capture Helena’s approval.  If she was honest with herself then she didn't think the narrow mid-terrace house outside which they were parked looked especially evil. She would have had an easier time believing that it belonged to the villainous mastermind's grandparents than the Professor himself. Unless of course, she thought to herself, it's all a part of the plot to blend in. His wheelie bins were on the kerb, separated into recycling and waste, his small front flowerbed was well kept, and there was a passive-aggressive "No Free Papers Please!" label stuck on the letterbox. Among the others of its kind, no-one would suspect a thing from this house.
                "We have arrived at our destination ma'am. Are you prepared to exit the vehicle or would like a few moments?" He asked. Helena wondered if her sleeping arrangements had left her looking particularly bedraggled, since the Chauffeur had now offered her two opportunities to 'prepare' further for her meeting. Self-consciousness regarding her appearance wasn't something that Helena was particularly accustomed to, nor was The Stunner terribly worried as long as she was unrecognisable. She gave herself a quick look over in case of spilt toothpaste but found nothing of concern.
                "No, thank you."
                The Chauffeur nodded silently and exited the car, opening The Stunner's door as he went past, and then fetched her duffle bag from the boot.
                “When it comes to be time for you to leave then you need simply page me.” He said as he handed her bag over. “I see that you’ve brought enough with you to stay for the weekend, but I shall be watching my pager regardless.”
                The Stunner replied wittily by blushing. She’d not considered that perhaps she wouldn’t need her overnight supplies or equipment when visiting her potential new employer. Regardless, she nodded goodbye to The Chauffeur and walked up the front path of Professor Endtimes’ house.
                To one side of the door, occupying its traditional space, was a plastic doorbell which had presumably been white in the early years of its existence. Since then, it had adopted the mysterious shade between cream and yellow which is reserved for aged plastics and spoiled yoghurt.
                Braving the perished and tarnished plastic, The Stunner pressed the circular button. A traditional 'BING BONG' chimed inside, disturbingly audible even on this side of the door.  ‘The Professor's neighbours must love him.’ The Stunner thought.
                Occupying the awkward limbo zone between pressing the doorbell and having it answered, Helena tried to gather as much useful data as possible from her surroundings to help identify the building. Her enthusiasm then waned once she realised she already knew its address; if that was a good enough identifier for the postal service then it was probably also good enough for her and the ministry.
                Despite her train of thought having time to pull out of the station, wait patiently at the signals and then derail violently, no-one had yet come to answer the door. It was solid wood, or potentially hollow wood without windows, so nothing could be learned by looking through it. The Stunner stared at the doorbell for answers, hoping that it would tell her whether a second ring would be required, but the boldness of its ring was no indication of its predilection for conversation. Stoically it looked back at The Stunner, giving nothing away.
                She didn’t want to seem impatient, but she also had no particular desire to stand around on a doorstep in full view of anyone who cared to look. Her hand hovered over the yellow/cream button but it was little other than a gesture, since she had in no way given the prospect of depressing it again enough thought to justify either action or inaction. Not looking around, The Stunner simply hoped that The Chauffeur had already pulled away and wasn’t watching the display of social ineptitude currently underway.
                Thankfully for The Stunner, the answer to her predicament made its own way to her, when she heard footsteps thudding their way through the house. From what Helena could tell, Professor Endtimes’ gait was slow and uneven, not quite shuffling but also not free-moving. From the muted, muffled nature of the footsteps he wasn’t wearing shoes indoors; a critical piece of information for the purposes of entry etiquette. The Stunner wiggled her feet inside her boots in an effort to kick-start the loosening process.
                The sounds of footfalls stopped abruptly and gave way to the metallic clanking of latches being drawn back, keys being turned, and if The Stunner didn’t know any better, the rustling of a paper bag. Slowly and steadily the door swung inward. Even though it was daylight outside, the interior lights were switched on, spilling a yellow glow out of the gap in the doorway. A thick burgundy carpet covered the floor, and the walls were smothered in beige wallpaper which sported a gold floral inlay.
                Although the décor possibly featured in the top five of Professor Endtimes’ recorded crimes, Helena’s attention was on the man who had been gradually unveiled by his own hand. True to her predictions the man was not wearing shoes, but his feet were covered by a pair of plaid slippers. Brown corduroy trousers rose up from the open heel of the slippers and led the eye upward to the hem of a white labcoat, hanging open over a turquoise patterned sweater. Above the pocket full of pens, the wide lapels, and the unkempt collar was a clean shaven face with a slightly twisted jaw; it was held in an easy smile beneath honest blue eyes and a balding head of wild white hair. The Stunner estimated that her greeter was at least fifty years old from the lines adorning his face, but she noted that most of his wrinkles were laughter lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes.
                “The Stunner! Welcome. Would you like a bon-bon?” He held out a paper bag of yellow dusted sweets. “I’m Professor Endtimes, but I suppose you must have surmised that already.” He paused for a slight chuckle. “Welcome to my lair, such as it is. Please, come in.” he said, standing to one side and gesturing into the hallway with one arm and an open hand. His voice was filled with warmth and enthusiasm. The Stunner stepped uncertainly into the belly of the beast, and he shut the door behind her.