After being chased off from Hillhurst, Jara, Noxic, and Typhus retreated into the Mountains north of Los Angeles where they spent the rest of the weekend–Jara healing her wounds while Typhus puked up the distillery he’d drank before they arrived into this world. By the time they were fully recovered, it was Monday morning, and the three of them were hanging out among the bleached and barren remnants of a recently burned patch of Angeles Forest.

“Hey big guy, how’re ya hanging in there?” Noxic asked Typhus.

His long time buddy stalked around, flexing and rotating his arms. Stopping close to one of the dead trees, he clenched his monstrous red right hand into a fist. With a single swing, he shattered over ten feet of the trunk into splinters.

“I feel great, baby!” Typhus roared as the rest of the tree crashed to the ground behind him.

“Yeah, thatta boy! Now that you’re back in the game, we can head back over to that dump and smash those jerks!”

“Yeah, but you’d better pull your weight this time. I wanna see some clappin’ and zappin’!”

Noxic laughed and wagged a finger at Typhus. “Oh, you don’t worry about me! Nothing gets me more fired up than smacking down an unruly robot!”

Typhus clenched both his fists and held them aloft. “Yeah! We’re gonna deactivate ‘em and shut down their human friends!”

Jara tapped the back of her head against the tree and let out a seething growl.

Noxic noticed their normally screechy pal brooding. “Hey Jara, you’ve been quiet for a minute, what’s buggin’ ya?”

She turned her head with a huff. “I am still sore over that girl with her infuriating magic.”

Typhus strutted over. “Yeah, what’s up with that? Once she started casting magic on you, you flipped out.”

Noxic agreed. “You lost your cool completely!”

Jara tightened her crossed arms. “That magic, it reminded me of something I faced a long time ago, before I met you two.”

Noxic lit up in the literal sense, his eyes and the green and blue tips of his metal dreadlocks glowing with his excitement. “Oh man, are you gonna tell one of your war stories?!”

Typhus pumped his fist. “Aw yeah, those are the best, baby!”

Jara whirled on them with dramatic flourish. “Absolutely not! I am not some old woman curled by a fire, telling stories to entertain you while she waits for death!”

She looked away. “All that you must know is that when I faced that magic, I was defeated completely and utterly. To think that such nonsensical, stupid craft was in this world too…”

She trailed off into grumbling, hitching her shoulders.

Noxic wasn’t going to hear any of his two best friends bum out. “Then you’re not gonna lose this time! Come on, Jara, you’re the coolest one out of all of us! Like heck are you gonna let one magical girl get your panties all bunched up.”

Jara’s expressionless white mask looked like it was pouting as she tilted her head away from her friends a bit more.

“Yeah, round two’s gonna be a whole different fight! You, me, and Nox? We’re gonna beat those punks down so bad they’ll have to make it a pay-per-view event, baby!”

“So stop sulkin’ and get pumped up! The baddest Merc in the Nightmare Realm is gonna get her runback, and she’s gonna be the coolest doin’ it!”

After a few moments, Jara turned her head and looked at them. “Thank you for reminding me why I put up with you knuckleheads.”

Uncrossing her arms, she placed one hand on her hip. “You’re right. I’m not going to resolve anything by sulking like bullied brat. Let’s go and settle the score right now!”

Noxic jumped, thrusting a fist in the air and clicking his heels together. “All right!”

Typhus flexed one of his arms. “Yeah, let’s get it on!”

Their celebration was cut short by an abrupt teleportation, all three landing in a heap near the center of a dark, stone-walled chamber laid out in the shape of a cross.

“I’ll murder the bum who just did that!” Noxic shot to his feet. “I ain’t being dragged around twice without my permission, capisce?!”

He looked around as Jara and Typhus got up. It was a candle-lit mausoleum, with walls lined with coffins three rows high and no room for anymore. The room’s disuse was evident in the dust and cobwebs that hung over almost everything, and the stale, musty air with the scent of slowly rotting wood and molding stone.

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“What’s with this creepy joint?” Noxic asked.

“Huh, ain’t this a spot.” Typhus chuckled and examined some of the coffins. Each had the name Doe and a different number. “I kinda like it.”

Jara looked ahead. “Vexor, is this the best you could do?”

Both Typhus and Noxic groaned in annoyance and looked to the center of the cross-shaped crypt, where Vexor was sitting atop a massive stone sarcophagus at the center, with another Beetleborg comic held in his hand.

“I picked it for practical reasons. It’s cool, it’s dark, and more importantly it’s sealed up. This crypt is quite full; there’s no reason for anyone to come near it, let alone enter.”

He slipped off the sarcophagus onto his feet without making a sound. “Now then, I demand you tell me what happened and why it has taken me so long to reach you… and your reasoning had better be sound.”

Noxic stomped up to Vexor, seething with every step as he reached him. “Now hold the heck on there! We did exactly what you told us, you pearly pontificator! Except when we got there, we got attacked by these… those…! Wait a minute!”

“Attacked by what?” Vexor asked.

Noxic pointed at the comic Vexor held. “That’s them right there! The guys who attacked us!”

Typhus and Jara joined his side, looking at the cover of Vexor’s comic. Their leader too looked at the front of the book and hummed. “I beg your pardon. You were attacked by… comic book characters?”

Noxic nodded fast. “Yeah, it’s like they came straight out of that book!”

“Except that they fought like flailing children.” They could hear Jara’s scowl hidden by her mask.

Vexor opened the book, curious, and began to read it as he swept away from his three underlings–pacing around the sarcophagus. “That’s because they likely are costumed children.”

His three underlings recoiled.

“Wait, you mean they’re not robots?” Noxic asked.

“According to the book they are humans wearing magical armor. Fascinating, and enlightening as well. Our fictional foes in this comic book exist in this world, and they attacked you right at the source of the power I felt.”

“Huh, hear that? You don’t have to feel bad about shuttin’ ‘em down, baby,” Typhus said.

Noxic clenched a fist. “That’s great! I also don’t have to worry about rebuildin’ ‘em from scrap!”

Jara hummed. They were humans, too?

Vexor faced his minions. “This warrants further investigation. Go back and see if you can find out more about these Beetleborgs. If you can bring one back to me? Even better.”

Noxic nodded. “Yeah, sure thing! We were gonna trash those guys anyway, but you called us up.”

Jara looked over at Noxic. “Tell him about when you tried to summon your Scabs.”

Noxic clapped his hands. “Oh yeah, get this! When I tried to call some Scabs, they came straight out of one of those Beetleborg comic books. I didn’t need to convert anything to material to make ‘em!”

Vexor perked up. “They came from the comic book, all you had to do was summon them as you normally do?”

“Well, I was gonna do my usual thing, but before I could find any machinery to convert? Bam! There they were! It was like I was born knowing how to do it! Watch!”

Noxic pointed his hands at the comic. “All right Scabs, get out here!”

Sure enough, a flash went off between the closed comic book’s pages, and four flames shot out to land around Vexor–transforming into shuddering, twitching Scabs ready to do battle.

Vexor looked from the book to the Scabs, then back and forth several times. “… Astounding, the potential this holds, the things we can do with this power…”

Waving the comic around, Vexor turned and let out a laugh. “Ho ho ho ho… your tardiness is forgiven. This is just as important, and as interesting. Make full use of this ability of yours, tell me what you learn when you use it against those Beetleborgs.”

“Yeah, sure thing!” Noxic replied.

Typhus raised his hand. “Hey, that ain’t all, Vex! There was somethin’ else. A magical girl was there too.”

Noxic looked back and forth between Typhus and Vexor, jumping in quick on the conversation. “Yeah, she gave Jara more trouble than those Beetlebums did by a lot!”

Jara did her level best not to grind her teeth. “An annoying pixie of a girl with marks on her cheeks, casting chaos magic through a wand that hurt like mad!”

“Marks on her…” Vexor recognized Jara’s description. Astounding had been surpassed. What a world! “A Butterfly!”

Jara did a double take. “You know about it?”

Vexor hummed again. “When you go there, and if you run into that magical girl, bring her here as well.”

Jara stepped up to him. “Hold on one disgusting moment! What do you know about that girl, what is a Butterfly?!”

Vexor answered the question as if it was about the weather. “A potent magical user, one that may be very useful to us. Bring her to me along with a Beetleborg, and I’ll determine just how useful they are.”

It was an unhelpful answer, but it wasn’t precluding Jara from doing as she was instructed. “Do you want them dead or alive?”

“Alive, but I have no problem with damage.”

Jara shook with excitement and turned to Noxic and Typhus. “Back to that ratty old house, then!”

The three Magnavores crossed their arms, nodded, and vanished in bursts of flame–taking the four Scabs with them. Looking at the scorch marks on the floor they left behind, Vexor turned and walked to the sarcophagus. He rested a hand on it and scratched lightly across the glazed stone surface.

“Such a fascinating world, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of it!” He set the Beetleborgs comic face down atop the sarcophagus and looked at the Eye of Providence on the barcode.

“What ruinous powers were just outside of your grasp? What shall I do with them when I claim them?” His clawed fingers cut into the polished stone, sparks flying as he dragged them across the surface with no effort.

“Ho ho ho ho, why bother asking you?”

Vexor walked down the length of the sarcophagus, cutting lines deep into it, and continued doing so as he circled around its end. “You were a fool that squandered your thrust out of the Nightmare Realm on puerile mayhem and wound up defeated by ants.”

Vexor laughed again.

“You underestimated their sting!”

He leaned back, laughing louder.

“What a waste of such Grand Design!”

He completed his circling of the comic and rested his opened palm on it. Burns appeared on the comic’s cover, as his eyes shone in a yellow light.

“What foundation you’ve laid down in this world will serve me well, Bill Cipher.”

The entire comic lit up, yellow flames licking up around Vexor’s hand as the light from his eyes and the cover both grew to encompass the entire crypt. As the light consumed him, Vexor’s laughter turned into mechanical screeching.

“EMOCY LUIRV JOEFW UUITB PUJTD CNPTQ IOPLP OSAJD NCFBQ XRCEB TNDFX.”

His screeching continued until the light grew blinding and enveloped him.