As the black magic coalesced into a humanoid form, Vell and the other loops drew their weapons. The rapidly assembling conglomerate of pure evil laughed at their opposition. The spiked carapace of the evil entity took shape, and waved clawed hands in their direction menacingly.

“You fools,” it chuckled. “I am the dark lord Havaxx! No man alive can slay me!”

Hawke hefted the Jingu bang and whacked the dark lord in the head as hard as he could.

“Ow! Were you not listening? No man alive!”

“I heard you,” Hawke said. “I just wanted to check if your magic was transphobic.”

“What? No. I’m not that kind of dark lord,” Havaxx said. “I’m going to enslave your souls and everything, but I’m not going to be an asshole about it.”

“Well, that’s nice of you. Sort of.”

The not-as-dark-as-he-could-be dark lord tried to resume his maniacal laughter, and got met with a blast of magic to the face, courtesy of Lee.

“Are we not done with that yet?”

“Well I had to try,” Lee said. “Not a man and all.”

“I- look, we already went over me respecting gender identity, what part of that would make you think I’d be misogynist? I meant man in the gender neutral sense, like, ‘all mankind’, that sort of thing.”

“I’m just being thorough,” Lee said. “It worked for Éowyn.”

“Yes, which is part of the reason I protected myself against that too,” Havaxx said. He appreciated Tolkien as much as any sensible evil overlord. “That and general respect for what women are capable of as a gender.”

“It’s appreciated.”

“Very well then, now, as I was saying-”

A bullet bounced off Havaxx’s skeletal faceplate, and he recoiled from the impact. Vell fired once more, just to be sure the armor hadn’t deflected the bullet. The second shot was equally as ineffective as the first, though it very effectively annoyed Havaxx.

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“Okay, seriously? What possible angle could you be playing at?”

“I know I may not look it, but I’m technically not alive,” Vell said. He tapped his waistline, and the scar from his bisection.

“Really? You don’t look very undead,” Havaxx said. As a prospective dark lord he’d been required to do a lot of undead studies, and learn to identify many different varieties. By all visible criteria, Vell looked mostly alive. The dark circles under his eyes were a ‘maybe’, but Vell just happened to be tired.

“It’s a long story,” Vell said. “In some ways I’m alive, uh, in other ways I’m dead, it’s complicated. The loophole presents itself sometimes. So I had to try it out, you know?”

“Okay, that one I kind of get,” Havaxx relented. “But is that it? Because really, the evil monologue plus maniacal laughter is kind of a job requirement for me, and I’d like to get this going, so does anyone else have anything they need to get out of their system? Anything they want to try, loopholes to exploit? You there.”

Havaxx pointed out Samson, who had, up until now, been trying to blend into the background.

“You’ve been skulking,” Havaxx said. “What are you up to? Are you also not alive?”

“No, I’m very much alive,” Samson said. “Also biologically male. So nothing up my sleeve.”

“Why are you lurking, then?”

“Oh I’m just new at this,” Samson said. “I haven’t fought a dark lord before.”

“Ah, cowering in fear of me, perfectly sensible,” Havaxx said. “Now, if that is all?”

“One more thing, actually,” Harley said. “When were you imprisoned in your dark bindings?”

“1062, why?”

“You’re very forward thinking for someone of that era,” Hawke said.

“Yes, my progressive ideas on gender and sexuality were one of the reasons I was imprisoned,” Havaxx said. “Also my desire to enslave the world and burn all civilizations in the crucible of my unholy fire. Again, why does this matter?”

“Wait, how do you know about Tolkien if you’ve been imprisoned since 1062?”

“I’ve had guards, they like to read books and watch movies,” Havaxx said. “I know a lot of things. Again! Why does my age matter?”

“Well, did any of your guards read anything about robots around you?”

“Yes, the odd metal automatons, why are they relev-”

Kim cracked her knuckles. She didn’t actually have any joints to crack, but she had her hands hooked up to play the sound effect anyway. She liked the intimidation factor. Havaxx turned around and found himself face to digital face with Kim, and her flaming metal fists.

“Ah.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Kim. Not alive. Not a man. Not a fan of you taking over the world.”

“Can we negotiate?”

“Maybe on loop two,” Kim said. “Just in case, I want to see if punching you works.”

It did.