Vell blasted through the tentacle of another shoggoth, and kept running before the limb reformed. While the creatures were gelatinous enough that bullets wouldn’t normally harm them, they were so poorly held together that the sharp impact of a bullet splattered their limbs into puddles. The membranous masses would reform eventually, but Vell only needed a few seconds to slip by.

After running past another manufactured shoggoth, Vell examined his options. He was really glad he had taken Helena’s advice and read the supervillain guide more thoroughly, as it contained one indispensable piece of advice: the superweapon was always up. No matter how labyrinthine the underwater fortress became, all Vell had to do was look for a way up. He found a staircase and headed up, hoping this one would finally be the last one.

For once, his prayers were answered. Vell stepped up, slammed open a door, and looked up at a dome of water above.

“Hey! Don’t just go around slamming doors open, this is a submarine!”

Mi Go was standing atop a platform next to a large beam weapon—presumably the very same one that had mutated Vell on the previous loop—and was shouting down at Vell.

“You could have flooded my entire base!”

“You’re the one who built it that way,” Vell said.

“I had to!”

“I know, it’s in chapter five,” Vell said. Every supervillain had to build at least one major structural flaw into their bases, or a self-destruct function. “You could’ve picked a different one! An airlock, or a vent, or something. People open doors, that’s like, the one thing doors are for.”

“Don’t critique my base design, and especially don’t quote that clown to do it,” Mi-Go snapped. “It doesn’t matter. I had the protective dome deployed anyway!”

Vell looked up at the glass dome that separated him and Mi-Go from the dark waters above, and saw those dark waters start to get brighter. He cursed under his breath. Chapter eight: the hero always arrives just barely before the villain begins their plan.

“In mere moments, we will reach the surface,” Mi-Go said, beginning the requisite villain speech. The waters above turned crystal blue, indicating they were near the surface. “Once the dome is opened, I will unleash my ultimate creation, and the entire world will be reshaped into unspeakable horrors!”

Mi-Go threw up his hand and laughed the requisite laugh as the submersible finally breached the surface and rose into the open air.

“You’ll never get away with this, Mi-Go, I’ll- Watch out!”

“Yes, you will watch me as I- oh shit!”

Vell and Mi-Go both dove for cover as a rocket soared through the air and slammed directly into the dome, crashing halfway through it before getting stuck. Once the shards of reinforced glass had stopped falling, Vell looked up just in time to see a hatch opening, and Doc Ragnarok leaping out of the rocket.

“Mi-Go!”

“Ragnarok, you asshole,” Mi-Go said. “I was just about to open the dome. You could’ve waited five seconds!”

Mi-Go angrily gestured to the shattered glass all over the floor, and the massive hole in his dome.

“Do you have any idea how much that’s going to cost to repair?”

“Save it, Mi-Go,” Doc Ragnarok snapped. “Don’t think I can’t tell that raygun is aimed at my base.”

“At my dorm, by the way,” Skye said, as she dropped out of the rocket.

“Skye?”

“Hi Vell,” Skye said. “Quick update, we’re here to help and my dad knows we’re dating now.”

“Oh, okay,” Vell said. “That’s, uh, that’s nice. Sorry for not saying anything earlier, Mr. Ragnarok-”

“Save it for after the shoggoths,” Doc said. Vell took a step forward and narrowly dodged a tendril from a shambling shoggoth rising up the stairwell behind him, as others rose from various openings around the dome.

“Oh, okay, sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “You guys want to handle the ray gun, or should I?”

“For legal reasons, I’m only here to compete with a rival villain,” Doc Ragnarok said. “All the actual hero work is up to you.”

“Stop bantering with the hero, this is my lair,” Mi-Go shouted. “Minions, attack!”

The shoggoths shuffled forward, slimy tendrils at the ready. Doc Ragnarok was not impressed.

“That’s my line,” he said. “Minions, attack!”

The hatch on the rocket he’d entered from opened again, and this time dozens of robotic drones poured out. While most of the drones swooped through the air towards the shoggoth’s, one flew down and dropped a barebones ray gun into Skye’s hands -the stripped down remnants of their “death ray”. Mi-Go was thoroughly unimpressed by the drone swarm.

“You want to threaten me with toy drones and foam darts?”

“Yes, I do,” Doc Ragnarok said, as his drones began to pepper the shoggoths with tiny darts of foam and rubber. “You always were too focused on the ‘mad’ rather than the science, Mi-Go. Your monsters are eighty percent slime, and foam is absorbent.”

The barrage had barely begun, and the shoggoths were already noticeably slower. Dozens of foam darts were absorbing the membrane they needed to move, making the abominations even slower and clumsier than they already were. One of them raged at the annoying assault of the drones, and raised a tentacle to swat them down, only to be met with a blinding red laser to one of its malformed green eyes. Skye smiled confidently as the shoggoth thrashed under the blinding beam.

“And having semi-transparent eyelids makes it hard to avoid a very powerful laser pointer,” Skye said. She aimed the beam at another shoggoth that got too feisty. Though they had multiple eyes to see through, their minds were too dull to process the sensory overload in even one of them.

“You’re a terrible supervillain, Mi-go,” Doc said.

“Why? Because I have a handful of oddly situational weaknesses?”

“No, you imbecile,” Doc continued. “You’re a terrible supervillain because you took your eyes off the hero.”

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Mi-Go let out a confused grunt, and turned around just in time to see Vell’s knuckles coming the other way. A single punch to the jaw was all it took to send Mi-Go sprawling over the railing of his ray gun’s control platform. He dropped to the floor as Vell dashed to the weapon, took out one of his revolvers, and fired at anything that looked important. The mutagenic machine let out a few sparks and explosive crashes as vital components were obliterated and the entire device fell dead. Mi-Go regained his bearings and looked up in horror as his attempted superweapon tried to collapse right on top of him.

“Hold on,” Vell said. “I can fix-”

His short-lived attempts to save Mi-Go from being crushed by his own weapon were unnecessary, thanks to Doc Ragnarok’s intervention. He nabbed Mi-Go by the labcoat and pulled him away just before the device crashed down on him. For some reason, Mi-Go did not look happy about it.

“Oh, damn you,” Mi-Go said. “You know every good supervillain is killed by their own creation!”

“I know,” Doc Ragnarok said. “Like I said: you’re not a good supervillain. You can have your ironic death when you’ve earned it. For now…”

Doc Ragnarok let go of Mi-Go’s collar and slapped him across the face.

“That’s for almost mutating my daughter.”

Mi-Go rubbed a sore cheek and spat on the ground near Doc’s feet.

“You’d be better off without her,” Mi-Go said. “Do you think I’d be this angry if you were some second rate villain? You were a legend, Ragnarok, you were inches away from conquering all of Europe! And then that girl-”

“That ‘girl’ is my daughter,” Doc snapped. “We’re supervillains, you imbecile, we’re not here to win, we’re here to challenge -to be a great evil that gives rise to a greater good. And there is no greater good than my daughter.”

Though it was caged within very odd circumstances, Skye still smiled at the sentiment. The good mood was cut short when her father punched Mi-Go in the face, this time knocking him out cold.

“Bastard,” Doc mumbled. “Now, shall we get out of here?”

“Please,” Vell said. “I’ve got shoggoth slime in my underwear.”

----------------------------------------

Dean Lichman rubbed partially decayed temples as Mi-Go’s aquatic fortress was towed away.

“Kim, tell me, is everything I plan doomed to go this way?” He lamented. “It seems like I can’t host any kind of event without...this.”

He gestured to the massive skull fortress as it drifted away. Kim shrugged.

“I think it’s just how things go around here,” Kim said.

“I’m glad you were on hand to stop it, at least,” Dean Lichman said.

“Oh, yeah, do me a favor, don’t tell Vell and the other guys I cut the power like ten minutes before they had their thing,” Kim said. “Apparently it was all kind of dramatic, I don’t want them to feel like it was a waste of energy.”

“I don’t think I’ll have a problem never talking about this again,” Dean Lichman said.

“It’s not all bad,” Kim said. “You still got your hosting fee, and the Supervillain Union is taking care of cleaning up Mi-Go’s unauthorized base, so you’re still in the black.”

“The things I do to keep this school afloat,” Dean Lichman sighed. He shook his head one more time and wandered away from the sorry sight. Kim watched the skull fortress drift away for a few more seconds, then left as well, heading for the senior dorms. The disassembly and cleanup of Doc Ragnarok’s lair was just about done, which meant it was the perfect time to show up and pretend to be helpful. Kim strolled past a few drones hauling away death ray parts and leaned on a wall near Vell.

“Need a hand?”

“Maybe with some heavy lifting, but we’re just about done,” Vell said.

“I told them we should’ve just used the self-destruct,” Doc Ragnarok said.

“Not while it was connected to my dorm, dad.”

“It was a non-explosive self-destruct,”Doc Ragnarok said. “A swarm of nanobots would’ve disassembled-”

“And then we’d have half a ton of iron filings to vacuum up all over the building,” Skye said. “Just drop it, dad.”

“It just feels wrong. Supervillain lair’s aren’t meant to be disassembled, they’re meant to be self-destructed, or destroyed by the hero.”

“Well technically, I am the hero,” Vell said, as he pried some paneling off a wall. “And I am destroying it.”

“Ha! That’s true,” Doc Ragnarok said. He unplugged one last bit of circuitry and shut down a container of bubbling fluid. Vell had asked about the purpose of the bubbling fluid earlier, and apparently it was solely for aesthetic reasons. Every supervillain lair needed glowing lights or bubbling vats, according to Doc Ragnarok.

“Anything else we need to unplug?”

“No, that should be the last of it,” Doc said. “The robots can handle the busywork from here. Ah, not including you, Ms. Kim, unless-”

“I get it,” Kim said. “I’ll leave it to the drones.”

Kim said goodbye and headed back to her dorm, while Skye led the other two back to hers. Vell found his way to the couch and fell onto it with an exhausted sigh.

“Sorry you didn’t get your thwarting, Doc.”

“Quite alright, whooping Mi-Go was more than enough fun to make up for it,” Doc Ragnarok said. “Besides, I get thwarted for a living. This was all just an excuse to visit my daughter, and on that front I’m doing very well.”

Doc looked at Skye for a moment, and then focused his attention on Vell.

“On that note,” Doc said. “You two have been dating for a year, then.”

Both halves of the couple pursed their lips and made awkward eye contact for exactly five seconds. Skye bit the bullet.

“Yeah, we met through, uh mutual friends, hit it off, had some common interests,” Skye said. “Vell met Roxy Rocket, you know, has a guitar autographed and everything, we could-”

“Don’t try to tempt me with my love of Roxy Rocket,” Doc Ragnarok said. “I have a question, and I want you to answer me honestly, Skye.”

She grit her teeth and prepared for the worst.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

That was not the worst, and Skye was not entirely prepared for it.

“A lot of reasons, I guess,” Skye said. “At first it’s because it’s a new thing, you know, not really worth mentioning, and then later on it gets awkward to bring up, or I got worried you wouldn’t like him, or I didn’t know how to start the conversation.”

“I’m your father,” Doc said. “I want to know what’s happening in your life, especially if it’s a boy you like enough to fight Lovecraftian monsters for!”

“You never asked!”

Father and daughter fell silent together. Vell considered stating the obvious, and wondered how best to say “you have some communication issues”. A sudden burst of laughter told him they might have come to the same conclusion on their own.

“Alright, you’ve got a point,” Doc said. “I’ll try to call more.”

“And I’ll try to talk more when you do,” Skye said. “Just mind the timezones. Last time you called from the himalayas you woke me up at one in the morning.”

“Ah. Well, I can imagine why you didn’t update me on that particular occasion,” Doc said. He slapped the arm of the chair he was sitting on and turned to Vell. “Sorry you got dragged into all of this.”

“No problem. I get dragged into everything,” Vell said. “At least this one helped Skye.”

“See, this is why I’m glad you two met,” Skye said. “If I had asked any other boyfriend to do this, they’d have dumped me on the spot, and if any other dad had met a guy like Vell, he’d never approve.”

“Birds of a feather, as they say,” Doc said.

“The name alone must be a pretty big hurdle for most guys,” Vell said. “How do most people react when you tell them your dad’s name is Doc Ragnarock?”

“I don’t,” Skye said. “His-”

“Now, don’t you dare, I have carefully cultivated a persona-”

Skye ignored the warnings and barreled through.

“His name’s Melvin.”

“Why?” Doc Ragnarok/Melvin pleaded. “Skye, please, respect the kayfabe.”

“With normal people, fine,” Skye said. “But Vell is my boyfriend, and my boyfriend gets to know my dad the guy, not my dad the supervillain.”

“Fine,” Doc said. “Fine. Okay. My name is...Melvin Lewis.”

“We can stick with Doc, if you like,” Vell said.

“Yes, please, good lord,” Doc Ragnarok said. “Nobody’s called me Melvin since my mother passed.”

“Got it. So, uh, other than supervillaining, what do you like to do?”

“Not a lot, honestly,” Doc said. “That’s the problem with loving what you do, it kind of makes it seem like you don’t have hobbies. I’m either doing supervillainy, or planning supervillainy, or writing about supervillainy, you get it.”

“Well, your book was great,” Vell said.

“Oh, thank you,” Doc said. “Actually, come to think of it, I’ve been meaning to do a collaborative work, really exploring the hero/villain dynamic from both sides of the aisle. Would you be interested in providing some notes?”

“I’m not exactly a traditional ‘hero’, but I could give some soundbites, yeah.”

Doc Ragnarok pulled out a tablet and started taking some notes on Vell’s antics. Skye watched from the sidelines with a smile on her face that was only occasionally interrupted by Vell describing how to properly execute a chokehold on a yeti.