GOR-DON thanked LO-PEZ for the lift home, promised to call him sometime, then wiped the mud and makeup off his face as soon as the confused and chubby G’Dalien sped away in the mayor’s sleek SkyLimo.

“Idiot,” he seethed. He slogged into the museum and approached the door to his toxic waste closet home.

CLANG!

The sound echoed from above, through the disintegration chute, which emptied into the trash pit outside his front door. GOR-DON leaned over the pit and looked up the dark chute.

FLOOMPH!

A large clump of silver material dropped out of the chute, covering his face. Freaking out, he fell over the railing to the pit but shot a tentacle out to keep himself from falling into the laser-disintegration unit below. The silver heap slipped off his head. His other tentacle shot down and grabbed it.

GOR-DON heaved his blobby butt over the railing and he looked at the N.E.D. suits in his tiny, clawlike hands.

“They get all the glory, while I get their dirty laundry.” He wobbled over to his toxic closet door and shuffled inside.

“You’ve got issues,” the pleasant computer voice announced.

“Tell me about it,” he replied as he dropped the suits on his desk. A new headline beamed onto his wall of holo-clippings.

“Oh, Marion,” the heartbroken G’Dalien moaned. “How did things go so horribly, horribly wrong?”

“That’s easy. You let your feelings get in the way of your duty…”

The croaky old voice startled GOR-DON. He stood up and looked around the room.

“Y-Your Mightiness?!” GOR-DON stuttered as he tried to act pleasantly surprised. “It’s been years! How have you been?”

“You failed me, janitor. Again.”

“No, no! I did everything you asked all those years ago! I delivered your package to the cave on the dark side of the moon, I trained the MoonBats to keep watch over his cave, everything! Do you know how hard it is to train a MoonBat in the dark?!”

“And yet…he came back.”

“Well, if I may make a small suggestion, in all your wisdom and evil ingeniousness, I think perhaps you may have underestimated his friends…”

“His friends?! You dare question my authority on his friends?! I’m quite aware of what his friends are capable of…”

GOR-DON flinched as the shadowy figure approached from the darkness and stepped into the green glow of the holo-clippings on the wall.

“After all, I used to be one of them.”

The old woman had long, silver-and-black streaked hair and wore a dark bodysuit with a flowing black cape.

She sneered at him and turned to the newest holo-clipping. Then she noticed the clump of N.E.D. suits lying on the desk, and picked them up.

“Where did you get these?”

“Oh, I caught them in the disintegration chute. I suppose the AlienSlayers have retired. So that’s good, right?”

She looked back at GOR-DON and began to laugh. GOR-DON laughed with her, nervously. She aimed a fist at the holo-clipping wall. Her large silver bracelet began to glow a brilliant blue.

“You’ve done well, janitor. I think you’ve earned a little getaway.”

“Oh. Where am I going?”

“Not ‘where,’ but ‘when.’”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re—”

“You don’t need to know anything right now, janitor. Except how to sew.”

“What? I can’t sew—”

WHUMPH! The silver clump of N.E.D. suits hit GOR-DON in the head.

“Learn.”

KABLAM!!

Her bracelet emitted a powerful ball of blue light, which blew a massive hole in the thick wall of GOR-DON’s room. He pulled the N.E.D. suits from his face to see smoke and debris swirl and scatter all around him. When it settled, he looked up.

Old Lady Sammi Clementine had left the building.

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