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The Agletarian commander looked confused for a moment, before a low growling sound filled the transmission.

Poacher let out a deep roar and bounded to his feet, ripping his hands apart and sending pieces of his heavy shackles in all directions.

The Agletarian fired the gun, hitting Poacher square in the head.

Poacher stumbled forward a step, then rounded on him, letting out another furious roar, his eyes gleaming black and red.

His skin took on a greenish cast as he accessed more of the dragon from Rayn’s kingdom’s powers, then bared his new very large teeth.

The round fell from Poacher’s now bullet impervious dragon skin, the soft “ping” sound of it hitting the floor the only noise in the room.

An instant later, the soldiers arranged around him began to fire randomly in panic. Poacher knocked them away like they weighed nothing, then opened his jaws wide and bathed the room in fire.

Monty glanced over his shoulder. “ That’s how you win a war, Agent McPherson. A Trojan Horse: you get them to open the door and take a dragon inside. Told you they don’t watch cartoons.” He informed them calmly, putting his top hat back on. “Vaudeville: if you would be so kind?”

Cory slammed his hand against the viewscreen, his static filled eye promptly displaying the image. His powers opened up the TV screen as a portal into whatever it displayed. In this case, the Agletarian base. “Good to go.”

Monty raised his voice to yell above the screams coming over the transmission.

“Irregulars!” His men instantly surrounded him like a barbarian horde, armed with everything from baseball bats to fusion guns.

A smile crossed Monty’s scarred face again, and he pointed the crystal end of his cane at the viewscreen, like a World War I commander ordering his men from their trenches and through no man’s land. “ Go to work! ”

A cheering battle cry roared from his workman as they charged forward around him.

Monty began to laugh cruelly as wave after wave of Irregulars raced past him and dove through the gateway Cory had created from the transmission.

The Agletarians had failed to take into account Cory’s power, and once Vlk opened up the line of communication, all the Consortium had to do was step through it and into the Agletarian’s fortified base.

The Irregulars surged through the screen like angry hornets from a hive, falling upon the surprised and mostly unarmed Agletarians, who could do nothing but try to flee in blind panic as they were cut down.

Monty raised his voice again, calling over the din of battle as he stepped through the screen to join his army. “Take no prisoners! Give no quarter! BURN IT ALL!”

Once the last of the Consortium’s forces were through the screen, Monty turned back to watch from the other end as the soldier’s burst into the Crater Lair’s command room, to find it now empty.

He watched the men on screen silently for a moment.

“You had years of careful planning, 1,000 highly trained soldiers, an arsenal of unstoppable alien weapons, and the resources of an entire country behind you.” He paused for a beat.

“I beat you in a matter of days, with an empty delivery truck and an idiot with an elephant gun, who wears Disney Princess socks with his combat boots.” Monty’ face twisted into a smile again.

“And I could have done it with far less.”

McPherson stood behind him and stared in amazement.

Monty held up a finger to bring a matter to the Agletarian’s attention.

“FYI: my engineers are better than yours, and Higgins was kind enough to point out one tiny design flaw in the gear you’re wearing, which really was a terrible oversight on your part.

” Monty looked almost sad, as if breaking them unfortunate news.

“Your little suits will protect you from explosions, true,” his scarred face spread into an even wider evil smirk, “but let’s see if they’ll help you to breathe through the 5,200 tons of dirt and wetland habitat that I’m about to drop on you, thanks to explosives planted by Mercygiver.

” He flipped the plastic cover off the device in his hand, exposing a button beneath.

“My associate, Harlot, has asked me to tell you...” He paused, as he thought about it.

“Honestly, I forget. Something to do with learning the consequences of hurting Wyatt. I wasn’t really listening.

But no matter. You’ll be dead, so when she asks if I told you, I’ll just lie.

Either way, I do recall her telling me to ‘bury you,’” he pressed the button and the transmission ended in a fireball and screams as the explosions took out the dozens of support pillars which held up the roof of the subterranean Crater Lair and it all came crashing down on top of the startled soldiers. “…Consider yourselves buried .”

The transmission went to static.

“Goodbye, gentlemen.” Monty casually dropped the detonator to the ground, amid the bodies of his enemies. “At least you tried.”

Monty stood in the center of the room and turned in a slow circle, arms wide, like Maria singing to the hillsides in The Sound of Music , watching the carnage and death take place around him.

He flung his top hat away with a flourish and took a theatrical bow to his imaginary audience, laughing again as if all of this amused him to no end.

****

John Cuttleston-Pie, AKA “Oversight,” didn’t exist. He might have at one point, John didn’t remember, but he certainly didn’t exist now.

He never appeared in any news stories about the Consortium.

You could ask anyone about him and they’d only stare at you blankly.

You could show them a picture of him and they wouldn’t see him in it.

You could drag him into their office and toss him naked at their feet, and they’d still argue that you were imagining things.

Because John Cuttleston-Pie didn’t exist.

He didn’t even know his own real name.

He had no police file. He had no birth certificate.

He had no friends, lovers, or family who could identify him in a lineup.

He didn’t draw a paycheck from anyone and he didn’t have a bank account anywhere.

When you really came right down to it, money was utterly useless to someone like him.

He could simply take whatever he wanted and no one would be the wiser.

Not that he really needed a lot, because everything was pretty useless to someone like him.

He didn’t need to wear nice clothes or flashy jewelry.

No one would see them anyway, so he had no one to impress.

Hell, he didn’t need to wear clothes at all if he didn’t want to .

Sometimes, he couldn’t even see his own reflection in the mirror.

He was for all intents and purposes… dead.

A ghost.

When Carl Barks was writing his legendary Uncle Scrooge comics for Disney way back when, his most popular issues featured the adventures of Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck.

Sometimes though, the artist would miscount the boys, and instead of three ducks being featured in a comic panel, there would accidentally be four.

This event was so frequent that fans of the series took to calling this mysterious fourth duck “Phooey.” He was a phantom.

There one panel, gone the next. While he was around, the other characters would see him and interact with him.

For the briefest of moments, he was their brother or their nephew or their friend.

He was loved . He had a family. One perfect fraction of time…

But then he would disappear without explanation in the next panel and wouldn’t be mentioned again.

No one remembered he had ever been there and no one noticed that he was gone.

Because Phooey Duck didn’t exist… except when he did .

“John” was a lot like that.

He could go anywhere and do anything. And no matter where he went or what he did, no one would notice him. He could be in the room with you right now, screaming into your ear, and you’d never even know it. Until the shooting started.

The problem with the ability to go anywhere, was that it meant that you were always nowhere.

He didn’t have a home. He didn’t date. He didn’t get waited on at restaurants or greeted upon entering a store.

No one remembered his birthday or asked him if he was having a good time or not.

No one cared when he was sick or congratulated him on a job well done.

No one pulled his broken body from the battlefield when he fell and no one thanked him for saving them from certain death.

Every tear “John” had ever shed was shed alone.

Being able to do anything meant that he was actually able to do very little .

Or at least, he didn’t remember doing very much. To be fair though, he knew almost nothing about his own life. Perhaps it was an aspect of his powers or perhaps it was something else, but whatever the reason, John had no idea who he was or where he’d come from.

He didn’t remember. He had forgotten the details about himself just like everyone else had.

He was simply the invisible man, living in a near eternal present, without a past or future. And as far as he remembered, that was the way it had always been. Which was probably for the best, because he didn’t much like what he did know about himself.

Laws and morals weren’t designed for invisible men. Prisons couldn’t hold them. They didn’t have to face the consequences of their own actions and they didn’t have to look anyone in the eye, no matter what they did. They could slip through the gates of Heaven and escape the fires of Hell .

There one moment, gone the next.

Invisible men could do anything they wanted. But… John didn’t really want to do anything. There didn’t seem to be much point, really.

Honestly, there wasn’t a point to his life at all.