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Revelations of Destiny	By : Kellendros Category: Kim Possible > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 63461 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 73
- 74
- 75
   The Palace of Nations Groundbreaking Ceremony, Geneva, Switzerland, 1929
   Striding up to the podium with an aristocratic air of poise and propriety, Sir James Eric Drummond, 16th Earl of Perth and Secretary-General of the League of Nations paused for a moment, using the pretext of adjusting his tie to take in the fair-sized crowd of diplomats, ambassadors, personal secretaries, translators, clerical staff, and, in some cases, bodyguards and military escorts assembled on the open field before him. Then he placed his hands firmly on either side of the dark oak stand and took a full, deep breath, gripping the wood with a look of courteous authority as he launched into his opening speech.
   “Gentlemen, and Ladies, if I may have your attention, please?” Sir Drummond waited for a long three-count to let the murmurs of the crowd die down, then continued in a strong, carrying voice that clearly displayed his extensive experience with public speaking. “We are gathered here today, on this historic occasion, to break ground on what is to be the future assembly hall for this grand League of Nations of which we are all a part; the Palace of Nations.”
   Sir Drummond used the ensuing applause as opportunity to take another deep breath, while off in the distance, several flights of birds exploded into the air and darted off in various directions, winging away from the area as fast as their little wings could carry them.
   “The building of this edifice represents our continued, lasting commitment to the principles upon which our covenant was founded; those of peace, prosperity, and fairness for all the lands of this great world of ours. That diplomacy, reason, and compromise can and will be at the forefront of all our dealings with one another, lest, God forbid, we again suffer such horrors as those of the Great War, ended ten years to this very day now. That we never again need visit such cruel, inhuman suffering upon our peoples, upon our very own sons and daughters, when peace and understanding can be had instead, if only we find the strength and courage to try.”
   Here and there in the crowd, a few particularly sharp-eared individuals were giving slightly perplexed looks, as, far-off, faint, and just barely audible over the sound of Sir Drummond speaking, they heard the most peculiar droning hum, reminiscent of… bees, perhaps? At the same time, at each of the four points of the compass, an ominously large, dark, indistinct shape descended from the cloud-cover high above, closing towards the gathering at a fast pace that ate up the miles between them.
   “And find that strength we have, my friends! For a full decade now, we have found it; the strength to come together and hear each other’s grievances and concerns and discuss them like civilized individuals. The strength to understand one another’s positions and use that understanding to resolve these issues with words instead of conflict and violence… These are the things make this League of Nations so important in these times in which we now live, where the threat of war carries so much… more, than it has ever done before. Where we must do everything in our power to avoid—” the increasing distracted Sir Drummond suddenly broke off his speech, looking around in confusion as he was unable to ignore the increasingly loud disturbance he was hearing. “What is that blasted humming sound and where the blazes is it coming from?”
   By now, nearly half the people in the crowd were asking that very same question, but it wasn’t until a minute or so later, as everyone was looking around trying to place the source of the deep, reverberating hum that was now clearly audible and filling the air around them, that a young, sharp-eyed Indian page spotted the large airborne shapes rapidly bearing down on the gathering.
   “There! In the skies! What is that, coming towards us there?”
   Looking up in the direction the young man was pointing, it was only a matter of moments before others in the crowd were pointing out the remaining three long, grey, tapered shapes approaching from the air. As the aircraft got closer, various members of the crowd rapidly identified them as enormous zeppelins, and all eyes immediately turned to the German delegation while questions and accusations flew thick and fast.
   “We know nothing of this!” the German ambassador immediately answered after a swift consultation with his aides and military escorts. “They are not ours, see? They are far larger than any dirigible we have ever produced!”
   The last part was said with a certain sense of awe and admiration the crowd could not miss, but even so, the accusations continued unabated. At the same time, others were pointing out a flight of Swiss defense force biplanes approaching from the southwest, on a clear intercept course with the huge zeppelins that were violating Swiss airspace. That flight quickly split into two even groups, each heading for the nearest dull-grey sky behemoth before them. In no time at all, they were closing in on their targets even as the zeppelins slowly descended towards the ground in near-perfect coordination with one another.
   At the same time, the contingent of Swiss defense force members charged with providing protection for the League of Nations were rushing out onto the field and taking up a defensive perimeter around the gathered diplomats, weapons out and at the ready while officers began trying to organize the milling crowd for an orderly withdrawal. It was at this point that everything descended into chaos.
   Off in the distance, a dozen compact, twin-engined biplanes detached from the undersides of the western zeppelin that was soon to be engaged by the Swiss planes approaching it, rolling out, changing direction and forming up in a dazzling display of looping aerial acrobatics. In no time at all, the fast, powerful, imposing looking aircraft were tearing up the outclassed Swiss biplanes like sharks ripping into a school of tuna, mercilessly shooting down anything that came into their sights during the mostly one-sided dogfight, despite the valiant efforts of the brave Swiss fliers that stood against them. That was by far the least shocking thing happening in the cloudy skies above, however, as, from the zeppelin to the south, lances of bright blue-white lightning began shooting out of the long, twin-sectioned gondola that graced its underside, the incandescent bolts blasting approaching planes into flaming wreckage wherever they struck. Even as all that was happening, several small platforms opened up in the gondolas of the remaining two zeppelins. A moment later, dozens of fiery missiles shot off those platforms, streaking across the sky and descending upon the various automobiles and other vehicles of the gathered delegation like a meteor shower, all with the same explosive results, blasting the haphazardly parked transportation into a collection of twisted, burning metal and rubber skeletons.
   With outlandish, inconceivable violence erupting all around them, and with their only means of a quick escape suddenly and cataclysmically cut off, the crowd of diplomats and aides descended into abject panic, but fortunately, just before the lot of them were about to stampede off in multiple directions, the more levelheaded amongst their number, along with the well-trained Swiss officers, narrowly managed to rally the unnerved assembly before their fear spiraled completely out of hand, the resolute, controlled calls for order bringing almost everyone back to at least a semblance of composure. Unfortunately, by the time they did regain control, flights of victorious enemy planes were buzzing overhead like enormous, angry hornets, swooping down and around in strafing patterns that chewed up the terrain surrounding the besieged group at a distance of about a hundred yards or so, the quadruple lines of machinegun fire from each plane blasting long rows of deep, ragged craters into the sod as they kicked up great sprays of dirt and grass with their high-velocity impacts, making clear the penalty for any attempt to flee the area.
   Given the obvious intent of the attackers to contain the crowd instead of kill, the Swiss officers ordered their troops to hold their fire—not that foot soldiers armed with rifles really had much chance of bringing down planes anyway, but they certainly would have tried had the circumstances been different. In the same vein, those officers told their men—and the crowd contained within their not-so-protective circle—to remain in place instead of trying to withdraw to a more defensive position. That turned out to be a wise decision indeed, as the next stage of the coordinated aerial assault swiftly revealed any attempt to flee would have been futile, even if the planes flying overhead hadn’t been there to hem them in.
   Heaving to and presenting their broadsides like pirate ships of yore, the four enormous zeppelins each came to a halt roughly a half-mile away from the site, hovering a hundred yards above the ground below. As they did, the ten remaining planes of the enemy armada broke off and formed up before heading back to the zeppelin they came from, there, much to the shock of the onlookers, to begin landing atop the mighty vessel one by one. That the planes could somehow come to such an odd, unnaturally slowed stop instead of falling off the comparatively short landing strip wasn’t what shocked the soldiers and diplomats, however; it was the fact that as each one reached the end of the flat landing platform built into the top of the zeppelin, a strange, smoking, mechanical contraption picked them up, flipped them upside-down, and attached them to a track that carried them down the back of the craft and along its underside, there to slide sideways and be locked into place on the very same struts that had originally held them before they first detached from the zeppelin.
   At the same time, from a large, sliding hatch on the bottom of the second of its twin gondolas, the southernmost zeppelin deployed an enormous, multi-barreled spike launcher on an articulated turret. That device immediately began shooting the most peculiar, dull black, eight-foot long iron rods with fat copper ball-caps and three equidistant, encircling rings of copper into the ground every fifty feet or so at a fairly brisk pace, until a slightly curved line of them ran nearly five hundred feet out from either end of the vessel. Even as the last post of that fairly ineffectual hemming fence impaled the soft earth below, the launcher retracted while a somewhat smaller hatch in the first gondola opened up, allowing a colossal, upside-down Jacob’s ladder comprised of two thick, gleaming, multi-ringed metal pylons tipped with bulbous silver balls to descend and lock into place. Moments later, thick arcs of brilliant white lightning began running down the device before discharging into the posts below, there to fan out in both directions as continuous lines of electricity jumped from post to post in a brilliant, cracking cobalt display of deadly, ozone-cloaked menace.
   Meanwhile, in the east, the long, hovering sky-behemoth that held position there was unfolding an alternating series of huge, thirty-foot tall, toothed metal disks from its undercarriage, swinging a total of three out to either side of its gondola. Then, once the bulky contraptions were perpendicular to the ground, they were each lowered on a pair of thick steel chains the size of an ocean liner’s anchor chains, though it was really more of a controlled drop than an actual lowering. That’s when the true horror began, for as soon as the heavy iron and steel constructs touched the earth, they sprang to life, symmetrical, slightly tapered twin cylindrical side compartments ratcheting out from the disks and sprouting a variety of gun and light cannon barrels while the broad, segmented central track began to turn, propelling the mammoth vehicles forward and revealing them to be war machines in the form of swift, frighteningly agile single-tread gyro-tanks.
   The deployment of the huge, mechanized monstrosities made the dozens of well-ordered, uniformed troops now rappelling down to the ground from multiple exits on the sides of the westernmost zeppelin’s gondola seem almost mundane, but all of that soon paled in comparison to what came next from the lighting-spewing craft to the south, as, in the open area between the zeppelin’s twin gondolas, a large, fat, twenty-foot wide metallic saucer slid into sight and started descending towards the earth below on nothing more than cracking pillars of bright blue-white electricity, all while a dozen or more men dressed in heavy, outlandish leather-and-rubber protective gear and wearing big, thick, black-tinted circular goggles and facemasks worked the controls of an elaborate central apparatus that sported six thick, equidistant Tesla coils, with each flaring, flat-headed copper column feeding dark purple current into a much bigger central receiver.
   Gazing on while dread, trembling awe chilled the very blood in their veins, the rapt diplomats and Swiss defense force members watched as the saucer gently descend to a height of about six feet or so, and then began sliding towards them on innumerable thin, bright blue legs of electricity, its eerily smooth, crackling, snapping passage scouring the earth below, reducing everything in its wake to a blackened ruin at it came. Soon the gliding platform was a mere hundred feet away from the ring of Swiss defense force members, and the group found itself now doubly hemmed in on three sides, with the lightning saucer to the south, lines of neatly arrayed, formed up troops sporting what appeared to be fantastically small, one-man portable machine guns to the west, and the six enormous iron wheels of destruction rolling in from the east.
   It was almost an anticlimax when a small, bulbous gyrocopter took off from the zeppelin to the west and swiftly set down just behind the line of troops, who soon parted to reveal a large, heavyset, magnificently bearded man dressed in crimson Germanic General’s regalia striding forward from the craft, while an incongruously tall, balding man with spectacles, a sharp, triangular goatee and much smaller, spiked mustache, who had the hair remaining on the sides of his head styled up in two long points and was wearing a heavy, paneled, button-down lab coat followed alongside him.
   Coming to a halt and setting his stance like a great oak taking root, the resplendent General casually rested one hand on the elaborate, gleaming brass basket hilt of his saber while he turned his hard, authoritarian stare briefly in the direction of his odd cohort. Looking back with a brusque, not particularly companionable nod, the… doctor? took a fat, not-so-small cylinder whistle from his belt and brought it to his lips, cheeks puffing up and blushing in what would have been a most comedic fashion were it not for the circumstances in which he blew it as hard as he could. The silvery whistle emitted naught but a long, drawn-out hiss of air, but still, the man seemed satisfied, and quickly returned the instrument from whence it came, settling back on his heels with a clearly expectant air.
   The silence—such as it was, with the hum and crackle of the lightning saucer, the rumbling growl of the gyro-tanks’ engines, and the hushed, apprehensive exchanges between various Swiss defense force members and beleaguered civilian diplomats—dragged on for several minutes before, here and there in the surrounded group, shouts went up as men pointed out the approach of yet another wave of altogether horrendous aggressors.
   There, off in the distance, coursing in across the open ground from every direction that wasn’t blocked by a fence of electricity, were hideous, twisted, bestial abominations of all shapes and sizes, each bearing the features of man and animal combined, running on all fours like the great apes of darkest Africa. On and on they came, closing with the group until they filled the open spaces between the forces already present—though curiously, those from the north split left and right, leaving that area free of their number. It was as if it were the end times, with hell itself released to roam upon the earth, and it was made all the more horrific when the greatest beast, one with the warped features of a mighty man-lion, made its way over to the doctor, gently pressed itself up against his leg while looking up with… adoring—nay, worshipful—eyes, and, in a guttural, approval-seeking voice, spoke!
   “Fa-ther?”
   The doctor didn’t deign to answer, or even glance at the incongruously childlike beast, but his right hand did come to rest upon the creature’s misshapen, maned head in a decidedly… affectionate, approving manner, whereupon the beast smiled a happy, hideous smile and returned its once more sharp, feral, golden-eyed attention to the fearful crowd gathered before it.
   Yet again, a certain air of (relatively) quiet anticipation descended upon both groups, only this time, it barely lasted any time at all before all eyes turned to the zeppelin to the north, as two loud, successive cannon shots boomed out from its gondola and captured everyone’s attention. Within moments, a large platform began lowering itself from the underside of the zeppelin’s gondola, bearing what appeared to be an automobile and a contingent of Indian men with full, curving, forked beards and mustaches, all wearing robes, turbans, and bearing curved swords and daggers in dark, gold-embossed scabbards at their hips.
   At the same time, a dozen or more doors opened on either side of the gondola, into which stepped men and, shockingly, women dressed head-to-toe in flowing black silk that was bound tight to lower shins and forearms with broad, wound strips of the same material, while their heads were covered in full facemasks and hoods that left only a narrow space exposing their eyes. A moment later, to shocked gasps and cries of alarm from the members of the besieged gathering, those black-clad figures began leaping from the aircraft, with more and more of their number following suit from behind in a steady stream of apparently suicidal lemming-like behavior. Shattered bodies and swift deaths were not the result of the hundred yard drop, however, as, much to the assembly’s astonished disbelief, the black-clad warriors somehow—impossibly—landed in a series of controlled rolls, tumbles, and acrobatic handsprings that brought them to their feet and sent them running across the field to take up position in the remaining space to the north, their lines forming up neatly at about the same hundred-foot distance as the other aggressors held.
   Following along at a sedate pace behind them once the platform reached the ground, came the sword-bearing Indian warriors escorting a beautiful, gleaming Rolls Royce Silver Ghost that crossed the uneven terrain with barely any bouncing or bumping whatsoever. In very little time at all, the luxury limousine was pulling up alongside the small, podium-bearing wooden stage long since abandoned by Sir Drummond and the other important diplomats that had occupied it, while the escort of Indian warriors continued on to form a double line between that raised platform and the fearful crowd before it. After coming to a stop, the driver of the vehicle, a slight, nondescript man wearing a very crisp, proper looking upper-class chauffeur’s uniform, exited the automobile and stepped back to the rear passenger door, whereupon he slid a portable walkway out from beneath the vehicle and rested the far end of it atop the raised stage before opening the door for whoever was inside.
   The onlookers did not have very long to wait before discovering who that was, as the occupant all but immediately disembarked, revealing a tall, middle-aged, somewhat severe, yet not entirely un-handsome man clad in the immaculate, expensive, perfectly tailored suit and overcoat of an English aristocrat, complete with top hat, ivory-handled walking stick, and gold watch chain. All eyes fixed upon the figure as he walked up the ramp and across the stage to the podium with the easy, casual stride of a man out for his morning constitutional. He simply radiated a certain sense of… dark authority and unwavering confidence that could not be ignored, drawing the attention of everyone gathered before him, even down to the now eerily cowed man-beasts, as most of their number refused to look at him directly, instead dropping their gazes to the ground and using fleeting glances, peripheral vision, or other, more feral senses to track his movements.
   Stepping up to the podium, the man swept his piercing, grey-eyed stare over the crowd, seemingly taking in and cataloging every last detail before him. Then, with continued nonchalance, he paused and checked his pocket watch, glancing to his left as he did. Seconds later, many in the crowd gasped or cried out in alarm as a puff of thick green smoke suddenly erupted from a spot on the stage about two yards off in that direction, its quickly dissipating mist revealing the outlandish figure of an old, fantastically tall Chinese man who had not been there a mere moment previous. In fact, to say that he was old was an understatement, as his dry, wizened features and milky eyes fairly screamed “ancient,” as did the long, wispy strands of his scraggly yellow-white Fu Manchu mustache and goatee. Layers of shimmering, gold-trimmed, emerald silk robes embroidered with resplendent, ruby-eyed golden dragons were draped over his gaunt, decrepit frame, and the ends of his gnarled, twisted fingers were tipped with six-inch lacquered, gold embossed crimson fingernails, while a short, cylindrical cap of emerald and gold topped a balding pate covered in the long, wispy strands of what little hair remained to him.
   As the last of the smoke dispersed, the Ancient twisted his head around and, in a very clear, precise manner, inclined it towards the man at the podium, after which, they both returned their attentions to the crowd before them, the one returning his pocket watch from whence it came, while the other began stroking the long strands of his thin mustache and beard. A moment later, the Englishman took a deep breath and began to speak in a strong, resonant voice that easily carried over all the other sounds filling the air.
   “Good morning, Gentleman, and Ladies,” the man paused for a brief second as he acknowledged the handful of females in his captive audience, “my name is Professor Charles Moriarty, son of the late, great Professor James Moriarty. To my immediate left, you will take note of my companion from the far-off Orient, the inscrutable sorcerer know only as the Mandarin.”
   “Paugh! Sorcery? What poppycock and balderdash!” despite the situation—or perhaps because of it—the hysterical reproach shot out of an older member of the British delegation almost immediately.
   Surprisingly unruffled over the interruption, Professor Moriarty simply looked on while next to him, the Mandarin’s milky eyes narrowed in ire, focusing on the man that had spoken out against him. A moment later, the Ancient threw out his hand and twisted it around in a hooking, lifting gesture while humming in an unexpectedly deep, melodic voice. As he did, the portly Brit who had spoken widened his eyes in abject shock and then terror, hands flying up and clawing wildly at his throat while he gasped and choked for breath that would not come.
   Even as the men closest to him moved to his aid, they found themselves falling back fearfully as, impossibly, the rotund, choking critic was first lifted to the tips of his toes, and then up off his feet entirely, rising a good two feet or more into the air as if suspended by a hangman’s noose or giant’s garrote. Looking on in impotent frustration, the crowd could do nothing but watch as the Brit’s eyes bugged farther and farther out of his increasingly beet-red face. Soon, his movements slowed, and then his arms fell down to his sides as his strength betrayed him, but just before he slipped away entirely, Moriarty spoke a single word.
   “Enough.”
   The Mandarin arched his right eyebrow high, balking at the command for a split second, then, with a reluctant, distasteful sneer, flicked his hand and stopped his humming chant, whereupon the portly Brit immediately fell to the earth, landing in a crumpled heap like a puppet with its strings cut. As men once more rushed in to assist him, they found him unconscious, but still alive, as the ragged inhalations and wheezing exhalations rising from his badly bruised throat could attest.
   “Now then, if there are no further interruptions…” Moriarty paused, despite the obvious rhetorical nature of his statement, and then continued, “As I have said, I am Professor Charles Moriarty, and this is the Mandarin. My other companions include, but are not limited to, in the east, the Ironmonger and his collection of war machines, piloted by the aptly named Dogs of War, in the south, the Sons of Tesla, masters of all things current and electrical, and finally, in the west, Sky Marshal Victor Von Krieg and his elite corps of aerial aces and crack airborne troopers, along with the good Doctor Alphonse Moreau and his collection of… sons and daughters.”
   Murmurs immediately sprang up in the captive audience; very few of the gathered diplomats knew all of the names Moriarty gave, but equally, very few of them did not recognize at least one of them, if not more. Soon, Sir Drummond was marshalling his courage, stepping to the forefront of his compatriots and waving Swiss defense force members aside as he addressed Moriarty directly.
   “My good sir, I must say that you and your companions are known to us, one and all, as villainous blaggards through and through, of which your unwarranted actions here today only confirm. Consequently, I, Sir James Eric Drummond, as Secretary-General of the League of Nations, demand to know what your intentions are!”
   “Villains?” Moriarty paused for long moment… savoring, the word he found on his tongue. Then, he gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. “No, my good man, we are no mere base villains or common thugs, no more than you and your lot could be said to be simple laymen and bureaucrats. Nay, there is nothing so common about us; rather, as Nietzsche referred to the Übermensch in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, so too should you term us super villains—for that is what we truly are, each masters of our chosen fields and proper virtuosos of dark design.”
   Moriarty smiled darkly at the apt turn of phrase he had coined, and then continued on in his oddly indulgent, genial tone.
   “As to our intent… well now, that will require some exposition, won’t it?” Moriarty paused while he doffed his top hat, placing it on the podium and then taking a step or two to the side before returning his focus to Sir Drummond. “Men such as myself and my companions have existed since the dawn of time. Alexander the Great, Hannibal Barca, Hakkon the Warlord, Gaius Julius Caesar, Temujin—that would be Genghis Khan to you—The Black King, Vlad Tepes, The Alchemist of Venice, House Borgia, The Silver Blade, Napoleon, and so many others have followed Der Wille zur Macht. In the past, they rose to positions of power and prominence because of superior aptitude and merit, and their ability to overcome the forces arrayed against them, but now, in these modern times, the game and the playing field is changing; shifting to unnaturally favor those of far lesser ability.”
   “And what would any of that have to do with us?” Sir Drummond demanded in the ensuing silence.
   “Why everything, my good Sir Drummond, everything indeed.”
   Moriarty set his walking stick directly in front of him and rested his gloved hands atop it, shoulders and stance squared as he brought the full focus of his sinister intensity to bear on Sir Drummond.
   “You see it is you, and all these other fine, far-thinking visionaries with you, who have initiated this paradigm shift, by bringing together the many disparate socio-political philosophies of the world, and subsequently convincing them of the merits of mutual cooperation with those they were, in whole or part, previously opposed to. You have already passed several jointly accepted accords to limit hostilities, weapons dealing, and what you consider to be unfair trade practices, and in time, you will do the same for any sundry activity that your League deems sufficiently criminal to merit such measures, which means that inevitably, you will turn your sights on us, not as any individual who opposes us, nor any organization, nor even any given country or collection of allied countries, but rather, you will bring the heretofore unprecedented weight of nearly the entire world to bear upon us, preventing those activities and proclivities of ours that you believe to be unacceptable in this grand, glorious new era of modern peace and wisdom.”
   “As such, we have come here today to offer you an accord of our own; a covenant, if you will, just like the one that unites your grand League of Nations—though I assure you, this one will be far more binding than your own.” Moriarty’s voice lost its genial air, turning hard as iron. “One that lays out the… rules of engagement, shall we call them? when dealing with such men as us and our organizations. A covenant that shall clearly define the measures we find acceptable, and those we do not, as well as providing an equally clear definition of the qualifications required for any individual or organization to fall under its purview, as well as the concessions those individuals must make in order to remain categorized as super villains, instead of the common villainous rabble that we grant you leave to deal with in any fashion you so choose.”
   “What? Preposterous!” Sir Drummond was well and truly boggled by Moriarty’s proclamation. “You’re mad to think we would ever agree to such a thing! What possible reason on God’s green Earth could we ever have to extend such concessions to you?”
   “Why, the very same reasons that brought you together in the first place, my good man; fear and enlightened self-interest.” Moriarty replied with smug certainty. “It was the horrors of the Great War that inspired the nations of the world to come together in this league of yours, was it not? To see that such monstrous atrocities, such callous disregard for human life, such widespread slaughter, the likes of which had never been seen before, would never occur again?”
   Moriarty’s demeanor became as bleak and grim as a sun-bleached wasteland.
   “Now let me ask you, what compares the cold, assembly-line nightmares of that conflict with what men such as we could unleash upon the world, were we only so inclined as to do so?”
   Moriarty raised his cane, gesturing in the direction of the Ironmonger’s gyro-tanks, and they immediately roared to life, side compartments angling down to unleash spewing streams of clinging fire and a rain of rapid-fire light auto-cannon shells onto the ground between them and their captive audience, filling the air with dull thunder and the high, excruciatingly unbearable banshee wail of pressurized incendiary liquid being released. A few moments later, the hellish, burning terrain ceased erupting as Moriarty shifted his cane to point south, where the Sons of Tesla were. When he did, half their number stepped up to the edge of their saucer, each alien figure bearing a bulky backpack with a narrow, segmented hose running to rods or staves covered in various wire-connected boxes and capped with fat copper balls. In unison, the bizarre collection of men raised their devices and pointed them at the open ground before the crowd, whereupon fat blue-white lances of incandescent lightning leaped out from the copper caps to scour the earth with their fury. Again and again, the chained lightning whipped out to char broad, black impact craters into the now cracked, smoking ground, until, at last, the weapons lowered as Moriarty swung his cane around to the right, indicating the forces in the west.
   With no more than a snap of his fingers, Sky Marshal Krieg sent his elite troops forward, where they took up twin lines with the front crouched so the rear could aim over their heads, all firing their one-man machineguns into the ground until the hail of bullets from their smoking barrels had reduced the sod to tatters, as if it had been freshly tilled for planting. With another single snap of the Sky Marshal’s fingers, the troops were falling back to their original positions in an ongoing display of perfect, practiced unison that showcased the excellent military order and discipline they had been imparted with. Then Doctor Moreau stepped to the fore, once more raising his whistle to his lips, though this time, he did not have to puff nearly so furiously to be heard by his children. The moment he did, the misshapen man-beasts dropped all pretext of humanity, their reason and restraint falling away with frightening ease as it was replaced by the full feral fury of their primal natures, every one of them howling and roaring and screeching and hissing out their hot-eyed hate while baring fang and claw in one animalistic threat display after another, each clearly ready to rend flesh and spill blood at a moment’s notice—and then, just like that, calm returned to them as the silent sound of Doctor Moreau’s whistle reached their ears once more.
   As the Doctor returned to his place alongside Sky Marshal Krieg, Moriarty brought his walking stick down to rest in front of him once more, only this time, the silver tip fell upon the wooden stage sharply, the crisp, vigorous strike releasing a clearly audible “crack” that was just shy of a small caliber gunshot going off. As that sound swept out over the gathering, fully half of the black-silk-clad men and women to either side of the stage swept one arm or another up high before whipping them down again, each hurling a small, dark object to the ground at their feet. When those objects struck, they one and all released grey-white clouds of smoke that billowed up to conceal the dark figures for a scant few seconds before dissipating, whereupon the crowd found that they had vanished completely.
   Looking around in confusion, wonderment, or awe, the captive audience once more found themselves in a panic as, but a minute or so later, more columns of smoke suddenly erupted all throughout their number, causing men and women to jump back or reel about in confusion. It was only after those clouds of smoke dispersed as quickly as they had come that the crowd realized the vanished black-clad warriors were now among their number, one or more of them holding a blade, be it a small, thick, tapered wedge of steel, a slender, straight-edged sword, or a curving, flaring length of gleaming metal mounted atop a sturdy four-foot long, black-lacquered wooden staff, to the throats of nearly every important member amongst them; Swiss defense force officers, top military advisors, and the official ambassadorial representatives of every nation present. Only Sir Drummond was spared the intimidating indignity, though even he had a pair of assassins standing to either side of him, each with their stance set and holding one of the long-handled blade-staves in his direction, both angled up at his head and ready to strike at a moment’s notice. It was simply that unlike his compatriots, those blades merely hovered a few feet away from him, instead of chilling his neck flesh with their cold, cruel kisses.
   “Your dull, narrow, insignificant minds hold no concept of what stands on the horizon as humanity marches into the future! Of the wonders and terrors to come!” Moriarty intoned with absolute assurance. “Now, stretch your limited imaginations further still, as you endeavor to consider what apocalyptic terrors we might accomplish if we were but given incentive to work together. Can you not see it? The Sky Marshal’s planes and zeppelins mounted with the Sons’ lighting cannon; Sons of Tesla platforms and power-sources integrated into the Ironmonger’s war-machines; ancient orders of assassins not only rising up out of the night to strike at your leadership, but also smuggling the feral creations of Doctor Moreau into your cities with impunity, there to be unleashed and allowed to run rampant in your streets above and your tunnels below; we could bring this world to its knees all but overnight—or at the very least, burn it to ash in the fury of our conflict, and cast the whole of humanity back into the dark ages for centuries to come!”
   Moriarty paused after his dark declaration, gauging the reaction of the crowd and Sir Drummond before continuing.
   “And that, my good man, is why you will give us the concessions we seek; because absent the threat of a mutual enemy such as we have never had to face before, there is very, very little chance men such as we would ever manage such as I have just described. Our secrets are our own to keep with the utmost jealousy, and we war amongst ourselves almost as much as we do with you and yours. The Sky Marshal and the Ironmonger seem a perfect match, but the egos and idiosyncrasies of either put them at odds with one another; the Sons of Tesla are xenophobic and obsessed, concerned only with that which fascinates their cloistered order and obtaining it at any cost; the Mandarin cares little for matters of the mundane, and even less for the Western barbarians beyond the borders of the far Orient; and I myself am of the opinion that the good Doctor Moreau should be drawn and quartered, if for no other reason than that he was so uninspired as to choose that wretched moniker for himself.”
   The left side of Moriarty’s mouth curled up in a wry, ironic smile.
   “And yet, here we all are, executing this grand object lesson upon you lot as if we had been staunch allies all along.”
   The Professor’s bearing shifted back to grim iron once more.
   “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That is why you will give us what we want; because to refuse is to seal the very doom of everything you have come together to protect, one way or another; because absent your acceptance of our thorny covenant, you yourselves become the very thing that shall bring us together in ways otherwise entirely improbable, if not fully impossible! You become the reason we have no choice but to swallow our pride and preferences and band together to make war upon the world in ways such as it has never before seen, throwing all to wrack and ruin! You will give us our concessions because the very last thing you and yours should desire is for any of us to have reason great enough to work together!”
   Moriarty’s dark aura grew to a nearly overwhelming, palpable intensity as his voice thundered out over the crowd, strong and hard and just shy of a raging shout as he hammered his point home with unwavering conviction. Then that sinister magnetism ebbed to more bearable levels as his demeanor once again returned to the peculiar… indulgently genial certainty, that seemed to be his norm.
   “So instead, it is you, and the nations you represent, who shall swallow your pride and defuse the situation which you yourselves have created, for the alternative is simply… unthinkable.”
   Before him, Sir Drummond bowed his head, realizing that however much it galled him to even consider the evaluation put forth by this infamous malefactor, especially given the truly outrageous manner in which it had been delivered, and however much more he railed at the idea that assessment might actually be correct, he had no choice but to accept Moriarty’s words as truth. The situation would indeed be one of their own making, for to back men such as these into a corner with no other perceived avenue of escape save attack was to invite disaster, as villains one and all they truly were, with all the villainous sensibilities and mores—or rather, lack thereof—that would not only allow them to visit such terrible suffering upon the world, but in fact be the very things that drove them to it. The League of Nations existed to promote peace, prosperity, stability, and above all else, do everything possible to ensure that that such as the Great War never happened again; if its mere existence was seen by these so-called… super villains, as forcing their hands, then ultimately, it served no purpose at all.
   Lifting his gaze to Moriarty once more, Sir Drummond gathered his courage and resolve, stifled his animosity and pride, all as any good diplomat would, and spoke to the man in a calm, resolute fashion.
   “It seems I must concede that you may have a point, my good sir, but make no mistake; we of the League of Nations shall never bow to tyrants or oppressors, nor will we give up any of our God-given sovereign rights to the likes of you! However, that being said, if these concessions of which you speak are not too odious, then for the good of the world, mayhap we may be willing to give them the consideration which they are due.”
   “Oh, indeed, Sir Drummond; we are not so deluded as to think you would simply grant us the very power we seek that causes you and yours to oppose, condemn, and hunt us at every turn; that would be absurd. The countries and organizations and so-called ‘heroes’ of this world may continue to resist our machinations as they have always done; that is simply part of the game. The only thing these considerations are meant to accomplish is to establish acceptable rules for that game, so as to avoid the inevitable escalation to… well, this—because I assure you, my good man, this serves neither of our sides well.”
   Sir Drummond nodded gravely before he responded; “Then if that be the case, I, Sir James Eric Drummond, in my position as Secretary-General of this great League of Nations, do hereby agree to put your proposal that we open negotiations with you… super villains, to the vote, and if passed, that we subsequently do so in all good faith.”
   Moriarty smiled, warm and gracious as he answered; “That is simply all that we ask, Sir Drummond. Simply all that we ask…”
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Revelations of Destiny