Limbo.

Howard the duck sat on the edge of the rock, staring off into the void, puffing contentedly on his cigar. A service revolver was tucked into his coat pocket, and he’d found a battered fedora in the ruins of the Crooked House. The latter sat square on his head, and he ran a finger along the brim.

“Are you just going to sit there forever?” the White Rabbit said, tapping her foot. She stood behind him, arms crossed beneath her ample bosom, rabbit ears drooping. Howard didn’t turn around.

“Didn’t you read the guidebook? Time doesn’t pass here.”

“And yet, I grow bored,” she said.

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

“He won’t move unless you come with us,” the White Rabbit said, stamping her foot, and tossing a pointed gesture at the hovering, tumbling shape of the Strawberry Man. Howard turned slightly.

“Then I guess you ain’t going nowhere, hunh?”

“Moo,” the Hellcow said, cape fluttering. Garko the Man-Frog slapped his clawed hands together.

“I agree, you bovine blood sucker. Cease this sulking, duck!” the amphibian growled. Howard hopped to his feet, eyes narrowed.

“Oh, and now you’re in on this too? What’d he promise you? A lily pad of your very own?”

“You-” Garko began, making to lunge for the fowl. The Hellcow interposed herself, fangs flashing. Garko stumbled back.

“Mooo.”

“Exactly.” The White Rabbit flung her arms about. “We have nowhere to go but forward, duck. Backwards is too far away and side-to-side has ever been a confusing sort of land.”

“You don’t get it, do you? He’s using us!” Howard snapped. “Or he wants to, at least. And I ain’t having it!”

“You don’t have a choice,” the White Rabbit said. “He mentioned your friend-”

“You leave Bev out of this!”

“I was referring to the auburn bearded Adonis who accompanied you before,” she said. She cocked her head. “Aquarian, wasn’t it?”

Howard looked up. The Strawberry Man looked down. Eyes closed, his lips rippled and crimson teeth surfaced. Howard restrained the urge to pull his gun and put a bullet between the floating man’s eyes.

“You’re just loving this, aren’t you?”

“I’m all about LOVE,” the Strawberry Man said.

“I ain’t falling for it. You want me to do something-us to do something. But if we don’t, you don’t get what you want. And that is what I want.”

“Unless what I want is for you to do exactly what you’re doing right now.”

Howard’s beak snapped shut. One of the Strawberry Man’s eyes cracked open. It sparkled like a ruby. Howard turned away. He stared at the ruins of the Crooked House, tumbling through Limbo in a slow motion orbit. Howard turned.

“Let’s go.”

---

Tombo. The Town that Occasionally Walked Like a Man But Hasn’t Yet in This Series Due to Space Issues.

Beverly Switzer sat at the bar, letting the Mindless One serve her a Tom Collins. Only it wasn’t really a Tom Collins, because a Tom Collins required liquid of some sort and what the Mindless One-whose name was Shaun-was serving her was an empty glass.

“This is a metaphor, isn’t it?” she said, holding the glass up to the light. Shaun didn’t reply. Bev threw the glass of her shoulder and sighed. “You suck as a conversationalist. And I’ve already spilled the beans on my complicated feelings for a feathered, frantic fowl of my acquaintance, psycho-analyzed my unwholesome, yet well-hidden lust for a certain bearded man-god, and, in a sense, given a hard look at my own reactionary existence on the edge of a reality I’m not even sure exists except as a fractured reflection of my own disordered psyche, of which you, my taciturn friend, are simply the latest shard.” She leaned forward. “And now I’m bored.”

Shaun said nothing. After a moment, he handed her another empty glance. He seemed to enjoy handing her things. Bev took the glass and stared at her reflection. “I miss you, Ducky.”

Something yellow moved across the glass. Bev was over the bar like a shot, yanking the pistol from her waistband as she tumbled to the floor. There was a hiss of mechanics, and something with arms like an erector set done in brass ripped the front wall of the bar apart like wet tissue paper.

As the dust settled, the thing stepped inside. Stenciled numbers decorated its armored skull and the its face was a bland, featureless teardrop.

“Oh, that’s not good,” she said. Shaun looked down at her, then back up at the entity. A beam of crackling, crimson energy vomited from the Mindless One’s single, cyclopean eye and spattered across the entity’s armored torso, sending it hurtling backwards out of the hole it had made.

Shaun raised his arms and brought them down on the bar, ripping it in half. Then, fists clenched, the Mindless One stalked towards the hole in the wall. Bev followed cautiously, the pistol squirming in her grip.

The pistol had been in the Crooked House when they’d first arrived. Like a maggot in an open wound. Or a chunk of unpleasant nut in an Almond Joy. It breathed and moved and whined and Howard had used it once to blow the head off of something that came scratching at the door and had a face like soap bubble full of worms.

“Shaun, wait-” she said. The Mindless One turned. Something that smelled of oil slammed into it, carrying it back towards her. Bev hit the floor as machine and monster passed overhead. She rose to her feet. Something sizzled as it split the air. Bev spun, pulling the trigger. The gun howled and the armored man staggered back and toppled, smoke rising from his chest.

“Oh God, did I just shoot Iron-Man?”

---

Within the pores of Mighty Tombo, men in yellow buzzed about. AIM had settled in the caverns of Tombo’s gullet like flies drawn to honey and now Daliesque machinery crackled and hummed with almost organic anticipation. A man in a canary yellow business suit stood on a raised platform, watching the goings on in a floating liquid sphere. Below him, a slew of technicians bent low over clicking consoles.

“Cataphract Alpha-2K just went off line,” one said.

“And Beta-Omega-6?”

“Still functioning.”

“Send in a recovery team,” the man in the yellow suit said, rubbing his chin. “I want that woman alive. Shoot to stun.”

“What about the construct?” one of the bee-keeper masked technicians said. The man in yellow gestured.

“Dismantle it. The boys in B-Unit have been wanting to get their hands on one of those things for years.” He turned. “How are our furry friends?”

“Still not checking in. Do you think they found it?”

“Without telling us?” The man in yellow paused. “Perhaps. Initiate emergency slideback from the Tunguska facility.”

“But that might-”

“Kill them? I’m aware. It’s a risk I, personally, am willing to take. Do it.”

---

Tunguska.

“LOVE is all we have, when what we have is each other,” the Red Rajah said. Inside his head, Aquarian pounded insubstantial fists against the walls of a ruby prison. The Rajah took no notice. He stretched out his hands, in benediction.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually listening to this!” the Scarlet Beetle snapped, struggling in the Beast of Berlin’s grip. “He’s lying! He’s just an anthropomorphic personification with delusions of grandeur!”

“Quiet,” the ape said, squeezing his former partner slightly. The insect began to struggle, even as its captor looked up at the Rajah. “What are you?”

“Peace. Forgiveness. Kindness.”

“I have never known peace. I do not forgive. Kindness is for lesser beasts.” The ape dropped the beetle and crouched. “I do not love.” The Beast jumped, lunging for the Rajah’s throat.

“Maybe not at the moment, but you did once,” the Red Rajah said, grabbing the Beast’s wrists and swinging it aside. The ape crashed into the nearby examination table and slid across the floor. The Rajah swung around as the Scarlet Beetle scrabbled up his back, pincers clicking. “And as for you-”

“Me nothing! As soon as I plant this distortion device, you’ll be AIM’s problem, and not ours!” the insect screeched, gesturing with a tiny disk of metal it had pulled from somewhere beneath his shell. The Rajah reached for him and the beetle avoided the grasping hand, skittering across the folds of the Rajah’s cloak.

The Beast of Berlin tottered upright, reaching. His soul rebelled at the thought of attacking the Rajah, but the ape had never been one to listen to ethereal whining. Visions of his slain kin, put into a mass grave when the Communists had lost power, filled his skull as he slammed into the Rajah.

“Do not struggle against LOVE,” the Rajah said. “LOVE always finds a way. The Singlespirit will grow and spread, carried on the wings of LOVE-”

“Love is the opiate of the masses!” the Beast bellowed, smashing both fists down on the Rajah’s skull. The crimson-clad man staggered, then gestured, and a red-hued field swept out, slamming the Beast back against a wall.

“Exactly. Exactly! All must feel the LOVE in order to be one! All must-”

“Say goodbye!”

“-goodbye?” the Rajah said, turning. Then, with a thunderous hum, his form wavered, rippled and vanished. The Scarlet Beetle began to laugh.

“Fool! Two-legged fool! No one can best the saturnine might of the SCARLET BEET-ahk!”

The glistening length of Garko’s tongue struck the floor, nearly snaring the Beetle. The Beetle fluttered into the air and disappeared behind the Beast, who clambered to his feet, eyes widening as he caught sight of the motley assortment who had apparently appeared from thin air.

“Who-”

“Same question, Different perspective,” Howard said, gesturing with his cigar. “Name, rank, serial number.”

“You’re a duck!”

“And you’re Magilla Gorilla’s second cousin,” Howard said. “Answer the question-”

“Where is he?” the Strawberry Man said, hovering over the group, his form breaking up into cherry colored clouds as he gesticulated. “I can’t feel him! WhereisHE?”

“Who-” the Beast repeated.

“Asinine anthropoid! Answer the question!” Garko snarled. “Also, give me that insect! Garko hungers!”

“Garko dies if he tries that trick with his tongue again!” the Scarlet Beetle said, landing on the Beast’s shoulder. It brandished its tiny pistol. “And if you’re looking for the gentleman in red, he’s already been delivered to his new owners-”

Around the group, the laboratory began to shudder suddenly. The walls groaned beneath a sudden strain. Control panels sparked and smoked. The Beast looked up.

“They wouldn’t-”

“Those ungrateful-” the Beetle clattered.

“What’s going on-” Howard began.

In Tunguska, something exploded. Again.

---

Tombo, the Town Who May Be Getting Ready to Walk Soon.

Seventeen mirrors, positioned according to the lost H’Naggai Prophecies, sat in the center of a modified Carnacki Pentagram. Lasers bounced between mirrors, and a coruscating gamma-flow field contained the whole set-up. And, at the center of it all, crouched in a web of criss-crossing lasers, the Red Rajah looked around.

“What-”

“They got him,” one of the AIM technicians said. “Unbelievable. Should we interrupt the shift?”

“Mmmno,” the man in the yellow suit said. He stood in front of the platform containing the Red Rajah, his hands clasped behind his back. “Shunt whatever comes through to thirty thousand feet. It’s been awhile since we fed the landscape.”

“Sir.” The technician turned back to his console.

“Hello,” the man in the suit said, bending towards the Rajah. “My name is Smith-6. Envoy of AIM to this delightful alternate.”

“Alternate?” The Rajah stood. Smith-6 smiled.

“As in reality. There are hundreds of realities you know, each stacked atop the other, each stack taking up space in a hyperstatial branch. This is one of them. M-2-K. Then, of course, there’s M-O-1, M-V-1, M-A-1, A-V-2-K, A-V-1, and dozens of others. More than can be imagined by the third-dimensional intellect, at any rate. And AIM has a branch office in each.”

“AIM. I remember you,” the Rajah said, turning, examining his prison. “You are…scientists?”

“Explorers of the unknown.” Smith-6 clapped his hands together. “Also, opportunists. Case in point, the LOVE.”

The Rajah stiffened. Glowing eyes fixed on Smith-6’s face. The clone smiled. “This reality has recently experienced multiple upheavals, including the aborted rebirth of an Elder God, and an invasion from UpTime. And, recently, we’ve even lost one of our Hive Nodes to the local rowdies. Unacceptable losses and problematic occurrences. So, we’re going to calm things down a bit. Mellow the populace out, if you catch my drift.”

“You want the LOVE…”

“We want all the LOVE.” Smith-6 nodded. “But don’t worry, we plan on sharing it out…”