In the sub-basement laboratory of the Ballad Clinic, Dr. Lucien Ballad had hooked up Keith Remsen to the Dream Enhancer (what was formerly referred to as the Big Dream Machine). Across from Remsen in the compartment was separated by a partition and in the other room were the ESPeople and three Space Flighters, Quasar, Solarman, and Comet Man.

The dream continued.

The dream of before consisted of Comet Man being brainwashed by Esteban Diablo to attack and capture the ESpeople. After a slight battle, Beckley succeeded in his task. Then, Quasar and Solarman appeared, laying waste to the dream forms of Diablo and Comet Man. But their battle was not over yet because it was at that moment that MODOK of AIM attacked them. MODOK reconfigured Quasar’s molecules so that Ka-zar of the Savage Land can attack him. The Lord of the Jungle was ready to do him in when Nightmask pulled them through back into reality. What he could garner from this dream was that Dreamscape was by a waterfall, like Ka-zar himself and that was the key to this whole riddle.

In this circumstance of the dream, it continued where it left off. Diablo led the Comet Man to his stone superstructure of a palace to begin his work on the destruction of Space Flight. Diablo twirled the ends of his moustache as he knew that Ka-zar, also brainwashed was attacking Quasar and MODOK was doing the same to Solarman. His plan of death and destruction was going quite well.

With a slight alchemical incantation, Diablo turned the stone slab to sand and when they both entered, he reformed it. He had brought Ann and Benny Beckley with him and promised Comet Man to cure them of the comet disease that was inflicted upon them by the scientists of the Bridge. It was all a ruse, Diablo thought evilly, all a perfect, planned ruse.

Diablo snapped his fingers sharply and Stephen, Ann, and Benny Beckley woke up from the sleep that claimed them. Upon seeing an enemy of the Fantastic Four there, he charged up his fingertips with comet energy and blasted Diablo in the face. Comet Man singed some of his hair. Smoke exuded from Esteban’s head.

With a telepathic ‘pitching’ cue from his father, Benny Beckley revved up his comet energies coursing within him and launched into an attack on Diablo. Benny rammed Diablo into the stone wall.

In pain, Diablo had a half-smile on his beaten face. Ann sidekicked him in the jaw, as he exuded blood, and repeatedly punched him as he fell into unconsciousness.

Before they could kill him, a magical portal opened and David Blackstone stepped through it. Beside him was his apprentice Copperstone. Comet Man and the Beckleys saw their ticket out of this drab, dreary place.

“Come, we must finish this,” Blackstone said.

In agreement, Comet Man, the Beckleys, and Blackstone and Copperstone stepped through the portal to NSC Headquarters.

In the hallway of the quarters of Space Flight and the NSC Team, Solarman was getting badly beaten by the robotic construct called MODOK, the leader of the splinter group of AIM. Ben Tucker lay on the floor, trying to gather his remaining strength. Ben touched his Circlet of Power to up his solar energies and seemed to be reborn.

“Okay, MODOK, you may have taken me down a peg before and you have beaten Quasar before, but you’ve got another thing coming!” Solarman said as he charged at MODOK’s big floating head.

Since it was hard for him to maneuver in his flying chair, MODOK had no choice but to be slammed against the far wall. He usually would have blasted his opponent with his metal headband. He already used the power of his living monsoon to do in Solarman and that would have been it. But Solarman’s Circlet of Power had the power of the sun coursing within it and him.

Solarman ripped off MODOK’s metal headband, thereby weakening him, and then, kicked the floating head around, disorienting him.

A nimbus of energy and a portal appeared. Comet Man and the Beckleys stepped through it.

Upon seeing his former friend there who once attacked him, Solarman had many questions for Stephen Beckley and his family. “Are you going to attack me? I did away with MODOK. I just want to know where Quasar is and if you’re still under the spell of Diablo.”

“No,” Comet Man admitted. “I am no longer under the spell of Diablo. I was able to break free since I saw my family. I am not going to attack you again. We’ve had too much of that recently. But I do know where Quasar is. MODOK had rearranged his molecules and transported him to the Savage Land where a brainwashed Ka-zar is about to attack him, along with Dreamscape.”

‘Who brainwashed Ka-zar?” Solarman asked.

“It was a subliminal message induced by MODOK and Dreamscape before Quasar was transported there.” Comet Man pointed to the portal, where Solarman could see Blackstone and Copperstone waiting for them to enter it.

Solarman and Comet Man flew through the portal and Blackstone closed it.

In the jungle of the Savage Land, Ka-zar, Lord of the Jungle, raised his hand to punch Quasar’s lights out. He was only wearing a brown loincloth and he rippled his muscles. Quasar opened his eyes one at a time, realizing that he was about to be attacked by one of his own.

He also realized that Ka-zar’s mind must have been controlled by the metal headband of MODOK back at NSC Headquarters. Quasar activated his quantum bands and cosmic energies lanced out of them and created a big yellow hand to push Ka-zar back.

But with MODOK controlling his mind, Ka-zar wasn’t about to back down now. He charged at Quasar again and again, once the Cosmic Space Flighter repelled his attack. Ka-zar had a new plan. He whistled and called Zabu to help him attack his foe. Zabu was a creature throwback to Earth’s prehistoric days and the current times of the Savage Land.

Zabu snarled, baring his fangs and tusks and his razor sharp claws. Quasar knew this needed a different kind of approach. He encased Zabu in a yellow bubble and hurled him to the other side of the Savage Land. Quasar wondered if the same trick would work with Ka-zar.

Quasar duplicated the trick with the Jungle Lord and had him join Zabu far away. Wendell Elvis Vaughn’s costume was ripped from the attack of both and he used his quantum bands to reconfigure the molecules of the torn costume to make them whole again.

“Now, to find myself out of this Earth, back to the New Universe,” Quasar said to himself as a sort of an aside.

In the near distance, Quasar saw a portal open and Solarman, Comet Man, Blackstone, and Copperstone exit it. They motioned for him to enter it but he was just too slow. It had been a while since Quasar was last in the Savage Land, years actually. What he didn’t expect was to be ambushed from behind.

A woman in tattered clothing attacked him, pinning him to the ground. She removed her tatters, her big naked breasts against his hard chest, and Dreamscape kissed him on the mouth. Quasar knew that Kayla Ballantine would be furiously jealous if she ever found out in the confines of this dream.

They were indeed by a waterfall, as Nightmask predicted. Quasar would have to keep Dreamscape busy with this kissing game.

From the portal, from another world, Keith Remsen—in his other identity of Nightmask—hurled himself in the air, where Derek Shiningstar was guarding Janice Zoya Gregarin, snatched her up, and carried her to the portal.

“Thanks but no thanks, Dreamscape,” Quasar said to his kissing opponent. “But I’m a married man.”

From out of his quantum bands came twin blasts that broke contact with Dreamscape. Quasar waved at her as he and Nightmask entered the portal.

The Space Flighters and the Hex Squaders appeared moments later out of the dream with Janice Zoya Gregarin by their side. Even though in the dream, Gregarin was just a dream-image they were able to get the real thing to enter their version of reality. They had the real Janice Zoya Gregarin at the Ballad Clinic.

Quasar woke up from his very vivid dream and wondered if he should tell Kayla about it. Probably not, he mused. She would only get jealous and worry. And he doubted he would meet Dreamscape in real life again. But he couldn’t wait to be in her arms again and enter this hostile takeover that Kayla and Ken Tanaka had been warning him about.

“And now, Diablo, you shall feel the near omnipotent power of Quasar and Solarman!!”

Before he had a chance to recover, Nightmask reeled the ESPeople and Space Flight out of their dream or what should have been called a nightmare. When they woke up from the big dream machine, Nightmask knew one thing about Dreamscape; she was by a waterfall and that was where he would find her next.