Vell Harlan and the Doomsday Dorms

“This is fun,” Samson said. “I woke up last loop worried about one supervillain, now I get to deal with two!”

“At least one of them is nice,” Hawke groaned. “The other one wants to turn us into some kind of weird fungus crab monster.”

“A Mi-Go,” Helena said.

“Yeah, that’s his name,” Vell said. “How’d you know? You weren’t in the room.”

“I had no idea,” Helena said. “I just know what a Mi-Go is. Those things we got turned into are from the Lovecraft mythos.”

“Horrific creepy monsters made up by a weirdo does seem like your kind of thing,” Samson said.

“His work is foundational to cosmic horror fiction and the study of the Eldritch,” Helena said.

“Oh, right, there’s so much to learn from him,” Samson said. “Tell me more about Lovecraft, like hey, what’d he name his cat?”

After a few seconds of intense contemplation, Helena realized she had been backed into a corner from which there was no escape. Her surrender came in the form of silence.

“Thought so,” Samson said.

“If you two are done bickering, we have actual problems to solve,” Alex said. “I presume the rest of us will be working on Mi-Go while you continue to wrangle your relationship?”

“No, Alex,” Vell said. “Obviously Mi-Go is the bigger priority.”

“But this is really important to Skye,” Kim said.

“I know, I know,” Vell said. “But obviously I need to focus on the mushroom crab monster thing. Best case scenario, I do both, worst case scenario, we stop Mi-Go and I chalk it all up as a big misunderstanding. I mean, who the hell would expect there to be two different supervillains on campus?”

“I suppose that is fair,” Kim said. The sheer absurdity of the circumstances would make anyone forgiving, and Skye was forgiving to begin with.

“Helena, stick with Doc Ragnarok,” Vell said. “Make sure he doesn’t stumble into anything Mi-Go related. Seems like those two have beef.”

“I can do that,” Helena said. “Would you like me to make sure your girlfriend doesn’t get mad at you for being late, too?”

“That’s not the priority right now...but yeah, if you could make an excuse or two, that’d be great.”

“I’ll think about it,” Helena said.

“Alright then, step one: those thugs in the dining hall.”

“You’re bringing me this time,” Kim said.

“Obviously, you think I want my ass beat twice?”

The goons fake accents had lasted about two seconds with Kim. The fight had lasted about that long too. One of the few still-conscious goons tried to crawl away, and Kim grabbed them by the ankle to drag them back and hold them upside down.

“Where’s your boss?”

“I don’t know!”

“Answer me!”

Kim clenched a metal fist, and the dangling henchman wriggled with terror.

“Please, I don’t know!”

“Kim, jesus christ,” Vell said. “Put the guy down. We’re not- have you been binging Batman?”

Kim let the guy continue to dangle for a bit.

“Maybe.”

“God,” Vell sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off an approaching headache. “Look, Kim, I get that you’ve got media playing in your head all the time, but you’ve got to switch up the genres more often. You marathon the same thing for days in a row and it starts to rub off on you.”

“It is not,” Kim said.

“Kim, you are dangling a human being by his ankle,” Vell said. “Put him down and turn on some children’s cartoons or something.”

Kim reluctantly dropped the goon, stepped to the side, and queued up some episodes of Tom & Jerry in her head. Vell knelt down and put a hand on the terrified goon’s shoulder.

“Hey, look, I get that you don’t know where the base is,” Vell said. “But you’ve got to know something. Help me out here.”

“The base is mobile,” the goon said. “It’s somewhere under water, probably still close to the island, that’s all I know, I swear.”

“Well, we both know that’s not true,” Vell said. The goon briefly started to sweat, until Vell reached into his tracksuit pocket and pulled out a keycard. He knew exactly where to find it, thanks to the last loop. “There we are. All done.”

Vell patted the thug on the shoulder and then let him flop to the ground to recover from Kim’s Batman-esque beating. He made sure to walk Kim out of eyesight of the thugs, just in case.

“Alright, now we know where to go,” Vell said. He briefly handed the card to Kim, who copied the access codes within before handing it back. “I’ll go get the diving gear.”

“And I’ll go get my swimming body,” Kim said. While her robotic body made underwater ops slightly easier in that she did not need to breathe, it also made her weigh six-hundred pounds, which was less than ideal for swimming.

“I’ll take the front entrance and keep up the super-spy routine, you try and find a back way in and sabotage things in secret,” Vell said.

“Or, hear me out, we both go in the front door and I punch my way through whatever’s in there,” Kim said.

“No, nope,” Vell said. He held up his phone to display an ebook version of Doc Ragnarok’s supervillainy guide. “These people want things to be one-on-one matchups. We go in as a pair, things escalate, and we’ll all get turned into creepy fungus crab monsters.”

“And then melt.”

“And then melt,” Vell said. “I try to avoid provoking people who can melt me.”

“What about-”

“That was an accident,” Vell said. “Come on. I want to try and get this done before Skye realizes I’m doing something else.”

Unfortunately for Vell, his girlfriend was very smart.

“Come on, Vell, where are you?”

She paced back and forth through the viewing room, and double-checked the forcefield generator. The first meeting at the dock had gone well enough, but Vell hadn’t been seen since. Their robotic minions hiding out in the lab hadn’t even been touched -at least as far as she knew. She was hoping Vell had taken a stealthy approach. Doc Ragnarok was still perfectly content, as it sometimes took his rivals a long time to make their first appearance, but Skye knew Vell’s competence too well. He was behind schedule.

She did one more lap of the viewing room and then headed for the central room of their lair once again.

“She was in the sheet metal business, and you can imagine how often I had to buy from her store,” Doc Ragnarok said, to a visibly bored Helena. “Obviously we crossed paths frequently, you can see how things got started.”

“Fascinating,” Helena grunted. The only thing worse than a long monologue about Skye’s mother was a second, identical monologue about the exact same thing.

“Hey, Dad, not that I don’t love hearing you talk about the circumstances of my own conception and all, but could I borrow Helena for a minute?”

“Does the death ray need repairs?”

“No, dad, it’s fine,” Skye said. “It’s about...school stuff.”

“Oh, right, well, carry on then,” Doc Ragnarok said. Helena raised an eyebrow, but followed along until they were out of earshot of Skye’s father.

“Do you know what’s going on with Vell?”

“I have no clue,” Helena said. “You’re the girlfriend. Aren’t you supposed to keep him on a leash?”

Skye took a brief pause to contemplate how Helena’s views on relationships had gotten skewed.

“No.”

“Well then neither of us have any idea where he is,” Helena said with a shrug. “You know how he is. Saw a random person who needed help and went off on some side tangent, maybe. I’m sure he’ll catch up once he’s done.”

“Yeah, that does sound like Vell,” Skye said. She had a dreamy smile on her face, which confused Helena. She didn’t think very highly of Vell’s insistence on being helpful.

“You could try giving him a call,” Helena suggested. “Maybe remind him where his priorities should be.”

“I’ll give him a bit,” Skye said. “I can always call him later, see if he’s not too tied up.”

Vell was not tied up. Technically it was more like wrapped, or whatever the equivalent word for being held in a tentacle was.

“Got to give you credit, it’s been a long time since something hit the top ten most fucked up things I’ve ever seen,” Vell said. Fours year of looping in he’d seen the best of the worst already, but Mi-Go’s genetic abominations had found their way into his top ten. The purple tendril that held him was actively dissolving and re-solidifying as it coiled around his body, and half-formed eyes occasionally bubbled to the surface to glare at him for a seconds before dissolving back into the bulbous mass.

“Why thank you,” Mi-Go said. He was, thankfully, a regular human, albeit a very old and wrinkled one. Vell had been worried about even more genetic abominations. “I’ve gone to great lengths to accurately recreate the Shoggoths.”

“It shows,” Vell said. He wriggled a little as more shoggoth slime seeped into his coat. His dry-cleaning bill for this tuxedo was going to be insane. “Any chance I can appreciate it from a less slimy angle?”

“Not likely,” Mi-Go said. “Shoggoth! Take him to the prisons and keep him out of the way until my plan has come to fruition.”

“And what plan is that, exactly?”

“That pathetic excuse for a supervillain you were supposed to be thwarting is long overdue to be put in his place,” Mi-Go ranted. “He thinks he can turn his back on our ways, then playact villainy for the benefit of the heroes? Pathetic! He insults the very concept of villainy.”

“He had a kid,” Vell said. “Would you want to blow up a world your daughter lived in?”

“Every woman is someone’s daughter,” Mi-Go said. “Why would I value mine more than anyone else’s?”

“I don’t know, there’s like, paternal bonding, or something,” Vell said. “I don’t know, I’m not a dad, but I know my dad wouldn’t blow me up.”

“Well, we can give him the father of the year award later,” Mi-Go taunted. “Shoggoths! To the prison chamber!”

The slimy abomination started shambling into the deepest pits of Mi-Go’s underwater lair. Vell was dragged along until the Shoggoth reached an all but lightless row of prison cells, and hurled Vell into one. Iron bars slammed shut behind him as Vell picked himself up off the floor and looked around. The cell was completely featureless and empty, but for one human skeleton in the corner. Vell was not particularly bothered by that, since he had seen a lot of human skeletons and could tell at a glance that one was fake.

“Okay. The part where I escape.”

“You want a hand with that?”

Kim was already in place, leaning on the bars of the cell. She had a smug smile displayed on her face already.

“I wouldn’t say no to a way out of here,” Vell said.

“On it, boss.”

Kim grabbed the metal door of the cell and tore it right off its hinges, then threw it across the room. The clatter of metal on metal echoed through the darkened chambers like a warning bell.

“Kim, someone definitely heard that.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know I’m here,” Kim said. “Mi-Go’s going to think you did that, and it’ll scare the shit out of him.”

“It’s still not great for stealth!”

“Because you’re not the stealthy one,” Kim said. “You go for the death ray and keep everybody busy. I’ll cut the power.”

“I notice I’m getting the job that involves the slime monsters here,” Vell said, even as he walked away to fulfill his mission.

“That’s on purpose,” Kim shouted back, before disappearing back into the darkness of the halls. Vell mumbled a few insults under his breath and then got back on track. He fumbled through his slime-covered pocket for his phone and tried to avoid putting it near his face as he called Hawke.

“Hey Hawke, everything coming along nicely on the backup plans?”

“Yeah, Alex says she can use a magic shield to stop the mutagen ray for sure,” Hawke said. “But that’s y’know, Alex.”

“She knows magic, at least,” Vell said. “There’s like, huge weird slime monsters here, so be ready to put that plan into action if things go wrong. I don’t know if I can-”

One of the aforementioned slime monsters grabbed Vell by the ankle and pulled him off his feet. On the other end of the call, Hawke heard a few muffled gurgles, some shouting, and the sound of violence. Hawke waited for a minute, but Vell’s voice never returned.

“That’s probably not good,” Hawke said. Various nightmare scenarios started to flit through his head.

Meanwhile, in the actual scenario, Vell had easily defeated the monster, the only casualty being a thoroughly cracked and slightly slime-soaked phone screen. That was going to take more than some time soaking in rice to fix. He shoved the now-useless phone back into his pocket until he could get it repaired, and got back to business.

The relatively minor hiccup in communication would have been no problem for anyone in any other situation, but since Vell was trying to manage two supervillains at once, it created problems almost immediately. The deep well of Skye’s patience had finally run out, and she called Vell, entirely unaware his phone was broken. She tried a few more times before relenting and calling Samson instead.

“Samson? Do you know where Vell is?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s-” Samson got midway through an explanation before remembering their cover story. “Uh, is he not in your lair right now?”

“No, he hasn’t even visited our minions yet,” Skye said.

“Weird, last I heard, he’d beat up some thugs and stolen a keycard, then headed to an underwater base,” Samson said.

“Underwater? Our base is on the Senior Dorms roof, the secret entrance is literally in my dorm room,” Skye said. “He’s been-”

Skye checked over her shoulder to make sure her dad was out of earshot.

“He’s been there often enough,” Skye said, lowering her voice a little.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Skye,” Samson said. “He’s definitely infiltrating something.”

“That’s...weird. Thanks, Samson, I need to go check on something.”

Skye hung up and stormed across the makeshift lair her father had set up.

“Ah, Skye, I was just telling Helena about your goldfish tank back in third grade,” Doc Ragnarok began.

“I’ll probably survive a change of subject,” Helena said.

“Dad, have you been using human minions again?”

“No, not for a while,” Doc Ragnarok said. “I’d love to, but the Union makes it hard to hire them on to non-standard jobs like mine.”

“And is any part of this lair underwater?”

“Not unless this island is flooding,” Doc Ragnarok said.

“Then why the hell is Vell infiltrating an underwater lair with human minions?”

Doc Ragnarok shrugged, and Helena tried her best to look clueless.

“Hold on,” Skye said. “I think I still have a deep sea scanner in my dorm.”

The fact that she was a reasonable human being amid a sea of self-interested sociopaths meant Skye often did lab work in her dorm room, far removed from the rest of the Marine Biology department. She made her way through the hastily constructed secret tunnel, hoping to bump into Vell heading the other way, but was disappointed. Unlike her boyfriend, Skye’s scanner was right where she’d left it, and she plugged in a quick scan of the seas below the artificial island. Since the scanner was calibrated to find very small fish, it picked up the massive underwater skull fortress with relative ease. Skye hustled back up the secret tunnel.

“Hey Dad! You’d remember if you had a massive underwater skull fortress, right?”

“Probably.”

“And you don’t have one?”

“Not here.”

“Then whose skull fortress is this?”

Skye held out the scan of the fortress, and Doc Ragnarok’s brows furrowed instantly.

“Mi-Go.”

“You know that just from looking?”

“You don’t? The skull is very distinctive, dear, every supervillain has their own unique design.”

“Huh. I must have flunked out before I got to that part of supervillain lessons,” Skye said. “Who’s this Mi-Go guy?”

“Someone especially upset that I still operate as a ‘supervillain’ while cooperating with the law,” Doc Ragnarok explained. “He’s spent just about every year since you were born trying to get me banned from the annual Supervillain Potluck!”

“Is he the guy who got your speech at the 2015 conference canceled?”

“No, that was...I was hungover, Skye,” Doc Ragnarok mumbled. Skye gasped with offense.

“You told me you were so grumpy because you were upset!”

“You were twelve!”

“I’ve been not twelve for a long time,” Skye snapped.

“It hasn’t been relevant!”

Helena cleared her throat loudly. She had been privy to too much personal information about their family already.

“Do you need something, Helena?”

“No, but I think maybe you need to do something about the other supervillain,” Helena said. “The one who is pointedly more ‘villain’ than us and our ‘death’ ray.”

“Do we? It was rude of Mi-Go to show up, that I’ll admit,” Doc Ragnarok said. “But if Vell’s a competent hero, as he appears to be, he should be fine.”

“We need to help him anyway, dad,” Skye said.

“I’m not really equipped for an actual combat scenario, Skye,” Doc Ragnarok said. “I have some robot minions with foam darts and a ‘death ray’ that's effectively a very powerful laser pointer.”

“Well we have to help anyway!”

“Why?”

“Because- be- ugh,” Skye groaned. She took a deep breath and clenched her fists. “Because Vell’s my boyfriend!”

The lightning-bolt shaped black streak in Doc Ragnarok’s hair got a little smaller as a few more of his hairs turned grey.

“He’s what?”

“My boyfriend, Dad,” Skye said. “I am dating Vell Harlan!”

“Dating- Did he seduce you to thwart me?”

“No!”

“Damn it,” Doc Ragnarok sighed. Skye’s offense turned to confusion.

“Why do you sound disappointed?”

“You’re a supervillain’s daughter, the hero is supposed to seduce you to the side of good in order to thwart me,” Doc Ragnarok said. “Happens all the time. The other villains keep bothering me about when you’re going to find a nice hero to settle down and betray me with.”

“Wh- No, Vell did not seduce me,” Skye said. “I mean, he did, sort of, but not in the context of- I’ve been dating him for a like a year, Dad.”

“You’ve been dating him for a year and you never mentioned it?”

“It hasn’t been relevant!”

Skye put her hands on her hips and stared at her father as he did the same. Helena cursed her crutches, which made it impossible to back away slowly. She settled for turning around and walking away at a brisk pace, only to turn around again, in sheer confusion, as the father and daughter started to laugh.

“Alright,” Doc Ragnarok said. “Let’s go save your boyfriend.”

“Please don’t make it weird, Dad.”

“Too late!”