He has been gone for a decade, but for him it was but a moment.

Where once thought broken and defeated, an old threat remerges as powerful as ever.  While set back by the lost time and having to start from the beginning, the once and future ruler of Earth has returned and reunites wth old friends with a new scheme to take over the Earth.

Can he reclaim the former power and reputation he once wielded?  Will his old foes stop him from his rightful place?  Or will he learn about a much greater threat to mankind, one which is an affront to even his tastes.

Chapter 1: Technicolor Visions in my Eyes

Some men fall into the abyss and expect darkness to cover their soul.  Others expect a blazing inferno, and fire slowly sizzling away their senses as they burn.  For me, my hell was the opposite of what I expected.  It was beautiful and serene, with lights and images blazing across the horizon.  And yet, despite the wonders around me, I was left in the cold and trapped in isolation as I tumbled through the maelstrom.
As cliché as it sounds, I was falling through time. Literally. As in, I was caught in a tachyon current and had no way to regain control.  Time travel is a tricky business all in itself, with millions of calculations needed to even access the time stream.  While I had thought this would be my greatest achivement, fate ruined my plans and turned this into my greatest peril.  A miscalculation caused by damage to my Chronocharm belt was the cause. Time travel is also a risky business, and without the proper equipment one can end up stranded in the wrong period of time or worse, end up trapped inside the Vortex. Normally a genius such as myself would have back up devices and fail safes to ensure this would not happen; unfortunately, I’m running out of options.

I reached to my belt and flipped the safety switch I had installed on it. A little red light briefly came on but subsequently shut off. Lacking the tools (or the stability) to take the device apart to work on it, I decided to go with an old trick I had learned over the years. I proceed to systematically hit the Chronocharm.  It’s not the most scientific way to handle this situation, but all it takes is for me to collide with a temporal fragment or ride this tunnel all the way to the end of Entrophy and I’m finished!

I was relieved when,with a buzz and a whirl, my stabilizer kicked into action. My body became covered in tachyon particles, creating a soft white glow around me. It intensified until I felt an enormous shockwave envelop me, followed by a quick gust of air. There was no time to react as I plummeted to the floor below me.

I hit hard, shattering the tiled floor beneath me. Errant particles drifted off of me as I tried to steady myself on my left arm. The room was dark, with the only lights being emitted from the various devices on my belt. I struggled to lift myself up but the massive strain from the battle left me weak. The weight of my armor was getting to me, and my power cells were nearly depleted.

I lay down, pulling the tattered remains of my cloak about me. I had just survived falling through a tachyon stream; what was the worst thing that could happen to me now?

***
I could see his face as I slept; smug, his lips curled in a sneer behind that mask. That stupid golden clod was so confident in his victory. He and his friends seemed to be smiling as they cornered me in my room. They weren’t going to smile for so long however, not when they find out it’s all a trap meant to destroy them once and for all…

***

I awoke with a start. My hands turned to fists as I leapt to my feet, my mind instinctively thinking of half a dozen strategies and maneuvers. To my surprise and quite thankfully, it was nothing, just the remnants of my dream from the night before. The room was empty and surveyed my surroundings. Light was streaming in now through an open hole in the ceiling, and water had collected in dank puddles on the floor.

I straightened up, feeling my back pop. I visor told me I had slept for more than eight hours; it felt like almost a day had passed. The dirty floor held an almost heavenly outline of myself in my sleep, and my velvet cloak was grimy from rolling on the floor. I wiped filthy water off of me with the remains of my cloak before tearing it from my shoulders and helmet.

The room was not familiar to me. It might have been my throne room. No wait, was it my throne room? It could have been my command center. No, that was destroyed when Professor Good Night smashed in with the Eurosquadron. The tattered drapes still along the wall reminded me more of my parlor room, but that had been torn apart by Insidious Pink and his Shooters. There were shell casings lying on the floor but somehow it didn’t seem to be the same. Then it hit me; this was my second command center behind my throne room.

When you have your mountain fortress invaded every day of the week and twice on Sunday, you keep back up rooms as well. You keep lots of back ups, such as back up doomsday devices, back up tuxes for formal events, even back up pay slips in case the IRS comes around. Always helps to have back ups.

What was more confusing to me, as I sat there and examined my environment, was how everything had become so damaged. The entire palace appeared to be in a state of serious disrepair. The battle I had just come from had only happened a day ago by my reckoning, but due to my forced Time Warp an unknown amount of time had passed. In that amount of time, my fortress had collapsed into a state of disrepair. The walls were nearly bare and all of my equipment was gone. Craters and burn marks lined the walls and the occasional broken piece of equipment lay about, but the place had been looted down to the metal screws holding my self portrait on the wall. Oh, and the portrait was gone too; bastards!  Clearly someone thought it would be funny to steal that portrait of me.  I’ll make sure they suffer for it.

I heard a distinct tone go on in the inside of my helmet. My suit’s power core, an atomic battery of ingenius design, was nearly depleted. The sunlight from the hole in the ceiling could repower it, but the more I moved about the faster it would die. The decision was simple; suit off!  In my current state, my armor could provide only minimal protection and if someone was waiting around all this time to finish me off, the suit is a hindrance, not a help.

I removed my helmet and began disassembling my suit. The chest plate and power pack I set on the middle of the floor, with the remains of my cloak piled underneath it. The charger on the chest plate reacted with the light and slowly began to glow. I placed my Chronocharm belt in the middle as well. It was pretty banged up and I was not planning on another trip, but it having a full battery might come in handy.

After straightening my equipment I decided to explore my castle. Certainly, something had to be left. No one could have stolen everything, as I had planned for every contingency. I reached towards my belt and pulled out a small baton from my hip. It was a simple device, one of my earliest inventions in fact. The device was a simple stun rod, capable of incapacitating an opponent with a well placed blow. It was one of my earliest ventures but it was not received well by the public; too many criminals it seems had weak hearts, and after several wrongful death lawsuits it was discontinued from service. Still, it was effective and was my only choice at the moment. Oh, how I longed for something more elegant, like a rapier, or a shotgun. No, how silly of me, that’s too crude, too barbaric, and too cliché.

A plasma cannon, now that’s a gentlemanly weapon.  Clean, simple, and can take out large groups in one clean blast.

I laugh loudly, my deep voice echoing off the walls.  It seems like an eternity has passed since I last laughed here in my home.  I had become so involved in my scheme that everything had taken backseat to my goal.  Still, the idea of a death ray would help me out considerably.  I resolved to search my home, and hopefully find out if any of my supplies are left and more importantly, what date it was.

The halls echoed with my footsteps. The hallways themselves were very cluttered, forcing me to step widely around piles of garbage. The remains of one of my Kangaboar deathbots lay rusting in a corner, while in another a bundle of metallic tentacles lay tied in a knot. Down one hallway I could still see indentations in the floor where that lummox DeMarko smashed down the hallway, calling hellfire in his wake. The hall still smelled like smoke even after all this time.

It had been going so well. My forces were just on the cusp of victory when in one fell swoop I was betrayed and denied what was rightfully mine. But the most humiliating part? It wasn’t her betrayal, or the destruction of my forces in battle that made me grit my teeth. It was the fact that once again I had been so close to winning.

As I continued to explore I found more and more of the same thing. Half ruined hallways, rooms caved in; robots in various states of broken and unbroken. Many had burn marks across their metallic forms, while others appeared to be torn in half. In one room I found one of my robots crushed flat into a wall, which reminded me of an old joke that we would tell at the Circle’s party nights at the bowling alley: “Which would you be more upset about, a hero smashing your super death robot into your wall or a dozen of your henchman? The robot, because blood comes out quicker than grease.” Hysterical, no? Well, maybe you have to be a member of our little fraternity to find that one funny but it’s a laugh riot.

I came across another one of my death bots, it’s form torn in half but it’s head seemed intact. I picked up it’s expressionless face, it’s metallic tusks dripping water from the ground. It’s dull yellow eyes once glowed a glorious golden color, and a smirk came to my face as I remembered the steam that came from it’s large nose. Ahh, my robots. My one true love if it could be said of such a thing.

My detractors claimed I had an unhealthy obsession with robots, almost jokingly to a compulsion.  That’s obsurd! Robots are machines; Sure, they can be beautiful, streamlined, even have a chrome finish on them that you can see your reflection in, but in no way would I say I was obsessed about them. It’s no different than working on a car, or taking a prized pet out for a walk.  Of course, my pets could walk, talk, and vaporize anything that came in their path.  They were also the most loyal thing I’ve ever had working for me next to one of my old henchman.

It was as I sat there admiring my handiwork when I noticed a small antenna located on the inside of one of the ears of the robot. I had forgotten that with this model I had included a complete communications package! You see, in my line of work versatility is key, so I built multiple features into the robots. It makes them more attractive to potential buyers and makes them look better than say NvC’s Blitzwagens or Cybozo’s G.R.I.N. Creatures.

Not knowing what time I was in or where my friend’s were, I decided I needed to contact the outside world and find out where my henchman were and more importantly, what had changed since I was gone.  Had my legacy endured, would my legions still remember me?   I admit, for the first time in a long while I felt fear and anxiety I pushed those thoughts aside.  I may have to start over, but if my past experiences have taught me anything, sometimes it’s best to start small.  Besides…revenge can wait, especially since it’s most certainly going to happen.