Tempus was quite literally a broken man. He lay groaning in a pile of rubbish in an alleyway just off Hobb's bay, wishing desperately that some kind, generous, preferably insane person would come along and rescue him and aid him in his wicked scheme.
“Pssst...”
Hark!! A whisper!! He turned his head weakly, looking off into the darkness.
“Oy! You! Time-traveller guy!”
A tall figure came skulking out of the darkness. “Tempus?” it said, unnecessarily.
The figure shushed him again as he opened his mouth to retort. “We don't want anyone to hear us – especially not one particular person,” it cautioned.
Tempus peered blearily at the figure. He seemed to be wearing some kind of mask over his head. Suddenly, he swooped, grabbing Tempus under the armpits and hoisting him to sit semi-upright.
“Quiet,” he hissed. “We don't want her to hear us.”
“Her?” Tempus queried, wondering what new arch-nemesis would pop up out of the woodwork.
“The Mistress of Evil,” the voice continued. “The Guardian of the Shears. The Creator of the Sound File. The One. Her.”
“Forgive me,” Tempus managed to choke out, “but isn't a Mistress of Evil exactly what we need right now? Or aren't you aware of my diabolical scheme?”
The hooded figure reached up to remove his mask, revealing that he wasn't a he at all. A shock of copper hair fell to the woman's shoulders. Tempus gasped in recognition, raising a trembling figure to point at her.
“It's... it's...”
She smiled, nodding satisfactorily.
“But aren't you...”
“I am.”
His eyes narrowed. “Aren't you on some list somewhere? Of... evil people? Don't you have a reputation to uphold? A pledge of loyalty to criminals everywhere?”
The woman laughed maniacally. “That's where you're wrong, Tempus! My loyalty lies with only one villain. And that is – Lex!!”
Tempus rolled his eyes. “Wait, don't tell me, you're going to force me to jump off a building.”
Sara (for that was the woman's name) was busy tying his hands behind his back. “Of course not,” she hissed. Setting a small mechanical device down beside him, she grinned wildly as a song droned out of the speaker.
“I'm simply going to leave you here, with this song playing over... and over... and over... and over... and over... and over again. It'll kill you in the end. After all, it drove me insane. Before that, I was a perfectly normal girl.”
He groaned.
“And you know the best part?” she continued viciously.
“What?”
“You have no one to blame but the player of this particular song. Your very own soon-to-be-wife, Evil El.”
She ran off into the darkness, leaving Tempus in despair.
”It's a long way to Tipperary...”
NEXT!
