The women are whispering to each other.

"What about the balance? Doesn't that mean anything to you people? Putting us back together will just leave you with the same goody two-shoes loser you started with. This all started because the balance was out of whack, right? Well, who's to say it was tilted towards evil? Maybe it was tilted the other way, and keeping me separate is one way to set things back to right again."

"Or perhaps," says the Do-Gooder, "putting us back together is the only way to balance out your evil."

"Please. Do you really want my baser instincts clogging up your moral certainty? Wouldn't you rather stay the pure and unblemished self that you are right now, without having to deal with the occassional desire to throttle furniture movers and drunks?"

"I have nothing against furniture movers."

"You will, if we're put back together."

I can see the giant gears grinding in fits and starts through his head. "Perhaps you have a point," he says after a while.

The gingerbread demons take to the streets.

The Hounds, having given up their pursuit of entering dimension X via the angles of the world, trot down the back alleys and side streets. They carry hand-written election flyers in their toothy maws. Whenever the diminuative monsters encounter a denizen of the Blood their tactic is to swarm the unfortunate individual, bite, claw and tear, then to leave the campaign flyers stuffed in the ragged wounds. From the ginger-hound's point of view, things are going swimmingly.

The Deep Ones mostly hang around the numerous fountains in town. They refuse to go into the fountains after discovering that gingerbread and liquid equals a squishy death, but find comfort in staying near the water. Being cunningly evil, the little ginger-terrors have taken to ambushing pigeons and seagulls. They know better than to kill the animals, but brutalize the birds as much as they can, before loosely attaching election flyers to their feet. When released, the result is a flock of bleeding birds that drop gore-covered campaign promises on unsuspecting crowds all over the city. The Deep ones then bide their time, nibbling on their fingers and toes.

The Cthonians take to the bowels of the earth. Being geniuses, they had the foresight to shellac themselves, ensuring that their cookie bodies did not break down too easily. The Cthonians are forced to carry the flyers in their mouths, but are none too bothered by the situation, as they are telepathic anyway. Their means of delivery is novel, but not unusual in Sang Sacre. Tunneling into the sewer system, the tentacled ginger-snakes creep into homes via the pipes. More than a few citizens are a little put off by the feeling of slimy tentacles carressing their bottoms as they sit on their toilets. Others find themselves stepping on drool-covered flyers lying haphazzardly on their stairs or in their hallways. Ambulances are busy today. The city has never seen so many accidents related to slipping and falling.

Calm, cool and collected, Ginger-Nyarlathotep wanders through parks and playgrounds, shaking babies and kissing hands. Most of his encounters usually end up with people running away in terror, but one stands out. After a particulary vigourous shaking, the dark lord found himself staring down a man bearing a cross.

"Get thee away, evil creature," shouted John-Q-Public.

Nyarlathotep blinked. A silence ensued.

"I said, leave," bellowed John-Q-Public once again.

"Vote for me, " croaked Ginger-Nyarlathotep.

"What?"

"Vote for me."

John-Q, clearly confused, scratches his head with the cross. "But...its not an election year."

Impatient at the best of times, the Dark Lord abruptly ends the conversation. With its penetrating gaze it destroyed John-Q-Public's mind and crafted it into one more to its liking.

"I say, vote for me, slave. Deliver flyers! Find more voter-slaves"

John-Q, thoroughly unhinged, began salivating and weeping. "Must vote...must vote...must vote..."

As the fellow ran off, pamphlets in hand, the Dark Lord raised its cookie arms to the sky and squeaked in triumph.

Yeah! Finally. Fucking. Found it.

I've been digging through these dingdang boxes forever, but I've finally found the fourth codicil to the town charter. As you might expect, Sang Sacre's Town Charter is a wizardly construct formed out of the most elemental pulses of mystical forces, bound by blood and notarized by three dairy gnomes. In other words, unbreakable on a fundamental ecotoplasmic level.

I sprinkle the Powder of Zeeroks over it and begin pressing it against blank sheets until I have enough copies. I circle the relevant section with a pink highlighter, scribble "Let 'em win" on it then quickly fold a paper airplane. I fling it out the window aiming it at Goblin Market. Quickly fold another one and shoot it to Ed's bar. One to Miracleman. One to Knut. One to Elena's house. Connie will need to know. Hmmm, better throw one to Penny. And Lizard. Am-chau. That'll do for a start.

You really don't want to be Mayor of Sang Sacre.

I'm huffing and puffing as I get back to the bar. As I start to open the door, I see Phred come around the corner, so I wait to see if he has any news.

"Any luck?"

"Nope, didn't see him, boss."

After I smashed the mirror, the bird's double took off like hell itself was chasing him. I dunno, maybe it was.

"Boss, do we really need to worry this much? I mean, he's just another penguin, right?"

"The thing is, Phred, mirror doppelgängers are always opposite the personality of their twin. Mark my words, that penguin is evil. Didn't you see him. His feathers were all spikey, and his bowtie was black. That can't be good."

"But what possible trouble could a thirty inch tall, semi-flightless, evil waterfowl get into? I mean, he's still just a penguin."

"Remember Earworm Karaoke Night? Remember the herring treats for Halloween? Remember the noodle incident? The mind boggles at what an evil penguin could do. Come on. Let's try calling Charpe to see if he can put some of the cadre on it."

At that instant, I notice the election poster on the wall of the next building over. "Vote Aeshma, Demoncrat for Mayor," it says. "What the frell is this?"

"Yeah, I was gonna mention that. I saw them all over the city. I didn't realize there was an election coming up."

Well that's just frelling great. Now the sonuvabitch is running for Mayor?!? He can't possibly win, can he?. There's gotta be someone better than him, right?

"Umm, boss? I think I found our bird."

He hands me a different poster. Yup, it's him. Running for mayor. Well, it actually said he's running for vice president, but someone scratched out "Vice President" and wrote in "Mayor" with a crayon. Swell. "That was fast work." I look at it more closely. "What the frell is the Meadow Party?"

"Ow!" Phred is rubbing his oversized ear as he stoops down to pick up a paper airplane, which he hands to me. I read Hec's message.

"Come on, we still need to call Charpe. We can't let that stupid bird win the election."

[I can't do anything right now. Feel free to ventriloquize me as you like.]

Feel free to ventriloquize me as you like.

[Okay, that's a disturbing image. "Hands. Hands in new places"]

It's all up to Rebecca now. I stand by and let her work, and I keep my hand over Edward. The wretched little furball is evil! What's worse, she's really cute, so she can probably get away with all kinds of malfeasance.

I think about what the Knuts said about balance. In my experience, there's always plenty of evil around, no need to find more. I'm all for a bit of snark, a dollop of sarcasm, and a healthy dose of skepticism, but pure black hat evil is not my style. I suddenly feel very tired. How will all this turn out.

Rebecca is muttering to herself. I turn to see what she's up to when another damned paper airplane hits me in the temple. Dammit. How do these things cross dimensional portals? Are we behind a dimensional portal? Why did I spend all those hours in science class surreptiously reading novels?

The message is really hard to read. It's in some kind of magic legalese that I'm not in the mood for. Someone has done a Coles Notes fortunately, in pink highlighter at that.

"What the hell? Is this an election year?"

The superintendent is about to speak when a paper airplane hits her in the side of the head. Penny's already reading hers. A third plane circles over our heads, then splits into three. One plane hits Dudley, another hits Snidely, and the last lodges in my ear.

The superintendent seizes the plane and stuffs it into a pocket. She seems preoccupied.

"Enough debate," she says. "Five you are, and five you'll stay. Leave the hall immediately when you get back to Sacre-space."

"What are you going to do?" asks Penny.

The superintendent slips on a pair of leather gloves. At least, they look like leather. "I'm going to work out some of my frustrations on the Shard you let in here. Now, step closer."

We all take a step towards her.

"Not to me," she says impatiently. "To each other." She pulls out something that looks like a camera.

"Pictures! Edward needs a comb!"

"It's not a camera," says the super. "It's a Re-Dimensionalizer 2200. Autofocus, zoom, works in all fourteen known dimensions. Now, I just need to set it for three--" she fiddles with a dial on top of the thing. "There. Now, move closer, please. Penny, step in front of Good Guy Knut. Edward, I can't see your face."

We jostle to and fro. Snidely mutters to himself. Finally the super seems satisfied.

"All right, everyone. Now give me a barbaric yawp."

"YAWP!"

Pink ribbon pushing pulling stretching suffocating, through mail slot bicycle pump flesh resisting, itching sweating lungs unfolding. Eyelid fireworks skull soccer toes curling--breath, and blur, and finally focus.

"Ow."

"We're home," Penny says. She seems a little disappointed. I suspect that she is not pleased with the fragmentation that has occurred. I don't know what to say to make her any happier about it.

"Home!" Edward hops out of Penny's pocket and runs from the hall. "I'm coming, Clovis!"

"Damn it!" Penny starts after him, and I follow. The super--I think Penny said her name was Lizard, and I wonder if she's the poet I recall having read in the Dogtown Review--told us to get out of the hall right away. I turn to make sure the others are following, but only Wishy-Washy is there.

"Where did he go?"

"Who, Snidely? I don't know. He must have come around before the rest of us did. Bad guys are always doing that."

"So they are." I sigh as I step out of the hall of mirrors and into the air of Sang Sacre again. I wonder what it is I've set loose on my beloved city. And that's the first time it really hits me, that I'm home. After all that time underground, I'm back where I belong.

"Did you read this thing?" asks Wishy-Washy. "I can't make head or tail out of it."

I recall the paper airplane, and I unfold it to read. It's from Hec. It takes me a minute to get my head around the archaic legalese, but when I figure it out I laugh out loud. It feels good.