Showdown! The Best of the Best

Chapter Twenty

The fortress had been nicknamed the Cathedral, for the way it loomed over the meadows of Kringle's Realm, its ominous, bleak figure casting a shadow over miles. The structure was massive. It had to be, in order to house Kringle and the operations necessary to his grand plan. Inside were housed memory banks, storage units for the Kriegbots, comm rooms, data units, and even bedrooms for Kringle and his enforcers. 

But none of these rooms played host to the current audience.

Kringle sat in a grand armchair, almost like a throne, in the middle of the massive, circular chamber. His enforcers had opted to call this room the Lobby, which, he supposed, was a halfway decent name, even though the room was more like an antechamber than a lobby. It was an empty, egg-shaped space with a ceiling some eighty, ninety feet above, with banks of monitors clad to the walls, encompassing half of the circle. The monitors rose roughly thirty feet before halting, giving Kringle all the access he needed to supervise the goings on in his domain.

And, lately, those events had been tumultuous and numerous.

Such as the failure of his summoned evildoers to incapacitate and capture the heroes he had brought here. As he sat in this chair, fingers intertwined in a pyramid, he wondered if, perhaps, he had underestimated the nine legends that had been spirited away to this place. There was an immense amount riding on this plan. More than just the conquest of the Megaverse.

There were expectations of him.

And so those expectations trickled down to the four ruffians that stood before him now. Kringle had a feeling that they knew they'd been summoned here for a scolding. Each had a different expression:  Azula, cold and indifferent, as ever. He assumed she'd had her fair share of scoldings from her father. Kringle had had her taken here from a world where the Fire Lord Ozai, a repugnant and sadistic conqueror, ruled over seventy-five percent of the planet. Nothing Kringle could say to Azula would phase her.

Muscular looked bored. Figures, Kringle thought. The villain, a star member of the League of Villains on his world, held no interest in anything beyond murder and brawling. He had been the easiest of the crew to recruit. Anything he said to Muscular would go in one ear and out the other. Smirking, he reckoned that the name could not be more fitting. Truly, that was all Muscular was good for:  being a muscular meathead. A human battering ram.

Blackfire was royalty, similar to Azula. A Tamaranean princess. Her look was somewhere between the two of her peers. More alike to condescension than boredom or indifference, Kringle realized. His smirk morphed into a grimace. That would need to be rectified. Blackfire was his subordinate, not his equal. If his plans were to succeed, that would have to be understood before too long. 

Out of the four lackeys that Kringle had recruited, the only one whose face read genuine fright, real, palpable fear, was the billionaire turned half-ghost, Vlad Plasmius. On his earth, he masqueraded as Vlad Masters, Kringle knew. But that was a facade. Vlad only wore this identity so he could complete his two primary objectives:   mastery over both earth and the Ghost Zone, and the murder of Jack Fenton. Jack, the father of Danny Fenton, aka Danny Phantom, was Vlad's one obstacle between himself and his love, Maddy Fenton. 

And Jack was also the one that Vlad placed blame on for the accident that had given him his powers. 

Kringle couldn't help but sneer at this thought. Vlad had been so easy to manipulate once Kringle had told him that Danny would be involved. 

Next to Kringle, opposite the heroes, towered a nine-foot, fleshy, pink amphibian form. His arms hung low, past his legs, giving him a simian posture to offset his amphibious appearance. He was built like Muscular, but, rather than appearing humanoid, this creature was almost alien. His eyes were tiny black dots in the center of his head,  his mouth a narrow slit. Frills hung from the folds of his neck, between his chin and his shoulder.