Zoe reached out for another of Miss Amazing's nemeses. This one was Mazinga, a female robotics scientist who patterned her criminal constructs after classic Japanese giant robots. She was in jail all the way down in Florida, but freeing her would be a snap for the new powers that Zoe had received when in her mystic studies she had encountered the Lord of Terror and been initiated into the powers of darkness....
Zoe reached out, but nothing was there. Puzzled, she walked into the kitchen and got a bowl full of water--just an ordinary ceramic bowl, yet perfect for magical scrying.
And what she found was that Mazinga didn't exist. Neither did Lady Tiger. Nor did Doctor Centipede. Even Knife and his secret horde of underground ninja was completely gone from the face of the Earth.
Horrified, Zoe opened the portal to the realm of the Lord of Terror. She saw him in his full awful glory and bowed down to him, but he seemed strangely subdued.
"I have been waiting for you," he said.
"Yes, master," replied Zoe.
"My kingdom is gone. GONE!" he yelled. Waving his taloned hand over the wide expanses of the plane, he said "YOU, my servant, must find out what has gone wrong...."
"But master, I see the Forest of Fear, and I see your kingdom. There is nothing missing..."
"What you see is all there is! Some unknown force has reduced my domain to a hundred mile radius sphere. Outside it is nothing! I have no armies, no resources... had not my enemies vanished along with all else outside that sphere, I would be no more! Now go to the Earth and continue with your research! I must KNOW!"
He waved his hand and Zoe vanished, to reappear in her room.
"What do we do?" wondered Miss Amazing. "We need to find out who that little Goth girl was."
"Why don't I wish to go back in time and find out?" suggested Amazing Boy.
"Because the stone just created all of this. It didn't really happen. She just remembers it happening."
"Maybe I can just ask the stone." She touched the stone and said "I wish I knew who the girl that affected Sarah was."
Words echoed in the air near Miss Amazing and Amazing Boy. "Her magical abilities, though in truth created by this stone recently, nevertheless make her immune to the ability of this stone to provide an answer."
"Great," said Amazing Girl. "We need to find out the way superheroes do. To the Amazing-Cave."
"We have an Amazing-Cave?" asked Amazing Boy.
"I don't think so, but I wish we had a superhero lair under my house, with a secret entranceway in my closet that only me and Karyn know about and can use, a loyal and intelligent computer system, a self-contained power supply, all the research equipment I would need to solve crimes, and anything else that goes into a superhero lair. Now I wish that Karyn and I were there right now."
They appeared in a well-lit room which didn't really look like a cave at all, but more like a laboratory. There was a circular pad in one corner, racks of test tubes, refrigerators, cabinets, computers much too large to be PCs, and a half eaten bag of cheese snacks that Jon remembered having left in his room. Doors led off to other rooms, labelled "restroom" and "storage".
Amazing Girl put the Queen down in a chair and shook her. "Wake up! Sarah, or whoever you call yourself. I need you to help me!"
The Queen, looking just like Sarah now that her mask was off, slowly regained consciousness.
Amazing Girl explained, "We want you to help us."
"Why should I help you?"
"Because if you don't, you're going to jail."
"You're such goody two-shoes. You'll send me to jail anyway."
"No we won't," said Jon. "There are extenuating circumstances. You didn't really get those powers the way you think you did. You didn't really run into a creepy Goth little girl, and you certainly didn't commit all the crimes that everyone thinks you did."
"What nonsense! If you really don't want me in jail, then release me at once!"
"I wish you knew what I was talking about!"
The Queen clutched her head--she was as stunned from the new knowledge as she was when the two superheroes had literally knocked her to the ground. "Magic stone?" she said. "Everything didn't exist before last Saturday?"
"That's right," said Miss Amazing. "The stone created you, with full memories of having run into this girl, and already fully affected by her powers!"
"So what do you want me to help you with?"
"I want you to help us identify her. It may not have really happened, but your memories, the physical evidence, the data in our computers... the evidence is there just as if she really was a villain all along. Computer!"
"Working," replied one of the big machines, as if it was from Star Trek.
"Computer, when the Queen here describes what she knows, I want you to find out everything you can related to that. Now, Queen, first we need to know what the girl looked like, even if it was an illusion. And since you've probably run into her more than Sarah, tell me if she had any quirks, if she had any rare objects we might be able to trace... tell me if she ever touched anything you own and might have left fingerprints, things like that."
The Queen described the goth girl's bad fashion sense, mentioned that she had talked about the Lord of Terror, and described several of the magic items she used.
"Wait," said Miss Amazing. "You're serious? She used a green cube striped with blue, around this big and with one rough side?"
"I'm telling you the truth, Miss Amazing! Though your computer seems to be drawing a blank on it."
"It's not my computer... I wish the Queen was at her home or wherever she was staying, but without any unusual magic or scientific items she might own, which are now in my storage room."
The Sarah lookalike disappeared.
Miss Amazing removed her mask and her breasts instantly flattened as she turned into male Jon again. Amazing Boy, seeing this, removed his mask and turned into Karyn.
"Karyn," said Jon, "that cube is mine. It's just a bookend. Only it's probably more than that now that this super-stuff is real. If the Goth girl uses it to do spells, she'd have to sneak into my room to get it, use it, and put it back."
"Unless she just replaced it with a fake," said Karyn.
"Could be," said Jon, "but it's still something to think about. And we also know she lives near us. If she was someone like Mazinga or Lady Tiger, she wouldn't even exist, because the stone only has around a hundred mile radius and she'd be too far away to be created by it."
He walked over to the pad. "I think I can figure this thing out. Just stand here and press the button."
Karyn stood beside him and he pressed a button on the wall. Soon he and Karyn floated up, only to find themselves being pushed into a rack of shirts and pants. It was dark and cramped, but feeling around they found that they could slide open the door, revealing that they were indeed in Jon's closet.
Jon looked around. "Karyn, the cube!" He pointed to a rack of Star Trek novels that was falling down at the end. "It's not there! The little Goth girl must have it!"
He yelled out, "Hey, anyone see my bookend? Mom? Dad? Zoe?"
