Ying, Yang and Ambivalence — Paul Vayro

Given a tip for a galactic hot spot, complete with dance floor and attached takeaway, Brick and Spiritwind head towards Fluffy McCoy's with a smile and a chat up-line beneath each sleeve; unfortunately, They's drunken memory tells their ship to go to Huffy LeRoy's by mistake: a bus depot with a dilapidated pub, hanging on for sanity and rare custom.Determined to have fun wherever they are, Brick and Spiritwind pull up a chair at Bozo and Schmuk's booth, two beasts of defiant size who are off to start a henchman training course at Evil University; as politeness spills forth and drink flows, the heroes offer the monstrous duo a lift. When they awake the next morning, they find themselves enrolled on the megalomaniac course, under threat of a thousand pinches and eternal headlocks should they try to leave. Adopting the pseudonyms of Dag Nammit and Corsetry Overload, they opt for study over pain.Nicole Extravaganza and Suzy Fantastic had recently been promoted to grade three heroes, and as such had to cash in their outdated nemesis at Velos 19, the hub of hero admin and ego driven rhetoric. Discovering their nemesis had given up day to day Evil, they hear he now works as the Chancellor at Evil University, and head to the planet that houses the academia of the naughty. Whilst there, they stumble across Brick and Spiritwind's room and overhear the pair mentioning their true identities as grade five heroes. Convinced they could gain further promotion, they offer to help.Hugo Cortizone, the popstar of the hero world, has a monumental crush on the two female heroes, a crush they repeatedly spurn. When his scanners see their ship at Evil University, he considers it his duty to pay them a visit and check they're safe, and maybe to hang around long enough to try and woo a snog out of one of them, or both.Dip Sing Doolally, the chancellor and nemesis in question, decides the institution needs a figurehead for potential students to aspire to, and to increase revenue. He instructs his vice-chancellor, Spon Dooliks, to find one from the current intake and elevate their reputation through manipulated drama.Spon had always envied Good's professional and well thought out approach to the battle of light and darkness, not like Evil with its flawed plans and flippant security measures, so when he spots the heroic nature of Brick and Spiritwind, he believes he's found a duo who can not only be the new hope for bad, but also shift the entire ethos towards greater success. Dip finds the pair little more than annoying and insists they can only be used if they are martyred after achieving whatever Spon intends them to achieve. He wishes to use their memory as an icon rather than the duo themselves.The final assessment for the megalomaniac course is to take over an Earth planet in the early twenty-first century. From their Evil base, a pub by a picturesque canal, Brick and Spiritwind plan to steal the internet and infect it with the news that they now rule the world.With countless pseudonyms and missions overlapping, heroic narrative struggles to make sense of the unfolding adventure, but with a pen and paper, and the odd shot of rum, it slowly falls into place as Good and Evil battle with their own identities as much as each other.