Battles Past and Reinforcements

Over the weekend Paco and I were toured by some of the youth of the BVC around outer Manila. Like a Filipino version of the Da Vinci Code we went from secret holy shrine to random yet meaningful obelisk standing in the middle of roundabouts, a dark and unusual path we found ourselves on. Thousands of people gathered at these places of worship and odes to past glories completely unaware of the powers hidden above, under, and within the tiles they knelt on.

I’m of course speaking about the secret Particle Accelerator that was built as collaboration between the Spanish, Americans, and the Japanese during the Vietnam War. All three countries felt that they owed the Philippines something after all of that colonization business. The accelerator was named Newton’s Tropical Playground or N.T.P. but goes by the nickname the Newt. The churches, obelisks, and holy thing-a-majigs act as detectors and other what-have-you’s. It is actually quite a coincidence that Churches were used as the mask for the detectors because the main objective of the Newt is to try and allocate the so called God particle.

Our brothers in the BVC are aware of the Newt and even help fund some of its research. Having been one of the advisors on the building of the Large Hadron Collider I must say that the Newt is quite a marvelous piece of machinery, a real testament to human ingenuity. The device though is a little old and when it really gets humming I can feel it shake my room at the BVC. While they have yet to create the God particle they have perfected the first instances of Time Travel although they haven’t been able to control it yet. I would offer some advice but I feel humanity must run its own course.

While the touring of the Newt was exciting Paco and I were much more excited about the arrival of one of our oldest friends and mentors Roman Paur. Roman’s real name has been lost to the ages but as he was one of the founding members of the Roman Empire the name Roman just kind of fits. From knife fights to equestrian tricks to a fantastic fiscal mind and a wunderkind with the stock market the Romski is a master of it all. Alas not all of his exploits are the most noble as it was he who trained Don Diabolico as well. It was decades after he had taught me and the Don had wormed his way into Roman’s good graces and Roman always having a soft spot for troubled youths thought he could reform him. Little did he know that he would help to mold the most fiendish mind the world had ever seen, as well as create a man who is my equal in most regards.

So now he is spending a little of his retirement joining Paco and myself. I am hopeful that his trained eye will help me root out some of his former students past and with the information maybe, just maybe, bring his reign of evil to an end. For right now though we are spending our time reminiscing over past exploits over the finest scotches and smoking fat cigars. You know high class stuff.

Oops the floor is a rumbling must be the Newt hard at work again…