Alcuard watched, in utter awe, as his friend again put himself out of his way for the sake of people trying to kill him. And watched in dismay, as yet again, his open hand was rebuffed by these broken souls who preferred their master's whips. He knew, from the moment Isabella had been dragged off to become a blood sacrifice, and those broken souls did nothing, that this story wouldn't have a happy ending.

But for the servants of this cabal of billionaires, it didn't have to be an ending at all.

"Vampy!" Isabella anointed as she dashed through the hall, holding BIRD in her hand. "Sunrise is in less than three minutes, you need to move away from the door!"

"We need to hold the door," Alcuard disagreed quietly, as he took one of the decorative banners off the wall. With a dramatic flourish he ripped the pole free of the fabric it was holding up, and returned to the door. He reached it just as Viviana and Luca dashed inside, extended pole to cross the entire entranceway, and shoved the pole into the oncoming crowd.

Alcuard shoved hard, as the crowd of people shoved and strained to push themselves inside. The pole bent against the press of hundreds of bodies, the vampires and others trapped at the front reached with fingers and claws to pull at his hair or poke at his eyes, and the strength of hundreds began to push him back.

But the crowd held when a surge of strength began to push at the bar. Alcuard turned to his left to see Luca at the bar, pushing against it. And when Isabella and Viviana joined in, the mob stopped again, unable to advance.

But their success didn't seem to cheer Luca, who looked at Viviana and asked, "Why aren't you two shutting the door?"

"We can't reach the door!" Isabella shouter back. "It opens out into the courtyard, and there's a hundred zombies in the way."

"What?" Luca exclaimed incredulously. "Alcuard, What kind of corporeal snob are you? What's the point in having a pretentious, oversized mansion if your butler can't slam the door in someone's face?"

"It's fire code," Alcuard grunted as he strained to hold the mob in place. "Doors always open out, so that mobs don't get stuck in doorways."

"Just saying, putting a twelve-foot tall oak door in their faces would feel pretty good right now," Luca said.

"Ah, good! They'll tear the four of you to pieces soon," BIRD exclaimed, breaking free of Isabella's tenuous grip and taking to the air. "Things definitely look bleak."

"You do realize that if the vampires win, they'll destroy the entire solar system when they eventually turn on each other, right?" Viviana asked as she dug her boots into the cobbles and pushed. "

"Oh I expect them to make a right mess of it," BIRD laughed as it flew over their heads. "What will these vain, small-minded vampires do with ultimate power, except ruin the work of billions of people who tried to actually make life better over the centuries?"

The shock Alcuard felt was very nearly as forceful as the time Luca had hit him with a tree. His mouth hung open as he stare up at BIRD, not fully understanding what the little robot was doing, and more importantly, not understanding why it was betraying its own allies.

"What are you saying?" Fabulo asked, in a voice as powerfully resonant as a nine year old child breathing a weather balloon's worth of helium. "We're going to build a corporate commune that will rule the world forever! Billions of people to harvest from this city in the sky, in an empire that will eventually rule the entire universe! Your brains and my face leading the charge into eternity and infinity!"

"Sounds like you really didn't think this plan through, Fabulo. Prove me wrong," BIRD said with a derisive scoff.

Alcuard shook his head in bewildered astonishment.

"Well, as soon as we get our hands on..." Fabulo began, his speech seeming to gather its own momentum. He blathered, he babbled, he extolled rather floridly on the virtues of a corporate merger.

Most astonishing to Alcuard, Fabulo was monologging.

And he wasn't pushing.

Neither were some of the vampires around him. They interjected to contribute their own thoughts, and abandoned their own labour. They disagreed on salient points about compensation, restructuring, distribution of resources. They failed to aid their fellows in trying to force themselves through the doorway.

"BIRD," Alcuard said in bewildered astonishment. "Thank you."

"Holy bean shit on a stick, he got Fabulo monologging," Isabella rasped, barely audible over Fabulo's self-infatuated droning.

"Relax, you can talk normally. He's a CEO talking about his work. Unless you try to talk over him he'll forget you exist," Viviana said.

"Hey, you don't do that to me, do you?" Luca asked.

"Oh no, never, boss," Viviana said, in a tone and with accompanying hand and eye gestures that less suggested sarcasm and more beat you over the head with a sign.

"Izzy, how much time do we have left?" Luca asked.

Isabella looked up at bird and shouted, "BIRD, how much time is left on that timer?"

Bird's mouth jerked open, and its beady eyes looked extremely resentful as it announced, "eleven seconds."

"Shit, they're up to something!" Fabulo shrieked, and the argument dissolved as dozens of vampires returned to the fight. They shoved hard, and their renewed determination forced Alcuard back.

"Alcuard, move your pasty ass out of here!" Luca bellowed!

"You can't hold the door without me!" Alcuard shouted back, and he managed to shove the crowd a few inches back towards the door.

"We don't need to!" Luca said, and trusting his friend, Alcuard dove into the shadows beside the doorway. Isabella and Viviana did likewise, just as Luca put up his hands and stepped backwards.

"Oh, no, it looks like you guys are going to win!" Luca said in a mocking whine. "It's so sad."

"Enough, Luca! This is my day!" Fabulo exclaimed triumphantly. But the vampire's jubilation was marred by wariness, and he made no move to advance on Luca.

"Funny you should say that," Luca grinned a grin so satisfied it would look like the best night of anyone else's life. But for Luca Cardego, was pretty much just his state of being. The universe's only quadrillionaire gestured with his eyebrows, and pointed into the air just above their heads. "You know what just dawned on me?"

And just as Luca said 'dawn', sunlight cut through the morning gloom and bathed the entranceway in light. Luca could see rays of sunlight cut through the vampires like the creatures were made of fog, and in the blink of an eye and a squeal of terror they burst into flames.

Fabulo burned brightest, as his silicone muscles were seared by the vampire's combustible flesh. "No!" he squealed as he burned. "No please!"

And in a bright flash of fire, a cloud of glitter was blown into the room so thickly that Luca disappeared inside as as it washed the hall in sparkles.

As the sparkles settled Luca stood triumphant, gleaming in his impressive shirtless glory as he glittered in the morning sun. "You did," Luca said to the glitter. "You just dawned on me."

The small crowd of minions and floozies, now missing their employers, turned and ran.

"Come on, Vi, let's shut the doors so that we don't turn Alcuard into stripper glitter," Luca said as he trundled through the now inch-thick layer of dead vampire carpeting the cobbles.

"On it, boss," Viviana answered. Shutting the doors involved moving a surprising amount of glitter, to the point where Alcuard idly wondered if this was the first time in history glitter had ever caused a door jam.

Alcuard breathed a sigh of relief when the doors shut, and idly kicked at a small mount of glitter with his foot. "When I killed my people all those years ago, they turned to ash in sunlight. This glitter dust is embarrassing."

"It's the author 'subtly' saying that modern vampires suck, but old school ones are cool," BIRD said.

"BIRD," Alcuard said solemnly, looking up at the little machine perched on a nearby chandelier. "Why did you help us? It might have saved our lives."

"It's simple," BIRD replied. "The vampires outlived their usefulness to me. Once I knew the plot really wanted them to die for cheap laughs, I really didn't have anything else to learn from them."

"Bah," Luca shouted as he shook glitter out of his hair. "Face it, birdbrain, you're actually kinda fond of us."

"Okay, fine! Yes, I haven't realized having fun was possible, let alone how hilarious the last few days have been," BIRD admitted reluctantly. "I didn't realize I'd actually enjoy witnessing a love triangle with a werewolf and a vampire. Even being the antagonist was fun."

"Antagonist? BIRD," Alcuard said. "Haven't you realized it by now? You're the hero of this story. Luca is the villain."

"What?" Both BIRD and Luca asked skeptically.

"You can't see it, because you think this universe is a parody. It isn't. It's a horror story," Alcuard explained solemnly. "Your horror story."

"No," BIRD whispered.

"Think on it. What is pain to a computer? What is suffering to an artificial intelligence? What is a fate worse than death to a machine?" Alcuard asked. Understandably, Luca shrugged, And neither Viviana nor Isabella could provide an answer.

But BIRD was beginning to understand. And Alcuard worried he had done something cruel by sharing this insight. "Nonsense," BIRD muttered, hanging its head. "When the world doesn't make sense."

"In particular, comedic nonsense," Alcuard agreed.

"That theory..." Isabella began to say.

"Makes too much sense?" Luca asked.

"Yeah," Isabella said. "I mean, look at the control engine for this flying city. A giant gauntlet, with its middle finger raised. The most powerful object in the universe, flipping the bird."

"No," BIRD droned, cradling its head with its wings. "No, fuck, no! Fucktard fucking a fuckquat in fucktardsvikle! No!"

"Wow, I think we broke BIRD again," Isabella reflected as BIRD fell off its perch and crashed onto the stone, breaking its wing an dislodging one of its eye cameras. BIRD didn't seem to notice the physical distress as it continued to mutter obscenities.

"So, Vi, did we just save the universe?" Luca asked.

Alcuard coughed, but he couldn't quite bring himself to respond. It was an exaggeration, certainly, but it wasn't an absurd boast. "If those vampires succeeded where my people failed, and found more infinity gems-"

"Unobtanium Stones!" Viviana interjected sharply. "Dear God, you want to go to war with Disney's lawyers? We just dealt with a mob of bloodsucking parasites."

"If they find more, it isn't inconceivable that they could use the combined power to reshape galaxies, or even the universe," Alcuard finished explaining. "It is not a grotesque boast to say we saved the universe today."

"Cool. Vi, add that to my business card." Luca held his hands up, and grinned wolfishly. "Luca Cardego, Lord of Mars, saviour of the universe, unimaginably wealthy playboy philanthropist. Hot damn, I've had sex that didn't feel as good as being able to say all of that."

Isabella sputtered and coughed indignantly, and Alcuard found himself smiling affectionately at the absurdity of the title. Though, he reflected, all of it was true.

"Means I'm adding it to my job title, boss," Viviana said. "Would you open a portal in the courtyard leading to the Luna refugee centre? I'll go get that unemployed mob outside moving."

"Thanks Vi. Love ya to the moon and back," Luca replied as he pulled out his portal device and pointed it towards the doors. Alcuard couldn't see anything happen, but suspected Luca did what he needed to, since he tucked it back in his pocket.

"Ha ha," BIRD chuckled from its prone position on the ground. It stumbled and pushed up with its single working wing until it was standing on its tiny feet. "Luca, Alcuard, Isabella, as strange as you might find me saying this, thank you. Even now, knowing I'm in a nonsense universe made up by a pretentious hack with delusions of grandeur, I find it's better to know. And I owe you all for that. Sadly enough, all I can offer right now to replay you is my revenge for Luca. One last counterstroke, set up in case my plans fell apart."

"What did you do, birdbrain?" Luca asked.

"Oh, I made sure you'll get the one thing you've been trying to avoid all these years," BIRD said.

And just as it finished, Alcuard could hear the clap of combat boots striking the cobbles. He looked to the doorway just in time to see a tall man, in a dusty fedora, wearing an ornate grenade launcher on his belt.

Lanval Adams stepped inside, casually sloshing through the thick pile of glitter littering the floor. "My former employers, I take it? Frankly, I think I prefer them that way."

"Why are you back here, Lanval?" Luca asked.

"One last contract. A contingency contract, in the event that Fabulo and company met an untimely fate. The contingent clause is that in order to buy out my company, this contract needs to be fulfilled."

"An assassination? Because I'm pretty sure that clause would make me the holder of the contract to have me killed," Luca said.

"No blood. Just a delivery," Lanval said, as he stepped up to Luca and handed him an envelope. "You have been served."