So

This is what we've come to.

Boys, we don't need to fight. I'm a changed man, these days--I am willing to let you live. I suppose that some would consider that a sign that the flesh-lairs I've taken over the years have eroded me--left tiny pieces of their original personae in my mind, even as I've mostly crowded them out. Even after all these centuries I don't know myself. But I have softened. Just as you have in the last few days, I think I've grown sick of fighting.

Initially I wasn't sure why exactly the Shiqquwts revoked the mystic charge of the fuschium pendant they gave me just before I returned to Earth-Alpha. But, in the body of my current host, I was able to determine that this Earth is a very special Earth. Maybe it's even the Earth that my former Master dreamed of, when he looked for a pure host. I think it's relatively safe for me to conclude that Earth-Gamma is in fact the Paradise Earth. A world as close to the "real life" that so many people through this Multiverse of ours imagine. Free from monsters, heroes, and villains. "Normal."

Which is why I'm confused as to how you four came into being.

As I've said, this body of mine has very particular senses and powers. (Including the ability to eventually recharge my fuschium crystal!) And I sense that you four had some rather strange and fascinating births.

As everyone knows, ghosts are the spirits left behind after we die--well, usually. (If someone were to, say, burrow into one's body, and keep it alive, but simply displace the soul within--to my knowledge, that would result in a person simply being completely destroyed. They would die an absolute death. Which is terribly funny.) But what if there were spirits that existed before we were born? Emissaries from the Spirit World, who entered the body before birth, rather than leaving it after death? Some say these inverse ghosts do exist, and they give fantastic powers to those that they enter. I've done some etymological work and found out that the earliest definition of "ghost" simply means "rage." Isn't that interesting? I suppose, then, that inverse ghosts would be...happy? And the Latin word for "joy" is Gaudium. Let's call these spirits--and by default, those who possess them--Gauds. Remarkably similar to the word gods, of course--and I truly believe, perhaps against my better judgment, that Gauds may someday become young gods. I've seen these entities in action through scrying before. Earth-Delta's Amos Berkley, the oft-referred "Manos," was a Gaud, and he was responsible for quite a bit of havoc.

I think you four must be Gauds, to have lived this long in such incredible circumstances.

Why am I telling you all this? Well. I figured I should give you a headstart. A fighting chance. Because let's face it--you may be the "New O'Grady Mob," but you don't exactly measure up to the Old one. And I do like myself a challenge. After 500+ years of existence (I think that's right), my lives have gotten a little boring. I should stay in practice when you and I go to Earth-Alpha and take over the Multiverse. I hope you don't mind if I take all the credit when that happens, though. I am the First Enemy, after all!

And the body I have now is not one of a Gaud. Trust me, I respect myself a lot more than that.

What I have is the body of a sort of God of Monsters. One intrinsically bound up in your childhoods--in a couple of ways. After all, why do you think I'm typing in Marcel's color? It's not just because I like the sight of blood.

Of course, Marcel Vecchio isn't my only new name. If you feel nostalgic, you can also call me Terry. We're one and the same.