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Over the next several months, Tanya had cause to regret her promise to aid the Justice League whenever one of them said her name three times in swift succession. It seemed to happen far too often. Almost every week, they were forced to defend the Earth from terrifying dangers: alien warlords, armies of robots, mad scientists, natural disasters, city-destroying monsters, and other threats that were even stranger and more alarming.

'How has this version of Earth survived until now?' Tanya wondered, as she helped the Justice League to defeat a giant starfish that had taken over New York. 'At this rate, it'll be a miracle if it lasts until the Apocalypse is due to happen in two years' time.' A frown spread over her face as she realised that, entirely by accident, she might have stumbled upon the truth: of course, the reason why the Justice League were beset by so many enemies was that, without realising it, they were putting on a show; Being X was like a child with a box of action figures and they were some of his favourites. In a few years, he would get bored and bring playtime to an end. 'Does that mean that no matter what I do, I'm still taking part in one of his games, forced to entertain him? Is there no way I can break free? Or have my attempts to defy him been doomed from the start?'

While she was distracted by these gloomy thoughts, the Justice League sealed their victory over the gargantuan echinoderm that was their latest opponent, imprisoned it in a forcefield cage, and started giving each other hearty congratulations. Very much the same as usual, just with a slight change of scenery.

"Thank you, Lady Tanya. We couldn't have done this without you." said Aquaman, coming over to her and putting on a smile that exposed rather too many of his gleaming white teeth. He was shirtless and glistening with sweat – or it might have been the seawater he needed to regularly immerse himself in – Tanya didn't care to get close enough to find out which.

"If that's true, then we have a problem," she replied, grimly. "For years, you've defended the Earth without my help, so why do you need it now? I have no doubt that if I were not here you would have triumphed regardless. But now you've decided that my help is necessary for you to succeed. Why is that?"

"If you don't want me to thank you, that's fine," said Aquaman, raising an eyebrow. "It just seemed like the right thing to do."

"I wonder… Have I weakened your resolve, somehow? Made you lazy?" Tanya continued, as if he hadn't said anything. "Many times before, you've prevailed against seemingly impossible odds, thanks to your bravery and ingenuity. Have I taken that away from you? Now you're aware that in times of direst need you can call upon someone to save you, are you still as 'heroic' as you were a few months ago?"

"You haven't made us any less effective," he assured her. Then, taking a deep breath, puffing himself up like a politician at a podium, he continued: "Yes, in the past, there have been a few times when we've 'prevailed against seemingly impossible odds'. But it always came at a price: the deaths of friends, family, and innocent bystanders; the destruction of homes, property, and places of cultural, historical and economic value; as well as the need to pay for repairs and rebuilding. With your help, we can avoid all that, so why wouldn't we? During the past few months, since you offered to help us, no one in the Justice League has been killed or seriously injured, collateral damage has been minimal and there have been relatively few civilian casualties. You've reduced the price of victory, for which we are very grateful."

Tanya gave a thoughtful hum. After a moment's deliberation, she said, "Those are motives that I can sympathetize with. However, I must warn you not to rely on me too much. I will not always be available to help you. There are many demands on my time."

"In times of desperation, I'll seize any advantage I can," said Aquaman. "Today, for example, Starro had mind-controlled the entire population of New York. But you put a stop to that as soon as you arrived. Exactly the sort of help we need, for the good of everyone." He paused. His smile was replaced with a grimace. "Still, if I've been overdoing it, I apologize. In future, I'll try not to call you except as a last resort."

"I would appreciate that," said Tanya.

"Is there anything you want from us in return for what you've done so far?" he asked, giving her a shrewd glance.

Wordlessly, she shook her head, opened a portal, and vanished back to Hell.

Even when she wasn't rescuing the Justice League from whatever disaster they'd become embroiled in this time, Tanya had plenty to do. She spent most of her time making sure her demonic employees were engaged in meaningful work, that they were well-compensated for it, and they were provided with a wide range of amusements, amenities and leisure facilities, which should mean that they were kept busy and contented, and therefore had no reason to rebel against her.

She was keen to encourage trade between Hell and the various nations of Earth – not that she intended any of them to be aware they were trading with Hell, of course – in order to develop the economy and gain a supply of American dollars, Japanese yen and other forms of currency for which she already had dozens of uses in mind. Therefore, she had set up Black Diamond Inc. as well as a few front companies whose purpose was to be the acceptable public face of a business that would have been exceedingly controversial if it was known to the general public.

It involved the production of rare metals, minerals and other raw materials to feed the needs of Earth's manufacturing industries. Demons would open a portal to an asteroid, gather a large amount of ore and bring it back to Hell, where it would be processed and reduced to its constituent elements; then it would be transported to Earth and whoever was willing to pay for it.

The true source of these valuable resources would be concealed by misdirection. Black Diamond Inc. owned mines and spoil heaps in a number of small countries around the world, where it would be claimed that they were using new technologies to cheaply extract raw materials from low-grade ores that would previously have been uneconomic to bother with. Tanya intended that Black Diamond Inc. would be a shining example of how a capitalist company could be productive and profitable while paying its workers a fair wage, having decent working conditions and environmental protections, and collaborating with local governments to improve infrastructure, healthcare and the lives of the general populace. No one should have any reason to suspect that Black Diamond Inc. was anything other than squeaky clean: a paragon of business integrity, run by irritating do-gooders of the sort that most people held in contempt. The problem was that all of this would take several years to set up. By the time the Apocalypse came, Black Diamond Inc. would not be ready and making money on anything more than a small scale.

Not for the first time, Tanya gazed out over the impassable gulf between her ambitions and the reality, bleakly amused and wondering why she bothered with any of it. "Why do I do this to myself?" she wondered aloud, sitting at her desk and staring at the pile of paperwork in front of her. Then, reason prevailed: taking a deep breath, she told herself that it didn't matter; the real purpose of all her business ventures was not to make money but to keep her employees busy and entertained so that they wouldn't cause trouble.

Similarly, when she had met with Lucifer and then the Justice League, she had assured them her taking over the Earth's criminal underworld was not just a lesser evil; carried away by her own rhetoric, she had gone so far as to present it as the solution to a great many societal problems. Of course, she hadn't managed to convince them, any more than she had convinced herself; no matter how simple her words made it sound, she had always known that it would be a difficult, complicated and dirty business.

The plan was still in its early stages and would take time to spread across most of the world. Several years, at least. More time than Tanya had left.

In a few places, where her loyal subordinates had finished setting up, the plan was working perfectly, exactly as intended. Other criminal gangs were being outcompeted in many ways, struggling to make money from less-harmful drugs, brothels, smuggled cigarettes, or anything else Tanya was willing to tolerate as not being especially harmful to society. That didn't mean that those things were harmless, of course; she was well aware that they all caused problems for people and society, but she was more concerned with the fact that criminal gangs were able to amass vast amounts of money and power by selling them, which led to much worse problems. It was a matter of priorities. She was willing to commit a multitude of minor sins if it meant preventing a greater evil.

She had no particular need to make a profit, so it was easy for her minions to undercut everybody else. They were demons, superhumanly strong and tough, able to shrug off small arms fire without taking much notice, so they were usually able to defeat their human counterparts if it came to a fight. They took great pleasure in doing so. This meant that before long they had gained large swathes of territory and done disastrous damage to other criminal gangs nearby. Harried on all sides by demons, law enforcement officials eager to take advantage of the situation, and their colleagues who would happily stab them in the back if there was anything to be gained from it, many gangsters were finding the criminal lifestyle too difficult and dangerous to bother with.

In any profession, the people who made the real profits were those at the top of the heap - the CEOs in their executive suites, the generals in their command tents, and the crime lords in their palaces – but the people who took the most risks and did most of the real work were those at the bottom. That was why, throughout her many lives, Tanya had always endeavoured to be one of those at the top. If the job was too dangerous and the pay was too little, it became almost impossible to find anyone willing to do it. There were still vast profits to be made from selling weapons, hard drugs and the victims of human trafficking, but not enough to tempt those who knew they wouldn't live long enough to spend their ill-gotten gains. People might be willing to gamble their lives on the possibility of wealth and success, but not if it seemed certain that they'd end up dead in a back alley somewhere.

At least, that was what would have made sense. However, Tanya was vaguely troubled by the memory of several dozen brave young men and women who had volunteered to fight for their country, despite knowing that they would be paid very little and it would most likely lead to their deaths, having been promised nothing more than honour and glory if they survived. Still, they had been patriots and idealists who believed in something greater than themselves, whereas most of the cruel, hard-bitten thugs who inhabited the criminal underworld were devoted to nothing more than the contents of their wallets. It was highly unlikely that any of them were of the same quality as… as... her old friends. Even if her memories had been erased by the slow passage of centuries, what little she could remember was enough to convince her she had not chosen poorly.

She always made sure to choose the right person for the task at hand. That was one of the reasons why her planned takeover of Earth's criminal underworld was taking even longer than she had expected: she refused to give demons free access to Earth unless she was sure she could trust them. Therefore, she took the time to carefully evaluate each and every one of them before sending them away on their appointed tasks. She was concerned that if she just set them loose, they would succumb to their base instincts and desires, carve out their own little fiefdoms and proceed to ignore her instructions until she came to winkle them out of whatever bolthole they were hiding in. So far, they had surpassed her expectations. Furfur, who led a team of snoops whose job was to report to her anyone who was breaking her rules, always seemed very disappointed that he had so little to tell her: a few minor infractions, nothing more.

It amused her to think that her demons – symbols of sin and corruption according to many religions around the world – had so far proven themselves to be incorruptible. None of them had been tempted by the bribes that rival crime lords had offered them. Perhaps that was only to be expected; most demons had no interest in anything mortals could offer them, not since human souls had lost all value as currency. They had little interest in drugs, slaves or fancy cars, for example. Mortal money was of no use to them because if they suddenly became very rich out of nowhere it would have been obvious that they'd done something they shouldn't have – and none of them were willing to risk Tanya's wrath for such a petty inducement as mere wealth. Fear had its uses. It meant that betrayal wasn't an everyday occurrence. Besides, all of her minions would much rather tear someone to pieces than accept a bribe from them.

However, the problem with her selective hiring policies was that many of her plans had stalled due to lack of manpower. An obvious solution would have been to hire human auxiliaries to support her demons and perform many of the necessary but unglamorous tasks needed to ensure the smooth running of any organization. Some of her lieutenants had already begun doing so, discreetly and to a small extent. But it was inevitable that involving humans to any extent would lead to further problems: they were flawed, fallible, greedy and weak-minded, prey to urges and desires that made them easily-manipulable, and extremely fragile. Tanya was glad she wasn't one of them anymore. But that didn't make it any easier to fill her manpower shortages.

Another problem was that, in many places around the world, the legal overworld was precariously balanced on top of the criminal underworld like a tiny mother bird sitting on top of a cuckoo's egg. In those places, the criminal cartels were deeply entrenched, immensely rich and influential, with more power and military might than legitimate governments, able to hire entire armies of mercenaries with futuristic weapons to fight off Tanya's demons. Even gaining a foothold in those places would be monstrously difficult and achieved only with the expenditure of vast amounts of blood and treasure. Or maybe 'blood' was the wrong word. 'Ichor' might be better.

Turf wars were a necessary part of her plan. More than that, they were inevitable and always had been for as long as organized crime had existed. However, Tanya was wary of making them too overt. Too much violence spilling out onto the streets, especially in cities that considered themselves to be safe and peaceful, might lead the authorities to conclude that her gang was just as bad as all the others and needed to be dealt with in as thorough a manner as possible. Also, it might attract the attention of Heaven and its angels, who so far had done nothing to impede her plans – but surely they must, sooner or later? No doubt they thought it beneath their dignity to side with drug lords and slavers, even if they genuinely believed it was for a good cause, but eventually, when Tanya's criminal gangs grew too powerful or their true nature was revealed to the world, the heavenly host would swoop down and claim to be the saviors of humanity. Alternatively, maybe they didn't care what the demons did on Earth because they saw it as a meaningless distraction that must soon come to an end.

So, what successes could she and her minions claim to have achieved over the past year? Had their efforts done anything to make the world a better place? Examining the statistics, she took some pride in the fact that, in numerous places, the price of hard drugs, illegal weaponry and trafficked women, for example, had increased by more than tenfold. It was still possible to buy all of those things if one was sufficiently determined, had the right contacts and was willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money, but the majority of customers were being priced out of the market, which meant that dealers and suppliers were finding it impossible to maximize their profits by selling in bulk. As a result, fewer innocents were being sold into slavery – perhaps not significantly fewer, but fewer – guns were becoming rarer in some places, only to be replaced with knives, baseball bats and attack dogs – the illegal drugs trade was becoming even more cutthroat than before, and various gangs were struggling to make ends meet. It wasn't as much as she'd hoped, but at least she'd done something. She could be proud of that, at least.

Even as she was pondering these thoughts, she heard a voice. Across the gulf of time and space, through the spectral barriers between the different planes of existence, she heard it calling to her. "Tanya Tanya Tanya," it said.

She couldn't help but groan, knowing that once again she would be called upon to save a member of the Justice League from whatever mortal peril they'd found themselves in this time. Glancing up at the clock and then the calendar on her wall, she was surprised to realise that it had been three months since the last time. Huh…

Standing up, she moved out from behind her desk, focused her mind on the exact location of whoever was summoning her, and then opened a portal. On the other side, she saw an unfamiliar place: a city of metallic ziggurats suffused by the faintly greenish light of an alien sun.

"Intriguing," she murmured, as she stepped through.

On the other side, she saw that the city was surrounded by a desert landscape similar to many she had seen during her past lives. Even though this was a place she'd never been to before, in some ways it was like coming home.

The emerald sun beat down on her, the air was clogged with dust, and there were dozens of robotic drones flying about like so many large and bulbous insects. The ziggurats had a peculiar, eldritch look about them, which could be evidence that they hadn't been designed by humans, but she'd seen weirder things designed and built by humans plenty of times. It was alien, but it filled her with a strange feeling of deja vu.

Looking down at the streets below, she saw hundreds of haggard and ragged slaves, chained and collared, wearily tramping back and forth, busy with an assortment of menial tasks. Their overseers were four-armed giants who lashed at them with whips, or stood to one side and watched over them, heavily-armed and menacing. When she saw them, Tanya wanted to scream and rage at such a senseless waste of manpower. This was clearly an advanced civilisation, so the only possible reason to use slavery was deliberate cruelty. But she hadn't come here to remonstrate with a group of thuggish henchmen who were mere cogs in a great machine of stupid business practices; a member of the Justice League had called for help. She would begin with that.

As she rushed away from them, she noticed the weapons the alien guards were armed with. Very familiar weapons. Lightsabers. Phasers. Lasguns. Vibroblades. Rayguns. Needlers. An eclectic collection, no two alike. She knew them all very well; they were old friends she hadn't seen in years, but she recognized them all the same. Her hands itched to hold them again. Purely psychosomatic, of course. It wasn't as if she had a physical body that could itch.

Then, she came to a gladiatorial arena, around which a baying mob had gathered to watch someone being mauled to death. The walls were tall and strong, the railings were thick, and the people up on the stands had an

excellent view of the bloodstained sands below, where a bearded muscular man was being forced to fight an enormous tentacular monster. The creature had a withered look about it and was clearly suffering in the heat. It had been goaded, branded and whip-scarred, maddened and terrified, and was now lashing about in a rage, for which Tanya didn't blame it in the slightest, except that it had come close to killing someone who was presumably a member of the Justice League.

Tanya didn't recognize him at first, but then: "Superman?!" Her eyes widened and she gazed at him with disbelief. "What are you doing here?"

He was wrapped in the tattered remains of his red cloak, bruised and battered, and thinner than she had ever seen him before, but she wasn't mistaken. He was definitely Superman.

"I'll explain later," he muttered, giving her the faintest glimmer of a smile. "For now… help? Please?"

"Of course," she said, lifting him high into the air, out of reach of any flailing tentacles. There were a few disappointed groans from the crowd, but the majority seemed intrigued by this latest development.

Gazing down at the frenzied beast, she murmured, "I am going to send you home." It was the work of a few moments to dip into its mind and find the place it longed for: a swampy forest, where mists wafted through the trees, slime seeped through black, sludgy soil, and the air seemed to shudder with the high-pitched screeching noise of thousands of insects.

"Nice place," she said, sending it on its way. With a noise like thunder, it vanished from sight, returning to its place of dreams. Then, she turned to Superman and asked, "Would you like me to do the same for you?"

"Uh… Metropolis, if you don't mind," he said. "I have an apartment there."

"344 Clinton Street. That's fine."

He looked conflicted for a moment, as if he didn't like the fact that she knew where he lived – or he wished she hadn't said it out loud – but he didn't argue. Instead, he merely nodded.

Tanya vanished him as well. Then, she looked down at the crowds of outraged spectators who were yelling obscenities at her, infuriated that she'd robbed them of their entertainment. She looked at the thousands of slaves spread throughout the city, performing meaningless drudge work for the benefit of no one, while heavily-armed guards were ready to punish them for any reason at all. She looked at the glimmering ziggurats, the robotic drones and other technological marvels on display, and grieved for what this city could have been.

"Amateurs. You've created a Hell of your own, just as pointless as the original, but without the inventive cruelty and depravity that made it such a work of art. I hated it, but I could at least appreciate the effort that went into its creation. But this…this is just a crude, worthless imitation." She sneered. "I should destroy it, but first… let's see what I can do to improve it."

With barely a thought, she made all of the slaves' bindings crumble to dust. Then, she did the same to the guard's weapons. However, it occurred to her that even if they were unarmed, they were huge, muscular and accustomed to violence. Because of the privations they'd suffered, many of the slaves were weak, timid and emaciated; even if their guards were heavily outnumbered, it was hardly a fair fight. So, Tanya did what she could to rectify the situation.

There was a chorus of screams as the guards realised they had been blinded. Tanya knew that it would wear off in a few days, if they survived that long. Many of the former slaves, revelling in their sudden freedom and realising that they had a chance for revenge, were determined to make sure that they wouldn't.

Surveying her handiwork, Tanya saw the eruption of violence, chaos and confusion all over the city, and permitted herself a small, satisfied smile. "Much better," she said, as she departed.