At this time we must turn our attention away from our subject of interest, Number Five, in order to examine is sister Vanya, who holds a special place in our story, much as a brick holds a special place in the story of the window it just smashed.

An outdated version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes Vanya Hargreeves as "Average, slight, and ordinary." Her hair is listed as "hair colored" and her eyes "unimportant". However the updated entry into the new guide scheduled to go on sale next quarter has a bit more to say, stating "Ultimate f***ing instrument of chaos, The Big One, absolutely do not f**k with this f***ing woman you have no idea, holy sh*t." (Censoring courtesy of the narrator.)

This is because Vanya Hargreeves, the most unremarkable being in three star systems (more unremarkable even than Miss Agnes Griddy of the now lamentably incinerated doughnut shop) was revealed this whole time to be chaos' hidden champion, possessed of immense and nigh uncontrollable power which, in a series of events we will explore directly, she used to utterly destroy all life on earth after being rudely interrupted during a musical solo (a feeling performers everywhere shall certainly be able to relate to).

In order to better understand the advent of this highly improbable scenario we must begin with Sir Reginald Hargreeves himself, a by all accounts rather unpleasant fellow of indeterminate origin and questionable morals who's favored pastimes included aviation, child trafficking, vigilantism and kicking puppies*. Reginald Hargreeves had a dream, or at least an idea, and it wasn't a very good idea but he went ahead with it anyway because he was old and rich and rich old men tend to do as they please with very little forethought or consideration as to how it puts others out.

Reginald Hargreeves decided to have children.

Not just any children of course, and certainly not his own as that would require he be desirable to someone. Instead he did what any wealthy being does when they'd rather not bother with the details and spent a lot of money very fast in order to purchase his children wholesale, acquiring them as newborns in mint condition before they aged up and lost market value. Now it should be noted that these were not regular children at all, but very special children with very special abilities, abilities he liked to make little notes about in dusty leather journals because cultivating an air of studiousness was an important aspect of any man who wore a monocle, else people might laugh at him for it.

On the subject of monocles, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says, "What's the bloody point, go buy a pair of glasses you pretentious wanker."

Regardless in due course Sir Reginald Hargreeves had possession seven magic children, which was the perfect start to a traveling theater group but he pushed them into crime fighting instead and the universe has been a lesser place for it ever since. To facilitate this rather hair-brained schemed he employed a variety of methods of instruction and training, most of which seemed to involve locking the children in various small, dark places and leaving them there for extended periods of time. (Surprisingly this did not have quite the desired effect and rather than become superheros when they grew up the Hargreeves siblings had several psychoses named after them instead.)

Now Hargreeves senior was a very educated man. This means he knew a great many things about a wide variety of topics, unfortunately none of which had anything to do with children, life, or practical matters such as the quickest way to get downtown during rush hour or how to tie his shoes. Predictably, this led to a rather bad habit of leaving out critical bits of his children's education. For example, while he taught them a good deal about things like target practice and how to incapacitate an enemy with a paper clip, his instruction was a touch limited on subjects like relationships; an oversight that ultimately ended with two of the seven siblings falling in love with each other, another life partnered to a mannequin and Vanya deciding her ideal match was a lunatic murderer living under an assumed name who's hobbies included petty theft, wood carving and patricide. As one might suspect, this was not the most stable of conditions for discovering one's long-dormant talent of being able to smite people via sound wave. (It should be noted here that Vanya herself had no knowledge of this power, as it's existence was one of those things Sir Reginald Hargreeves decided not to mention to anyone.)

Moving on

It is a universal rule that all siblings fight, the sole exception being siblings born on the planet Xerra 3, because the population of Xerra 3 consists of a single vast organism which stretches almost the entire circumference of the planet and who procreates by splitting it's consciousness via osmosis, and therefore any physical confrontations merely result in the creature engaged in a fistfight with itself. (Historians are 98 percent certain Xerra 3 was the origin point of the universally recognized phrase, "stop hitting yourself"). We mention this because it is important to understand that when Allison and her sister got into an argument over Vanya's somewhat questionable taste in men, it was a fairly routine sort of sibling disagreement and she had absolutely no reason to believe it would end with her nearly dying. Chaos, hard at work behind the scenes, had other ideas.

Due to this unfortunate outcome Vanya once again found herself locked in a small, dark space by her family because common sense was another one of those things that Sir Reginald Hargreeves decided was beneath him and didn't bother passing on to his children. She retaliated by using her newfound, near limitless power to blow the small dark space to smithereens, followed by the house, the surrounding neighborhood and most of her wits. She then popped off to change for a very important violin concerto because family drama aside, it's terribly rude to keep ones audience waiting. Her siblings, undaunted by failure and in possession of more enthusiasm than wisdom, went after her with very little thought given as to what they would do when they got there.

We shall not embarrass the Hargreeves children by going into the details of that final confrontation, as anyone who wants an accounting of them can simply purchase a copy of Ulog Zolprender's anthology "1001 Top Galactic Screw Ups" and read the relevant chapters. Suffice to say it did not end well for anyone living on planet Earth at the time, and the poor moon took it in the shorts too.

If there is an underlying theme to the various narrative threads found in this story, it is that chaos must be in possession of a sublime sense of cosmic irony, as it had been through every character's attempts to prevent disaster that ultimately caused them to fall victim to it. Hargreeves' efforts to repress his adopted daughters' chaotic power led to it being unleashed in it's most deadly form, the Temps Aeternalis' struggle to control free will caused their best agents to all go rogue and threw the entire organization into complete disarray, our nominal heroes through their own actions were the very cause of the apocalypse they were attempting to prevent, and Number Five, highly successful instrument of chaos and twelfth deadliest assassin in the universe (among carbon-based, bipedal lifeforms in possession of three arms or less) was faced with the fact that his entire life and all of it's struggles therein had been nothing more than the slow build-up to an inevitable and spectacularly destructive punchline.

Chaos, wherever it was to be found, was surely laughing uproariously over the whole spectacle.

And yet, all was not lost. D'Olor0z, still embedded deep in Number Five's limbic system, casually reminded their stupefied host that he had spent the better part of fifty years being carefully trained in the science of traveling into the past, and what was the point of nearly having his brain melted by quantum physics if he wasn't going to use it? Number Five, who really was a bit cracked, insisted on taking his entire family with him despite the fact it required a number of hasty, last minute calculations on D'Olor0z' part least they all be torn apart at the atomic level, and wouldn't that put a damper on everyone's day.

Setting coordinates for the nearest coffee shop because they were definitely going to need a very strong cuppa after all this, D'Olor0z fed the information into their vessel's mind and the whole barmy lot of them disappeared in a flash of blue light that would have been very impressive to any bystanders, were they not busy being incinerated at the time.

If it seems at the end of it all the net gain of this cosmic practical joke was that Temps Aeternalis got exactly what they'd wanted all along in the destruction of the earth and all that came of their attempts to wrangle control of elemental chaos was inconvenience to themselves, well. Perhaps there is a lesson there to be learned about simply letting things take their course and trusting that even if the universe doesn't seem to know what it's doing, it's a fair cop to say it has a far better idea of what it's about than any of the rest of us.

Then again, Number Five and his siblings are still out there together somewhere - or rather, somewhen - determined to change the course of history, their butterfly wings undoubtedly stirring up endless trouble and unforeseen consequences throughout the galaxy so perhaps this is not the end after all, but merely an intermission of sorts. A well-timed pause before the encore.

We shall see.

*citation needed