The Prof always was great with the banter; even gave Birdy a run for his money. Had a real flair for those top shelf words too – I remember one time he called me a galloping priapism. I was pretty irked about it until I looked up what priapism meant and had to concede the assessment.
“Do you like my new weapon?” D’eath asked.
He raised a clenched fist to show off his latest invention. The Prof was always coming up with new contraptions – earthquake machines, shrink-rays, one time he even designed a doohickey that could bring nightmares to life (what that guy couldn’t do with a pile of old magnets and transistors!). The device he was showing me now was a gauntlet – a Nintendo Power Glove by way of Thomas Edison – cutting-edge tech running on old-timey cogs and camshafts. I had to give it to the guy, he wore it well. And they say steampunk is just Goths discovering the color brown!
“I call it my Nemesis Gauntlet,” D’eath said.
“Don’t get too used to it, Professor,” I told him, “I’m about to dismantle it along with the rest of yo—”
But before I could get to the meat of my sentence sandwich, he zapped me right in the hog. A pulse of blue light flew out of his gauntlet, rebounded off my groin then landed back in the glove like a catcher’s mitt. No damage done, mind you – didn’t even feel a sizzle. Truth is, I haven’t really experienced what you’d call pain since the Reagan Administration. Least not at this point in the story.
It was time to engage in some hand-to-head combat. I put on my war face and went to give D’eath the hurt. I guess it was the third wall he knocked me through that I realized something was off. It’s not every day a string bean in a tin suit holds his own against a guy who can punch a glory hole through the hull of a battle ship. No doubt about it, the Prof had been eating his Wheaties.
D’eath’s glove made a PING noise like Mom’s oven timer then he hit me with another blast of blue before palming the return. Nice try, but it might as well have been a summer’s breeze for all the damage it did. Now it was my turn. I ran a mental inventory of my superpowers. Which one to demolish him with? Champagne problems I know, but when you have as many tools in the box as I do, choice is half the battle.
I opted for heat vision. Enough cowboying around I figured – let’s see how the Prof liked it when I turned his Nemesis Gauntlet into a puddle of slag. I squinted my eyelids for maximum focus and gave him a white-hot dose of my eye beams—
—but the Professor’s peepers transformed into a pair of sizzling marbles and he stopped the blast mid-air with an optic lightshow of his own.
“An eye-beam for an eye-beam,” he said, proud as a peacock.
I was going to have to work for my lunch this time.
I grabbed a couple of handfuls of floor and tore a strip from under the Prof like I was shaking out a dirty rug. To my surprise he flashed into the air before the ripple could knock him flat and hovered there cross-legged, grinning like a smug fakir. Seems D’eath could give gravity the middle finger too now. Not cool.
There was that PING again and D’eath set back on the ground. I was starting to clue into what was happening. My guess – and this was just off my dome – was that his gauntlet was letting him temporarily bogart my superpowers, meaning anything I threw at him, he could throw right back. I needed to separate D’eath from his glove. Instinct told me to tear it off along with the arm that went with it, but thanks to the Heroes Code I’m not allowed to rip a man’s limbs out of their sockets and go John Bonham on his skull.[38]
Unfortunately the Professor isn’t bound by the same set of rules, and used that distinct advantage to beat the ever-living tar out of me. BAM! POW! ZZONK! I’m telling you, the guy bounced me around like a beach ball at a Kiss concert.
I came back at him with a punch that would have made a normal man’s heart explode in his chest like a wad of C-4 but D’eath caught my fist in his palm; his arm a pillar of iron. Next thing I knew he was grabbing me by the scruff of the neck and mashing my face into a stack of bullion. As he pulled me away I saw an impression of my grimace stamped into the gold, then he released me, letting me flop to the floor like a spoiled child.
I tapped out but the Professor grabbed me again and slam-dunked my face into the floor. BAM! My head was full of bees. Everything seemed far away suddenly, as though I was staring down the wrong end of a telescope. The situation was getting to look real dicey. Unless I figured out a way to come back at him fast, D’eath was going to take me out of the gene pool. He wound up for the deathblow and launched a fist like a freight train—
—but I knocked it aside, guided it past me and used the Prof’s own momentum to bury his fist in the wall. As D’eath struggled to free himself I used my window to lunge forward, tear off his Nemesis Gauntlet and knock his narrow ass to the ground. After that I snagged him by his breadstick wrist, pulled a pair of cuffs from my utility belt and went to give him some jailhouse bling.
“You’re under arrest, Professor,” I said. I did my best to make the ‘Professor’ part sound sarcastic in a ‘nice one, Einstein,’ kind of way, but I can’t be sure the satire shone through.
Ordinarily this is the point I’d find myself slapping irons on a cackling hologram, or D’eath would trigger the roof to collapse and give me the slip in the wreckage, or his face would swing open on a hinge and I’d see a bunch of motors and wires where flesh and blood ought to be (robot decoys, the last refuge of the scoundrel). It’s ridiculous, I’ve knocked D’eath down a million times but he’d always chumbawamba back up again.
Not this time though. The cuffs snapped shut –CLICK– and the arrest was bona fide. D’eath wasn’t going anywhere, unlike his Mandroids, who’d left him for dust while we were busy slugging it out. That was a new one I had to admit. They didn’t even bother taking any gold with them – the bullion was right where it was meant to be – not a brick unaccounted for. The guards inventoried top to bottom but it turns out the only thing missing was the vault’s tibonium door. A pretty good haul given that the stuff’s worth more than its weight in gold, but impossible to fence. I’ve no idea why D’eath had his henchmen drag that thing away, and to be honest, I don’t much care. I’m not one to question every little thing. I find life’s like watching a movie that way – sit tight and keep your mouth shut and everything will come together in the end. All that mattered was that I finally had Professor D’eath, and dead to rights too.
So why was he wearing a grin like he’d sold me a Lamborghini?
*****
Is this really the end of Professor D’eath’s criminal career?
Will Captain Might ever recover that stolen plutonium?
And isn’t about time a love interest showed up, you know, for the chicks?
Find out next week… same Cap-time, same Cap-channel!
*****
*****
Part Two: Powerless
The Journal of Captain Might
Written by Captain Might
Footnotes after the fact by Captain Might
January 19th — March 12th
*****
January 18th
Today the Mayor of New York called a statewide holiday to thank me for a job well done. I guess a lot of stories start that way. A lot of mine do anyway.
Professor D’eath had been a pain in our collective assh*le for too long – no wonder people were so glad to see me finally put him away. Running around stealing plutonium and murdering folks – you won’t win any friends that way.
I was pretty psyched about putting the big fish in the tank too. Hooking D’eath was going to go a long way to blotting out the malicious sh*t Rex Kettner and the rest of my critics have been running on me. Maybe now the press will quit being the brown in my rainbow.
I made a big show of perp walking D’eath into the station personally. The crowds showed up to watch in their thousands, lining the streets, hooting and hollering.
“We love you, Captain Might! You’re the best! Have all of our babies!”
I waved back and p
ressed the flesh. “Please, I’m just made of the same stuff as the rest of you... just way more of it.” (I kept that last part under my breath obviously).
My colleagues gave me a roaring round of applause when I stepped into the C.H.A.M.P lobby between the legs of my giant effigy.
Fish Face gave me a big wet slap on the back. “Nice collar, Cap.”
Even Birdy gave me some love. “Good going, amigo.”
Professor D’eath was taken away and led to a holding cell. After that the Mayor stopped by to congratulate me personally for taking the Prof off streets.
“We’re going to honor you with a fireworks display so huge it’ll turn a week of nights into day!” he said. “Sure, the lack of sleep we’ll suffer is bound to make the domestic suicide rate spike a notch or two, but I say that’s a small price to pay!”
Finally everything’s back to normal. All’s right with the world. The only thing that’s left now is to get Professor D’eath to confess where he stashed that stolen plutonium. That can wait for now though. Today I celebrate, tomorrow I seize the day.
January 19th
Stripped of his steam-powered exoskeleton and dressed in a convict’s jumpsuit, Professor D’eath looked like a plucked chicken. The only gadget he had on now was the dampening collar we’d fitted him with; the one that jammed up his superpowers and left him looking like a senior citizen with a whiplash injury.
I watched D’eath through the interview room’s one-way glass. He was sat perfectly still, wrists chained to the interrogation table, hands palm down on its surface as though he was conducting a séance.
“Try not to lean on the Prof too hard,” Birdy whispered. “The last thing we need is him slipping through the legal cracks because you get too handsy in there.”
He was right. I couldn’t afford to take that risk, much as I wanted to beat D’eath so bad it earned him a new nickname. If I was going to get what I wanted from this suspect I’d need to play him with a dab more finesse.
I pushed through the door of the interview room and paced up and down behind the D’eath’s chair.
“You like science and stuff, right, Professor?” I asked. “Here’s a pop quiz for you, how strong do you think I am? Go on, don’t be shy, have a guess.”
His eyes bored holes in me.
“Give up?” I said. “Okay, you got me; that was a trick question. Fact is, no one knows how strong I am because they never built a machine man enough to put it to the test.”
I took a seat opposite the Professor. “You know, sometimes I have to wonder; what are my limits?”
“If you even have any,” Birdy offered, waltzing into the room and taking the chair next to me.
“If I even have any,” I repeated. “I mean, if a panicked mother can hoist a two ton auto off her baby, what do you think I’m capable of?”
“I guess it would depend how motivated you were,” Birdy suggested. “Are you feeling motivated now?”
“Good question,” I said, popping my knuckles and meeting D’eath’s eye. “How about we find out?”
That was meant to be the Prof’s cue to spill the beans. Instead, all I got for my trouble was a 360 degree eye roll that made me want to break my hand slapping the guy.
“If you’re done prattling,” sighed D’eath, “would you mind placing me in a cell? You’re giving my ears Down’s syndrome.”
The guy gave as much f*ck as a nun on her period.
“Have it your way then,” I said. “Let’s see if your attitude improves once one of your fellow inmates turns your assh*le into a Christmas stocking.”
If D’eath wanted a cell he was damn sure getting one – same place as his partner, Mimix – down in the deepest, darkest confines of the Supermax. That’s what we call C.H.A.M.P’s detention center, the place we keep supervillains prior to trial. The Supermax is a basement complex custom built to detain felons before we send them upstate to break rocks.[39] It’s iron clad, airtight and manned 24/7 by superhuman screws. The place is locked up tighter than a tick’s cooze. Or so we thought.
According to D’eath’s jailer, the Prof waited until he was secure behind bars then activated a device disguised as a pinkie ring. The ring was his key out of there – a state-of-the-art dingus straight out of a SyFy original that opened up a portal and let him teleport on home. D’eath didn’t so much as offer a “cheerio,” just scienced up his exit and gave us the Irish goodbye.
I guess that solves the locked room mystery at the nuclear plant anyway. Damnit. I should have used my X-ray vision on the Prof’s jewelry when I booked him – instead I got sloppy and now the coop’s flown. He even took his prison collar with him, which proved good as useless since it turns out being a one-man brain trust doesn’t actually count as a superpower. Son of a bitch. After all that work, Professor D’eath escaped the Supermax in the space of a day. Honestly, when it comes to motherf*ckery you don’t want to bet against that guy.
January 20th
Of all the dogsh*t days for an occupational performance review, why did it have to be this one? Here I am with a bloodbath and the theft of sixteen-hundred pounds of enriched plutonium to solve and I’m stuck at the station having to justify my job to some snot-nosed Government stooge. An evaluation officer – that’s what he calls himself. I’m not going to waste time describing him in any more detail than that, just imagine a man, only smaller.
None of us is safe – from C.H.A.M.P’s Chairman all the way to Gerry the Janitor – everyone’s getting a flashlight up their ass. The stooge caught us with our pants down too; we weren’t expecting a review for another couple of months yet. Rex Kettner’s to blame – haranguing us on his talk show and firing off angry petitions left right and center – no wonder the sudden misgivings about our competence. Professor D’eath’s prison break looping on TV like the news developed a stammer hasn’t helped either.
The evaluation officer tapped at a clipboard with a Bic and looked at me with his cardboard brown eyes. “Explain to me again exactly how you allowed the prisoner slip custody.”
Honestly, can’t some people find better things to do than pouring stank on the guy who once saved the planet from Armageddon twice in a single weekend? (It would have been three times if it weren’t for Baron Blight getting laid up with a cold just as he was preparing to spread his ultra-virus).
“Listen, son,” I said, “how about you step off, respect the tights and let me do my job?”
“Your job,” he replied, licking the tip of his pen, “is to keep me happy.”
This f*cking guy, he’d call the health inspector on his granddaughter’s tea party.[40]
January 21st
With that distraction out of the way I could finally get back to the job of putting a bead on Professor D’eath. That’s what I figured anyway. Instead, I spent the whole of today conducting a gruelling hard-target search that turned up exactly bupkis. Damn it. Where had that magpie feathered his nest?
I was bone-weary by the end of my shift, but I wasn’t done yet. I decided to pay a late night visit to the station to see if we had anything on file that might fast-track the manhunt. If that sounds desperate it’s because it was. When it comes to detective work I’m a natural, but only in the ‘disaster’ sense.
Since I was stopping by after hours, Gerry was the last man on the clock. Gerry you won’t know, and don’t bother looking for his trading card either – he’s the company janitor, not some Spandex-swaddled superguy. He’s also a friend, a father figure and an all-round good egg. Going on sixty-five and bent double from years of mopping floors, Gerry isn’t your man for fighting mad scientists or repelling hordes of Mandroids, but that doesn’t stop him being an essential cog in the C.H.A.M.P machine. His job may seem small fry, but without Gerry manning the fort I’d be left changing my own toilet rolls. I’m telling you, it’s guys like Gerry who are the real superheroes.
I flew by C.H.A.M.P and had the old man let me into C.H.A.M.P HQ with his janitor keys. I thanked Gerry for his help and gave him a fri
endly pat on the back, being extra careful not to snap him in half like a dry twig. Accidents will happen. I got overenthusiastic with a high-five one time and put Birdy in traction for a month. If I close my eyes I can still see him bouncing off of the break room wall like a meat pinball. Just as well I didn’t go in for a bro-grab really, I’d be on death row right now.
I made for the incident room and dug out Professor D’eath’s case file. It came with a rap sheet thicker than a preacher’s bible but – no surprise – had absolute zilch to go on in regards to known whereabouts.
“How do I find D’eath?” I asked Gerry, thinking out loud. “Usually I just follow the trail of carnage,” I added, answering my own question. “Not that there’s been much of that lately, except for Dr Rune getting offed.” I paced up and down some more. “Rune and D’eath never had prior though – at least not that I know of. I should pull his file though shouldn’t I? See if that turns anything up?”
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