Memoirs of a Crimefighter

by Seth Jacob

  “I think it’s like you said outside the Z-Ray Lounge. Mistress Gorgon will resurface eventually, and I’ll find her. Maybe she’ll slip away from me again, but then I’ll find her again, and again, until I get the information I need from her to put this whole search to rest. I’m not going to give up. Not yet, anyway.”

  “You’re on the right track, Spectacle, but you’re forgetting something.” Ultra Lady smiled. It was like the smile of a math teacher who could see that I was close to getting the right answer to the algebra problem, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

  “What’s that? Let me guess, I should poke around the rubble of the Z-Ray Lounge for clues, right?”

  “No—”

  “Hold on, I can get this, I should interrogate Mistress Gorgon’s known associates. I should hunt down her henchwomen, the Harpies. That’s it?”

  “No, Spectacle. No…what you’re forgetting is that you’re not alone. Not anymore. You just need to ask for help, and you’ve got the resources of the Superb 6 on your side.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Of course. Your dad, he really was a mentor to me. I mean, we only teamed up a handful of times, but he helped me when I was starting out. He could have…taken advantage, you know how some of these older male superheroes are. But he didn’t. He gave me a lot of real help and advice. I wouldn’t be in the Superb 6 without Jack Titan, and I feel like…”

  “You feel like I remind you of him. Right. Great.”

  “No, that’s not what I was going to say. I feel like…looking at you, looking at the kind of superhero you are, I feel like you could use the same help that your dad gave me. He would have wanted that, I think.”

  “Oh,” I said, and for the first time since my dad died, I felt some shadow of what closure must feel like fall over me. Ultra Lady put her white gloved hands on top of mine on the table.

  “Seriously, Spectacle. You’re not in this alone anymore. We’re going to find Mistress Gorgon and the Superb 6 will get the identity of whoever stole your father’s trophy room. Maybe Sleight of Hand will cast a confession spell on her, maybe Queen Quantum will extract the information on a subatomic level. One way or another, we’ll return what was taken from you.”

  “Thank you,” I answered, and I started to say some clever, smart ass response, but I stopped myself. Sometimes being a superhero can feel like a never ending war with costumed psychopaths with superpowers to back up their severe psychological disorders. But sometimes, very rarely, there are moments like in that museum with Ultra Lady, surrounded by half a century of superhero history and a roomful of people dedicated to the same life of costumed crimefighting, sometimes there are moments when you realize something important about being a superhero. We’re all in this together.

  Ultra Lady and I had our dinner, and we changed the subject to something a little less heavy. We talked about the normal things. We talked about movies we had seen recently, superhero gossip, TV shows we were catching up on, and eventually the charity event began. There was an auction to raise funds for the museum, and absurdly wealthy people bid on absurdly expensive things, like a signed pair of Doc Hyper’s latest limited edition running shoes, a couple of weeks of training in superhuman MMA from Supra, and a date with Anhur who promised to answer any of the lucky winner’s questions about “that spoiled little shit” King Tut.

  After the auction, Queen Quantum played a few songs, and she was incredible. She played the guitar, drums, bass, and the piano, by manipulating their molecules all at once with her superpowers, like a quantum mechanical one woman band. Then Beyond Man talked about attending the opening of the museum in the early 70’s, and how the kids there thought he was just an actor in a Beyond Man costume. He managed to drop a not so subtle plug for Extradimensional Fitness at the end of his speech. Sleight of Hand finished the event with a really touching story about how he actually served time in the building back when it was a prison. He spoke about having his freedom taken away in this place, being under constant surveillance, treated like he was less than human because of his addiction to SUHP and his superhuman abilities, how he lost all hope for humanity in this place. He spoke about coming to the opening with Beyond Man years after he served his sentence, and seeing it converted into a museum inspired him to overcome his addiction to SUHP. The fact that it still stood today filled him with hope that maybe humanity will make it through the darkness. Maybe, just maybe, everything really will be okay.

  It was an amazing night, and at the end of it, Ultra Lady and I exchanged phone numbers, and we agreed to meet again soon. I walked home, something I had started to do more and more, and I was filled with a feeling of hope and optimism as I took in the night air. I felt like anything was possible. I should have known better.

  I was about to cross the street outside my building when I tripped and almost fell on my face. My left foot wouldn’t lift off of the ground, and when I looked down, I saw that my shoe was covered in a viscous, purple goo that rooted it to the asphalt. I looked behind me and saw a mob of men in white hazmat suits and black gas masks rushing towards me. There was at least fifty of them and they each carried a black hose that connected to a set of purple tanks on their backs, and I yanked at my stuck foot so hard that my shoe ripped off along with most of the hair on my ankle.

  I bolted. I ran from that hazmat clad battalion and I leapt into the air, but their black hoses shot a shower of purple immobilizing goo at me that plastered my legs and shoulders and arms and pulled me back down to earth. I crashed onto the street in a pile of purple ooze, and the hazmat suit wearing bastards surrounded me. I struggled to pull myself out of the purple adhesive goo swallowing me up, I thrashed my legs and wrenched my arms which were tangled up in ropes of stretchy purple goo, but it was like fighting against quicksand. The more I struggled, the more that purple gunk sucked me back into it and devoured me whole. The hazmat horde slowly circled in as I flailed around in the dripping, sticky mass of purple goo. They looked like one giant animal with many arms and legs moving in for the kill on their wounded prey. One of them took the purple tanks off of his back, and he raised them high above his head.

  “Goddamn it,” I sighed, and then he brought them down on my skull.

  The lights went out.

  Chapter 11: After Hours

  I came to in complete darkness. A black hood was over my face. My head was pounding with pain, so much that it was hard to think about anything but the pulsating ache in my forehead. I tried to stand up, but I was tied to a chair and I couldn’t move any part of my body. My mind was consumed with total panic, a panic so strong that all rational problem solving parts of my brain shut down, and I tried to rip free of the bonds restraining me to the chair almost completely on animal instinct. It took me a few minutes to recall what happened. I have never been more convinced that I was about to die than in that moment when it all came back to me.

  “He’s awake,” I heard someone say behind me.

  Someone pulled the hood off of my head in one quick motion like tearing off a band-aid. I couldn’t see for a few seconds as my eyes adjusted from the darkness. I blinked a few times, and then I saw that I was in the Flasked Crusader. All the lights were on in the bar. The curtains were drawn over the windows. The hazmat thugs stood around the walls of the place like silent, judging witnesses at an execution. One of them had familiar eyes. It took me a moment to place them, partly hidden behind the clear plastic of the black gas mask. It was Jane, the bartender who told me exaggerated stories about my father and The Punster.

  Thick steel cables were wrapped around my body and tied me to the chair, and blood had dripped down my forehead and onto my costume jacket. I tasted my blood in my mouth, and I spit it at those mute, purple sludge spraying bastards.

  “It’s so nice to finally meet you, Spectacle!” A cheery voice spoke behind me, and I tried to turn my head but I couldn’t see who it was.

  “Sorry about my Goons roughing you up. They’re new recruits. Not too experienced with my goo formula an
d its sedative properties yet. Bashing you in the head was completely uncalled for, the goo would have knocked you out. No muss, no fuss.” I still couldn’t see who was talking to me, but he sounded very warm. He sounded sincere and friendly.

  “I’d offer to shake your hand, but I’m sure you’re bound to decline,” the strangely pleasant man said. He walked in front of me then, and as soon as I saw him, I knew exactly who he was, and there was no doubt in my mind that he had arranged for my father’s trophy room to be stolen.

  “No pun intended,” The Punster said. He stood in front of me with an air of overwhelming kindness. I was still panicked and afraid that I was about to be killed, but something about him started to put me at ease. There was something in his eyes, some sort of apologetic understanding as he looked at me, and it was oddly comforting.

  “You’re not much to look at, are you? You’re not so much Jack Titan’s heir as you are Jack Titan’s err,” The Punster slapped me lightly on the face as he threw out this new, even stupider pun.

  He paced around me a bit and looked at me. The Punster had changed very little from what I saw of him in the clippings I found in my father’s apartment. He was about six foot five and roughly 65 years old. He was mostly bald but he had white hair on the sides and back of his head. He had perky, almost jolly green eyes and a perpetually wry, crooked smile, like he always had a joke on the tip of his tongue but he was waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it. He wore a dark purple turtleneck with a small, quarter sized, “P!” symbol on the breast. He was a little flabby, but seemed surprisingly spry and energetic for a man of his age. The Punster stopped pacing and crossed his arms.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Kill you? No, of course not, Spectacle. Killing you would attract a lot of unwanted superhero attention…I don’t need the Superb 6 breathing down my neck. I know how this looks, but you’ve got the wrong idea about this whole situation.”

  “You had your henchmen ambush me…knock me out…and now I’m tied up. I’m pretty confident that I have the absolute right idea.” Punster walked over to the bar and dragged a stool in front of me. He sat on the stool, and he scratched the top of his bald head.

  “Look, Spectacle. Your father’s death…it really rattled me. We were rivals for a long time. Over 40 years. What do I have to show for it? I’m pushing 70, and I wasted my entire life on a silly, petty rivalry. And how did it end? In the most anti-climactic way possible, with Jack Titan overdosing on soup like any ordinary souphead. It’s a true tragedy, the way your father died.” The Punster seemed genuinely mournful. He was quiet for a moment, and I was taken off guard by his sincerity. This was not the mad, egomaniacal Punster that I had imagined from all those clippings and from Anhur’s stories.

  “Anyway. Jack Titan’s passing, it made me realize that it’s time for me to move on. That’s why I had the Specialist steal that box of your father’s things from your apartment. You showed up to the Flasked Crusader…which I own, by the way. The pun name should have clued you in. But you showed up there, talking to Jane, who works for me, of course.” The Punster nodded towards Jane who stood near him. Even through the gas mask, you could see her loyalty and devotion to The Punster shine as she nodded back at him.

  “She told you I was dead, which was a lie, obviously. Most people assume I’m dead. Dead, or a weak, elderly man. And that’s the way I like it. I like to be underestimated,” The Punster said, and he smiled.

  “Anyway. She called me right away…and I just had to have closure. I can’t tell you how touched I was when the Specialist procured that box for me and it was practically an altar to our rivalry. There’s so much history in that box,” Punster got up from the stool, and he walked out of my line of sight. A few seconds later, he returned with that cardboard box marked “Trophy Room” that I had been searching for all this time. He sat back down on the stool with the box in his lap.

  “But, as I said earlier, I’m trying to move on. I’m trying to let go of what I realize now was a shallow, childish feud with your father. So…I want to make you an offer.”

  “An offer?”

  “An offer for this box you’ve been hunting for. What do you want for it, Spectacle?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars cash, right now, in exchange for this box and your word that you’ll never try to obtain it again. What do you say?”

  I’d like to say that I didn’t even consider it, but the truth is that I sat there for at least a solid minute. It was an extremely tempting offer, and of course, Punster and his Goons could just kill me if I said no. I really wanted to take the money, and maybe it was the mild concussion one of the Goons gave me with that crack on the skull, maybe it was the glass of whiskey that I had earlier at the Z-Ray Lounge, but I just shook my head no.

  “Really. That’s surprising, Spectacle. Your father would have taken a deal like that in a heartbeat.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “No, it’s the truth. Your father and I…we were enemies since we met at the Harvard SUHP Project in ’64. You have a conflict for that long, and it goes through cycles. Sometimes there were periods of intense hatred between us, and at other times…the war cooled down. There were times when I would just pay Jack Titan a hefty sum, a nice little ‘truce package’, and he would stay out of my way for a while.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m afraid not. Can I be frank with you, Spectacle? I’m not interested in diverting my attention with this idea of the superhero/supervillain rivalry anymore. It’s stupid, it’s childish, and there are more important things to focus on.” The Punster stood up from his stool again. He carried the box over to me, and he dropped it in my lap.

  “Here. You can have it. I honestly don’t care. All I want is for you to stay out of my affairs, can you do that for me?”

  I looked down at the box as it rested on my steel cable wrapped legs. The Punster had meticulously organized its contents. All the photos were in neatly stacked piles, all the notebooks were arranged in chronological order, the countless mementos and super-tech trinkets had been filed in small tupperware containers with labels like “Superb 6 Misc” and “Team Up Souvenirs” rather than just thrown into the box, but it looked like nothing was out of place. It looked like The Punster was really offering me what I wanted. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ll take that as a yes, Spectacle,” The Punster said, and he drew in a breath to continue speaking, but something made him hesitate and reconsider. He paused for a moment, and I got the sense that he was considering what to say next very carefully.

  “Your father’s death…it really fucked me up, son. It made me realize that I have to do something more with my life, and believe it or not, there’s a place for you in that. I don’t want to be your enemy…we could work together, we could truly change the dynamic of the costumed community for the better.” Punster hunched down in front of me so that we were eye to eye. There was a pleading look in his eyes.

  “There are always going to be supervillains. As long as people unlock superhuman ability with SUHP, there will be people who will abuse that power. There will always be superpowered people who use that power to steal, to hurt people. And people do get hurt, Spectacle, innocent people get caught in the crossfire of these asinine, superpowered fistfights we have with each other. There’s a better way to do this, and I’m already implementing it. I’ve been organizing all of the supervillains in this city, all of the most powerful and experienced superpowered criminals.”

  “Please. What makes you different from any other wannabe super-crimelord? You don’t think others have tried this scheme before you, like The Immaterial Man for instance—”

  “I don’t think you quite grasp the scale of what I’m talking about, Spectacle. I already have The Immaterial Man, the sick, intangible sociopath that he is, working with me. As well as Mistress Gorgon, and The Abnormalite, Dragon General, Dr. Delusion, an up and coming young gentleman wh
o calls himself The Whimsy, and a hundred more lower level players. We also have The Specialist providing us with enough super-weaponry to outfit an army.” I was legitimately surprised by this list. Those were people who were notorious for not working well with others. If The Punster really got those superpowered psychos to cooperate with each other, he would have to be one incredibly dangerous and intimidating individual.

  “I’m going to run all the super-crime in this city like an efficient machine. The most powerful supervillains will execute quiet, organized operations that will neither hurt a single person nor draw attention to crimefighters. Meanwhile, the legions of weaker and less professional idiots in costumes will cause as much of a scene as they can, with their museum robberies and jewelry heists and bids for global domination. They’ll distract the superheroes with the pointless, hollow battles that they crave while the adults take care of the real business.”

  “The real business of being glorified thieves, right?”

  “Is it stealing if we take back from the people who robbed billions of dollars from everyone else? I’m talking about stealing from the predatory lenders, the banks that tanked the economy with their irresponsible practices, yet they got trillions in bail out cash, the CEO’s whose paychecks get fatter every year, the multi-billionaires who horde 40% of the wealth in this county while 99% of us scrounge for pennies, the people who stuffed their pockets while they threw the rest of us to the wolves. I’m talking about taking money from people who stole it in the first place.” Some of the Goons standing around the walls of the Flasked Crusader bobbed their gas mask covered faces up and down in agreement. They were eating up The Punster’s speech. There was an enthusiastic vibe spreading through the gang of hazmat suited henchmen.