13. Surprises
Previously on And When Two Villains Woo, Sam Superlative Jr. has left Professor Cthulhu’s lair and is in search of henchwoman Candystriper! Candystriper, meanwhile, has just blasted Captain Happily Married from the sky with a dangerous weapon hidden in her robot arm! Meanwhile, the Malevolent Med-Student is fleeing on foot from John Cute’s mostly destroyed underground hideout, while John Cute himself is airborne in search of the escaped supervillain!
Whew. That’s a lot, isn’t it? We’ll try to catch up with everyone, but first, the usual commercial word!
Never had the Malevolent Med-Student wished so much that he could fly. Normally he didn’t mind; the Malpracticycle was serviceable enough for his needs, and he certainly didn’t want to jostle for airspace with all the capes like Superlative Man or Captain Happily Married, not even to mention normal civilian air traffic. Right at that moment, however, as he hurried as fast as he could down the sidewalk of a city street he didn’t know the name of and didn’t care to anyway, knowing John Cute could drop in on him at any moment, the Malevolent Med-Student felt rather desperate. “Blast it all,” he said, “If only I could fly!”
Far above his head he heard the THWIRM noise. “Huh,” he said. “That sounded like an Explodanator. Plasma-bolt model, if I’m not mistaken. Now, I wonder, who in the world-”
Then he heard the whooshing sound, growing steadily louder, of an unconscious caped form falling through the air. “Ah,” the Malevolent Med-Student said, unable to resist the temptation to monologue, “And that would be the target. Let’s have a look-see, shall we?”
He looked around and up, and in a second he’d spotted the falling cape. “There we are. Now the next question is who are they and who shot them down-”
He was interrupted as the cape hit the ground with a sudden loud whump. The Malevolent Med-Student winced, in spite of himself. If whoever it was hadn’t been gifted with super-strength or invulnerability (not necessarily the same thing), that cape was going to be in a proverbial world of hurt. The Malevolent Med-Student wondered. There’d been something familiar about that falling caped form.
He ran closer, and approached the fallen hero, and as he did he began laughing softly to himself. Of course. Of all the heroes in all the city, it was Captain Happily Married himself. And he’d been shot down, of all things.
The Malevolent Med-Student was just reaching for his Pharma-Death Beam when he remembered he didn’t have it, but then he heard a whir of servos and a burst of rocket fire, and suddenly Candystriper landed with a thump right beside him. “Hey,” she said, apparently torn between excitement over her victory and her upset over her boss teleporting her from Professor Cthulhu’s earlier. “What’s up?”
“Candystriper…” the Malevolent Med-Student said, gaping. “You… you did it!”
“Yeah,” she said, cautiously. “Robot arm.”
“You DID IT!” he exclaimed again.
“Yeah…”
The Malevolent Med-Student actually broke into a grin. “Candystriper, my minion, I love you! Let’s celebrate! Back to the secret lab, if you would!”
“Uh- uh, sure!” Candystriper said. She’d meant to check whether Captain Happily Married was fully down for the count, take his pulse, that sort of thing, but her attention had been suddenly grabbed and wonderfully focused on three of the words the Malevolent Med-Student had said in the midst of his jubilant outburst. “Here, um, I think this has an attachment, um, thing.”
The robot arm obligingly extended a line for the Malevolent Med-Student to hold on to, and within seconds they were rocketing away into the sky again.
“Look,” the warden of the Penitentiary for Enhanced-Risk Persons said, “For the last time, we don’t have Candystriper. We had her boss, but he got out, so now we don’t have either of them. Now get out of here, kid, I got more important stuff to do.”
“I understand, sir,” Sam Superlative, Jr. said, although he really didn’t. He thought it over as the guards escorted him through the prison until he was outside in the air again. Professor Cthulhu had been about as clear as a guy like him could be. He’d seen Candystriper imprisoned and about to be tried. Unless-
“Oh, I’m such an idiot!” Sam said, smacking himself in the forehead and nearly knocking himself over. He’d lied. Cthulhu had lied. Candystriper wasn’t under arrest at all, she was out there somewhere, who knew where, and what was he supposed to do now?
“Excuse me, son?” a voice called. Sam turned. Two heavily armored officers had come up behind him. “We’d like to have a word with you, if we could.”
Although Sam was still in training, officially, he considered himself to be one of the Good Guys. As a result, he didn’t immediately think to call for a lawyer or perhaps fly away into the sky being questioned. Instead he answered, politely as he could, “Absolutely, officers, what’s up?”
“We understand you told the warden in there you have Android Pete in your computer?”
“His consciousness, yeah,” Sam said. “His emergency protocol, I think he said.”
“Right,” the officer said. “We’d like to check that out, if that’s all right with you.”
Sam paused. “Well, ah…” The computer was, of course, in the Superlative Sanctum Supreme, and strictly speaking his dad had the access codes. He didn’t actually know if he was authorized to even tell the officers about the sanctum, let alone let them scan the computer. “Look,” he said, “Let me go ask my dad and I’ll-”
He had, almost unconsciously, not even thinking that it might look suspicious, started to lift off. “Hold it right there!” one of the officers barked.
“Activate sonic, activate sonic!” the other said into his radio.
A sonic cannon, concealed in the Penitentiary’s walls and already locked on Sam, now opened fire. He hadn’t braced or anything, and with a loud thwoomp he went down hard. Sam’s last thought before passing out was, perhaps not surprisingly, “Ow, that hurts-”.
Oh, poor Sam Superlative! He just can’t catch a break!
"Penitentiary for Risk-enhanced Persons." That'd be "maximum security". "Minimum security" people would probably be at the "Penitentiary for Persons without Risk-enhancement."