Previously in Dawn of the Super Surgeon, an Edison City serial, the Malevolent Med-Student and his loyal henchwoman Candystriper had begun their new career as former supervillains, now heroes, to the dismay of the supervillain Committee of Calamity. Their adventures continue below, but first, to catch up on prior serials, go here:
And now, back to the story!
In superhero work, as in many other endeavors in life, good communication is key. The former Malevolent Med-Student, now Super Surgeon, thought he had done everything he needed to do before he and his loyal sidekick Candystriper set out on their first night on patrol in Edison City, but he had, unfortunately, overlooked one important detail. He had neglected to inform the capes that he was now on their side.
To be fair, this wasn’t entirely his fault. “Oh, Candystriper, you’d better let everyone know I’ve changed teams,” he’d said offhandedly a few hours before, while he was in the midst of tuning up the Malpracticycle. She’d taken “everyone” to be “the villains we used to hang out with”, and had duly notified them. (More precisely, she’d swung by Screaming Banshee’s hideout and yelled “Whee we’re with the good guys now see ya!” and then ran off again. ) Thus the word of the Malevolent Med-Student’s switch in allegiances rippled out through Edison City’s villain community, even to the heights of the Committee of Calamity itself. What the news didn’t do was reach the good guys themselves, since the villains and the heroes didn’t talk much except for the occasional bout of witty banter during their fights.
All this meant that when Titanium-Alloy Guy saw the Malevolent Med-Student tearing down a city road aboard the Malpracticycle with Candystriper at his side, he promptly assumed the guy was up to no good. “I knew it,” he growled inside his alloy-plated helmet, realigning his rocket thrusters to an intercept trajectory with the careening supervillain. “Computer!”
“Yo?” came the lazy voice of his latest AI. He had operated his weapons systems solo for the longest time but had finally decided to work with an AI system for help. The techies were trying different personality profiles, none of which had worked with Titanium-Alloy Guy so far. He wasn’t too keen on this one either.
“Open an all-cape-wide channel! Make sure you tag that soccer ball what’s her name’s got! She’s the one that said the guy was going clean, right? Well, I’ve got eyes on him now and if that sucker’s clean I’ll-!”
“Channel’s open, dude.”
Titanium-Alloy Guy coughed. “Yeah. Right. Uh, hey, this is Titanium-Alloy Guy, and I have a sighting on the Malevolent Med-Student, I repeat, Mal-Med is on the move, repeat on the move, just crossing Eleventh and Quill streets now, and heading down Eleventh! I am in pursuit!”
He clicked the channel off. “Time to bring out the big guns. Activate the xoron cannon!”
“Yeah, baby!” said the AI, as the left arm of his weapons suit clicked and rattled and transformed out into a truly massive blaster barrel. Titanium-Alloy Guy sighed and made a mental note to tell the techies to try another personality profile next time. This was getting old fast. “Lock on!” he barked.
“Locked, my dude!”
Another sigh. “Fire,” Titanium-Alloy Guy said, with less enthusiasm than he might otherwise would have. When he met with the techies again, he was going to get an AI that was professional this time, darn it. He wanted HAL from that movie with the pod bay doors, not a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. His arm thwirm-ed and shook with recoil as the mighty xoron beam scythed through the air, straight towards the Malevolent Med-Student.
Down on the ground, the former supervillain was at that moment discoursing on the need for proper introductions. “Business cards, Candystriper! We should have them printed up en masse so that the people we’ve saved know precisely who’s done it! Tomorrow we visit the Kinko’s!”
“I don’t think they use that name anymore,” Candystriper said, but the Super Surgeon didn’t notice, having moved on to the design the business cards would bear. So wrapped up was he in this that he didn’t notice Titanium-Alloy Guy in the sky above him, or the flash of the xoron ray.
Candystriper almost didn’t either, but then her robot arm chirped wildly. Xoron Ray detected. Shield activated. It promptly threw up an energy shield around both her and the Super Surgeon, which caught the blast from Titanium-Alloy Guy just in time. The thunderclap from the impact knocked both of them off their feet and shattered every window on the block, but it was nothing compared to what would’ve happened had the xoron ray actually hit them. Not that they were in the mood to appreciate that just then.
“Excuse me!” the Super Surgeon howled in high outrage. “I’m on your side now, you incomprehensible nitwit!” He scrambled for his Pharma-Death Beams to return fire, but then Titanium-Alloy Guy swerved in the sky and rocketed back towards them. He slammed down on the street and stood, every gun on his armor trained and ready to fire on the two ex-villains. His voice echoed out with a bass growl through extremely powerful shoulder-mounted speakers.
“I’M SORRY,” he said, “YOU’RE WHAT?”
Author note: a hat tip to Architectonic for the idea that our new heroes should have business cards. Also, true story, Kinko’s really doesn’t go under the name Kinko’s anymore. Now it’s FedEx Office. I didn’t know that until today. Now I know! And so do you.
Hahahaha I love that Super Surgeon is seriously considering business cards! (His name is difficult to shorten now - Sup-Sur sounds like I'm offering minestrone to someone)