5: Candystriper and the Captain

Jan 28, 2024

Last time in Quarks of the Heart, Meg Atomic had successfully avoided the watchful eye of her mother and Seymour the cybernetic soccer ball, with the help of her thermal-manipulator sister Sauna, and met the Malevolent Med-Student for a second and more romantic date! Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city…

Candystriper, henchwoman to the Malevolent Med-Student, was bored. “Hey, boss,” she asked, her voice echoing in their hideout, “You wanna go and see if we can’t find that thrudanium that’ll power your scope?” She meant, of course, her superior’s latest creation, the diabolical Soul-Sucking Scope-O-Sadness. It was brilliant in concept, but in reality it wasn’t doing any soul-sucking, just generally sucking, since it wasn’t powered up. For that it needed thrudanium, a mystical element currently in the possession of the Department of Engagement with Risk-enhanced Persons. They would need to “borrow” it, obviously, but she couldn’t do that all on her own initiative. Henchpeople weren’t allowed. They had a code. First rule of the code was: you take orders from the boss. Thus her question.

Candystriper waited for a long moment. It was only then that she really registered her boss’s absence. “Hey,” she said. “Hey! Where’d you go?” It was Friday. They always made a point to do villainy on Friday: it was the optimal time to get people into a foul mood heading into the weekend. She couldn’t understand it.

She searched the hideout, even checking the garage where they’d hidden the Malpracticycle. It was still there. Had he been nabbed? Had one of the capes finally got him? Had he fallen through a wormhole into another dimension populated entirely by sentient shades of color? Had he now been transformed into…gasp…chartreuse?

Candystriper, horrified by the thought, snatched up her Death Kazoos and ran for the Side-Effect Car. “I’m coming, sir!” she said. “Hang on! I’m on the way! Think violet, sir! Think violet!”

She buzzed all over the city. She interrogated every librarian she could find; after all, they knew everything. She crashed into the Edison City zoo and dive-bombed the shark tank in case he’d tried to recreate their infamous Shark Week Caper again, but she could find nary a trace. Candystriper was truly befuddled. Where could he be? Where, oh where, was the Malevolent Med-Student?

Captain Happily Married had dispatched the robots out west in record time and was flying back into the city. As he soared in over the river he patched in a call to Super Soccer Mom. “Hi, honey, I’m back early! How’s the city?”

“Not great,” Super Soccer Mom said, her frustration punctuating the call like static. “Seymour’s gone on diagnostic mode for some reason and Meg Atomic’s on patrol and the Wild Woodchuck’s supposed to move tonight and I was going to send Seymour with Meg to take care of that but then Seymour crashed and I don’t know, something’s going on with Meg, I don’t know what it is, Justin, it’s just that something’s not right with her, and Seymour’s in level E, I don’t understand it!”

“I see,” Captain Happily Married said. “Well-”

At that moment a shark flew past his head.

“Heavens to Betsy!” he exclaimed. “Excuse me, honey, but there’s an emergency! They’ve gone airborne at last!” With that he soared after the shark, caught up to it, and grabbed hold of its tail. Then he flew down the way it had come to see who was launching sharks into the skies of Edison City.

“Candystriper!” Captain Happily Married said in his usual booming voice as he thudded down outside the zoo, flailing shark in hand. He paused. “Candystriper?” he said, more confused this time. One didn’t usually see a henchperson without their superior around.

“Okay,” she said, leaping on top of a recycle bin, “Where is he? You tell me where he is right now or I’m sending every shark here into freakin’ orbit!”

“Where is who?” Captain Happily Married asked, keeping his voice calm and level.

“My boss, that’s who!” Candystriper yelled. “The Malevolent Med-Student! I’ve been looking for him for hours, I can’t find him, so I gotta know! Where’s he gone? You tell me right now!”

Captain Happily Married froze. Several facts came together in his mind. One: The Malevolent Med-Student was missing. Two: Seymour, his wife’s trusted soccer ball assistant, was out of commission. Three: Something, he knew not what, was going on with his daughter.

He added these together and leaped to a not unreasonable conclusion. “By the Great Horn Spoon! The Malevolent Med-Student has kidnapped my daughter!”

“He did what now?” Candystriper said. She felt sure that if her superior had pulled off something like that, he would have consulted his loyal henchwoman first.

The Captain, unfortunately, was no longer listening to her. With a quick toss he hurled the shark back into its pool, and then blasted away into the sky, super-powered senses blazing to their fullest, scanning everywhere he could see for his girl. When he saw the telltale Volvo parked outside a restaurant, he thundered down in a blaze of almighty wrath so loud he missed the faint *pop* as Meg and Keith came up for air.

“WHERE IS SHE?” Captain Happily Married boomed. Then he looked straight ahead, through the gap in the restaurant window his landing had just created, and saw her sitting in a cozy restaurant booth at a table across from the Malevolent Med-Student.

“What?” the Captain said.

“Dad?” Meg Atomic said.

“Blahg,” said the Malevolent Med-Student, startled into incoherence.

Read the Next Chapter.

For more episodes of Quarks of the Heart, check out the serial index page below. Thanks for reading!