9: Help!
Previously on And When Two Villains Woo, superhero Sam Superlative Jr. has just carried off henchwoman Candystriper and an ice cream truck before being apprehended by Meg Atomic and Sam Superlative, Sr.! Before we find out where they went, we return to rogue hero John Cute’s secret lab, where a captive supervillain is trying to manipulate thrudanium in order to achieve immortality.
The Malevolent Med-Student was having an extremely bad day. He had labored all day over the thrudanium, but in Candystriper’s absence he had rapidly discovered an unpleasant truth that he’d forgotten over the years. Mad science is, in many ways, like any other branch of the sciences: it requires a good deal of simple straightforward elbow-grease work. Researching the group number and valency of the atoms in the thrudanium material in question, and then going off that to determine reactivity levels. Pipetting liquids at precise times and in carefully measured-out quantities. Calibrating the zyrgotron-scanner to get an accurate measurement of the relevant xanthin fields. Moving and breaking down the cardboard boxes that are in the way of the new scransomic booster you need installed. And so on.
Ordinarily Candystriper would be doing all of this while the Malevolent Med-Student would be gesticulating dramatically over by a whiteboard, or perhaps standing by a mirror practicing vocal exercises for the Villain Monologue he would deliver when unveiling his latest Pharma-Death Beam. But Candystriper wasn’t there.
He wouldn’t go so far as to say he missed her, exactly, but her absence had put a definite dent in his work process, given that he had to do the work now since she wasn’t doing it. This led to even further problems, since there were some things that only Candystriper knew that he hadn’t gotten around to learning. For example, she would’ve known that the zyrgotron-scanner was a funny piece of equipment that needed to be coaxed in just the right way before calibrating otherwise it would be a micrometer off in its measurements. She could also pipette liquids like there was no tomorrow, whereas he wasn’t even entirely sure how to pronounce the word pipette, let alone do the process it described correctly.
After the third minor explosion and the loss of an eyebrow, the Malevolent Med-Student had finally complained about all of this to John Cute. “I am the brains of our operation,” he’d tried to explain. “I develop the theory. I deliver the speeches. I don’t do the actual work: that’s why one hires one of them!” By this he meant a henchman; they’d been called minions, but that term had fallen out of favor ever since a certain Universal Pictures movie had made its way into popular culture.
John Cute took all this in calmly. “So you can’t do it,” he said.
"Of course I can,” the Malevolent Med-Student huffed, “But it would be nice, not to mention a professional standard, if I had some assistance!”
“It would,” John Cute agreed. “But this is a solo op. No one knows but me and you. That’s how it stays. If you can’t do it, fine. Let me know now.” Still with that ice-calm tone, he drifted over to a nearby workbench, picked up a steel wrench, and snapped it in half. “Well?” he said, as if he’d just done nothing particularly impressive at all.
“No,” the Malevolent Med-Student said weakly, “No, I can do it, I can most certainly do it. I was merely, ah, making an observation. As it were.”
John Cute flipped the pieces of the wrench into the nearest trash can. “Maybe if you observed less and worked more, you wouldn’t need help. I’ll be by tomorrow to check your progress.”
He left, the laboratory door slamming behind him. The Malevolent Med-Student couldn’t get the sharp metallic shriek of the wrench being torn in two out of his head for a long time.
Meanwhile, Sam Superlative Jr. had made a decision while going at super speed. What most people forget about super speed is that, in order to cope the runner’s senses adjust so that to them it seems like running at normal speed and everyone else is in very slow motion. This means that Sam had some time to consider his options as he was whisking Candystriper and the ice-cream truck away from the street where his dad and Meg Atomic had shown up.
The first thing he’d done was the easy part: he’d removed the driver from the truck, placed Candystriper in the driver’s seat, and then buckled her in: he knew he was breaking a lot of rules here, but traffic safety wasn’t going to be one of them if he could help it. Next, Sam had lifted the ice cream truck with Candystriper inside and carried it off at top speed.
He got two blocks when he realized that he couldn’t go where he was first planning to go, which was back to the Superlative Sanctum Supreme. After all, that was the first place his dad would look. He needed to go somewhere else, somewhere that neither Meg Atomic nor Sam Superlative Sr. nor any of Edison City’s heroes would think of looking, at least for a while. This led to a startling, yet not entirely unreasonable conclusion.
There was a sudden knock on the gloomy door. It opened, revealing the dread presence of Professor Cthulhu, emanating an air of profound irritation. Unearthly syllables twisted themselves into words barely understandable by meager human consciousnesses. “Why have you come here?”
Sam knew he was going to regret this later, but he couldn’t really go back now. “I need your help,” he said, and as a follow-up added hopefully, “I brought ice cream?”
The Professor considered him. Then, after a long moment, it uttered a single word. “Vanilla?”
So thoughtful of Sam to buckle her in!