9: The Answer
Last time in Quarks of the Heart, after a fight with Meg’s best friend Liz Flask, Meg Atomic finally asked Keith whether he was going to continue being the Malevolent Med-Student or not. Before we find out how he replied, let’s catch up with everyone’s favorite henchwoman!
Candystriper was bored. She had been standing for ten minutes in the same line and it hadn’t moved. Most people would pass the time by making conversation with the people around them, or failing that, pulling out their phones and scrolling for updates on their various social media accounts. Candystriper wasn’t most people. She was a henchwoman, she was unemployed, and she was not happy about this situation at all. Since she didn’t feel like talking to people, and she didn’t have socials for obvious reasons, she decided to play the kazoo.
Happily for the innocent civilians in line, she elected not to deploy her infamous Death Kazoos and instead reached for the practice kazoos she played when she wasn’t looking to inflict musical injury. After a few songs during which the people in front of her decided they would rather be somewhere else, Candystriper finally arrived at the counter of the state unemployment office.
“Hi,” she said to the person behind the counter, “So here’s the thing, I lost my first job, totally wasn’t my fault, my boss like fired me which is so weird because I really thought we were working well together and we had so many great plans like the Anti-Flange Blaster and the Soul-Sucking Scope-O-Sadness not to mention Project Sugar Plum but anyway he goes and just fires me like that and I don’t know what’s going on and he tells me to call up this Fodgel guy like I should know who that is and anyway I figure I should probably go get money from you guys because I can do that right so here I am!”
She paused, expecting the gentleman at the counter to hand her currency in some form. Alas, Candystriper was to be disappointed. “I’m sorry,” he said, blinking, “Who was your employer?”
“The Malevolent Med-Student, silly,” she said, blinking right back at him. She naturally assumed this was some sort of code. “So when do I-”
“I’m sorry,” the employment office man interrupted, “but our policy prohibits benefits for henchpeople, given the inherent, ah, criminality of the work-”
She had already forgotten him. The idea of the blinking being a code had triggered something in Candystriper’s mind, which was often scattered at the best of times but on occasion came together to produce brilliance.
“It was a code,” she said to herself, her eyes distant. “He said to ring Fodgel. Ring Fodgel! Fodgel isn’t a name!”
She snatched up a nearby pen and a brochure about benefits and and begin scribbling, the bureau agent looking on in some confusion. “Excuse me,” he said, “But I really think you should probably leave-”
“I’ve got it!” she crowed, throwing the scribbled-on brochure and running pell-mell out of the office.
The bureau agent came out from behind his desk and looked down at the brochure. “Long fridge?” he said, utterly confused.
He was wrong, as it turned out. Candystriper, unfortunately, was not. She had done the real solution in her head and written down a false one for the authorities to find. Now she leapt aboard the Side-Effect Car (the Malpracticycle being still in the garage of their hidden lair) and tore away into the night.
“Let me clarify,” Meg said. “Are you going to continue as the Malevolent Med-Student, or not?”
“I’m-” Keith began, which for one second raised Meg’s hopes as the variables shifted in a positive direction since I’m is usually followed by not, which he did.
“Not,” he finished. “Now then, perhaps we could remove to a better location. Do you have any friends who wouldn’t recognize me?”
“You paused,” she said. “You paused between words. Why would you do that unless you had to think about it? And why would you need to think-”
“I disintegrated my supervillain phone, remember?” he said. “I relieved my henchwoman of her responsibilities, cut my ties to my proverbial past, as it were, what do you want me to do, set my cape on fire? If this is because I pointed out to your friend that there’s a difference between beams and rays, which by the way there really is, I don’t call it the Pharma-Death Ray after all-”
“There!” Meg said, her frustration rising. “One, the difference between beams and rays really isn’t the important issue right now, and two, you just said don’t! Present tense, Keith! When this, whatever this is, is over, are you just going to go back to blowing up things, shooting rays-
“Beams,” he corrected. “Again, there’s a very clear distinction-”
“Whatever,” she said. “It’s not important, don’t you understand? If you’re going to go back to all that then I don’t see any sort of a future for us and there’s no point in going on with any of this!” The variables were shifting rapidly in her head and they weren’t looking very positive and she needed them to stop and she needed him to just listen to her for just a minute-
“Oh, screw it,” he said, and before Meg had time to adjust her variables to that and formulate a response, he produced a compact Pharma-Death Beam mark 3 from a concealed jacket pocket and fired.
WHAT NO KEITH DANGIT
Ahhh no! Keith why??