2: Third Point of the Triangle

Previously on And When Two Villains Woo, henchwoman Candystriper has escaped from police company with a block of thrudanium, taking a moment to reflect on the first time she met her employer, the Malevolent Med-Student! And now, back to the chase!

Candystriper could’ve kept speeding happily on down the road forever, reminiscing away about the good times she’d had meeting the Malevolent Med-Student and getting drawn into his evil schemes (jumping headlong into them, more like, but tomato potato as she would’ve said). Unfortunately, the small convoy of multiple police officers chasing after her had other ideas.

She had a definite feeling they wanted their car back, but she couldn’t quite pin down why. Maybe she wasn’t driving it right. With one hand on the wheel, Candystriper fished around in the car for a minute until she found the police car’s control panel. “Bingo!” she exulted, although she could barely hear herself over the WHOOOOOOP from the siren she had just activated at full volume.

“How do you turn this thing down?” she yelled out the window as she whipped around a curve, the convoy of cop cars still in hot pursuit. She fished around again hoping to hit the volume control, but this time she found the loudspeaker.

“WHERE’S THAT STUPID-OH SHOOT THAT’S NOT THE RIGHT ONE!” Candystriper’s voice resounded like frantic thunder across the city blocks. The officers behind her would’ve found the whole situation hilarious, except they knew what she’d momentarily forgotten: she still had a block of thrudanium in the seat beside her. If she crashed and the thrudanium went off, most of Edison City would go with it.

She snapped around another turn when suddenly something slammed the car hard from the side and jolted it into the air. Candystriper thought at first she’d been hit, but when she looked over, she saw the edges of a black cape flapping in the wind. “HEY!” she yelled. “HEY! DROP THIS THING RIGHT NOW!”

“I would, but then you’d die,” a voice shouted from outside the car. “You’ve got the thrudanium, remember? Also, the volume control knob is to the right of the steering wheel, next to the red switch!”

“WHO THE HECK ARE-OH WAIT,” she paused for a moment, then she resumed, recognizably quieter now. “Who the heck are you?”

A head poked up above the passenger side door, with hair the color of the cape snapping outside the car, brown eyes, and a look that reminded Candystriper of the Malevolent Med-Student in one of his moods. “John,” he said, “John Cute. Now, hand over the thrudanium and I might consider setting this car down safely and letting you go.”

She snorted. “Like you wouldn’t do that anyway. I’ve been working this town for years, you people got standards and all. What’re you going to do if I don’t, huh?” It was so cliché she almost hated to say it, but by this point she was committed to the line. “You gonna kill me?”

“Yes,” John Cute said, and tossed the car up and away into the open sky. Needless to say, it was not the answer Candystriper expected. As the car arced up into the stratosphere and beyond into the void of space, as its air rushed out through the window she had opened before and forgotten to close, as she began to lose consciousness while the stars spread out above her, Candystriper’s last few thoughts ran like this.

Huh: I didn’t think he’d do that.

Wild, for a superhero.

Dude’s got brown eyes. What color does Mal-Meddie have?

She tried to remember as she fell into the dark.

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The police car turned up the next morning, mysteriously appearing outside the headquarters of the Edison City Police Department, with Candystriper lying unconscious inside. They rushed Candystriper to St. Cupertino Memorial and then conducted a thorough search of the battered car. Despite all their efforts, however, they found no trace of the thrudanium. Even Candystriper, once she regained consciousness, couldn’t explain where it was, nor even how she’d gotten back to Earth. As far as she and they knew, the thrudanium had completely disappeared.

Read the Next Episode.

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