Nuklear Age (61 page)

__________

At last, they stood outside the massive Danger: Main Doors. “All right, Menace,” Nuklear Man said in a tone indicating he meant business. “Don’t you commit no villainy whilst within these here sacred halls of purity. Got it?”

“Yez, fine. Whatever.”

“With more feeling this time.”

“No.”

“Hey,” Nuklear Man said. “I’m the only one here who knows the right transmitter frequency that can open them doors. Now then, one more time from the top.”

She rolled her eyes, reached into her coat, and produced a device that looked like a cross between what had once been a television remote control and a dashboard-mounted radar detector. She pointed it at the Danger: Main Doors, pressed a few buttons, and smirked as the great metallic semi-circles separated. She re-engaged her Negaflux Field and floated into the Silo’s innards.

“But. How’d she. Doors go open. Not supposed to,” Nuklear Man sputtered.

Atomik Lad put his arm around the Hero’s shoulder. “She’s a clever gal.”

“Yes,” the Golden Guardian surmised with a sagely stroke or two of his chin. “A little
too
clever, if you know what I mean.”

“No. I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Hm. That’s a shame,” Nuklear Man said. “I was hoping you could let me know.”

Atomik Lad nearly laughed. “C’mon. We’ve got work to do.”

“So good of you to join uz,” Dr. Menace remarked as Atomik Lad and Nuklear Man touched down. Her fingers curled and uncurled under Katkat’s chin as cat reclined across the Danger: Supercomputer’s keyboard. The feline purred happily as his tail occasionally twitched and hit a random button on the Danger: Keyboard.

Nuklear Man was on the Danger: Couch in a golden flash. “Ohhh, Danger: TV, how I missed you so.” With a simple finger-gun motion from the Hero, the luminous screen lived once more. “Mmm, Silly Sam’s Cartoon Marathon-a-thon o’ Fun.” His voice dropped to a lusty whisper, “I missed you most of all.”

Atomik Lad helped Dr. Menace with Katkat’s continued bliss by scratching behind that cat’s ears. “Iz he alwayz like thiz?” the Venomous Villainess asked while motioning to Nuklear Man with a nod of her head.

“I’m afraid so. Don’t worry though, he always manages to come through in a pinch.”

“I know,” she growled. “That iz what iz so
enraging
. It’z bad enough that my brilliant planz for utopia have to be continually thwarted, but doez the univerze have to be so cruel as to let that bumbling oaf be the one rezponzible for delaying my inevitable domination?”

“Bitter?”

“Thiz small talk borez me. Let uz plan our azzault.”

“Yeah. Hey, Nuke!”

“Can’t prepare now. TV.”

Atomik Lad rubbed his eyes. “Come on, Big Guy. We’ve got to go to work.”

“Bah. Workin’s for losers.”

“It’s either this or it’s back to prison.”

“Feh, at least in prison I didn’t have to worry ‘bout no workin’.”

“Or watching Silly Sam, for that matter.”

“Eeep!” Nuklear Man was a golden blur stretching from the Danger: Couch to the Danger: Kitchen for an instant. “I’m reeeeeeaaaaady,” he sang while seated at the Danger: Kitchen Table.

Dr. Menace sighed. “It’z juzt az well that we do it in there. I think that I will need a drink or two by the time thiz iz over with,” she said while walking into what was now the Danger: Plannin’ Room.

“I know what you mean,” Atomik Lad said. As he moved to join her, he happened to glance at the Danger: Supercomputer’s screen. It displayed a schematic of Katabasis Prison’s ventilation system. A course was plot through the twisting tunnels leading from the outer wall directly into the all but forgotten North Tower. Unfortunately, according to the screen, the North Tower’s vents had been sealed up with brick.

“Well, not a bad plan, but these ventilation shafts aren’t even big enough for a person to crawl through. Why, you’d. Have to be.”

Katkat meowed at Atomik Lad’s hand to prompt the ex-sidekick into petting him some more. Again, the cat’s tail twitched happily. Atomik Lad looked to Katkat, the screen, Katkat, the screen.

“No. Couldn’t be.” He walked to the Danger: Plannin’ Room. “His tail just happened to click on the Internet icon. And then the web browser icon. And then typed out the address of the Metroville Hall of Public Records.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Unlikely, downright
improbable
, but possible. Besides, the North Tower’s vents were sealed off with stone blocks. He’d have to—”

Dr. Menace stepped out of the Danger: Plannin’ Room. “Do you alwayz store child-sized pick axez and flashlightz on your kitchen table?”

“Gasp.”

“What?”

“Cat. Vents, prison. Mining. He,” Atomik Lad babbled.

Dr. Menace turned back into the kitchen. “I am surrounded by blubbering clodz.”

__________

The Danger: Kitchen Table was covered in tactical satellite photos of the newly christened Superion Hall, Superion Square, Superidyne, and the Superindustrial Park which was now bustling with mindless red-clad workers and dozens of half-constructed machines of war.

“Thiz iz my plan,” Dr. Menace began. She looked to Atomik Lad. “At twenty-one hundred hours, you will approach Superion and engage him in converzation.”

Nuklear Man, already taxed by the act of having to pay attention, gave Dr. Menace what he liked to call The Face: a slight curling of the lip, a slacking of the jaw, and an empty nodding of the head as she droned on.

“…But do not attempt to fight him.” She paused momentarily, that nagging little voice in the back of her head insisted that something was not quite right. She turned to Nuklear Man who deftly deflected any suspicion by looking away with an overly I’m So Innocent look an instant too late which served only to increase any suspicion the not-so-good-doctor had. She carried on, “Ahem. Merely diztract him so that Nuklear Man,” who carried on giving her The Face, “can take him by surprize.” Again she turned to him, quicker this time, and again he looked away an instant too late.

“Got it,” Atomik Lad reported.

Nuklear Man went back to Facing Dr. Menace.

“Then Nuklear Man will drop in on our uzurper. In their melee, Superion’z mental hold on the populaze will slip away. That iz where I come in with my modified Defusionizer Cannon to strike down the arrogant—
stop doing that!”
she blurt, shaking with anger.

Atomik Lad looked up just in time to see Nuklear Man still giving her the Face before switching to the Oh No You Must Be Mistaken It Wasn’t Me Because I’m Looking Over Here face.

“Nuke. If you’re going to be a distraction, then just leave,” Atomik Lad said.

The Hero happily skipped out the Danger: Plannin’ Room. “Heh, heh, suckers!” he taunted as the Danger: Door
fwoosh
ed shut behind him. Silly Sam’s Cartoon Marathon-a-thon o’ Fun could be heard coming from the Danger: Living Room.

Dr. Menace took a series of deep breaths to purge her psyche of rage. “How do you put up with that every day?”

“It’s not so bad. You build up a sort of a tolerance.”

“By toleranze, do you mean you ignore him or do you imagine perpetrating variouz actz of violence againzt him?”

“A little from column A, a little from column B.”

Dr. Menace almost smiled. “Yez, well. You do realize that once thiz job iz done, we shall go our separate wayz.”

Atomik Lad shrugged. “As you wish.”

They shook on it.

__________

A few minutes from twenty-one hundred hours. Lightning rumbled threateningly within the depths of the night’s black clouds. The ex-sidekick raced on Atomik wings through Metroville’s barren streets. He decided to stay low to avoid the possibility of becoming a living lightning rod.

“I just hope Nuke can be trusted to come through with his part of the plan.,” he mumbled to himself while taking impossibly sharp turns through a couple alleys. Sheets of newspaper swirled in his wake like a cliché of set design.

__________

Nuklear Man was sprawled across the Danger: Couch as the latest installment of Silly Sam’s Cartoon Marathon-a-thon o’ Fun played itself out before his very eyes. Katkat was curled up against the Hero’s tummy with his own furry belly exposed for maximum comfort.

“Must. Resist. Belly love,” Nuklear Man told himself while his hand reached out to Katkat; slowly so its owner wouldn’t notice until it was too late to do anything about it. “Dum de dum, I sure do like cartoons,” Nuklear Man told Katkat. “It’s a good thing Sparky and Dr. Menace decided to make our plan start right when my show is over so I wouldn’t be too distracted to be able to bust out old school with some burning Plazma Justice instead of sitting here being all distracted by something utterly inane.” His hand had made belly contact. “Oh no.”

__________

Dr. Menace was hunched over a work bench at her abandoned warehouse headquarters. She was madly working homemade instruments on the exposed innards of her Defusionizer Cannon. She took off her Ultra-Magnifier Goggles and rest them next to the Positron Zapifier with its wires sprawled across the counter like they were desperately reaching back to the cannon. She wiped sweat from her brow and gave the totality of her work thus far a look.

“The Beam Coherentizer iz connected to the Nega-Particle Wave Induzer. The Nega-Particle Wave Induzer iz connected to the Frequenzy Modifier. The Frequenzy Modifier iz connected to the Polarizing Lenz.” She leaned back and tilt her head. “Since the cannon is already set to neutralize Nuklear Moron’z unique Plazma Energy readingz, I would have to recalibrate the entire mechanizm for Superion’s Negaflux Energy in order for it to work on him.” She crossed her arms. “It took me nearly two yearz to finally compile enough information about the Golden Goon so thiz cannon would exterminate hiz blazted powerz. How could I achieve a similar effect againzt Superion without the prerequizite data?” she asked the assembled disassembled Defusionizer Cannon pieces.

The answer came from the Beam Stabilizer.

“Yez. If I changed the Beam Stabilizer into a Frequenzy Modulator, and change the method of energy projection from a beam of preprogrammed Negaflux energy of a particular frequenzy to a pulze of Negaflux energy of randomly alternating frequenciez that would naturally cohere to neutralize whatever the blast struck,
then
I could fire one blazt at Superion.” Her devilish genius took it a step further. “And fire
another
blazt at Nuklear Clod! Thereby eliminating them both!” She spun a pen sized welder between her fingers. “Of courze, the Atomik Lad could eazily be kept under control if hiz beloved Rachel were, shall we say, my captive.”

Villainous laughter echoed from the depths of the Abandoned Warehouse District like it hadn’t in weeks.

__________

Atomik Lad looked up at Superion Hall from the bottom of its front steps. His feet crunched on the shattered glass his Field had liberated earlier that afternoon. The whole building had a peculiar whistling about it as pre-storm winds rushed in and out of vacant windows, taking along Progress Reports, various Order Forms, and The Like. In the darkness, he could only make the building out by the rhythmic flashes of lightning that never quite escaped their clouds.

“Thanks, God. It’s not bad enough I have to face down a maniac even more powerful than Nuke, but you’ve got to go and make the weather all dramatic and stuff.”

Distant thunder rumbled not entirely unlike laughter.

“Feh.” He checked his Danger: Watch. “A minute early, but close enough.” His Atomik Field erupted like an explosion, only silent and unable to escape from its moment of ultimate violence, trapped as it was in a second of ecstatic rage. He floated up to the top floor slowly, effortlessly, like it was the ground falling away instead of him rising from it. “Show time.”

Superion Hall’s windowless walls gave way to red draperies rippling in the winds at the top floor. Atomik Lad reached out to tear one away but his Field ripped it to shreds. He recoiled too late and was horrified to find that after all these years and all his precautions, he could still make such a simple and potentially fatal mistake.

He didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on it for long. “So nice of you to join us, Sport.”

Atomik Lad peered inside. He could see Superion, illuminated by a sudden flash of lightning, sitting in the high-backed Mayor’s chair. “I was beginning to doubt the strength of your heroic impulses,” Superion said. “But it seems that you have been sufficiently programmed to do your duty even when you know you have no hope of victory.”

Good. He’s feeling villainously conversational. Just gotta keep him talking
. “Sounds like you’ve got Superior ConfidenceTM too.”

Superion smiled sinisterly. “It looks like I underestimated you in our last confrontation.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Nuke in all our time together, and believe me, one thing over the course of ten years is quite a lot from him, it’s to never give up.”

“Oh, your vaunted Nuklear Man.” Superion revolved the chair through some of the slowest and most deliberate 360 degrees the ex-sidekick had ever seen. “I am as far beyond him as he is beyond you. How can you possibly hope to do anything more than be broken by my hands?”

Atomik Lad shrugged. “I’m an idealist. It’s a character flaw.”

“Your bravado is another.”

“We’ll see about that.”

__________

“We now conclude our broadcast day,” Silly Sam said directly into the camera with all the earnest seriousness that his name did not imply. An arm popped up from off screen to hand Silly Sam a sheet of paper. He scanned it and faced the camera once more. “Well, I was just informed that as of tomorrow we will no longer be known as Silly Sam’s Cartoon Marathon-a-thon o’ Fun. We’ll change formats and become Super Superion’s Superion-a-thon o’ Worship. I, for one, look forward to these changes. Good night.” The screen switched to a test pattern that already incorporated Superion’s Star-S symbol.

“Well,” Nuklear Man told himself. “Time to get goin’. Ahem. I said, it looks like it’s time to go. Yup. Gotta go.”