Episode #15: Into the Demon’s Lair
Or, How I Spent My Weekend Kicking Crime Butt
A thick fog hung through the deep corridors of the Boss’s headquarters. If one were standing in one of these corridors, one might hear, approaching from the distance, the sound of horse hooves, of all things.
In a moment, four people loped into view, holding imaginary reigns, followed by a fifth in a rather large power suit, which was banging two halves of a coconut together. This was made even more ridiculous by the fact that the large metal arms looked much more suitable to blasting large holes in things, than to holding fruit.
"Why do I have to bang the coconuts?" Seeker asked.
"Well," Brian said, "Pouch was a good start, but then we realized that you’d spent all those years in orchestra and listening to classical music, so you’d have a much steadier rhythm."
"Gee, thanks," Seeker said, rolling his eyes inside the cockpit.
"’alt!" a voice cried from the fog. "’oo goes there?"
"A Security Contingent," Flip said easily, which Seeker promptly acknowledged. "We’re escorting some prisoners to their new cells."
"And why do you have a British accent?" Brian asked.
"Author-sama thou’ i’d be silly," the person in the fog said.
"No asking questions, prisoner!" Flip said, giving Brian a mild poke to keep up the pretense. He just hoped that Kuni-chan, tucked away and hidden in the folds of his cape, didn’t make any noise or move around too much.
"I’ they’re the prisoners, ‘ow come they don’ ‘ave ‘andcuffs? Prisoners’re suppose’ to ‘ave ‘andcuffs…"
"Not under the new regulations," Seeker said, "according to amendment 276, paragraph 7. See?" He held out one half of the coconut.
"Bu’ that’s jus’ a coconut! ‘ow did you get a coconut ‘ere—"
But his protest was cut off as Seeker rammed it into the guard’s face. "Ow! Me face! Me face!" he cried, and fell over onto the ground.
The Argonauts stepped around him, and continued down the corridor.
* * *
The Boss appeared in the trashed laboratory deep underneath his lair, and surveyed the damage. His frown became deeper as he noticed the now-useless hunk of metal and fiberglass that was once a laser cannon. Turning to his advisors, who were huddled fearfully nearby, his face turned red with fury.
"How…how could they have been allowed to get this far, to do this much damage?" he demanded.
The advisors rubbed their hands together, and one by one tried to fumble a response.
This made the Boss even more furious. So far, these advisors had done nothing helpful for him. He held up a hand, which caused them to recoil in fear, their faces blanching. There was a flash of light and a great eruption of flame, and the advisors were incinerated, shrieking in pain.
The eerie orange light played across the Boss’s face, his mouth turned up in an amused grin as those closest to him writhed in their death throes.
Turning to leave the former laboratory, he pulled out a cell phone and called his secretary. "Send the Death Squad to guard the entrance to the Inner Sanctum. Don’t let any of the Argonauts into Central Headquarters."
* * *
Seeker pulled out a handy printout of the headquarters he’d downloaded, and scanned it over. "We should go here," he said, pointing to a place in what appeared to be an obscure corner of the complex.
Super Jen peered over his shoulder. "But, Seeker, that’s listed as ‘Sewage Overflow Containment’. Wouldn’t we want the place marked, oh, say, ‘Main Control Room’?" She pointed to a place directly in the center.
"That would be the Execution Chamber," Seeker said, matter-of-factly. "Really, Super Jen, haven’t you kept up to date on the Evil Overlord list? It’s clearly explained in rule #65."
Super Jen looked unconvinced.
"How about this; when we’re out of here, I’ll e-mail you the URL. For now, just …trust me on this."
"Okay," she said. "Sewage Overflow Containment it is."
Brian stepped into dramatic lighting and raised his finger determinedly to the sky. "To Sewage Overflow Containment!"
"You know, Brian," Pouch said, "no matter how much you pose and throw your voice, you just can’t make those words sound dramatic."
"We’ll give him a couple points for trying," Flip said.
* * *
The Boss stepped into his office and sat down at his desk. Folding his hands together in front of his face, he glared at the space in front of him, wishing for another supply of advisors to destroy. His mental gears were turning frantically; the Argonauts were inside his complex and, if not stopped, would throw a wrench into his entire plans of conquest.
He ran a list of possibilities through his mind and, one by one, discarded them. Then he realized: what he needed was a bargaining chip. Hmming thoughtfully, he made up his mind. Phoning his secretary again, even as an evil grin started to spread across his face, he said, "Prepare the secret weapon. We’ll be initializing it sooner than expected."
"But sir—"
"Just do it!" he barked. Setting the cell phone down on the desk so hard that it cracked, the Boss stood out of his chair and paced around his office. He had originally been saving the final combined efforts of Tsunami Heavy Industries and Double-A Cybertechnologies for his final coup, after the path to conquest was cleared of all major obstacles. But the Argonauts had stubbornly held on to all his efforts, like some annoying insect. Well, five annoying insects. But now…now he had no choice but to bring out the metaphorical—and literal—big guns.
* * *
Throughout the complex, lights began to flash and alarms started to ring. The startled Argonauts looked around as the corridors were filled with flashing red lights.
"Did we trip off an alarm?" Super Jen asked.
"Initiation of Prime Laser Cannon Array in five minutes. All officers report to stations," a metallic voice intoned.
The Argonauts blinked.
"That cannot be good," Seeker said.
"Attention Argonauts," another voice said, and this one definitely wasn’t a computer voice. "As you can see, you have less than five minutes to surrender yourself. Or Moadville gets toasted. I know at least one of you is capable of sending a message through radio frequencies, so I await your response. The choice is yours."
The Argonauts blinked again.
"Oh, shoot."
"We have to find the Laser Cannon Array and shut it off!" Flip said. "Seeker, where is the array located?"
"Right here," Seeker said, pointing to the spot on the map.
"But that just says ‘Primary Weapons Array’," Super Jen pointed out. "Shouldn’t we want to look for something else, by your logic? Like," and she peered over the Soyokaze’s arm at the map, "maybe the ‘Petting Zoo’?"
"Changing the name of the Primary Weapons Array wasn’t mentioned in the Overlord list."
"But maybe he’s taking it one step further!" she argued.
"We’ll go to Primary Weapons Array; it’s located in the most logical place."
"Petting Zoo!"
"Primary Weapons Array!"
"Initiation of Prime Laser Cannon Array in four minutes."
"Of course we’re all good friends! And you wouldn’t want to let your good friend down, would you?" Pouch purred. He’d taken the initiative to grabbing a passing officer and had commenced sweet-talking him. "So, where’s the Prime Laser Cannon Array?"
"Oh, upstairs on the fifth floor," he said, "third door on your left. Right next to the men’s room."
"Ah, thanks! I owe ye one!" He patted the officer on the back and sent him on his way. He then turned to the other Argonauts, grinned and winked. "Fifth Floor it is!"
They booked it down the blinking, ringing corridors, trying to find a way upstairs. However, considering the fact that there were five superheroes loose in the complex, the Boss had shut down all the public elevators. Flip looked around and found a door marked ‘Stairs’. It was locked, however. Stepping back, he kicked it down with a crash, and four of them rushed in. However, the Soyokaze was too big to get through without destroying the stairs and the doorway, thus making it impossible for the others to follow.
"I’ll find my own way up," Seeker said. "I’ll see you guys up there!"
Flip nodded and followed the others as they rushed up the stairs as fast as they could. Seeker pointed his guns upward, targeting the ceiling, and blasted his own passage through it. There was a small explosion, and several pieces of floor tile and insulation sifted down through the smoke. Revving his jetpacks, he launched into the floor above him.
* * *
"Initiation of Prime Laser Cannon Array in two minutes…"
The Boss sat at his desk, his hands folded in front of his face. Planning to gamble, were they? How foolish. They couldn’t possibly stop the weapon in time. If heroes were so dedicated to saving people, why would they never surrender if that were the most assured way of saving everyone?
Not that he minded toasting sections of Moadville. Explosions and wailing in the streets always made a good backdrop to his cup of coffee when he was pulling an all-night shift.
* * *
Brian, Flip, Pouch and Super Jen burst into the room where they’d been directed, and took in the scene all at once: the Soyokaze hovering over a large hole in the floor, and several uniformed guards unloading their ammunition at the mecha. Behind them, what looked like several large transparent tubes (reminiscent of the Enterprise’s warp core) were heating up in a glowing flare of light.
"Initiation of Prime Laser Cannon Array in 30 seconds…"
"We have to shut it off! In the name of justice!" Flip exclaimed, jumping towards the main console and knocking aside several guards in the process.
"Can you figure it out, Flip?" Super Jen asked.
"It has a very cryptic user interface," he said, tapping several keys and trying to get a response.
"I’d help," Seeker said, trying to shake a particularly persistent guard off of his arm, "but I’m a bit occupied right now."
"I think the problem is in the source code," Brian offered. "Try reprogramming it. Toss in a random undeclared variable and stall it."
"Naw, too much time, and the code is probably too robust to be stopped by a minor bug," Super Jen said. "It’ll probably just throw an exception and work around it." She turned to Flip. "It’s a hardware problem; pull out the wiring or something—"
"Guys, guys, I can handle this!" Flip said, holding up a hand to stay their suggestions. "Don’t be a backseat programmer. Who here is the Comp Sci major?" He raised his hand and looked at the others.
Slowly, Brian raised his hand too. Flip sighed in exasperation.
"Your attempts to stop me will be futile," intoned a voice over the loudspeaker. It was a voice that was slowly becoming far too familiar. "You should surrender now and keep Moadville from becoming a charred crater while you still have the chance!"
"Initiation of Prime Laser Cannon Array in 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . ."
"Do something!" Pouch said. "You’re the computer geniuses!"
"7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . ."
The Boss opened his laptop and brought up the Laser Array program, which showed all the relevant information as the cannons charged, along with a thermal diagram of Moadville which would display the damage as it was happening.
" . . . 4 . . ."
Seeker blasted over the rest of the guards and aimed his primary missile ejectors at the laser tubes, releasing a heavy barrage of projectiles. Even through the thick smoke that resulted, he could see through his scanners that damage to the cannons was minimal and wouldn’t be enough to stop them. That shielding was thick; he’d barely scratched it.
"3 . . . 2 . . . 1."
Flip smacked his fist angrily onto the console just as the voice intoned, "Firing Primary Laser Cannon Array."
* * *
Beth was sitting in her dorm room, listening to her Suzanne Vega CD and polishing a short story for her Writing Fiction class on her Macintosh notebook, wearing all black, with lots of silver jewelry dangling on her wrists and from her ears. Yup, things just don’t get any more Beth-ish than this.
Suddenly, the room heated up, and a flare of light rushed past her window, followed by an explosion as the portion of Moadville in the direct path of the laser beam was incinerated.
Beth stood from her chair, walked over to her window, and shut it, blocking out the noise. Sitting back down at her desk, she continued to type.
Yup . . . she was in a room.
* * *
"We have to stop it!" Super Jen exclaimed. "We have to minimize the damage!"
The lights dimmed briefly, then flared bright again. Flip blinked. "Wait a minute; it has limited power. What if . . ."
"Hey, that’s it!" Brian said. "If it’s being run by a computer, it has limited memory. So all we have to do is run a program that’ll take up so much RAM that it’ll be impossible to run anything else!"
"Good idea," Flip said.
"I can start by playing Riven," Brian offered.
"No, I have an even better idea," Flip interjected.
"You do?" Super Jen asked, just as Seeker and Pouch said the same thing.
Flip pointed dramatically at the ceiling as Brian tended to do. "Launch Windows 98!" he declared.
* * *
The Boss was grinning as the computer screen showing the display of Moadville started to fill with red lines as paths of destruction were cut through the town. To the left of the screen, the current status of all the cannons were listed, all humming at a steady rate. Then, all of a sudden, the computer froze, and a window popped up: "Insufficient Memory to Complete Task. Please exit all programs and reboot. You will lose any unsaved work. To ensure that this problem does not occur again, buy Internet Explorer." Then his screen went blank, then was filled with a large version of the Windows logo.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
The Argonauts were smiling at their work as the laser cannons sputtered and shut down. "Now," Seeker said, "it’s time to take care of the Boss."
The Boss, meanwhile, lifted his face up from his hands and glared at the door so hard that it melted away into a brownish puddle on the floor. A temp walking by with a stack of papers in his hands froze, stunned. And just because the Boss was feeling particularly ill-tempered, he pulled out a pistol and shot the temp for good measure. As the young man’s body fell to the floor and the papers spilled around him, the Boss continued to glower.
"The Argonauts," he growled, "will not leave this place alive."
* * *
At that moment, five Argonauts were hurtling through the corridors, heading for the destiny which awaited at the end. None of them knew what they were really up against—more wizards or flying cities, or Ninja Masters? Maybe even an adult red dragon?
At that moment, Fan Boy walked into the corridor. "Not likely," he said in his breaking pubescent voice. "While the Author-sama has been exacting at times, she would hardly be as demanding or cruel as to set an adult red dragon on the heroes at this time. However, this isn’t to rule out the possibility that other DMs in the future would do so, after the heroes have leveled up appropriately—"
A very familiar and pudgy comic book store owner waddled in after Fan Boy. "Worst fanfic episode ever," he said firmly, and waddled off-screen.
Leaping dramatically over the wide form of Fan Boy (well, actually, four of them did; Seeker just knocked him aside), the Argonauts continued on their route to the center of the complex, drawing ever nearer to their fate.
"Down this corridor," Seeker said, pointing. They turned onto the branching hallway, which sloped slightly downward. As they left the part of the complex that was filled with administrative offices, the place became darker and gloomier. Soon the walls
had gone from wood paneling and soft, numbing color schemes to smoothly-hewn stone and eerie looking torch brackets. "We should be approaching the main control room soon!"
As if to validate this statement, hordes of screaming ninjas appeared before them, each bearing a skull-shaped patch on his shoulder. The Argonauts, after a moment of blinking audibly, could interpret some of the screaming vaguely as "We are the Death Squad!"
As the horde leapt forward, Brian stepped in front of the other Argonauts and held out his hand to stop them. "I’ll take care of this," he intoned dramatically. He pulled a glowing disk from inside his trench coat.
"But that’s—" Super Jen began.
"Moon…..Tiara….Ma—"
THUNK!
The glowing discus dropped to the ground and reformed as a tiara. Brian was bent under the weight of the anvil sitting on his head.
"Wow, he didn’t even finish the move!" Pouch said.
"Well, come on; it was a Sailor Moon reference," Seeker pointed out.
However, much to nobody’s surprise, this failed attack didn’t quite stop the ninja death squad horde from advancing. In fact, if anything, it encouraged him, which was exactly the opposite of what Brian had intended. Leaping forward, they proceeded to open up a can of whoop@$$ on our intrepid heroes.
Flip punched one in the side of the head, knocking him to the floor, but his next two attacks were easily dodged. "They’re much more skilled than the Forty Ninja Masters of the Black Dragon," he growled under his breath, "although a bit less annoying."
Unfortunately, these Ninjas discarded the tactics of previous ninja hordes when attacking Seeker. Rather than try to pile on top of him and drag him down, they aimed their mighty fists and feet at strategic points—joints, weapon arrays, and any other weak spots they could think of. Seeker, jostled around in the cockpit, was flipping control switches and pushing buttons furiously, trying to find some way of shaking them off. He fired up the jet packs and lifted off the ground a few feet, which slowed down the attacks—slightly—but put him in a much better position. He aimed his own arm-mounted stun ray and knocked out a swathe of ninjas, but even more seemed to be coming to take their places.
Pouch had pulled out his feather-sword and was slicing his way through the horde, mostly resorting to the age-old gypsy method of slicing through their belts so their pants fell down. Well, even though they weren’t wearing belts, the effect was the same for most of the ninjas. Soon Pouch was surrounded by ninjas stumbling around with their pants around their ankles, and surprisingly, a good portion of them were wearing white boxers with red hearts on them. He grinned, Cheshire-cat like, at them. "You should not ‘ave messed wis zee Argonauts, yes?" he said. However, when fighting in a large crowd, it was best not to stop to toss off a one-liner, because at that moment, a non-pantsed ninja took advantage of Pouch’s back being turned to punch him, two-fisted, on the back of the head, stunning the Argonaut, who collapsed to the ground.
Super Jen wasn’t having that great a time herself. Her umbrella ruined in the previous episode (its webbing had been burned off, and the tines were slightly bent and melted from the intense heat that had resulted from her shoving it into a small laser cannon), she couldn’t fly above the crowd or use it as a shield, so she was swinging it as best she could as a club, hitting ninjas upside the head. When that proved only minimally effective, she exclaimed, "Why don’t you just back off!?" This caused several ninjas to superdeform and squirm away, stunned briefly. She readied her umbrella for another offensive, but realized that the ninjas were fast getting the better of them. It looked as if an infinite supply were coming through from the walls and the ceiling. They all seemed to be blocking a great set of iron doors not too far from them in the hallway. If they were blocking it, then—
"Brian!" she called. "Behind those doors—that must be the control room!"
Brian was off to the side, occasionally hitting passing ninjas with a rubber chicken.
"Even if we could get through them to the doors," Seeker said, "these ninjas won’t let us pass! We need to finish them off first!"
At that moment, a ninja rammed what looked like a tuning fork into a shoulder joint on the Soyokaze. It flared up suddenly as it released 1,000 volts into the mecha. Seeker gritted his teeth at the pain, but the Soyokaze sank to one knee and collapsed.
"We can’t get through them!" Flip said.
Brian smacked one more ninja with the rubber chicken, just as Pouch struggled to get up and Seeker forced the Soyokaze up. "Don’t give up yet," Brian said. "We still have one more hope left. All of us, together, must pool our powers to summon…"
"Captain Planet?" Super Jen asked, surprised and dubious.
"No," Brian said. "Someone even more powerful than Captain Planet."
"Seeker, clear a space for us!" Flip said. "All of us need to stand together! Come on!"
"Can do!" Seeker released another blast from his recharged stun ray, cutting a swathe through the horde. The Argonauts separately struggled towards each other through the dazed ninjas and formed a loose circle. "Ready?"
Each of them closed their eyes and concentrated, summoning inside themselves their full powers, until each was glowing with a battle aura.
Flip stuck his fist into the air. "Martial Arts!" he cried.
Seeker did likewise. "Mecha!"
Super Jen followed. "Magical Girl!"
Pouch was next. "Sword and Sorcery!"
Brian was last. Lifting his voice to the stone ceiling, he exclaimed, "Comedy!"
From each of their auras, a beam of light shot forth, all of them connecting in the center of the circle, high above them. Then, a powerful, musical voice issued forth from the glow. "By these powers combined…"
"…I am Sailor Anime!"
Hoevering above them was the most magnificent being they had ever seen: with long brown hair and large anime-ish eyes that seemed to take up half her face, Sailor Anime wore a sailor fuku, and clutched in her cybernetic arm was a long, gleaming katana blade.
"Wow, you’d think that just her creation would earn an anvil the size of the Grand Canyon," Super Jen remarked.
"Oh, Sailor Anime is Fourth-Wall immune," Brian said, as if it explained everything. Which it did.
The Ninjas, seeing a girl with a katana hovering over them, leapt at her instead; being from Japan, or at least presuming to be, they weren’t about to underestimate a school girl in a fuku. They were right. Unfortunately, that didn’t help them.
"Rainbow Fireball Blade Blaster Attack!" she cried, swinging her now-glowing katana at the horde, which was thrown back by a blast of fiery pinkish-red light.
"Guys, we can finish them off now!" Seeker said, aiming his shoulder cannons at the remaining ninjas and blasting nearly half of them unconscious. Pouch and Flip leapt out from behind him, taking out the remainder with a flurry of kicks, slashes and punches. Nearby, Super Jen and Brian were completing the task by making sure that any ninjas that tried to get up were summarily hit over the head with an umbrella or a rubber chicken, respectively.
When the ninja Death Squad was completely defeated, they turned to Sailor Anime, who was still hovering over the large pile of black-clad and partially pantsed bodies. She smiled, then turned to the large iron doors that lead to the main control room; with two mighty slashes from her katana blade, the doors fell away into pieces. Turning back to the Argonauts, she gestured to the now-revealed passage. "Go, Argonauts; I cannot accompany you further. But remember," she added as her body began to disappear in a gradual flare of light, "the power is in you!"
Brian blinked. "Wow. I thought it was just heartburn," he said thoughtfully, patting his chest.
The Argonauts looked into the next room; it consisted mostly of a long dark passage leading up to a throne in the distance. To either side stretched immeasurable darkness. They stepped forward—
"I am Ryu of the Death Squad!" another voice called. "Tsunami!!" A black-clad figure leapt from the darkness, aiming for the Argonauts. Landing in the middle of them, he pointed dramatically. "Although late to the scene, it appears that my fellow ninjas have been defeated, leaving the stopping of the Argonauts up to me!"
The Argonauts looked at each other. Than, one by one, they grinned.
"Argonauts Special Freak-Out Attack!" The superheroes formed a loose circle around the determined ninja, and began chanting ominously… "Ch ch ch ch ch ch . . . ha ha ha ha ha ha . . . ch ch ch ch ch ch . . . ha ha ha ha ha ha . . ."
The ninja looked around, surprised. "Wh—what are you doing?"
They started to close in on Ryu, continuing to chant and glare ominously. "Ch ch ch ch ch ch . . . ha ha ha ha ha ha . . ."
The young ninja started to look frightened now. "Don’t come any closer!" His face had turned pale in the dim lighting. Finally, he let out a terrified scream and leapt off into the darkness, running in fear of what the Argonauts might do.
The superheroes smiled in satisfaction. "Well," Brian said, "so much for that."
"I vondehr vhy he vhas so frightened of us, yah?" Pouch added.
There was a moment of silence. Then, from the distance, someone began clapping.
One by one, the Argonauts turned to look in the direction of the throne. Two spotlights flicked on in the distant ceiling, illuminating said throne and the figure seated upon it. "An amusing display, Argonauts. You know, you’ve caused me more trouble than any other opponent I’ve faced. Most of them are crushed without a fight. But you…I’ve even deigned to come down here from my office to meet you." He lifted his face into the light.
There was a collective gasp from the Argonauts. "It’s…" "You’re…"
"…the Palmer!"
It was Mike Palmer, the seedy and undoubtedly evil head of the Student Government. Wearing a white dress shirt and khakis, and a classy blue-and-red striped tie, every inch of him screamed "Politician!" His eyes revealed a cold and heartless soul, devoid of imagination, silliness, or any other thing that made life huggable and soft and springtime fresh.
"That’s right!" he crowed. He snapped his fingers; the darkness on either side of the room lit up to reveal monitors of every shape and size, lining the walls. "I’m the one who is going to control the strings of every aspect of this town! The Student Government is already under my thumb; absolute power is almost in my grasp! And I know who you are!"
"NANI?!" they all gasped.
"Jynx, owe me a coke," Brian said cheerfully.
"Of course. I know everything in this school; and now that I’ve had your Dungeon searched, I know all the little details. You’re those free-thinking nerds from the gaming club! You watch anime, and you…" he shuddered, "roleplay." He spat the word out as if it tasted bad in his mouth. "Soon I will know who gives you your orders…and then I will eliminate the problem at its roots!"
"We won’t let you do that!" Super Jen exclaimed.
"You won’t get away with this!" Brian declared.
"We will lift your shadow of evil from this fair town!" Flip intoned. Lighning flashed in the distance.
"Ha." The Palmer grinned. "You gaming minority will never be able to stand up to the world! We have bureaucracy on our side! We control everything! Even if you manage to penetrate our complex defense system of red tape, you won’t be able to do a thing! Now . . . Conform!"
He held out a hand and zapped the five Argonauts, whose bodies convulsed with purple lightning as they fell to the ground, screaming in pain.
"You’ll never win!" Palmer shrieked, his eyes lighting up with insane glee. "Conform!"
Their costumes began to fade, revealing their every-day clothes. Pouch gasped, "My accent’s fading!" Then he looked down in horror. "Oh no! I think I’m wearing a cardigan!"
"Be—strong, Pouch…" Flip gasped. "We’ve got…to fight…it…"
"I don’t think I can, any more," Super Jen groaned. "His mundanity is too strong…We might as well give in…."
"No!" Brian exclaimed. "Jen, remember all those times you said you’d never give in to popular fashions, because you didn’t want to conform to the crowd’s shallow standards?!" He tried to force himself up, ignoring the pain as he was shot through with purple lighting.
"Conform!"
Brian momentarily shuddered as a new flash of lightning passed over him, but he continued to force himself to stand. "Do you…" he continued, "want to give in and start wearing bellbottoms?!"
Super Jen’s half-lidded eyes now opened wide with a new determination. "Never!" she cried, forcing herself up again.
"We shall be strong together!" said Flip, facing the Palmer.
"Accent or no," Pouch continued, his costume reappearing, "we can fight this thing!"
"We can overcome this!" Seeker said, forcing the Soyokaze to stand. "These same free-thinking nerds you despise, Palmer, are stronger than you think! We are beginning to infiltrate your ranks and become forces to be reckoned with." Inside his cockpit, he was grinning.
"You!" the Palmer hissed. "You’re that gaming club representative, cleverly disguised as a responsible upperclassman, who dared to defy me!" He launched a fresh barrage of conformity, but it was weaker than before.
Brian looked at the other Argonauts standing beside him, then grinned defiantly at the Palmer. "That’s right," he said. "You can’t stop the growing force of geeks. Even now, we are banding together to stand tall and unafraid! Gathering across America and the world, in Star Trek conventions and Renaissance Faires, in the growing strength of Anime clubs…even now, the children of politicians are picking up copies of Kiki’s Delivery Service! And yes," he continued, "we even have our own formidable businesses!"
"NOOOO!!" The Palmer shrank back. "Bah, imagination! Bah, humor! Bah, fandom!" His arms were covering his head now.
"We’re winning, guys—!" Super Jen began, when suddenly there was a loud sound of ripping and peeling, and the Palmer seemed to explode outward, a wave of energy throwing the Argonauts back.
Suddenly, where a clean-cut bureaucrat had stood, was now a horrific demon. With scaly, blackened skin, long, gangly limbs and clawed hands, a gaping, fanged jaw and angry red eyes, it hissed and spat at them, its long forked tongue dripping foul acid.
"It’s…Palmer’s true form!" Keibert exclaimed.
"Such power must have corrupted him," Seeker said. "Either that or he was always a demon. Which, frankly, wouldn’t surprise me."
"Yooou’lll….neverh esszcape…alhiiiive!" it hissed. "My power . . . issss far greater than yourssszz!"
"By any chance," Brian asked, "did anyone suspicious-looking offer you a ring a long time ago? One of a nine-piece set?"
"SSSILENCCCCE!!!" He waved a clawed hand, and another wave of energy threw the Argonauts even farther back, and cracked the stone floor as well.
"What are we gonna do?" Super Jen exclaimed. "He may be too strong…and we’ve already used all of our special back-up moves. Sailor Anime was a one-shot deal!"
"It’s true," Brian said, "that we can’t rely on anyone else to back us up now. We have to do this by ourselves. But that doesn’t mean that we are completely without hope."
"What did you have in mind, Brian?" Seeker asked.
"Guys," he began seriously, "remember when I told you never to cross the references?"
"Umm…" Pouch hedged.
"Um, yeah! Of course!" Super Jen said, nudging Pouch and nodding at the others furiously.
"Yes," Flip said.
"Well," Brian continued, "We’re going to have to cross the references."
Super Jen, in keeping with the mood, gave a small gasp of fright.
"That’s right. You ready, guys?" With that, Brian stood up determinedly, with the others following suit. Super Jen discreetly pulled out a hair pin and stuck it between the handle and the shaft of her umbrella, giving it a slight twist until she heard a clicking noise.
"No matterrrrr…what you pullll…you won’t ssstop meee!" Palmer continued to hiss. "And your charred bodies will go into the incinerator and be turned into next week’s chicken fingers at McFinley’s!"
The Argonauts did a group huddle. "Are you ready? On three…" They turned around and faced Palmer again. "Argonauts Special Final Attack—!"
They all broke off suddenly, their eyes widening. Pointing their fingers simultaneously at something behind the demon, they screamed in unison, "What the hell is that?!"
Palmer, taken off guard, turned around and looked over his shoulder, alarmed.
At that moment, they all pulled up the full measure of their strength. Super Jen lifted up the detached handle of her umbrella, and screamed, "Umbrella of Light!" An umbrella of solid light sprung from the empty handle and emitted a beam straight at Palmer.
From the Soyokaze’s shoulders, huge missile ejectors which had not been there before appeared, as Seeker’s voice boomed through the external speakers, "Macross Cannons!"
Pouch took a deep breath of air, declared, "Akira Scream!" before releasing a
long and loud scream which blasted half the infrastructure away.
"From the depths of darkness and angst," Flip said ominously, "Shishi Houkudan!!" A blast of pure angsty energy shot out at the demon.
Energy began to swirl around Brian as he brought his hands together, palms out; the wind from the powerful chi lifted his highlander hat off his head and caused his hair to seem to stand up. "Ka…mi…Ha…me….HA!" With that, a blast of pure white chi seemed to fill the room, coalescing and aiming straight at Palmer. It seemed to absorb the power of the other four attacks, becoming stronger and more intense, swirling in at the villain even as he stared, aghast, at the power hurtling towards him. There was a brief second when he opened his mouth to scream, but no sound could come out before he was engulfed. Through the blinding white light, the Argonauts could barely make out his demonically blackened body as it disintegrated.
The light faded; there was nothing left of the great evil that had menaced them, the man or demon powerful enough to control the Black Dragon, Darfeld Senshire, and seemingly countless others. His throne now was a pile of ashes, and his throne room of immense stone walls and video monitors was cracked and crumbling. Through the newly-formed cracks in the walls, light was streaming as dust and debris sifted down from the ceiling. A particular Highlander hat plopped down neatly on Brian’s head.
"Just goes to show you—" he began.
"Um, Brian," Seeker asked, "why weren’t we supposed to cross the references?"
Brian’s eyes widened. "Oh. Um. . . . RUN."
The five Argonauts high-tailed it out of the room, through several corridors (and over one pile of still-unconscious ninjas), and out the first door they could find, out into the partially-lit Moadville dawn, just as the largest pile of anvils ever seen came crashing down onto the complex, forming a hill of immense proportions. When the dull clanging came to a halt and the smoke cleared, it was to reveal the complex completely demolished (and flattened).
"Just goes to show you the power of geeks!" Brian declared, raising a fist triumphantly into the air.
"Wow," Pouch said, "a moral that actually has to do with what happened!"
"It’s a new beginning for us," Super Jen said, watching as the sun came over the horizon.
"This great evil has been vanquished, and the city is now safe," said Flip, satisfied. Kuni-chan gave a quiet squeak and poked her head out of the folds of his cape, flapping up to his shoulder to watch as a new morning dawned on a safe and joyous Moadville.
"Now we can get back to sitting around and watching more anime!" Brian said.
"Here’s to that!" Pouch cheered.
"Guys, may I remind you," Seeker pointed out, "that finals are coming up?"
"You know, being a freshman in college," Brian said, "I should be running for the hills. But now that we’ve defeated Palmer," and he stared at the glowing rosy east, "I feel that I can face anything that Dr. Cupholder can throw at us." He turned to the audience. "Dr. Cupholder is this semester’s Computer Science professor."
Thunk!
"Well, at least that’s still operational," Super Jen said to herself, looking up at the sky.
* * *
The end of another school year. Even as we read, parents are driving up to the school and helping their kids to haul out boxes and boxes of stuff, that will be carefully organized and slipped into waiting trunks and back seats, until it arrives at its destination, where it is tossed haphazardly in the back of the garage for the summer, collecting dust and waiting for the start of the new school year.
The sun was warm, and the trees were thick with green, and despite the bustle, there was a sense of melancholy in the air. Here was where people said good-bye, with promises to stay in touch, which were really half-pleading requests of "Please, don’t forget me!"
Jen waved good-bye as Beth’s mom pulled her van out of the parking lot, and disappeared in the distance. When it was gone, she turned to the other occasional Argonauts. "Beth and I are going to be rooming next year," she said happily. "It’s going to be terrific!"
Josh checked his watch. "I’ve got to be getting out of here soon," he said, not entirely happy. "If I want to beat rush hour traffic, that is."
"We’ll go with you back to Catfish," Brian said. "My parents aren’t going to arrive for a while."
After finishing wedging Nero swords and anime tapes into his back seat, Keibert, Brian, Jen, and Charlie stepped back and waved good-bye as Josh pulled out into traffic, his hand waving from the window.
Keibert sighed and sat down on the curb, pulling a note out of his pocket. Hey Keibert, it read, thanks for bailing me out with that whole bounty deal. Now that I have the reward money, it’s actually enough for me to do what I’ve always dreamed: move to New York and start my own Bounty Hunter agency! Thanks again! Love, Linnea.
Folding it up again, he was about to put it in his pocket, when one of his friends walked by and waved. "Hey, Keibert!" She had shoulder-length reddish hair, and wore long, wispy black goth clothes.
"Hey, Jessica!" Keibert waved back, a warm smile forming on his face. He got up and joined her, chatting about the coming summer and strolling away down the sidewalk.
"I wonder," Jen said thoughtfully, "what next year is going to bring us."
"More friends, and new and wacky adventures, I’d think," Brian replied.
"Hey, I’m getting a job at a computer business," Charlie said. "You guys keep in touch, right? Just use my school e-mail address."
"I’ve already given you guys my addy, right?" Jen asked.
"Yup. Oh, hey," Charlie said, picking Kuni-chan up, "here come my parents. Ja ne!"
Brian and Jen waved as he walked down to the street to meet his parents. He turned and waved back, smiling.
When he was gone, Jen got up and started walking back to Bricks Complex. Her roommate was already in their room, helping her parents pack her stuff up. "What about you?" Jen asked Brian. "Who’s your roommate gonna be? You and Charlie gonna be together again?"
"Naw, I’m just gonna spin the roulette wheel again and see what happens. Luck of the draw."
"Hopefully, your roommate will be the type to not notice that you’re a superhero," Jen pointed out.
"Not if the city is safe enough to not need us. Which, although boring, wouldn’t really be all that bad, technically."
"No more all-nighters?"
"Well, there will be all-nighters, but they will be spent studying rather than infiltrating enemy complexes."
"Oh, okay."
There was a long pause as they sat and watched Nikki’s parents finish packing up the room. Soon, Jen’s own parents were there, and as it was getting late, they finished packing quickly and went out to dinner. Jen, feeling kind of bad that now Brian wouldn’t have anyone to eat with (a situation that the Argonauts tended to avoid; during the school year, it was usually a given that you would run into someone who you knew whenever you went to eat), invited him to join her family for dinner. Then they parted ways for the evening.
The next morning, Jen was slipping the rest of the boxes into her family’s minivan.
"Jen?" Brian began.
"Yeah?"
He paused, then said, "Keep in touch, okay?"
"Of course!" She smiled and slipped into the back seat. "See ya in the fall!"
Brian waved as the van pulled out and drove off into the rising sun. Then, slipping his hands into his pockets, he turned and walked back to Schwartz, where his own parents should be arriving shortly, and wondered what the next year would bring.
* * *
The figure of Brian receded in the distance on the small monitor. Watching that monitor, someone smiled. He turned on other screens, which replayed the great explosion that had eliminated the Palmer.
Wonderful . . . everything was going according to plan . . .
Author’s Notes
Well, it’s finally done. About a year after schedule (these episodes took place during the 1998-1999 school year), but it’s done.
Fan Boy is actually a geek character from the animated series Freakazoid. The nameless comic book store guy is from The Simpsons.
I hope everyone enjoyed our wacky retelling of the Argonauts’ first year together as superheroes. It was a swell year, and I for one couldn’t ask for anything more. Except for Argonauts adventures in the second year! Stay tuned for more wacky adventures and exciting new characters! Coming soon to this very web page near you!