--Chapter Two: A
Taste of Things to Come
Leo: (in Worms, carrying a miniature drum of
napalm) DIE, FELLOW INVERTEBRATES! (Throws the drum. It scatters the gas
among several enemy combatants.) HA! Gotcha, suckers! Victory is mine!
(Krug’s foot lands on the ground, causing
the mud to collapse, crushing all the worms.)
“Eww, ground
squishy…”
Krug brushed the
dirt (and a couple of flattened earthworm carcasses) off his foot and walked
carefully back to the pavement. At one a.m., and in disguise, he was not one to
gain too much attention in downtown Toronto. Any passers by who thought his
body-length frock coat and oversized hat were odd for the recently warm weather
did not bother to question him or stare too long.
Still, Krug did
as he was advised, avoiding overexposure on the streets by walking mainly
through grassy shortcuts. The first part of his mission was simple: Go to a
computer store and eat all the merchandise in aisle seven. The store he had
been directed to was now across the street. The monster waited for the road to
clear, then crossed and peered in the shop window. Little did he know that his
actions were being watched…
--
High atop a
nearby building stood Pants Man, scouring the city through binoculars, talking
to himself in classic superhero fashion.
“Somewhere out
in that malaise of lights lies evil; I just know it. And where there is evil,
Pants Man will thwart it. Ooh, what’s this now?”
His binoculars
brought him to look at a figure in full-length coat, peering into a large
computer store’s display window. Pants Man zoomed in on the subject just as
Krug punched a hole in the glass, shattering the window.
“Vandalism,
possibly burglary… this is bigger than anything the police have ever assigned
me to!” In his excitement, the hero instantly gave chase… meaning, of course,
he ran back to the roof elevator and pressed the 1* floor button, hoping his
target would not make a fast break before Pants Man could arrive on the scene.
--
Krug knew not to
go down certain aisles of the computer store; he had not been told the reason
for that, though: to keep from tripping the motion detector alarm. Winding his
way through, he found aisle seven.
--
Pants Man
surveyed the scene from outside the broken glass and wondered why no alarm had
gone off.
“Strange,” said
he, peering his head inside. There were muddy footsteps on the floor, barely
visible in the light. Then, a loud crunching sound coming from the front of the
store confirmed his suspicion that the criminal had not yet run for it. The
Khaki Crusader stepped inside, cautious of the glass shards surrounding him.
They made a light crunch under his feet as he entered, but the louder sound
from the front aisle made this noise negligible.
Pants Man
followed the footsteps in a zigzag pattern until he knew the crunching was
coming from just around the corner. Time for a dramatic entrance, he
thought.
Krug, meanwhile,
was intently and indiscriminately chugging metallic objects and therefore
oblivious to his follower. He wondered for a moment about the possibility of
getting too much iron in his diet, but it passed as he grew an acquired liking
for the various alloys in front of him.
Then a flash of
light to his left made the monster turn his head. He was probably just as
surprised as Pants Man was at what he saw.
On the one hand,
Krug found himself staring at something that looked like a Fleshy One, only
with some not-so-fleshy object on its head, its hands pointing a Super Soaker
200 in his direction.
On the other
hand, Pants Man found himself in front of a red, furry mass in a coat that
looked like the upper part of it had been eaten away. Its eyes glowed yellow,
the main light of the room, and its mouth was propped open by a cd-rom drive
box that it was apparently eating.
Pants Man
recovered from the initial shock before Krug did. The hero yelled out, “Hold it
right there! You’re under arrest for destruction of property… and… stuff.”
His voice
trailed off as Krug stood up straight, swallowed the cd-rom box whole, and gave
him a look that was comically evil, and yet had no intended humor in it.
The monster’s
response was simple: “You got three seconds before Krug eat you.”
Pants Man pumped
the Super Soaker rapidly in anticipation. He later reflected that there must
have been a timer built into Krug’s head, because it was exactly three seconds
from the end of that last spoken sentence that the red mass attacked.
The hero ducked
and rolled to the side, recovering in fighter stance and shooting the gun. An
intense wave of bleach struck Krug in the face, but the villain responded by
simply swallowing the alkaline liquid and licking his lips, as though he
actually liked it.
His weapon
rendered useless, Pants Man had to think fast. He ran into the next aisle for
temporary cover, setting off the store alarm in the process.
“Well, at least
the police will come now,” said the hero, thinking aloud. Inwardly, he kicked
himself for not calling them earlier; at the time, he felt it necessary to
catch the vandal first. In retrospect, staying away from the vandal would have
been a better course of action.
The alarm
initially stunned Krug, giving Pants Man ample time to make a full escape. The
monster covered its ears with both hands, closed its eyes and ran away from the
noise, straight into the Macintosh aisle. Seeing this from the checkout area,
the hero got an idea. He looked around for the Employees’ Office, and once he
had found it, he ran in.
A nearby
Janitors closet contained the circuit breakers and power switches for the
store. Pants Man turned all of the switches on. The lights turned on in the
store, thus driving the red monster even more insane. The hero returned from
the office area just in time to see
Krug start throwing random objects at the ceiling lights in vain retaliation.
Unfortunately, one such object started an odd chain reaction:
The projectile
hit a ceiling sprinkler, which started spraying water. The water landed on the computers
and ground, inadvertently rolling into some carelessly uncovered floor sockets…
cueing a massive chain of electric explosions.
After an
unspoken exclamation crossed Pants Man’s mind, he ran for the front doors and
kicked them open. Krug also ran, his eyes and ears now mostly adjusted to the
change in surroundings. He knew he had eaten most of the assigned aisle, so he
could still technically tell his masters he had been successful. But it was
instinct that told him to run now, and he jumped out of the broken window and
ran around the corner to retrace his steps back to headquarters.
Pants Man was
still concentrating on the building when five city police cars rolled up on the
street, sirens blaring. The electric fire then blew out the remaining windows.
--
(Five hours
later, in the Commissioner’s Office)
Commissioner: (slamming
an early edition of the city paper on his desk) DAMMIT PANTSMAN! You and
your heroic stunt tonight cost almost a half million dollars in damage! What
the HELL made you think you could just go AWOL and blow up buildings for a
living? Huh?
Pants Man: (tired,
dejected look, sitting in a small chair in front of the desk) Well, I saw a
crime in progress, so I tried to stop it, and—
Commissioner:
You saw a guy smash a window. So did you call the police? NO! Did you tell us
what was going on? NO! You ran after him with a SQUIRT GUN and nearly got
yourself killed! There’s a reason I don’t assign you to live-action cases like
this, Pants Man. Your unconventional meddling may have its place in following
detective leads, but it has no place in a fight against a conventional robbery.
Period!
Pants Man: But
it wasn’t just a robbery! I saw that suspect eating a whole aisle of
computer hardware. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t human.
Commissioner:
The security camera got a shot of a figure in long coat and hat. We didn’t get
the face, but everything the cameras saw it do was normal criminal behavior.
There’s no evidence anything in the store was eaten, given that there isn’t
anything lift in the store that isn’t completely FUBAR. So don’t even try to
pull the wool over my eyes. The suspect even ran away from the crime scene like
a normal criminal would! All this destruction, and you weren’t even able to
make an arrest!
Pants Man: (shaking
head) I’m telling you, Commissioner, that thing I saw was red, furry, had
big yellow eyes, and ate metal stuff. If that’s human, then I’m a
freaking dairy cow.
Commissioner: I
won’t have you disrespecting me in my office any longer, Pants Man; you are now
officially off the force. If you meddle in this or any other investigation of
the Toronto City Police in the future, you will be arrested. Now hand in your
badge and gun.
Pants Man: (lays
the Super Soaker on the table) Here’s the gun. I’m afraid I can’t give you
a badge, since I never had one to begin with.
Commissioner: (takes
the gun and stows it under the desk) Whatever. Just get the hell outta my
office.
Pants Man: Oh,
I’ll get out, sure. But the next time that monster goes loose on part of the
city, see for yourself how far conventional methods get you. He’ll
probably eat the very police car you lock him in.
Pants Man left
with his back turned to the desk. The Commissioner sighed and looked at the
squirt gun. Perhaps he should have told the superhero the real reason for the
manhunt last night… or the reasons behind scores of other missions, for that
matter. If Pants Man knew just how much most of his work was appreciated, he might
not have tried to strike out on his own and without a given assignment. Then
this whole night never would have happened…
Ah well, now
that the poor guy had been brought to the point of blaming make-believe
monsters for his own shortcomings, it was probably best for him to stay away
from the Force. Seriously, thought the Commissioner. Next time, he
would have told us the Boogey Man was loose.
--
Pants Man drove
home and walked straight to his room, shutting the door behind him before Aeris
could follow. The cat, thinking she had just been snubbed, sat outside the door
and waited for her owner to come back out so he could tell her about his
adventures. Scott went to sleep right away, though, not giving a single word to
his pet.
Eventually,
Aeris lost interest, thinking the artist/superhero was simply more tired than
usual. After a day had passed, though, without any major action from Scott, she
began to worry again.
--End
Chapter Two