[LNHY/ACRA] The Daily Super Short-Short Story #45

Saxon Brenton saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
Mon Oct 25 05:30:12 PDT 2004


The Daily Super Short-Short Story #45
 
A Devil Came Down to Georgia 27
 
Last time: The Banjo Duelling Kangaroos were chased away.
 
     Exclamation!Master! crossed his arms and said in a more normal tone 
of voice, "Well, they were a tough pair of cookies." Then he glanced over 
at Martin. "You okay, son?"
     "I think so," he said, reflexively checking himself for cuts and 
bruises. Then,  .oO( Why am I worrying about cuts and bruises? I grew back 
my hand after it was blown off! Lord, was that only yesterday morning? )
     Oblivious to this internal monologue, E!Master! said, "Thanks for 
the help with that. They were much stronger than I would have dreamed. 
I'm going to be giving a statement to the authorities now. If you're 
going to do the same, I'd suggest you cook up a cover name."
     "What, I-Haven't-Thought-Of-A-Superhero-Name-For-Myself-Yet Lad 
won't cut it?" Martin said pointedly.
     Exclamation!Master! smiled sardonically. "The Kangaroos are super-
villains. No matter how intelligent they are, supervillains tend to be 
stupid in rather specialised ways. People who create incredible inventions 
and then use them to rob banks rather than simply patent them are like 
that. They, at least, would take a name like I-Haven't-Thought-Of-A-
Superhero-Name-For-Myself-Yet Lad at face value."
     .oO( Unlike people who dress up in their underwear to fight crime? ) 
Martin thought to himself. There was, he felt, a rather obvious need to 
do something worthwhile with his abilities, but was feeling dubious about 
being a superhero.
 
 
     In the end Martin decided to stay and give a statement as well, using 
the codename MegaMetal BlastLord (which simply highlighted the influences 
of the handles used by other online RPG players). Then he morphed himself 
back into as much of his normal shape as he could and went looking for 
where Delroy had gotten off too.
     He spent the next hour or so searching the crowd. It took him so long 
because he was somewhat distracted by his disgruntlement at not being able 
to fully remove the metal growths from his face and arms. It was absurd. 
He could grow a working IR laser to burn a demonic sock, but he couldn't 
remove - or at least shift around - some metal plating on his skin? He 
supposed he could take what he was stuck with and try to arrange it so 
that he looked like he was cosplaying to imitate Seven of Nine from the 
Star Trek: Voyager TV series, but that would only pass muster in casual 
circumstances. There was no way he'd be able to pull off an excuse like 
that at a formal occasion, like graduation.
     After a while it began to occur to him that Delroy wasn't around. 
With mounting concern he checked with the casualty lists of people who'd 
been physically hurt or put into shock by the antics of the Kangaroos 
- and was briefly relieved to find that his companion wasn't listed there.
     Then he went back to the university, hoping to see if he had gone 
home. Martin recalled that Delroy had seemed a little bit miffed when he 
had told him that he'd been holding back information about the evil socks 
and stuff. But he wasn't there either.
     By now it was mid-afternoon and Martin was starting to get worried. 
He decided to go back to where he'd last seen him, and if, after a bit 
more checking, he couldn't find him Martin'd put in a missing person report.
He walked back to the city, keeping a lookout for Delroy, but failing to 
be on the watch for traps by evil socks.
 
Tomorrow: The trap.
 
The Daily Super Short-Short Story series and the wondersocks created by 
Arthur Spitzer, and used with belated permission.
 
All main characters created by Saxon Brenton are Ask First Before Use 
for the duration of this storyline, then they'll probably go to Usable 
Without Permission. Thanks to Andrew for querrying this point.
 
-----
Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
     saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
The Eyrie Archives of Russ Allbery which collect the online superhero
fiction of the rec.arts.comics.creative newsgroup can be found at:
     http://archives.eyrie.org/racc/



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