LNH: Hungry, Hungry Sabertooths! #23: "A Treatise on Fantastic Epidemiology; or, Sabertooth Monster Beast Power Activate!!"

[Drew Nilium]

HUNGRY, HUNGRY SABERTOOTHS!
#22: "A Treatise on Fantastic Epidemiology; or, Sabertooth Monster Beast Power
Activate!!"
A tale of plagues and cures, by Drew Nilium

====

The body of Multi-Tasking Man stalked the corridors of the LNHQ, the sinister
mind of UltraKiwi Wondersock steaming and curling within.

Bah! You'd think a net.hero base would have multitudes of interesting inventions
he could use to create giant monsters. But areas such as the Plot Device Room
had somehow been relocated underground during the quarantine, in case the LNHQ
was invaded while the LNH was sheltering in place. Reasonable precautions!
Humbug!

UltraKiwi Wondersock made a left turn and bumped into a figure. "Oh, pardon me."

"Sabertooth!" the figure growled, and leapt at him!

UltraKiwi Wondersock squeaked in bestartlement and flinched back, unleashing a
blast of nega-ultra-energy!

...when nothing happened, UltraKiwi Wondersock peeked.

The sabertooth was sitting before him, head bowed worshipfully. Well, no,
actually, it was sitting comfortably in the middle of the hallway and staring
at him unblinkingly, but that counted as friendly for a cat.

A sudden change of heart... or... UltraKiwi Wondersock surrounded this body in
nega-ultra-energy and made a beckoning motion toward the sabertooth.

The sabertooth stood up, streeeeetched, and padded towards him. He held fast,
and it nuzzled against his legs.

Of course!! Like all prehistoric creatures third-graders are familiar with,
sabertooth tigers counted as both wonders and monsters - and all monsters were
the servants of UltraKiwi Wondersock!

Yesssss, this boded well for his plans...

====

Dr. Stomper got up out of his chair and streeeeeeeetched. "Now that the Super
Quarantine Field is up, we may have a chance of stopping the virus."

"I thought you said you couldn't stop the virus," said Halls Jordan.

"No, I said I couldn't *cure* the virus, since there are so many different
strains." Dr. Stomper walked out of the lab and down the corridors, Halls
following. "But I can make a serum that can cure a specific strain of the
virus. Ah, Multi-Tasking Man - come on, you'll want to get a look at this."

Multi-Tasking Man stopped the very not suspicious things he was doing in the
hallway and obediently followed along.

The three of them went to the hangar, converted to a series of sabertooth pens
to keep the tigers they'd managed to catch safe and comfortable until they
changed back. The biggest pen held the giant sabertooth, now sleeping, that
UltraKiwi had managed to defeat the day before yesterday. Multi-Tasking Man
hissed at the thought of it for no reason.

"I've managed to aerosolize the serum," said Dr. Stomper, putting on a hazmat
suit and loading a metal can into something that looked like an overclocked
paint sprayer. "An airborne cure for an airborne virus."

He stepped into the pen and started spraying in the general vicinity of the
sabertooth's face. Halls Jordan watched intently, but Multi-Tasking Man seemed
to be gazing off into the distance...

The sabertooth, breathing deeply in sleep, began to shrink and change shape,
exhaling sabertoothness and inhaling humanity. In a few minutes, the naked body
of Very Big Boy laid on the floor.

Halls immediately threw a green energy blanket over him. "Looks like a one
hundred percent success. Are we going to go around and spray all the
sabertooths?"

Dr. Stomper shook his head. "The testing to tell which strain an individual
sabertooth was infected with takes all day. Instead, I've figured out a way we
can hit every instance of a strain at once."

Multi-Tasking Man stood up straight at that. "*Really*."

"That's right, old friend. This way..." Dr. Stomper lead them to something like
an enormous drone with a number of aerosol spray-nozzles on the bottom. "This
cure.thingee will fly up to the top of the Super Quarantine Field and release
the aerosolized serum. If the Field wasn't there, the serum would just drift
off on the wind, but with it in place, it'll spread out to all of Net.ropolis,
and the cure will get to anyone suffering from this particular strain."

"Fasssssscinating," said Multi-Tasking Man, rubbing his hands one over the
other, his eyes shining with non-megalomaniacal glee.

"We'll release the cure for one strain at a time, until everyone in Net.ropolis
is cured," said Dr. Stomper, lifting an enormous bottle of serum and screwing
it into the top of the drone. "If that works, we can start using this solution
on other major cities."

"That'll take a while," said Halls.

"True," said Dr. Stomper, "but without Net.ropolis as a major infection center,
other areas will be better able to keep the disease contained." He smiled,
crossing his arms and looking off into the sky. "It looks like there might be a
light at the end of the tunnel."

====

UltraKiwi Wondersock cackled to himself as soon as he was out of earshot of
those fools. Mmmmmm... so these ones have found a way to change one back from
being a monster. Very clever, very sweet... and just what he needed for his
diabolical plans!

It would be a simple matter to take a sample of the virus and subject it to
dark magics and nega-ultra-energy, turning it into an impossibly virulent
airborne plague. Even simpler would be to plug this magicked virus into the
cure.thingee, so that when it rose up and sprayed the city, it would unleash
this plague - and turn every human in Net.ropolis into a sabertooth tiger,
forever!

Yesssss, and they would become his new monster army, for him to march on the
world, the universe, the Omnilooniverse! Now, he would be the true Sabertooth
Tiger King!

And...

So caught up was UltraKiwi Wondersock in his own plans, that he did not feel
what was going on beneath the surface of his mind...

The consciousness of Multi-Tasking Man had been pushed down, sealed away. But
this was a consciousness that could sustain many independent threads, that had
been woven thru the cores of CassAIndra, Seer of Discord. It knew how to coexist
with another being without getting in their way.

And one of those threads of consciousness spun off a second thread, and then
dedicated itself to hiding, a little loop that did nothing but exist in the
background of their shared mindscape. And the second thread spun off a third
thread, and then dedicated itself to hiding, a little loop that did nothing but
exist in the background of their shared mindscape. And the third thread spun
off a fourth thread...

Multi-Tasking Man existed...

And existed...

And existed...

Drew "proud of this" Nilium