SG: Sporkman #25 - A New Humiliation - (DCB 10/12)

[Greg Fishbone]

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**               The Sporkarific Sporkman
**             Featuring the Preteen Patrol
**            Episode #25: A New Humiliation
**                  By Greg R. Fishbone
**
**             Dillweed City Blues #10 of 12
**
** Mickey Dunne, a former child superhero, has reinvented
** himself as Sporkman, savior of the Supersonic Airship
** Unsplodable. Can he save the future by confronting the past?
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     Spoonstryke dropped from the skylight onto a narrow catwalk and
suffered another deja vu moment. No wonder she didn't remember the
Spoonside Galleria from her childhood in Dillweed City--this building
had just been a gigantic warehouse back then. In fact, it had been the
exact same warehouse where she, as Spoongirl, had first encountered
Astatine Valance in her AquaRegia identity...

* * *

     From her perch on the catwalk, Spoongirl watched the gang of
burglars pry open the valuable shipment of collectable dolls. Any
moment now she'd be ready to make her move. Any moment now she'd drop
down and take them all out... Any moment now she'd finally prove how
competent she really was...

     Suddenly, she felt a presence moving toward her from behind.
Spoongirl's hand clenched a handful of spoon-shiruken from her sash as
she spun to confront her attacker, who turned out to be a young girl
about her own age, wearing a blue and red superhero costume.

     "Hi, Spoongirl. Whatcha doin'?" asked the girl casually, as if
they'd just run into each other on a public street corner.

     Spoongirl stared at her, incredulously. "I'm about to capture a
gang of doll-burglars," she said.

     "Neat! Can I watch?"

     "Who are you?"

     "AquaRegia."

     "AquaRegia?" Spoongirl scoffed at the name. "What are you
supposed to be, the Lost Princess of Atlantis?"

     The girl shook her head. "Aqua regia is a fuming, corrosive
mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids capable of dissolving gold
and platinum. I'm a superhero in training!"

     Spoongirl just stared blankly at her.

     "My cousin sent me in here to check if anyone was trying to steal
that shipment of UFO-Catcher dolls, and look! They totally are! By the
way, he's a real big fan of yours -- why don't I go get him?"

     "No," Spoongirl stated. "This isn't a good time for autographs,
Princess. Right now I have a job to do!"

     "You have a job? Wow! I tried to get a paper-route once, back in
Gnerfskin Falls, but the newspaper's Xerox machine broke down and they
couldn't print any more copies."

     "That's nice," said Spoongirl, looking down to make sure that the
doll-burglars were still busy and unaware of her presence. "Why don't
you just stay up here, out of the way, and I'll take care of the
bad-guys."

     "Oh, I can't stay up here! My cousin said I had to check in with
him in five minutes, and it's been four minutes and twenty-six
seconds, twenty-seven seconds, twenty-eight seconds..."

     "You're not going anywhere until I've captured those burglars,"
Spoongirl stated, as she flung the shiruken to emphasize her point.
She was aiming to miss, of course, as she merely wanted to scare the
other girl into staying out of her way until the building was secure.
AquaRegia, seemingly, did not move -- yet somehow she managed to catch
all three of the bladed spoon-shaped projectiles with one hand as they
passed by.

     "Hey, these are cool! Can I keep them?" Spoongirl pulled out her
spoonlaser and pointed it at AquaRegia. "That's a very dangerous angle
you have that thing aimed in," the other girl noted. Spoongirl took
this as a personal challenge, and pulled the trigger.

     The laser beam missed AquaRegia by the smallest fraction of an
inch, as Spoongirl had planned, passing so close that the
superhero-trainee would feel the heat on her neck. But Spoongirl
hadn't counted on the beam striking one of the thin metal braces by
which the catwalk was suspended from the warehouse rafters, breaking
it apart. There was a loud sound of tearing metal, and the catwalk
pitched to the side and dropped about a foot, barely held in place by
the remaining support-braces.

     Spoongirl momentarily lost her balance and almost fell off the
catwalk, but AquaRegia remained balanced, as if she had somehow
calculated and compensated for the effect of the shattered brace.

     Far below, the doll-burglars heard the crash echo through the
warehouse. They looked around at the stacks of boxes and crates
surrounding them, but failed to look directly above their heads.

     "I told you that was a dangerous angle," AquaRegia said to
Spoongirl. The red-haired flatware heroine clenched her fists and took
a step in the other girl's direction. "Stop! Don't take another step!"
shouted AquaRegia.

     "Is that a threat?" asked Spoongirl. "You don't scare me,
Princess! I'll step any place I want, any time I want!" She took a
single step forward to emphasize her point, and the weakened catwalk
fell away under her feet.

     "I definitely heard something this time," said one of the doll-burglars.

     "What?"

     "Dunno... It sounded a bit like a large metal catwalk crashing to
the cement floor after falling about thirty feet from the ceiling.
Yeah, look, there it is over there!"

     "Good thing it didn't fall on the Ultraman dolls," said another
of the burglars.

     "What do you suppose would make a catwalk fall like that?" All of
the doll-burglars looked at each other for a moment, and then turned
their gaze toward the ceiling, where AquaRegia was hovering in the
air, holding Spoongirl by the collar in a very undignified manner.

     "Look, it's Spoongirl!"

     "Awwwwwwwww!"

     "And she's got a little friend to keep her from falling to a
messy, splattery death!"

     "Awwwwwwwww!"

     "And the two of them are probably going to capture us and send us
away for a long, long time unless we can kill them and escape!"

     "Awwwwwwwww!"

     "Hey, they're waving at us!" AquaRegia exclaimed, waving back
with her free hand. "Now they're drawing their guns! And now their
pointing them up at us! This is so exciting!"

     "We're going to die, you idiot!" Spoongirl screamed.

     "You mean you're not bulletproof?"

     "No!"

     "Oh. That could be a bad thing."

     "No kidding." The doll-burglars pulled their triggers, and
Spoongirl's crimson jacket was riddled with dozens of bullet-holes.
This would have been a very bad thing indeed had she still been
wearing it at the time. Instead, she had managed to pull her arms out
of the sleeves and drop out of the garment just in time to miss the
hail of bullets aimed in her direction.

* * *

     Spoonstryke shook her head sadly at the memory. It had all seemed
so embarrassing and undignified at the time but those really were the
good old days. Now that she had grown up into the grim and serious
solo heroine she'd always been fated to become, silly things like that
just didn't happen to her anymore.

     "Reach for the sky, evildoer!" shouted a child's voice behind her back.

     Spoonstryke sighed, chiding herself for so carelessly invoking
Murphy's Law. She turned slowly toward two young boys in curious
costumes. One, whose gem-studded duds seemed to be channeling
Liberace's favorite tuxedo, was balanced precariously on the shoulders
of the second, who looked like an Orange Creamsicle with legs--and
what exactly did the "U.T.K.K." on his chest stand for, she wondered.
Uptight Tele-Kinetic Kid? Uncle Theo's Knaughty Knightmare?

     "Kid superheroes have really gone downhill since back in my day,"
Spoonstryke noted.

     "The sky, I told you! Reach for it, that is. Toward the skylight,
I mean." The gem-covered boy gestured upward, momentarily throwing the
other boy off balance. Spoonstryke could now see that their only
support was some kind of plastic-coated notebook that hovered in the
air next to the catwalk.

     "That's not one of the approved battle cries from Chapter 4 of
the manual," the other boy lectured him. "The most preferred
expression in this situation is 'Freeze!' -- a single
attention-grabbing syllable that works to great effect against any
villain whose powers aren't ice-based."

     "Well...how do we know this one here isn't ice-based?"

     "Think, Bedazzler, think! Is her skin covered in frost? Does she
have little icicles hanging from her fingers? Is her costume white or
pale blue? No! Therefore you should have said 'Freeze!' instead of
'Reach for the sky!' like the sheriff in an old Western."

     "But I like old Westerns," Bedazzler protested.

     Spoonstryke rolled her eyes. Had she ever been this young? This
naive? This completely stupid? She started to introduce herself, to
bring this sorry situation to a close before these kids hurt
themselves fighting her, but she never had the chance. A gleaming
silver girl slammed her gleaming silver shopping cart into the
catwalk, ripping it from the wall.

     "Not again," Spoonstryke stated in annoyance, during her
freefall. She eased her descent by using her spoon-grappler, the
mall's string of decorative banners, and a twenty-foot-wide penny that
stood on its edge among a collection of items from her father's
crime-fighting career. Spoonstryke landed gently on her feet next to a
plaque that read, "This gigantic coin is a 320-times scale replica of
one that might have been mailed in during the Spoonman Music Club's '9
Compact Discs for a Penny' promotion."

     The gigantic coin, knocked loose from its base, began to roll
down the colonnade, crushing other Spoonman-related exhibits as it
gathered speed. "Oh-no! It's heading for the Eddie Bauer Outlet
Store!" exclaimed the silvery girl with the flying shopping cart. She
dropped down and interposed her body directly between storefront and
the rapidly approaching penny.

     Spoonstryke considered this development for a moment. It was
entirely possible that this metallic girl knew exactly what she was
doing and had the power to stop 90 tons of fast-moving zinc and copper
using only her body. On the other hand, it was also possible that the
girl was trying to nobly sacrificing her life to save a few racks of
overstock clothing. Unable to take the risk, Spoonstryke sprang into
action.

     Since she hadn't had a chance yet to retract her spoon-grappler,
Spoonstryke's only other option for overtaking the fast-rolling coin
was a quick release from the compressed gas canister on her belt. She
would only get one chance, and her timing would have to be
split-second accurate...

     Spoonstryke positioned the tank and ripped the nozzle clean off.
Combined with a running jump, this sent her airborne with a trail of
green-grey smoke in her wake. She flew directly toward a life-sized
robotic T-rex, which had stood outside her father's ill-fated
Spoonworld theme park, and reached out a hand to steer herself around
its toothy head, onto a new trajectory headed right at the silver
girl.

     "Shopper! Look out!" called one of the boys from high above. "The
supervillain is coming right at you!"

     The girl turned, saw Spoonstryke approaching, and screamed.

     Spoonstryke rolled her eyes and wondered why situations like this
one always took place on an 'act now and explain later' basis. Unable
to alter her course, she gritted her teeth and reached out to snatch
the silvery girl out of the giant penny's path--only to have her arms
splash through as if the silvery girl were made entirely out of
liquid. The penny also splashed through the girl's body, leaving a
silver puddle that quickly flowed back into the shape of a dazed girl
who stared horrified into the newly-decimated Eddie Bauer Outlet
Store.

     Spoonstryke's flight came to an abrupt end as she crashed into a
hotdog stand, drenching her entire body in a long smear of mustard,
ketchup, onion pieces, chili, and uncooked wieners.

     When she looked up, Spoonstryke saw the silvery girl's lip quaver
in dismay as the two boys jumped up and down, high-fiving each other.
And then there was Mickey Dunne, freshly arrived, still wearing his
police uniform and looking oh so smug and amused.

     "Way to go, Spoonstryke," said Mickey with a smirk. "I could make
any number of hotdog-related puns right now, but I'll leave those as
an exercise for the reader."


WILL SPOONSTRYKE BE ABLE TO KETCHUP WITH HER FORMER REPUTATION?

CAN SHE PASS MUSTARD WITH THE PRETEEN PATROL?

IS THIS WHAT SHE GETS FOR ACTING LIKE SUCH A HOTDOG?

Find out next week as we relish the idea of another episode of the
Sporkarific Sporkman Featuring the Preteen Patrol, only on A FRESHLY
TOASTED BUN!


AUTHOR'S NOTES:

[1] Astatine was as immune to Spoongirl's cuteness as she was to most
other powers and attacks. You'd think this would have endeared her to
Nancy, but it only pissed her off more.

[2] Spoonman has a lot of the same trophies as Batman, but less heroic
means of accumulating them. Also, he stores them in a shopping mall
instead of in a bat-filled cave. The 90-ton cent could be made from
melting down $327,680 worth of actual pennies. Since each penny
contains more than a penny's worth of metal, this might actually be a
wise investment.

[3] I recently sold my stash of collectable UFO-Catcher dolls,
hard-won in 1995 from some of the toughest UFO-Catcher machines in
Tokyo, to an anime-themed museum.

-- 
Greg R. Fishbone
* Official Author Site - http://gfishbone.com
* The Penguins of Doom book site - http://septinanash.com
* Word of the Day blog - http://tem2.livejournal.com