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spiffy
Wed Dec 15, 2004 at 03:26:06 am EST
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On the Fringes - A Hellraisers Ascendant tie-in
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On the Fringes – A Hellraisers Ascendant tie-in

Mark Hopkins sat on the edge of his expansive, canopied bed cradling a blackened photo album on his lap. He flipped to a page near the middle, to a charred photo in which an impossibly-muscled man with a baseball bat hanging from his belt was giving his fern a noogie while a man in a Zorro costume and a woman in fetishwear looked on and giggled. Another page showed him glued halfway up a firehall pole next to a broadly-grinning man with a shield giving a thumbs-up, as a woman dressed as a snake looked dour in the background. His lower jaw trembled and he carefully closed the album, setting it down on his bedside table.

Less than a day and a half after Kerry Shepherdson’s explosive visit, the burn marks on the photo album and the few remaining on the wall were some of the only signs that any violence had occurred. The gas mains in the President’s Quarters had been almost completely replaced by a squadron of engineers that proved impossible to track down when it came to working on those sectors of the island that didn’t have gas mains to begin with, but that worked with shocking efficiency when it came to the home comforts of the new President-for-Life. Mark sighed. He needed to sit down with Letitia to pound out a plan for civil service.

Beverly Campbell hesitated for several seconds before knocking, mastering the urge to activate her power to be unnoticed and go hide in a deep, embarrassed hole. She rapped twice on the door.

“Yeah?” Mark called, then amended, “Er… Enter!”

Bev stifled her smile and pushed the door open. Mark blushed and rose from his bed upon seeing her. She shut the door behind her.

“Hey,” she said. “The Lynchpin’s delegate is here to… what did you do to your pants?”

Mark looked down. A dark rectangle of ash was smeared across the white silk covering his upper thighs. Rolling his eyes, he pulled open his drawer, then thought better of it and shambled into the attaching bathroom to wash the soot from his hands.

“Who did Flasky send?” he asked, yelling over the running water.

“She didn’t give a name,” Bev admitted, and added somewhat acidly, “but she’s tall, wearing nothing but a fishnet and, oh yeah, she’s green. Looks almost like one of those slave girls from the Trans… what?”

Mark had stepped out of the bathroom and was staring at her, his pale face a startling contrast to the flush of moments before, his fern weaving around his body in agitation. “Gamona,” he said softly.

“Gamona. Another ex-girlfriend?” Bev demanded, then bit her lower lip to silence herself.

“What? No.” Mark strode to the dresser and pulled out another pair of white pants, these with gold thread embroidered down each leg. “She’s an assassin, Flask’s best.” He froze. “Where is she?”

“In the audience chamber.” She joined him at the dresser, picked up a remote control and pressed several buttons. A panel on the wall slid to the side to reveal a thirty-inch plasma television. A raven-haired green woman was staring directly at the screen. She looked dangerously bored.

“Eee,” Bev commented, taking a step back.

“Fuck. She’s here to kill me, and she wants me to know it. She wants me to walk into the fucking room and talk all diplomatic, and then she slices my throat before I even realise it. Fuck!”

“Mark, relax!” She touched his shoulder. “You can take…”

“I can’t take her, Bev!” He spun to face her, making her hand drop. “Gamona was bred by Dark freakin’ Thugos to kill kill kill! I might have a shot if I were the Dark Knight,” he didn’t notice his assistant’s face reddening, “or Messenger or, or even CrazySugarFreakBoy! … but, dammit.” He sunk to the floor and rested his forehead on his palm. “Dammit, Bev, I can’t do this.”

She sat down next to him, carefully avoiding contact. “Mark, two days ago you took apart Count Fokker’s entire invasion force! This is just one green chick. Listen, you keep her talking, I’ll sneak up on her with one of those neuro-blaster things, and…”

“No.” Mark put a hand on her knee. “You stay out of the room.” He looked her directly in the eyes. “Seriously, Bev. You stay out of the room. She’ll kill you to distract me and then gut me anyway. I’ll figure something out.”

She looked back at him for a moment, then down at his hand, which he quickly removed. She sighed. “Fine. Okay. Well the first thing is for you to change those pants. If you’re going to get killed, you should…” she choked on the remaining words. Mark stared at her helplessly for a moment, then pulled her close.

“I’ll be okay, I promise. People have been trying to assassinate me daily for the past four years. I’ll figure it out.” He thought for a second and smiled slightly. “I could always send my army after her.”

Bev looked up at him, sniffed and tried to grin. “Or nuke her.”

He chuckled softly, then paused, looked down at the new pants folded on the floor and back up at her.

“Oh!” She stood up. “I’ll get out so you can…”

“No, that’s…”

“I should…”

“That is, I mean, if you…”

She held up her palm. “I’ll be right outside.”

He exhaled with a slow grin and nodded. “Okay.”

She hurried out the door, and with a click he was alone again. He stood for a moment, then slipped out of the dirty pants and fit one leg, then the other into the new pair. He knew he needed to figure out how to beat an alien assassin genetically bred and trained from birth to be a killing machine… but something nagged at him. Something familiar about being in a room tattooed with scorch marks.

He pressed a button on his watch. It would be one in the morning in Parodipolis. He flicked a fern tendril toward the television, on which Gamona hadn’t moved but looked impatient, flipped open a small panel below and dialled the number for Visionary’s condo. His heart started beating faster and he realized he had no idea what his next words would be.

A green face, this one familiar and friendly, popped up on the screen.

“Hallie!” Mark exclaimed. “Sorry to call so late, uh, can I talk to…”

“spiffy! You’ve heard?” Her voice crackled and the image faded in and out. Mark noticed the AI’s grave expression. His brow furrowed.

“Heard what?”

The connection was deteriorating, with Hallie’s face disappearing behind rapidly-darkening static. “… Hellraisers … holding Lisa, Dancer and … infected … spiffy … onnection failing … your TV …” There was a brief flash of static before the screen went black. He stabbed the redial button with no result, then flipped to the BBC.

Moments later, he was again sitting on the edge of his bed, trying to breathe.

GothaMetropolis York and Parodioplis quarantined, infected with a mutation of the bubonic plague. Suicide Blonde massacring medical aid personnel in the outskirts of both cities. Communications cut off by a raging electrical storm. And no mention whatsoever of the Lair Legion’s current whereabouts.

A sudden realization shot him to his feet and propelled him across the room. Bev jumped as he exploded out of the door.

“Mark?” she ventured, but he tore off down the hall without responding. She went after him, following the sound of slamming doors, taking a hidden elevator down to one of the secret sub-basements that hadn’t been raided by American OPS agents.

It was there that she caught up to the President, in front of the stasis chamber in which the Science Villain known as Biohazard was shackled, drugged and immobilized by an energy field that suspended all neurological activity and physical movement. Mark was leaning his full weight against the wall, his arms and legs trembling and a small pile of vomit on the floor in front of him. He turned, hearing her approach, and looked up at her through bleary eyes.

All he could utter, in a voice choked with relief and burden, was, “He’s still here.”


***


By the time President spiffy entered the room for his audience with Gamona, she had been waiting for over twenty minutes and was fully prepared to dispense with the tiresome bit with the pleading and bleeding in favour of a quick slice and a plane ride home.

“Hopkins!” she raged, standing up. He held up a finger and continued speaking into the small circuit-filled rectangle labelled “Detective Agency Comm-Card”.

“… get word out to Caveguy and get up here ASAP. Thanks Banjooooo,” the ferned wonder said curtly before cutting off the connection. Gamona decided the pleading and bleeding might not be such a bad idea after all.

“Hopkins!” she snarled again. “How dare you keep me waiting for -”

Her nostrils flared at the smell of fennel and she whirled, seizing the vibra-knife that had been hidden in her hair and slicing through the fern tendrils swarming around her limbs, that she could neither see nor hear. With a curse, spiffy crouched into a defensive position, silently commanding his fern to encase him in leafy armour while sending out another crushing wave of tendrils to overwhelm the assassin. She twisted at impossible angles to avoid the fern trying to immobilize her and hurled the vibra-knife at spiffy’s heart.

With reflexes honed by years of attempted political assassinations, spiffy dodged to the right so that the vibra-knife, if it got through, would embed itself in his shoulder instead of anywhere more vital. A dozen fern tendrils swatted out simultaneously and, as eleven of them flailed uselessly, one landed a smack on the knife’s hilt, spinning it out of its trajectory. It clattered at spiffy’s feet. He left it where it lay, in case it had any defence against being used by an enemy.

Gamona sliced through the latest assault of fern tendrils with a strand of razor-sharp hair and leapt through the center of the room, past crowds of flailing leaves creeping toward her along the wall, ready to slice spiffy’s throat with the same strand of hair. She was stopped short by another mass of invisible fern tendrils clustered in front of their host’s body, and before Gamona could twist free, hundreds of them had wrapped around her arms and legs with crushing strength. She was quickly lifted six feet in the air, spread-eagled and struggling.

“Okay, just chill for a second. Truce, alright?” spiffy tossed a cell phone at her and released one of her arms just in time for her to catch it. “It’s for you.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Hello?” she growled, then fell silent. Moments later, she hurled the cell phone at the floor, where it shattered, and went to tear her other arm free, but more tendrils wrapped around her forearm and pulled it back.

“You just spoke with Henry Flask’s personal assistant and he just told you that Flask has been infected with the plague that’s been tearing through GMY and Parodiopolis.” spiffy spoke swiftly, with authority. “Their best medical consultants haven’t got a clue how to cure him, and he’ll be dead within two days if nothing is done. You know as well as I do that there’s some super-baddie behind this, and the Lair Legion are going to be occupied taking him down.”

“So what?” Gamona demanded, straining to free herself.

“So unless your boss gets serious medical attention, seriously fast, you’re going to be out of a job and nobody’s going to pay for my absurdly handsome corpse. And he’s not going to get any medical attention, because Suicide Blonde is ripping through all the WHO and Red Cross crews that are trying to provide it. Think about it. If the LL is occupied, who’s powerful enough to take on the Suicide Blonde?”

The alien assassin’s struggles ceased.

“I’m heading over there to take her down and then see what I can do to support the medical teams. I could use your help.”

Gamona’s relaxed muscles suddenly clenched and she pulled free of the fern with superhuman force. She leapt for spiffy, murder in her eyes. Reacting instantly, his fern released the remainder of the heat it had absorbed from the gas fires of two days previous into her body. The psychoreflective energy mesh grafted into her skin flashed brightly and she kept coming. spiffy scrambled backwards and a mass of tendrils punched through the wall behind him, plugging into the palace’s power supply and channelling the electricity into Gamona. The energy mesh flashed brighter, skin sizzled, and Gamona fell in a smoking, unconscious heap inches from spiffy’s feet.

For several moments, there was no sound in the room save spiffy’s regular gasps.

“Fucking hell,” he finally breathed, then turned on the intercom to ask Bev to wheel in the adamantine crate.


***


Letitia Gahager found spiffy in the genetics lab with his superpowered dog, whose tail was wagging furiously as the ferned president searched through the cabinet full of skin samples. He grunted softly as he found what he was looking for and pulled out a slide to join the one he was already clutching. He knelt down and HoundDog lunged in to lick his face, knocking him over. He scrambled to his feet and scratched the canine’s head. Letitia noted that two sheets of paper were rolled up in hard plastic casings and fastened to the dog’s collar with metal clips.

“Okay bud,” spiffy said urgently, holding out the skin samples, “I need you to find these guys, okay? They’ve got treats, okay? Treats!”

HoundDog barked once and sped off. Letitia grabbed the railing to keep herself from toppling over in his wake.

“Teaching an old dog new tricks?” she quipped, and spiffy turned to face her.

“Hey. Bev filled you in?” he asked.

“She didn’t have to, I was watching the news. What’s the plan, boss?”

“Come on,” he gestured, and she fell in stride with him as he left the lab and walked down the hall. “I’m heading over there. No one knows what’s going on inside the cities, but it seems like the Legion is too busy to take care of Suicide Blonde, and nobody else is equipped to take her down. She’s been visiting all the rural hospitals, turning the emergency response staff into statues and destroying all the blood and supplies going to the crisis centres.”

“Bitch,” Letitia observed. “What’s her problem?”

“Don’t know, don’t care, I just need her stopped. There’s a tricky bit, though.” spiffy hesitated. “She’s, like, uber-powerful. If we get anywhere near her, she’ll turn us to vapour and it’ll be game over. Have you got anything that might give us an edge?”

Letitia pondered the question for a moment. “I’ve been working on a counter to Fleshcrawler’s powers that I might be able to adapt. It’s a molecular stabilizer, about the size of a ladybug with a needle you stick into your chest. Basically, it convinces your body it’s pretty happy the way it is and wouldn’t rather become a modern art exhibit.” She frowned. “Haven’t worked out how to shield the stabilizer itself, though. Once she worked out what was happening…”

“All we need is a momentary advantage. She won’t have time to work it out,” spiffy assured her. They turned the corner toward the nearest bathroom. “We’ll be leaving in about two hours, once Banjooooo and Caveguy get here. Do you think you can have five or six stabilizer whatsits cooked up by then?”

Letitia nodded, then added, “I’m not sure it’s the best idea for you to go, Mark.”

He stopped. “I have to.”

She snorted. “Your brow is creased just like Epitome’s is when he’s trying to look serious and grave, you know that?” She continued as he struggled to smooth his forehead. “Aren’t Banjooooo and Caveguy heavy hitters? And I’m sure whatever super-good guys HoundDog is fetching can’t be lightweights either.” She reflected for a moment. “Aren’t any of your friends named, you know, John, Dick or Harry?”

spiffy shook his head. “Letitia, we’re talking about the people I care about here. The Legion, the Juniors… and dammit, we’re talking about my cities! Maybe I wasn’t the greatest mayor in the world, but I did my best and I’m not about to abandon them when I’m needed.”

Letitia nodded slowly. “Just like, as newly-appointed President of Badripoor, you would never abandon your nation at one of the most unstable moments in its history?”

Mark opened his mouth to respond, then shut it. “I don’t even speak the language here,” he argued weakly.

“All the girls in your harem are bilingual,” Letitia pointed out helpfully.

“It’s just…” He inhaled, gathering himself. “A year ago, hell, three months ago, I would’ve been in the thick of it, getting the cities under control, yelling ‘Lair Legion, Line-Up’ and stomping the bad guy with the rest of them. Now that Velma fucking Klein is in charge of GMY, she’s more likely to arrest the Legion than let them help, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it! All of a sudden, I’m the ‘somebody else’, I’m the fucking cavalry. I should be there!”

Many people would have been startled by this level of vehemence from the young fern-wielder. Letitia was more moved by the pools of moisture gathering at the edges of his eyes.

“Dominic is in the thick of it,” she said quietly. Mark looked up at her, startled.

“Letitia, he’ll be fine, he’s Mr. Epitome. He -”

“He’s an idiot,” she interrupted. “He’ll charge in, waving the flag and singing the anthem, and one of these days he’s going to meet someone stupider than he is and he won’t come back from it. But if I start ocean-hopping to save his butt every time he puts it in the fire, I’ll get tossed behind bars again.” She scowled. “Prison is boring.”

spiffy was silent.

“Mark, you’ve given me the opportunity to do some good for Badripoor, and the citizens here gave you that same opportunity. And they haven’t even tried to assassinate you yet.” Seeing him close his eyes in resignation, she stepped forward and gave him a hug. “Honey, being responsible sucks, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

He squeezed her back in a quick embrace, then stepped away. “Should never have hired a super-genius,” he smiled sheepishly. “Thanks, Letitia.”

Without another word, he turned the corner into the bathroom. As Letitia watched, the new President of Badripoor knelt down in front of the toilet, held his head over the bowl and shouted “Elsqueevio!” She raised an eyebrow. spiffy stepped back just in time to miss being soaked by the column of water that rose from the toilet. It shimmered, taking form, and suddenly a man stepped from the toilet bowl to the floor.

“Greetings, spiffy. I was supping with Poseidon.” He winked. “Many thanks for the interruption.”

“Heya, ‘Squeevee. We’ve got a situation.” He turned to his companion. “Letitia Gahager, this is Elsqueevio, God of Small Waters.”

The Idiom eyed the diminutive man in a toga that had just emerged from the toilet. “Neat,” she decided.

spiffy stepped out of the bathroom. “Come on, Elsqueevio, I’ll give you the details in my office. In the meantime,” he said, pulling the leather-bound calendar from his pocket, “let’s see what kind of Presidential duties I’ve been ignoring.” He flipped to the appropriate page and his eyes narrowed at seeing unfamiliar handwriting until he suddenly remembered that this calendar had been a Christmas gift from Xander the Improbable. In the square representing tomorrow’s date, it read:

6:30 EST – Diplomatic meeting with POTUS @ White House
(bring pointy sticks)

spiffy smirked and looked up at Letitia. “Turns out I have an appointment in Washington, DC.”

“What?”

“Almost slipped my mind, too. Standing up the President of the United States, man, that would’ve sucked, huh? Can you take Elsqueevio to the lab and fill him in while you work?”

After receiving the Idiom’s assent, spiffy hurried out to the palatial gardens and fanned out his fern to absorb as much sunlight as possible.


***


The Belleville Public Library, roughly five miles northwest of GothaMetropolis York, had become a makeshift headquarters for the World Health Organization. Two helicopters sat in the parking lot, fuelled and ready to transport the incoming specialists to the contamination zone as soon as they arrived from Toronto and Detroit. A long stream of volunteers carried bags of blood, needles, gauze and other supplies to the three ambulances appropriated from the local hospital, while a handful of trained personnel handled antibiotics and shouted rapid-fire status reports into cell phones, no one complaining about the buffeting winds or the chilling rain.

“Dr. Hancock and Dr. Friedman just touched down at the landing strip, they’ll be here in ten minutes,” Anna Serletis shouted over to the helicopter pilots. They nodded and one of them rushed to his machine for final preparations. Anna hurried over to the ambulances, holding her clipboard to her chest to keep it dry, and addressed the middle-aged man who had taken charge of the volunteers. “I want these ambulances ready to go in five minutes, how are we looking?” He didn’t reply and she looked up from her clipboard to see his wild-eyed stare directed over her shoulder.

She turned in time to see the helicopters melt.

Steam hissed across the parking lot as a path evaporated through the helicopter puddle and rain swerved to miss the blonde woman walking confidently toward the library. She didn’t seem at all bothered by the cold wind piercing the thin material of her blouse and shrieking under her miniskirt. Anna shivered from something more than the cold as the newcomer stopped in front of the terrified volunteers. With a glance and a gesture, the ambulances vanished one by one, leaving nothing but clouds of white smoke.

“Who’s in charge here?” Bambi Bacall demanded haughtily. Hesitantly, Anna stepped forward, hoping to distract the woman enough to let some of the volunteers slip away. The Suicide Blonde gestured and Anna’s surprised expression was frozen forever in a glass statue.

She turned to the trembling volunteers. “Have any of you heard an update on Goldeneyed’s condition? The poor boy seems to have come down with a slight case of plague, and it would be such a shame if any of you managed to save him before his death scene.”

No one replied. She sighed loudly.

“Well if you’re going to be useless, I’ll just move on.” She gestured, only to find the flesh she’d been about to transform into hydrochloric acid wasn’t there anymore. Before she could recover from her surprise, the panicked volunteers in front of her vanished one by one in the space of about five seconds. As even the glass statue that had once been Anna Serletis disappeared in a sepia streak, she felt a rustling between her breasts. She reached into her cleavage and found a phone number scrawled across a scrap of paper.

“What?” she puzzled, then sensed a mass plummeting from the sky and turned the adamantine crate to oxygen just in time to prevent it crushing her. This served to release a furious alien assassin.

Gamona seized Bambi’s head as she tumbled to the ground and twisted violently, snapping her neck. With a grunt, Suicide Blonde repaired her spine in time to have two ribs broken by a well-placed kick and her nose driven through her brain by a green palm. Reversing both injuries, she lashed out with transmutative powers, leaving a marble statue of Gamona with its fist an inch from her throat.

“Gamona?” she tried to say, but found her mouth too dry to form the name. She coughed, then choked as her body shook violently. She watched in horror as water poured from her skin and mouth until the moisture leapt from her eyes, blinding her. Recovering her wits, she pulled in all the surrounding raindrops to replenish the fluid she’d lost. Her eyesight was restored long enough to see her body’s fluid coalescing into a transparent, shimmering humanoid form that was raising its fist. She tried to evaporate the liquid entity, but the force controlling the water shrugged off her manipulations. Then the moisture once again leapt from her body and a watery fist slammed into her nose, sending her shrivelled body flying backwards. The puddles on the parking lot helpfully moved out of the way so that she impacted on hard, dry pavement.

Blind, mute and crazed, the Suicide Blonde forced parched muscles to work under cracking skin and pushed herself to her feet, just in time to be stomped into the pavement by an enormous, scaly foot. The parking lot heaved and a slab of concrete erupted from the ground to push her to her feet.

Dimly, she heard a primal scream, “Hooga!”, before a war club crumpled the left side of her skull. Then her body was buffeted by hundreds of super-speed blows while a disembodied voice chatted. “No hard feelings, right? Maybe when you’re re-hydrated, dinner and a movie?” The water elemental, fattened by rain, slammed both fists into the top of her head, slamming her to the ground.

And that was when the Suicide Blonde snapped.

The concrete around her peeled up to surround her in a giant sphere, spraying the water elemental in all directions as it came in for another hit and deflecting the next blow from Caveguy’s club. When all the air in the immediate area was converted to mustard gas, only De Brown Streak’s quick sprint saved him and Caveguy from a choking death, and even then he had to hold his shaggy ally back so that he wouldn’t plunge into the roiling gas cloud to aid his companions. Elsqueevio simply rolled his eyes and held his breath, then took hold of the rainfall and directed it in wave after pounding wave onto his opponent’s shield. Before it could break through, however, the Suicide Blonde used the momentary respite to clear her mind and locate the upstart playing with her water. Realising that for some reason she couldn’t affect his flesh, she simply turned the mustard gas around him to titanium.

Banjooooo leaned down to pick up the concrete ball, but it exploded outward and threw him back. The Suicide Blonde emerged, fully restored without a single bruise or scrape. Giant adamantine restraints grew from the ground to restrain the sea monkey. She walked over and placed her hands on his straining arm.

“Ah,” she realized, and the molecular stabilizer on his chest vanished with a pop.

“Oh shi-” Banjooooo started, but then couldn’t speak through caramel lips. The Suicide Blonde turned to face her two remaining opponents.

“Hooga!” Caveguy declared savagely, breaking free of De Brown Streak’s grasp and charging with his war club waving over his head.

Joshua Clement swallowed hard and started to run after him.


***


The men installing the last of the new windows with UV-resistant coating at 6:15 in the morning as Mark Hopkins walked across the path to the West Wing of the White House were a cause for concern. Another was the fact that, while he was being searched for a third time in the West Wing’s lobby, nobody realized he was suspending a duffel bag full of weapons above his head in a clump of light-bending fern tendrils.

As the security team stepped back to let him through, the Personal Aide to the President stepped into the room and shot the visitor a winning grin.

“President Hopkins, so nice to see you. If you’ll just follow me?”

The two men walked into the Roosevelt Room, where the Personal Aide gestured for Mark to take a seat in one of the expensive cushioned chairs, and sat down across from him.

“Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, particularly since you’ve come such a long way for this visit. We did try to contact you, but unfortunately we weren’t able to reach you before you left Badripoor. I’m sure you’re aware of the current crisis facing us?”

Mark nodded. “I heard about it in passing.”

The Personal Aide sighed. “Well I’m sure you can understand that the President is deeply involved with the emergency and will be unable to meet with you this morning.”

“I sympathise completely,” Mark assured him, then added, “Is he in the Oval Office right now? I’d like to at least say hello before I go.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the man replied with a sugary smile. “We would be happy to put you up in the Hilton until the crisis passes so that you can meet with the President at that time, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to leave your office untended for that long.”

Mark sighed regretfully. “You’re absolutely right. Well, I guess I’ll be off.” He stood, then paused. “There’s just one thing I want to take care of before I go.”

With a thought, his fern stopped redirecting light and showed itself wrapped around his white ceremonial garb, with two tendrils extended far above his head. They descended, dropping the duffel bag to the carpeted floor with a clatter. The Personal Aide stood up, sputtering. Mark ignored him and pulled a water gun from the bag.

“I ran into a toy company rep and a priest at the airport. Cool, huh?” Thanks Xander, he added silently. He tugged on the trigger and caught the Personal Aide full in the face with a spray of water.

It dripped off his indignant nose and plopped on the carpet.

“Oh,” Mark worried.

Before the Personal Aide could alert security by pressing the button under his armrest, the Secret Service agents that had been hovering in the hallway rushed in all three entrances and surrounded the President of Badripoor. Unfazed, he turned his water gun on them. This time, the spray was met with inhuman shrieks and the acrid stench of dissolved flesh.

“That’s more like it,” spiffy muttered, bending down to grab a stake. A Secret Service agent that had had the foresight to duck behind one of his companions leapt forward, seizing spiffy’s arm and baring fangs at his exposed neck before falling back with sizzling hands. His claws tore away part of spiffy’s robe to reveal the undershirt printed with crosses and peppered with garlic. spiffy ruthlessly plunged a wooden stake through the heart of the shocked vampire and it exploded into dust. Across the room, the Personal Aide to the President gasped.

The remaining five agents rushed for spiffy, but most of them were blinded by the holy water and their eyes wouldn’t grow back for a good day or two. He ducked behind a fanged attack then tangled his adversaries in fern tendrils. He grimaced as he quickly impaled each of them in turn with his stake, then pointed at the door behind him.

“Get out of here,” he told the Personal Aide. The man scrambled to comply. spiffy took a deep breath and hurried out the opposite door, heading for the Oval Office.

As soon as he exited the room, knife-like fingernails raked his wrist and he dropped the stake. Pale hands seized him by the shoulders and pinned him to the wall, and spiffy found himself facing at least a dozen suited vampires, blocking the way to the President’s office.

“The weed-wielder,” snarled the Assistant for Speechwriting, who ignored the smoke curling from his hands as they clutched spiffy’s shoulders. spiffy had never liked him. “You’ve greatly inconvenienced us.” He turned to the Assistant for Communications. “Screw the timeline, turn him now.” He grinned, exposing his curved fangs. “The rest of us get salad.”

The vampires pressed forward.

spiffy closed his eyes. “Sorry, guys,” he said sadly.

His fern released its store, bathing the creatures of the night in exotic Badripoorian sunshine. The light faded and spiffy dropped lightly to the floor that was now a housekeeper’s nightmare.

The door to the Oval Office burst open and fern tendrils whipped out, pinning the Vice President, the Deputy National Security Advisor, the Assistant for National Security Affairs, the Assistant for Domestic Policy, the Counsel and the Deputy Counsel to the walls. The President of Badripoor strode into the room and leaned both hands on the desk to face the President of the United States.

“Mayor Hopkins!” the President spat, standing up and glaring nervously at the fronds waving about the room. “What are you doing? What just happened in the hall?”

spiffy smiled grimly. “About that, George… we’ve gotta have a chat.”


***


Caveguy’s battle strategy seemed pretty close to this: if he kept hitting the Suicide Blonde with his club, she wouldn’t be able to concentrate long enough to destroy his molecular stabilizer and turn him to jelly. So far it was working pretty well. In the meantime, De Brown Streak ran urgent circles around the titanium block encasing Elsqueevio, trying to wear it down while ignoring how the caramel body of their strongest ally was slowly melting in the rain.

“Enough,” Suicide Blonde declared. She waved a hand and Caveguy’s club disappeared. His confused “Hooga?” was cut off as twin slabs of pavement rose from the ground and slammed together with him in the middle. Josh was alone against the matter manipulator.

“Okay,” he breathed to himself. Drawing a lesson from his fallen comrade, he sprinted to the nearest sports equipment store, grabbed an aluminium baseball bat, and returned to pummel the Suicide Blonde with hundreds of blows per second. She crumpled momentarily at the attack, but then reached out and seized the fast-moving mass with her powers. Josh froze with his legs extended, mid-sprint, and bat raised, mid-strike. He tried to grin endearingly at the well-endowed villain, but she wouldn’t even allow him that much muscle control. He focused on the difficult task of keeping his lungs and heart moving.

“You little pest.” She towered wrathfully over him. “Do you know what I can do to you? I can turn your blood to acid. I can turn your skin to tissue paper. Or maybe I should just extend needles out from your major organs and keep you alive until Goldeneyed dies and I get my cousin’s powers. Won’t we have fun seeing how much of you we can teleport away before you die?”

Josh tried to disagree, but couldn’t move his tongue.

”But no,” she decided. “You’re not worth keeping around that long.” Josh felt his neck start to strain as his head sought to pull away from his body. Black spots appeared at the edge of his vision.

“Stop.”

It was a voice that would tolerate no argument, and the Suicide Blonde complied instantly, freezing in place. Josh gasped, eternally grateful for the miracle that was air. He turned to find a pale, gaunt man in a raincoat.

“Um, thanks,” he said, hoping desperately that this wasn’t some new foe. “Hi. I’m De Brown Streak, infamous mutate terrorist.”

“Hello,” the stranger replied. “I am The Living Statement.”

“Right on,” Josh struggled for something to say. “It’s not often I find someone else with a three-word code name.”

“What damage has she caused?” The Living Statement asked.

“Er, well, there’s a guy trapped in that block of titanium over there,” Josh gestured. “And another between those concrete blocks.”

“Free those two trapped individuals,” the man ordered. The Suicide Blonde gestured, and it was so. Elsqueevio released the breath he’d been holding, brushed off his toga and walked over. Caveguy sought his war club through his concussion, then fell over.

“And her?” The Living Statement pointed at the Gamona statue.

Remembering the way the assassin had snapped the Suicide Blonde’s neck, Josh replied, “Uh, maybe leave her like that just for now.” He eyed her fishnet tattoos. “Dammit,” he added. “But that big fish dude over there…”

Before he could finish, there was a loud popping noise and Banjooooo returned to normal, ripping his adamantine bonds from the pavement.

“Yes! I evolved the ability to transform from caramel to me! Where’d she… oh.” He seemed disappointed upon seeing the placated Suicide Blonde standing next to The Living Statement. “Uh, hey,” he said to his former foe.

“So, uh,” De Brown Streak tried, “did spiffy’s dog come get you too?” He’d been startled when the flying dog had started barking at him at about 500 mph on his way to GothaMetropolis, and moreso when it had a note for him attached to its collar. Then it wouldn’t leave until he fed it a side of beef.

“Yes,” The Living Statement replied simply.

“Right. Um. So how’d you find us? TV news?”

“I told my body to go to the Suicide Blonde and teleported here.”

“Right. So pretty much everything you say comes true?” De Brown Streak thought about that. “You better be careful never to tell anyone to drop dead.”

“I speak little, and carefully.” He reflected. “Although I am not sure if that is a conscious choice or if by saying it I make it so.”

“Yeah alright, we can compare powers later,” Banjooooo interrupted. “You’ve got control over her, Statement?” The Living Statement nodded his assent. “Cool, because the way I figure it, the plague, whether it’s viral or bacterial, it’s got mass. She might be able to neutralise it.”

De Brown Streak was impressed. “Nice call.”

“We can use her for cleanup here,” Banjooooo continued, tossing out orders with the practice of royalty, “then head down to the infected zones to see if she can destroy the plague, or create antibodies if anyone’s come up with some.”

The Living Statement nodded, and De Brown Streak hopped from foot to foot.

“Listen guys,” he said, “it’s been a slice, but I’ve got friends in GMY and I was heading up there to check on ‘em, so if I’m no use here…”

Banjooooo waved him away. “Thanks for your help, man. Good luck.”

“Yeah, no prob. And thanks for the save, The Living Statement!” With that, Josh Clement sped off to the southeast, leaving the others to their lengthy relief efforts.


***


“I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’ve possessed a fair variety of things,” spiffy told the President as his face turned several interesting colours. “A few years back, the Parody Master manifested in me. Man, that was a trip. Oh, and back when I was dead in Hell, Nebraska, I possessed Visionary’s body.” He frowned thoughtfully. “That was… different. Anyway, most recently and most pertinently to our current situation, I possessed a vampire. It was just for an afternoon, but it was an eye-opening experience.”

The American President seemed to agree. His eyes were very wide.

“See, when I was in this vampire’s body, he wasn’t, but I still caught some vestiges of his personality, and the surprise for me was that they’re not all that different from us. They love, they hate – they really hate – they watch reality TV and eat junk food. The difference, of course, is that when they eat junk food, it’s not McDonalds. It’s the guy that eats McDonalds.

“But the big thing for them is blood. It’s not just food. It’s their God, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed all rolled into one. It goes beyond even a sexual craving. It’s a need, and we can supply it. In these bags of meat of ours, we’re pumping the elixir of life, and they will do anything – ANYTHING – to get at it, even if that means ripping your throat out or keeping your family in the larder.”

As he spoke, spiffy surreptitiously eyed the politicians pinned against the wall. He wasn’t sure yet which of them were vampires, but the Deputy National Security Advisor was looking hungry.

“This government does not respond to threats,” the President warned.

“Man, three months ago I was part of your government. You’ve gotta stop seeing threats everywhere. I’m just trying to show you exactly how disappointed I am in this little security breach of yours. And by security breach, I don’t mean me.”

The President of the United States blinked.

“You’ve got yourself a vampire infestation in your inner circle, probably kicked off by the same folks that infected your eastern seaboard with the bubonic plague, and as a new world leader, I’ve gotta say that makes me antsy.”

“Now boy, I don’t take kindly to these allegations about my staff.”

spiffy shrugged. “The proof is in your hallway, and should probably be vacuumed up.” He grimaced, and added with genuine regret, “You’re going to need to replace a lot of people. Sorry.”

The President let that sink in. “Let’s say you’re right, and I got… vampires,” his cheek twitched as he spoke the word, “in my White House. Then maybe I owe you a thank you for getting rid of them, and you can carry yourself back to Badripong and let me deal with my country’s crisis!”

“It’s not quite that simple.” spiffy sat down in one of the cushioned chairs facing the desk. A vein in the President’s neck pulsed, and spiffy noticed the Deputy National Security Advisor noticing. “I’m in charge of a volatile nation struggling to turn around centuries of oppression, and I don’t have any vampires infiltrating my palace.”

“What’s your point?” the President asked curtly.

“It occurs to me,” spiffy said slowly, “that, from your perspective, Badripoor isn’t all that different from Sybia. Unstable government, possible links to terrorism, a new ruler unrecognised by… well, you. It occurs to me that you might be looking for an excuse to stir up trouble.” He leaned forward. “Look around, George! If you’re having so much trouble keeping your house clean, maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to make enemies outside of your borders.”

The President of the United States bristled and leaned over the ferned phenomenon. “Listen here, you little leafy punk…”

spiffy’s peripheral vision caught a movement in the doorway and leapt to his feet too slowly. With supernatural speed, the Assistant for Legislative Affairs pounced on him and drove him to the floor. With the fern momentarily distracted, the Deputy National Security Advisor tore free and fell upon the petrified President.

“Thanks,” he said, sniffing the President’s neck. “That was getting tiresome.”

Fern tendrils wrapped around the Secretary’s midsection, trying to pry him free from spiffy, but he dug fingernails and toenails into the young man’s flesh, latching himself firmly. Smoke rose from where his flesh touched the image of the cross on spiffy’s garments. He leaned his face down to his foe’s.

“We won’t be such easy prey, child.” spiffy wrinkled his nose at the assault of rotten breath. “We were the first, made by Nosferos himself.”

“Never heard of him” spiffy retorted. The Secretary frowned, his fangs descending.

“I don’t think I’ll keep you. But wouldn’t a vampiric, superhuman fern be fun?” He descended his gaping jaw to spiffy’s neck. The Advisor smiled nastily and imitated the movement. The President shuddered but was unable to break free.

spiffy whistled.

“What?” the Secretary demanded. “Of all the possible-”

Then the wall exploded and he was struck full in the midriff by a speeding mutt. The pair flew through the opposite wall, taking four hunks of spiffy’s flesh with them. HoundDog whined as his new chew-toy exploded in the early morning sun, and he nosed the ashes that floated to the grass.

The Advisor snarled and plunged his fangs down toward the President’s neck. Fighting past the pain and increasing blood loss, spiffy sent a trio of fern tendrils into the surprised vampire’s mouth, vaporizing his lower jaw with the last store of solar energy and jamming them down his throat. The tendrils forced their way farther into his body, ripping through muscle and past bone until the vampire’s eyes grew wide with shock and he exploded into dust.

“If you haven’t got wood,” spiffy gasped, “I guess leaf is the next best thing.”

A tendril whipped out into the hall and returned with the wooden stake, dropping it onto the desk in front of the pale and trembling President.

“Come on,” spiffy hissed with pain, struggling to his feet. “I’ll give you some tips on national security.”

The presidents of two nations and a dog then went about cleansing the White House of vampiric invaders.



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