🚀 go-pugleaf

                            The Defense Squad             QUOTE OF THE DAY:
                               Episode 180             "...at least I thought
                         The Last Turdian, Part 4       I was dancing, 'til
                                   or                   somebody stepped on
                          NorthByNorthWestworld:        my hand."
                      Chapter 1: A fistfull of turds       -J. B. White
                               Written by
                               Bill Paul
                       The man with two first names

CONTINUED FROM PART FOUR...

        "Awright, hold it a minute. Lemme see if I got this right..."
        Loko emptied the last of the Red Eye into his glass and sucked it
down quickly, just in case his brain still had any ideas about getting in
the way of this conversation. What Jeb and Belle were telling him was
just a little too outlandish for even someone as liquored up as he to
accept, which clearly meant that more liquor was required.
        "Yer telling me that once a month, Withering Gulch gets attacked
by these... these..."
        The Turdian Terror waved his hands around indistinctly while
searching for the correct word.
        "...things," he said finally.
        "Yep," Jeb cut in, "a whole danged army of 'em. Ugliest, meanest,
nastiest things you ever saw."
        "Right... an' you want me to stop 'em for you? All by m'self?"
        "Withering Gulch won't survive much longer if you don't help us,
Loko. None of us can stand up to these horrors, but you can. All we have
to do is show them that we won't take their attacks lying down anymore."
        "So don't lie down. Why don't you just fight them?"
        "We've tried," said Jeb, "an' each time we do, they jus' come
back meaner an' nastier'n the last time."
        "Well... ain't there any law in these parts to help you? What
about the army?"
        "Aw Hell (tm), the army ain't gonna waste its time with a backwater
town like Withering Gulch. An' the law cain't do nothin' tuh stop these
ornery varmints. You could ask Sheriff Jones if'n yuh don't believe me."
        "Fine, I will. Where is he?"
        "He's dead," said Jeb, matter-of-factly.
        "Ah. I see your point. Say, Jeb, don't take this the wrong way,
but your family name wouldn't happen to be 'Gump,' would it?"
        "Beg yer pardon?"
        "Nevermind."
        Loko abandoned his chair and stepped out into the street where he
could better see the stars. Night had somehow managed to sneak up on him
while Belle and Jeb explained their troubles.
        "If I were Edgar Von Blim right now," he said to himself, "I
think I'd be worried. I can't believe I'm really thinking about going
through with this."
        "Alright," thundered the Turdian Terror as he spun around and
reentered the saloon, "I'll do it! I'll save your town, but don't think
you can just sit around and let me do all the work. You're going to
help. I'm going to show you how to stand up to... to... whatever it is
that's out there. You have to learn how to fend for yerselves, 'cause I
won't be around forever. Hell (tm), if I'm lucky I won't even stay out
the week."
        "Buy gum, you're right," said Jeb, his voice choked with pride.
"Withering Gulch needs to fight for itself. You jus' tell us what we gotta
tuh do, Loko. And we'll do it. With your help, ain't nothin' can stop us!"
        "Okay, it's settled then. So now we have to prepare. When're
these... these... 'things' due to attack next?"
        Belle cast her eyes upwards and furrowed her brow.
        "Well, let's see... if they keep to their usual schedule, I'd
say... sometime tomorrow night."
        "Tomo--!! Tomorrow night?!" Loko exclaimed, "You mean I've only
got 24 hours to whip this fleabag town into shape?!"
        "Ayep," Jeb replied.
        Loko slumped back into his chair and and tipped back his hat.
Though his displeasure was clearly evident, Bell and Jeb seemed not to
notice and continued to smile contentedly at him.
        "Shit," he said, "I think I need another drink."
        A sound like a gunshot rang out from the direction of the bar and
a second bottle of Red Eye exploded towards him. It slammed into his palm
with enough force to take a man's head clean off, and Loko noticed whisps
of smoke billowing from it as he set it down on the table.
        "Hmm," he mused as he took his first drink, "does he always do
that?"
        "Do whut?"
        "Ferget it. Just ferget it. Say, barkeep! Could you step over
here for just a minute?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
        In his day, it was said that no man, save Lightnin' Hopkins
himself, could move faster than the Grey Panther. Of course, back then he
called himself the Ebony Panther, and he didn't need an hour and a whole
bottle of Ben Gay to get out of bed in the morning. As a young man he was
strong and brash; indominable in both body and spirit. When he first took
up the mantle of the Ebony Panther to avenge the death of his father, he
became the hated nemesis of countless criminal forces. His senses and
reflexes were so finely honed that it was said he could dodge bullets. And
legend had it that the Panther had mastered a mysterious black art that gave
him the power of invisiblilty at night, allowing him to stalk his enemies
totally undetected. Whether there was any truth to this legend the Panther
would never reveal. There was some speculation that these stories about
his supposed mystical powers were simply the terrified ramblings of those
who had fallen victim to his hunter's stealth and skills. In either case,
the Ebony Panther had an uncanny talent for escaping death which served
him well over the course of his career.
        But that was thirty years ago. In spite of his reputation as the
most formidable non-metahuman super hero in the world, by the time the
Ebony Panther had reached his late forties, he could tell his era was
drawing to a close. He was slowing down. Only a few people knew, but when
an innocent man almost died because of his inability to pull him out of
the way of a speeding truck in time -- a feat he could have accomplished
easily if he'd been in his prime -- he knew it was time to pack it in.
"You can't save them if you're dead," his arch nemesis Ulysses Kraw,
Master of Smell, told him at their last meeting. And he was right. The
horrors of World War II and Korea gave way to the absurdity of Viet Nam,
and as the Children of the Sixties rose to power, the Ebony Panther
quietly passed the torch to the new generation and retired.
        He returned to action briefly, during the riots in Watts, when it
finally became clear that nobody was going to lift a finger help. But there
was only so much one man could do, and today only a handful of people who
were actually there even remember the lives he saved. Bowing to the
unrelenting passage of time, it was then that he rechristened himself the
Grey Panther, and after that final mission was complete, he once again
laid his alter-ego to rest.
        When DefenseCo first approached him and suggested that he come
out of retirement, at the ripe old age of seventy-two, all he could do
was laugh. After all, it had to have been part of some kind of joke.
Perhaps he was on Candid Camera, or DefenseCo's Bloopers and Practical
Jokes. But they were serious. And once he was finally convinced of that,
it made him terribly angry. How dare they! He'd already given the best
years of his life to them, and here they were telling him it wasn't
enough! What more did they want from him! It was practically an insult,
and he turned them down flat. They offered to make him a millionaire,
but he threw them out on their ears. No amount of money could buy back
his youth, and without that his life as a super hero was over.
        And then, two days later, Lightnin' Hopkins died. It was all
over the TV and papers. Everywhere. There was no way to escape it. The
image of his granddaughter Marjorie standing at his graveside and the
stories of how he'd spend his final moments using his powers to protect
the innocent haunted him no matter where he went. That bastard had ruined
everything. The carefuly constructed wall of rationalization he'd erected
around himself crumbled under the enormity of what Lightnin' Hopkins had
shown him. He realized that he'd been running from the truth for years,
and only now that an old comrade in arms was dead was he prepared to
acknowledge it.
        "You can't save them if you're dead," the Panther had said,
repeating his old enemy's words to himself as he dialed DefenseCo's
corporate hotline on that fateful day. "Well I'm not dead yet."
        It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed to make sense.
Once a hero, always a hero. To the very end. Slamming down the phone after
accepting DefenseCo's offer, he felt invigorated. Rejuvenated. He felt more
alive than he had in years. Curiously enough, the old skin-tight costume
still fit; in fact it didn't look half bad. And with its full face mask,
nobody would ever see the grey hair or the wrinkles. They'd see only the
mysterious ebony form springing out at them from the night, and they'd
tremble in fear. The thought of evil once again cringing in terror at
the mere mention of his name restored all the vitality the years had
stolen from him.
        But now, standing in the 26th's precinct's evidence room, looking
into the Scarlet Shrubbery's soulless blood-red eyes and seeing her claws
streaking towards him, he once again felt very old, very slow, and, above
all, really, really stupid.
        The night betrayed the Grey Panther's fear, and it spoke of it to
the Scarlet Shrubbery as she leapt out of the darkness. That was what she
wanted, of course: by drowning her opponent with fear she'd be able to
take him out quickly, and without causing him any injury. Somehow she knew
that the man in black who'd dared to follow in her footsteps wasn't her
enemy, but she couldn't let him detain her, nor could she allow anyone to
know she had any interest in the Steenbrinner case. One quick strike to
the side of the neck, and he'd be out like a light, perhaps without even
knowing who or what had hit him. The Shrubbery closed her fist to keep
her talons from cutting into her target's skin and struck a lightning
fast blow...
        ...against the door of the evidence locker.
        "What the Hell (tm)...!?" she spat. She slammed her other hand
into the locker to stop herself and looked around. He was gone. That
was impossible: nobody could move that fast.
        "It would seem," the Panther said, looking down on the Scarlet
Shrubbery from his perch atop the locker, "that I haven't lost my touch
after all."
        The Shrubbery stared up at him through her infrared lenses and
marveled at how the Grey Panther was almost invisible against the shadows,
in defiance of several notoriously inflexible physical laws. It then
dawned on her that the only way he could have gotten up there and avoided
her strike at the same time, was to leap almost ten feet straight into
the air. That too seemed like something nature wouldn't allow unless she
had a few stiff drinks in her.
        "Oh shit," was the Shrubbery's only comment.
        The Grey Panther's foot snapped Clinton's head to the side,
sending her sprawling into a bank of smaller lockers and causing a
tremendous clatter. Outside, the officer on guard continued to doze.
The Scarlet Shrubbery recovered in only a few seconds, but by then the
Panther was nowhere to be seen. She stood with ready with a shrubarang
in hand waiting for an attack that never came.
        "Fine," she thought. She'd already photographed the documents
in the evidence locker and secured a sizeable sample of Scorn to study.
She had what she'd come for: the night cried out to her to beat a hasty
retreat now that the opportunity had presented itself.
        The window beckonned, but steel bars blocked her path. Still,
they hadn't stopped her from getting in: surely they couldn't prevent
her from getting out. But as her talons tightened around the first bar
and it began to deform from the pressure, the Scarlet Shrubbery noticed
a thick crimson slime oozing along its length. It clung to her claws
even as she pulled away. She looked up to scan for its source, then
cried out in terror as the Crimson Amoeba released its grip on the
ceiling and swept its amorphous body over her face.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        "So," began Crankshaft, taking a drag from a cigarette, "let's go
over this one more time."
        "W-we already told you all we know!" gulped Sergeant Dear.
        "Yeah, c-can we go now?" added Detective Honey.
        The two undercover narcs, still in uniform, clung to each other
in abject terror as the pseudo-anti-hero loomed over them, sweat dripping
from their brows.
        "No!" Crankshaft snapped. "None of us is leaving here until we
get some answers!"
        "But we don't no anything else!" Honey protested. "We swear!"
        "C'mon, boys: we've been through this already! Quit holding out
on us!"
        "Crankshaft," Sister Sludge broke in, "don't you think you're
being a little rough on these boys?"
        "Yeah!" Dear agreed.
        "Shaddap!" Crankshaft exploded.
        "Yes sir." said Dear meekly.
        "Ah, I hope you don't mind my interrupting here," ventured
Honey, "but I'm curious: is Crankshaft your real name or is just a
secret codename of some kind?"
        "I said shaddap!"
        "Crankshaft, please! Can't you see your scaring them?"
        "Well they should be scared! This is scary business! Scorn
could destroy the country unless we put a stop to it. And we won't be
able to stop it, unless these to jokers talk!"
        "Look," said Honey, "it's like we said: after we took
Steenbrinner into custody, he shut up tight as a clam. Wouldn't say a
word to anyone, except his lawyer."
        "And what did his lawyer say to him?" Sister Sludge asked.
        "Not to say anything," Dear replied.
        "Swell," Crankshaft groaned.
        "Okay, then what about the evidence you seized from his car. You
said there were documents."
        "Yes," said Honey, "some financial records, but they were in
code. And something that looked like a delivery schedule. There were
times and dates and stuff."
        "Drop dates?" Sister Sludge inquired of Crankshaft.
        "Or meeting dates with his supplier," he replied. "Were there
any locations specified in this 'delivery schedule?'"
        "No," said Dear, who was only now starting to regain his composure.
        "Damn," Crankshaft hissed. "Okay, that leaves us with the financial
records. We'll just have to break the code. Gentlemen: we'll need copies
of all those documents you seized."
        "They're under guard in the evidence room," Honey explained. "The
feds ordered them sealed. Didn't you know that?"
        "No. Why should we? We're not feds."
        "You... you're not!?" Dear exclaimed. "Well then... who are you?"
        "We..." Sister Sludge began, hesitantly, "uh... that is, we're...
uhm... we..."
        Suddenly, and without warning, there was a muffled explosion from
somewhere upstairs. Dust began trickling down onto the interrogation room
table and cracks took form in the ceiling. After a second explosion,
whole chunks of plaster began to fall. Crankshaft held up his nearly
indestructible baseball bat to protect himself and Honey and Dear leapt
out of the way just as a pair of steel talons tore through the ceiling
and the Scarlet Shrubbery, the Grey Panther and the Crimson Amoeba came
crashing down from the floor above.
        "...are in serious trouble," Sister Sludge finished.
        "Honey," cried Dear, "what do we do?!"
        Detective Honey, Undercover Narc, pulled out his service revolver
and confidently gave the barrel a spin.
        "First," he said, "we try to arrest them with a minimal amount of
force and read them their rights. Then, if they resist... we blow their
heads off!"

WILL THE REGEGADE DEFENSECO FRANCHISE MEMBERS AND THE SCARLET SHRUBBERY
RESIST?????
WILL HONEY AND DEAR BLOW THEIR HEADS OFF?????
WILL ANY OF THEM MAKE ANY PROGRESS IN THE STEENBRINNER CASE?????
WILL LOKO AND THE CITIZENS OF WITHERING GULCH SURVIVE THEIR ENCOUNTER
WITH THOSE... THOSE... THINGS?????
WHAT ARE THOSE... THOSE... THINGS?????
WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH WITHERING GULCH ANYWAY?????
WILL LOKO EVER FILL IN THAT FORM?????
WILL LARABETH AND EDGAR VON BLIM EVER FIND HIM?????
WHO WAS THE MYSTERIOUS FIGURE WHO APPEARED IN THE PROLOGUE?????
WILL SMARTMAN TURN GINSU WORLD CLASS OVER TO THE MILITARY?????
WILL STEVE WOZNIAK KNUCKLE UNDER TO DEFENSECO'S LEGAL TEAM?????
HOW DID THE INTERSTELLAR MAFIA MAKE THEIR COMEBACK?????
WHY HAS IT BEEN SO GODDAMN LONG SINCE I LAST POSTED?????
WHAT'S BEHIND THE SUPERUSER'S HEADACHES?????
WHAT DOES RAMROD WANT TO TALK TO HIM ABOUT????

That last question was answered in a recent installment of Team Cynical,
but as for thet rest, you and everybody else will just have to...

Find out in the next episode, appearing only in... SUPERGUY!!!

"Superguy: now more than ever."