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                                   CALFORCE
                                  Episode 119
                    (Lights...Camera...Run Away!, part one)
                             "That's Show Business"
                                      by
                                 Gary W. Olson

                                 |||---^---|||

     As weeks went, the week following the disasterous battle that had
resulted in the disappearance and possible deaths of Rad, Dar, and Glum was
hardly a positive one.  Pundits leveled blunt criticisms of CalForce's
handling of the situation and their failure to call on other heroes for
additional support.  The team had to deny, repeatedly, that it had captured
Radian, as the Weekly World Schmooze originally reported, and had failed to
turn her over to the authorities.  The week-long search for Radian, Shadebeam,
and Chalandra was turning up no leads, and it was beginning to look like
Radian was thumbing her nose at the law at will.
     Manny had grown despondant upon learning that Chalandra had left and
that Rad and Glum might be dead.  He had taken to wearing an oversized,
somewhat ragged robe around CalForce headquarters, eating rocky road ice
cream by the gallon, and watching soap operas and infomercials.  The rest of
the team, while not taking their grief to such an extreme, was somewhat
sullen.  Kaoru had quietly been accepted into the team, temporarily at least,
and was often either in the training room (after having forced the rusty-hinged
door to it open) or off working on something in his suite.
     Galaxy Hunter had been very upset to learn about the possible fates of
his Empress and Emperor, his niece and nephew-in-law, and his anger was only
abated somewhat when Eivandt and Tom showed him HAL's logs of the battle and
the events leading up to it.  He wanted to stay on Earth, to wait to see if
Rad and Glum re-emerged, but he was required to return to Hottentot, to take
up the role of Regent in their absence (Rumiko being too young to ascend to
the throne that was hers as the only blood heir).  GLADYS, instead, was
detached from her duties of running the Imperial Palace and was sent to Earth
in her humaniform body, with strict instructions that she was only to monitor
events and wait for Rad and Glum's return, and not take part in CalForce's
missions or activities.  She conversed with HAL, more than anyone else, and
generally stayed out of the way.
     Marian and Michael mysteriously absented themselves from CalForce
headquarters sometime after the battle, without leaving a note.  HAL was not
able to locate anyone matching their descriptions in the news or on the police
blotter, so the team, for the moment, decided not to investigate.
     To make matters worse, the corner store was out of Guinness.
     Thus, the mood was already set for the members of CalForce to hear Mighty
Guy's announcement that he was quitting the team, and superheroing altogether.
     "I'm quitting the team and superheroing altogether!" Kent announced.
     There was a quiet, poigant moment as Key, Yury, Templar, Tom, Laura,
Eivandt, and Kaoru did simultaneous spit-takes (not on each other, fortunately).
Manny did not do a spit-take, but he dropped his spoon into his ice cream
container.
     "But...but why?" Key asked, stunned.
     "It is the only path I see open to me," Kent said.  "All my life, I have
prided myself upon holding to only the Mightiest standards, to never deceiving
those I have sworn to protect.  In these past weeks, both before and after
the battle, I have had to engage in deception, and I find I can call myself
a superguy no longer!"
     "The deceptions before were necessary, because lives were at risk,"
Templar explained.  "And the deceptions afterward were necessary to cover up
the previous deceptions, to keep us from being charged with some rather
serious charges.  We've been through this before..."
     "Yes!" Kent said.  "I understand the reasoning, and were it to occur
again, Bore-All forbid, I would go along with it again.  That is the crux of
the problem, my friends!  Deception may be necessary, but I find that my
Mighty sense of moral justice is at odds with that necessity.  Therefore, I
have elected to retire from being a superguy!"
     "But you'll still continue to be a reporter, right?" Yury asked.
     "No," Kent told her.  "I will be resigning from that position as well,
for similar reasons!"
     "Does that mean you're...leaving?" Key asked, her eyes beginning to
well up with sadness.
     "It does not!" Kent exclaimed.  "I could not bear to leave you, Key!
What's more, this city is ideal for my new chosen profession!  A profession
that will allow me to carry on my Mighty Ideals, touch the hearts of young
and old alike, and make a difference, without compromising my Mighty sense
of moral justice!"
     "What profession is that?" Laura McCavish-Laffalot asked, as she risked
taking another sip of orange juice.
     "Acting!" Kent declared.
     "Oh, I see...huh?!?" everyone except Manny responded.
     "It has occured to me that my skill at hiding my civilian identity has
required a good deal of acting on my part," Kent explained.  "Clearly, since
I have been able to protect my civilian identity so skillfully, I must have
Mighty Acting Talent!  Therefore, I shall pursue a new career in the cinema!"
     "Isn't hiding one's civilian identity also deception?" Kaoru whispered
to Yury.
     "Sssh," she whispered back.
     "Well, it's not easy to get into movies," Templar said.  "Most who try
don't get in, and those who do usually have to wait for years, patiently
working up from small parts in sitcoms up to playing stereotyped bad guys in
hour long action shows..."
     "True!" Kent exclaimed, undaunted.  "But I am given to understand that
if one knows someone 'on the inside,' it helps get one that big break!"  He
winked at Templar.  Templar gulped.
     "You want me to...help you...find a role?" Templar asked.
     "Would you?" Kent asked, his eyes lighting up.
     Templar looked at him, trying desperately to think of a reason to say
no.  Whole reams of good reasons scrolled through his head, but he had
to reject them all, after seeing Kent's puppy-dog-like eyes.
     Still, if he couldn't think of a reason, there were others who could.
     "Let me talk to someone before I answer that," Templar said.  "Tom,
could you hand me that paperweight from the coffee table?  Thanks."  He
took the paperweight from Tom's hand and promptly hit himself hard on the
forehead with it.
     As he passed out, Manny shrugged and turned back to watching Regis and
Kathi Lee.

                                 |||---^---|||

     They watched, silently, as his flickering image materialized in their
realm.  He saw himself as solid, they knew, and saw their realm as a movie
theater, similar to many found on his home planet in 000SUPERGUY, but not
exactly like any of them (for one thing, the floors were clean).
     He also saw them as two well-known Earthling movie critics, and when
they spoke their names, his ears heard them as "Siskel" and "Ebert,"
although those were not their true names (those were "Rexreed" and
"Leonardmaltin").  It was thus because they wished it so, not because their
true forms were so mindbogglingly complex and higher-dimensional-like that
it would drive him insane just to look at them, but because he never
called before he dropped by, and they had to cover up the pizza boxes and
boxer shorts somehow.
     They waited for him to speak, which he did, as soon as he collected
his thoughts.
     "Er, hello," he said.
     "Hello, Criticalman," Siskel said, raising his bag of popcorn in
greeting.  "You have come to seek our knowledge and wisdom, have you not?"
     "Yes, I have," he said, as his flickering image moved down the aisle
in a pantomime of walking, until it stood directly in front of them.  "My
friend, Mighty Guy, has decided to foresake his career of being a superguy
to go into acting, as I have done.  He requests my assistance in this, and
I find myself in a quandry."
     "Whether to help your friend become a Hollywood star or to help him
realize that his true calling is being a hero," Ebert said.  "We know, we
watched the last scene."
     "Of course," Criticalman said, genuflecting a bit.  Technically, it was
true -- the last scene did play on the huge movie screen that was part of
both what Criticalman saw and what Siskel and Ebert saw.  But it was in a
small box in the corner, with the sound off, while the rest of the screen
was dominated by "Debbie the Pan-Dimensional Seductress Does the Horsehead
Nebula."
     "Our advice to you is that you do both," Siskel told him.
     Criticalman looked confused by this.
     "He has used his power of Mighty Fast Thinking to rationalize his
decision and will not be swayed by simple persuasion," Ebert said.  "He
believes his true destiny lies in the realm of the thespian.  How better to
show him that it does not than to allow him to try?"
     Criticalman blinked.
     "That...made sense," he said, finally.  Siskel fought the urge to throw
popcorn at him.  "Thank you, Great Ones.  I now know how to proceed!"
     He bowed to them, and flickered out of existance.  Siskel and Ebert
waited to make sure he was completely gone before they spoke again.
     "Suckerrrrrrrr!" they exclaimed, breaking into laughter.

                                 |||---^---|||

     Templar awoke, and blinked.  He could still see the movie theater that
was all he ever saw of altiverse 141THUMBSUP, the home of the wise ones, Siskel
and Ebert, who had given him his cinematic powers.  As always, their words had
proven to be considerably enlightening, though he wished he had asked why they
were clad in boxer shorts which were decorated with many replicas of Gene
Shalit's smiling face, and why the theater seemed clogged with pizza boxes.
There were some things, obviously, that man was not meant to know.
     Presently, he realized that his head was resting in a comfortable lap,
and he looked up.
     "Hey there," Yury, the owner of the lap in question, said down to him.
"Ain't there an easier way of contacting them?"
     "I'll...have to ask them next time," Templar said.
     "You can move now," Yury suggested.
     "I could," Templar said.  "I...oh, of course."  He sat up and grinned,
sheepishly.
     "Well, what did they say?" Kent asked, anxiously.
     "I'll help you any way I can," Templar told him, hoping Kent wouldn't
notice that he didn't really answer the question.  Kent, of course, didn't
come within long-range scanning distance of such a realization.
     "Excellent!" Kent exclaimed.  "I knew I could count on you!"
     "In fact, tomorrow they're casting my co-star for my new movie," Templar
told him.  "It's down to the last five people, and ordinarily they wouldn't
open the casting up to someone as new to the field as you, but I'll just have
a word with Mr. Bigwig, the studio owner."
     "I shall re-enact my favorite scenes from 'Then Came Bronson' to
prepare!" Kent declared.  He stood and strode out the door, and Eivandt
removed his hand from Key's mouth.
     "What?!?" Key asked, grabbing Templar by the collar and shaking him
vigorously.  "How could you do this to him?  To me?  To the public?"
     "I've got everything under control," Templar told her, quickly.  She
released his collar, and he collapsed back onto Yury's lap.  "I've got a plan."
     "I think I see," Tom said.  "Give him what he wants, and he'll realize
it's not what he really wants."
     "But what if it *is* what he wants?" Key asked.
     "Then we'll just stack the deck in our favor," Templar said.  "Here's
what we do...um, Manny, are you listening?"
     "What?" Manny asked, as he looked away from the screen.  "Um, yeah."
He then turned back to look at the screen, and consumed more rocky road.
     "Right," Templar sighed.  "Okay, the rest of you then.  Here's what
we need to do..."

                                 |||---^---|||

     "Now, you realize," Percy Grey said, as he lit the fuse, "that this is
all part of important journalistic research, and that you'll probably win
a Pulitzer for this."
     "Really?" Timmy 'maggot breath' O'Larson asked.  "That'll be cool!"
He would have jumped for joy, but the eighty or so pounds of explosives that
were strapped to his body, and connected to the fuse that Percy just lit,
made that too difficult.
     "Now we're just going out into the main office, so you can get your
journalistic work done without splattering us with body pa--er, without
being distracted by us," Percy said.  "Okay, everyone, behind the shield
glass..."
     "Where is everyone?" a Mighty voice asked.  Percy groaned.
     "Ah, there you are!" Kent exclaimed, as he walked into the room, as
his fellow reporters scattered for cover and/or held their ears.  Percy
winced as he stepped on the fuse and put it out.  "I say, Timmy, why are
you playing with dangerous explosives like that?"
     "Percy told me I should!" Timmy responded, before Percy could apply
the duct tape to his mouth.
     "Explosives are dangerous things, Timmy!" Kent told him, sternly.
He picked Timmy up and spun him about, plucking the explosives off of Timmy
with Mighty quickness.  Unfortunately, Timmy was not injured.
     "Kent..." Percy growled.
     "One moment, Chief!" Kent told him.  "I must place these in a location
where they will be safe!"  He walked out of the room, and, moments later,
re-entered it.  "There!" he said.  "Now that that's out of the way, I have
an important announcement to make!"
     "You've gotten another exclusive interview with Mighty Guy, right?"
Flores asked, clearly envious, and a bit bewildered by how frequently Kent
managed to interview Mighty Guy.  Everyone else in the room, that is, the
people who were not brain-damaged and could clearly see that Kent Clark and
Mighty Guy were in fact the same person, shrugged.
     "As a matter of fact, yes!" Kent exclaimed.  "But that's not the
important announcement!  The important announcement is that, effective
immediately, I will be resigning my job with this fine newspaper!"
     Response to this announcement was immediate and explosive.
     "I get his stapler!" one reporter shouted.
     "No, I do!" another reporter shouted back.
     "His paper clips!" a third exclaimed.  "I got dibs on those!"
     And so on and so on.
     "But, Kent!" Flores exclaimed.  "What about your journalistic integrity?
What about your unswerving dedication to the truth?  What about helping me
in my quest to discover Mighty Guy's true identity?"
     "I'm sorry, Flores," Kent said.  "But I've got a new calling!  I'm going
to the Brazillian rain forests to meditate and seek spiritual growth.  Why,
I've already selected a gigolo!"
     "Guru," Percy corrected.
     "That too!" Kent added, quickly.  "My interview with Mighty Guy and
Criticalman will, therefore, be my last submission to the Schmooze!"
     "This is new," Percy said, as he accepted the thick stack of computer
paper, staggering only slightly under its weight.  "Why did you interview
Criticalman?"
     "Because he is helping Mighty Guy with his new career choice -- acting!"
Kent exclaimed.  Percy dropped the interview, and winced as it slammed into
his toes.  "Criticalman is going to help him get cast in his new movie, as his
partner in fighting crime!"
     "But his new movie is 'Tommy Anderson - The Movie'!" Percy protested.
"There's no cops in that!"
     "Relax," Kent told him.  "He assures me that scripts always go through
rewrites before shooting.  He said he'd talk to Mr. Bigwig before the casting
tomorrow!"
     "Mr...Bigwig," Percy said, fighting the edge of bitterness in his voice.
     "Yes!" Kent said, clearly not picking up on the bitterness.  "Well, I
must be going.  Farewell, my esteemed colleagues!  Carry on our noble work!"
     With that he turned, and with great fanfare, walked through the wall
next to the door frame, his mind already thinking ahead to how he would
impress the director.  Percy, Flores, and Timmy watched him go.
     "Bigwig gave me the job of producing 'Tommy Anderson - The Movie," Percy
complained.  "He promised he wouldn't interfere with my artistic decisions.
Not that it should surprise me.  He promised he wouldn't interfere with my
running of this paper, but he went back on that, too!"
     "When was this?" Flores asked, confused.
     "Just recently," Percy said.  "That story on Chalandra Harkness being on
the run with Radian and Shadebeam.  It was all set to run, and boom!  He calls
and orders me not to run it.  Oh, sure, he *said* he had no choice in the
matter, that his superiors insisted..."
     "Since when did he have superiors?" Timmy asked.  "I thought he was the
owner of a vast media empire!"
     "Well, technically, Bigwig's Vast Media Empire, Inc, is owned by some big
holding company, and...well, it's not important," Percy said.  "Anyway, let's
get back to our journalistic experiment, Timmy!"
     "Yay!" Timmy 'verminous weed' O'Larson exclaimed, happily.
     "Now, where did Kent put the explosives?" Percy asked.
     That question was immediately answered when Percy's office blew up,
rather spectacularly.
     "Oh, dear," Flores said, as the smoke cleared.  "That was unexpected."
     Timmy took photographs as Percy started turning several distinct shades
of red and purple.
     "If you'll excuse me, I have a phone call to make," Flores said, as she
walked into the main office, reaching into her purse for a calling card.
     "Who's she calling?" Timmy asked.
     "I don't know," Percy said.  "But she's using her Working Villains card,
so she must be making the call in the guise of her alter-ego, Legs Luther."
He shrugged.  "At least she's not charging it to my name anymore."

WHO IS LEGS LUTHER CALLING?
WILL CALFORCE BE ABLE TO CONVINCE MIGHTY GUY NOT TO FORSAKE HEROING FOR ACTING?
WILL MANNY BE ABLE TO SHAKE THE FUNK HE SEEMS TO BE IN?
WHAT ARE MIGHTY GUY'S FAVORITE SCENES FROM 'THEN CAME BRONSON'?
WHAT ABOUT 'KILLDOZER'?
WHAT ABOUT 'MITCHELL'?

Find out soon, only on SUPERGUY!, now in stereo!
--
Gary W. Olson         swede@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu         swede@drycas.bitnet