Post by Admin on Jun 16, 2022 0:51:58 GMT
Introduction
Chicago was the home or place of origin of a lot of unusual mystery heroes and villains in the 50s and 60s. Even a group of leprechauns joined in the action!
Setting
Chicago, Illinois : 1960
Zing Strikes Again
Donal Regan was in a great mood as he left his office and started a late-night walk home from work. Not only had he recently been sworn in as a naturalized US citizen, he had been promoted today even though he’d only been on his new job for a few weeks! His heavy construction company was involved in the building of the new Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and his command experience in the Royal Marines was just what they needed in a foreman for that job. Things were looking up!
He was fortunate to be looking in the right direction when a green blur sped down the street, heading for the Thirteenth National Bank of Chicago, next door to Donal’s office building. He wasn’t the only one who saw the green flash, but nobody else seemed inclined to do anything. The green blur was the calling card of Zing, Queen of Quick, and it was common knowledge that if Red Rocket, Tom Atomic and Adventurine couldn’t bring down the villainous speedster, there was nothing an average pedestrian could do either.
People in Chicago were on the verge of panic; since there didn’t seem to be any way to protect their assets, every company that could was working on a plan to get their cash, at least, out of town. Thirteenth National Bank had dragged their feet about following this policy, and tonight they were going to pay for their slow response.
The Queen of Quick went through the front door almost without slowing down. As usual, she’d melted the lock and then shoved with super-speed. Since her first bank heist, she’d started ignoring alarms, as neither private security forces, the police, nor even Chicago’s own mystery heroes had been able to arrive in time to stop her. She vanished inside the bank and never saw Donal quickly slip through the broken doors after her. In the shadows inside the door, he paused for a second and closed his eyes, then disappeared with a slight ‘pouf’ of displaced air.
Except - where the beefy figure of the six-foot-six-inch-tall Donal vanished, he was instantly replaced by four virtual duplicates — except that they were each only half his height. The group split up and moved silently and purposefully, vanishing deeper into the darkened interior of the bank. They moved with an unconscious grace that would turn the most accomplished gymnast green with envy.
Zing had been in this building earlier today, disguised in her civilian clothes, and she knew just where to find the vault. She raced into a large room full of desks, straight to the vault door that was set in the rear wall of the room. She had eyes for nothing but the vault door itself, and failed to notice that this room itself was very much like a very large vault, with massive sliding doors now withdrawn into recesses in the front wall. And for the first time since she’d blazed onto the Chicago crime scene days ago, she was stymied.
The vault door was a huge slab of steel, set flush into the rear wall. The hinges must have been inside, and the lock must have been electronic and built into the wall, because the door itself was featureless. Zing began rubbing the door at super-speed, friction heating it, but the monolith was so massive that her best efforts barely warmed a small section. Frustrated, she changed tactics, drumming on the steel with her clenched fists, hoping to induce high-speed vibrations that might cause it to shatter.
She heard the barest whisper of movement behind her, and she whirled to see that she had run into a trap. The massive doors through which she had entered were silently gliding shut, and some kind of gas was seeping out of the light fixtures in the ceiling. If she’d been a little more preoccupied with the vault door, or the tiny noise had come a tenth of a second later, she would have been trapped. But a tenth of a second in real time was close to an hour to her highly accelerated subjective sense of time, and she easily slipped between the almost-stationary doors.
A door into the lobby had started to open, and she could see the man in uniform whose premature movement had alerted her. He had spoiled the trap; now that she was aware, not even the massed forces of Spinelli’s fledgling Mystery Villain Apprehension Unit would be able to stop her. She accelerated toward the wide-open front door.
Four Leprechauns at Once?
She saw the rope stretched across her path by two mini-Donals at the last nanosecond, but even her fantastic reflexes weren’t enough to avoid it. She tripped and sprawled headlong, and she would probably have died when she smashed into the wall or the floor at supersonic speeds, except for the magic aura that protected her from the effects of her speed. When her concentration was broken, she lost her speed, and the aura instantly slowed her down to normal human speeds. The sudden change stunned her, though she would survive, and she slid to a stop on the floor, dazed. Another mini-Donal raced from behind a pillar and quickly cast a steel-stranded net over her, and her own struggles to rise simply tangled her more tightly. Donal number three raced to her side before she could regain her concentration and her speed.
“I’m afraid this’ll hurt ye a wee bit more than meself!” And he whacked her on the side of the head with a small leather sack filled with sand. The mini-Donals had managed to liberate the rope, net, and sap from various members of the SVU team without being noticed.
By this time, Spinelli and his new team had gathered in the lobby, surrounding the three small heroes and the entangled villain. The confrontation between the cops and their newfound mini-allies was pretty comical. Spinelli was the first to speak.
“I might barely believe in one single leprechaun, if I was drunk at the time, but three of you?”
“‘Tis best if’n ye count yuir allies a wee bit more accurate,” came a squeaky voice, and a fourth mini-Donal raced out across the room from the direction of the vault.
“But… you all look alike,” another officer observed, somewhat bemused.
“Gosh and begorrah. The lad’s right,” one of the small characters piped up sarcastically. “A wonder we nae noticed before!” The cop couldn’t help but smile at the irony; he’d used the same line — without the accent, of course — when people made similar remarks to him.
“Beside,” another joker piped up. “Ye’re a fine lot ta be talkin’, ye bloody clumsy sassenachs! Who amongst ye could tell any one o’ ye froom t’others?”
Mini-Donal number four, the one who had just joined the group, spoke up. “’Twas nice meeting ye all, t’ be sure, but it’s time fer us to be leaving ye!” The four headed for the door. Various cops tried to grab them, but seemingly without effort, the leprechauns avoided capture.
“Years o’ practice, doncha know?” one of them explained to the bewildered Spinelli. “Can’t let none of ye big clumsy folks get yuir paws on our pots o’ gold!” He winked. “Tough enough hidin’ them from th’ rest oov us!”
“Hold on! I need to know who you are! And you have to fill out a report!” Spinelli raced after them.
“Ye don’t say?” one of them responded. “Looks like ye and yuir boys are gonna have to do it yuir own selves, copper!” The last leprechaun stepped around the corner into a dark alley, and by the time Spinelli reached it, the alley was empty, except for a big drunk lying near the wall of one of the buildings.
“Say, fella, did you see…” And then Tony thought better of it. How could a self-respecting cop ask anyone, even a drunken bum, if he’d just seen four leprechauns pass this way?
Dissension in the Ranks
Back in the bank, Stanton was talking big. “Spinelli sure messed up this one! If it hadn’t been for those midgets, the dame would’a got away, and we’d have to go in with zilch! Sure would look good on our records, huh?” He ignored the growing muttering around him. “After my report, the governor will bounce him outta the unit on his can, and then you guys will have a real leader!”
“Major, that isn’t the way it happened, and we all know it.” This was from a MVATF team member who was on detached duty from the State Police. “You got me busted the last time you screwed up because there weren’t any witnesses. But there’s twenty of us tonight who saw you jump the gun.” There was a lot of nodding and muttered assent, though the rest of the cops weren’t quite up to arguing with a major just yet.
Stanton turned to Spinelli. “You hired this lying weasel? He almost got busted out of the Force, and the whole thing is in his records! I warned you he was trouble.”
Spinelli was calm. “A man is not his record, Major. And I took your warning into consideration when reviewing Officer Lioni’s qualifications.” He attempted to change the subject before Stanton could talk himself into more trouble, and spoke to the whole group. “We didn’t do bad tonight. A little overeager…” But Stanton wasn’t going to be ignored or placified.
“I’m talking to you, &#@$*!” he screamed. Grabbing Tony’s shoulder, he spun him around. It looked like he was about to take a swing, and for just an instant, everyone’s attention was on the two officers. But the tension was quickly broken by a soft sonic boom and the smell of burning floor wax, ignited by the melted strands of the steel net. While Stanton was picking a fight, Zing had used the distraction to her advantage, and now she was gone.
“I guess we’ll continue our discussion at the station house,” Spinelli remarked sadly. He knew he’d be off the hook for Zing’s escape when his team reported Stanton’s behavior, but he had caved in and let Stanton accompany the team despite his own misgivings. Well, he would do better in the future. “She got away tonight, but it was close. Next time!”
Chicago was the home or place of origin of a lot of unusual mystery heroes and villains in the 50s and 60s. Even a group of leprechauns joined in the action!
Setting
Chicago, Illinois : 1960
Zing Strikes Again
Donal Regan was in a great mood as he left his office and started a late-night walk home from work. Not only had he recently been sworn in as a naturalized US citizen, he had been promoted today even though he’d only been on his new job for a few weeks! His heavy construction company was involved in the building of the new Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and his command experience in the Royal Marines was just what they needed in a foreman for that job. Things were looking up!
He was fortunate to be looking in the right direction when a green blur sped down the street, heading for the Thirteenth National Bank of Chicago, next door to Donal’s office building. He wasn’t the only one who saw the green flash, but nobody else seemed inclined to do anything. The green blur was the calling card of Zing, Queen of Quick, and it was common knowledge that if Red Rocket, Tom Atomic and Adventurine couldn’t bring down the villainous speedster, there was nothing an average pedestrian could do either.
People in Chicago were on the verge of panic; since there didn’t seem to be any way to protect their assets, every company that could was working on a plan to get their cash, at least, out of town. Thirteenth National Bank had dragged their feet about following this policy, and tonight they were going to pay for their slow response.
The Queen of Quick went through the front door almost without slowing down. As usual, she’d melted the lock and then shoved with super-speed. Since her first bank heist, she’d started ignoring alarms, as neither private security forces, the police, nor even Chicago’s own mystery heroes had been able to arrive in time to stop her. She vanished inside the bank and never saw Donal quickly slip through the broken doors after her. In the shadows inside the door, he paused for a second and closed his eyes, then disappeared with a slight ‘pouf’ of displaced air.
Except - where the beefy figure of the six-foot-six-inch-tall Donal vanished, he was instantly replaced by four virtual duplicates — except that they were each only half his height. The group split up and moved silently and purposefully, vanishing deeper into the darkened interior of the bank. They moved with an unconscious grace that would turn the most accomplished gymnast green with envy.
Zing had been in this building earlier today, disguised in her civilian clothes, and she knew just where to find the vault. She raced into a large room full of desks, straight to the vault door that was set in the rear wall of the room. She had eyes for nothing but the vault door itself, and failed to notice that this room itself was very much like a very large vault, with massive sliding doors now withdrawn into recesses in the front wall. And for the first time since she’d blazed onto the Chicago crime scene days ago, she was stymied.
The vault door was a huge slab of steel, set flush into the rear wall. The hinges must have been inside, and the lock must have been electronic and built into the wall, because the door itself was featureless. Zing began rubbing the door at super-speed, friction heating it, but the monolith was so massive that her best efforts barely warmed a small section. Frustrated, she changed tactics, drumming on the steel with her clenched fists, hoping to induce high-speed vibrations that might cause it to shatter.
She heard the barest whisper of movement behind her, and she whirled to see that she had run into a trap. The massive doors through which she had entered were silently gliding shut, and some kind of gas was seeping out of the light fixtures in the ceiling. If she’d been a little more preoccupied with the vault door, or the tiny noise had come a tenth of a second later, she would have been trapped. But a tenth of a second in real time was close to an hour to her highly accelerated subjective sense of time, and she easily slipped between the almost-stationary doors.
A door into the lobby had started to open, and she could see the man in uniform whose premature movement had alerted her. He had spoiled the trap; now that she was aware, not even the massed forces of Spinelli’s fledgling Mystery Villain Apprehension Unit would be able to stop her. She accelerated toward the wide-open front door.
Four Leprechauns at Once?
She saw the rope stretched across her path by two mini-Donals at the last nanosecond, but even her fantastic reflexes weren’t enough to avoid it. She tripped and sprawled headlong, and she would probably have died when she smashed into the wall or the floor at supersonic speeds, except for the magic aura that protected her from the effects of her speed. When her concentration was broken, she lost her speed, and the aura instantly slowed her down to normal human speeds. The sudden change stunned her, though she would survive, and she slid to a stop on the floor, dazed. Another mini-Donal raced from behind a pillar and quickly cast a steel-stranded net over her, and her own struggles to rise simply tangled her more tightly. Donal number three raced to her side before she could regain her concentration and her speed.
“I’m afraid this’ll hurt ye a wee bit more than meself!” And he whacked her on the side of the head with a small leather sack filled with sand. The mini-Donals had managed to liberate the rope, net, and sap from various members of the SVU team without being noticed.
By this time, Spinelli and his new team had gathered in the lobby, surrounding the three small heroes and the entangled villain. The confrontation between the cops and their newfound mini-allies was pretty comical. Spinelli was the first to speak.
“I might barely believe in one single leprechaun, if I was drunk at the time, but three of you?”
“‘Tis best if’n ye count yuir allies a wee bit more accurate,” came a squeaky voice, and a fourth mini-Donal raced out across the room from the direction of the vault.
“But… you all look alike,” another officer observed, somewhat bemused.
“Gosh and begorrah. The lad’s right,” one of the small characters piped up sarcastically. “A wonder we nae noticed before!” The cop couldn’t help but smile at the irony; he’d used the same line — without the accent, of course — when people made similar remarks to him.
“Beside,” another joker piped up. “Ye’re a fine lot ta be talkin’, ye bloody clumsy sassenachs! Who amongst ye could tell any one o’ ye froom t’others?”
Mini-Donal number four, the one who had just joined the group, spoke up. “’Twas nice meeting ye all, t’ be sure, but it’s time fer us to be leaving ye!” The four headed for the door. Various cops tried to grab them, but seemingly without effort, the leprechauns avoided capture.
“Years o’ practice, doncha know?” one of them explained to the bewildered Spinelli. “Can’t let none of ye big clumsy folks get yuir paws on our pots o’ gold!” He winked. “Tough enough hidin’ them from th’ rest oov us!”
“Hold on! I need to know who you are! And you have to fill out a report!” Spinelli raced after them.
“Ye don’t say?” one of them responded. “Looks like ye and yuir boys are gonna have to do it yuir own selves, copper!” The last leprechaun stepped around the corner into a dark alley, and by the time Spinelli reached it, the alley was empty, except for a big drunk lying near the wall of one of the buildings.
“Say, fella, did you see…” And then Tony thought better of it. How could a self-respecting cop ask anyone, even a drunken bum, if he’d just seen four leprechauns pass this way?
Dissension in the Ranks
Back in the bank, Stanton was talking big. “Spinelli sure messed up this one! If it hadn’t been for those midgets, the dame would’a got away, and we’d have to go in with zilch! Sure would look good on our records, huh?” He ignored the growing muttering around him. “After my report, the governor will bounce him outta the unit on his can, and then you guys will have a real leader!”
“Major, that isn’t the way it happened, and we all know it.” This was from a MVATF team member who was on detached duty from the State Police. “You got me busted the last time you screwed up because there weren’t any witnesses. But there’s twenty of us tonight who saw you jump the gun.” There was a lot of nodding and muttered assent, though the rest of the cops weren’t quite up to arguing with a major just yet.
Stanton turned to Spinelli. “You hired this lying weasel? He almost got busted out of the Force, and the whole thing is in his records! I warned you he was trouble.”
Spinelli was calm. “A man is not his record, Major. And I took your warning into consideration when reviewing Officer Lioni’s qualifications.” He attempted to change the subject before Stanton could talk himself into more trouble, and spoke to the whole group. “We didn’t do bad tonight. A little overeager…” But Stanton wasn’t going to be ignored or placified.
“I’m talking to you, &#@$*!” he screamed. Grabbing Tony’s shoulder, he spun him around. It looked like he was about to take a swing, and for just an instant, everyone’s attention was on the two officers. But the tension was quickly broken by a soft sonic boom and the smell of burning floor wax, ignited by the melted strands of the steel net. While Stanton was picking a fight, Zing had used the distraction to her advantage, and now she was gone.
“I guess we’ll continue our discussion at the station house,” Spinelli remarked sadly. He knew he’d be off the hook for Zing’s escape when his team reported Stanton’s behavior, but he had caved in and let Stanton accompany the team despite his own misgivings. Well, he would do better in the future. “She got away tonight, but it was close. Next time!”