The New Identity Caper

The New Identity Caper Apr 30, 2021 21:09:51 GMT

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Post by Admin on Apr 30, 2021 21:09:51 GMT

The New Identity Caper
Introduction

Fingerprints are an infallible method of identification, right?

Setting

San Francisco, Ca. : Winter 1962

Part 1: The Cavalcade of Dexterous Wonderment

You’ll Find What You’re Looking for at the Circus

“Dr. Presto, Stoney, attend!” The newest San Francisco underworld boss, Dave “Big Wheel” Green spoke softly to the air in his ornately appointed office. Big Wheel was a tall man, a bit soft, with a long face, square jaw, dark, heavy eyebrows and prematurely white hair. His voice was low and rumbling, often described as gravelly. He was dressed in an expensive dark blue three piece pinstripe suit with a white carnation; a dark blue bowler hung on the coat stand, and a slim black cane with a silver handle worked as a detailed dragon’s head leaned against his desk.

A listener in the next room, whose well-compensated job was solely to implement commands from the boss, pressed a pair of buttons on a console. In a laboratory and an office a floor down, buzzers sounded. Dr. Presto, a thin, baby faced man with curly red hair, wearing a stained and singed white lab jacket, jerked his head upright, bit off a German swear word at being interrupted at a critical point of building some delicate electronics, and hustled out the door. In the office next door, Max Stoneham jumped out of his chair and raced for the hall. Max was a bit bigger than his boss, about 6’4”, in much better shape, and totally bald, wearing a well-fitted two piece tan suit with red tie, red suspenders and red shoes. The two hurried up the stairs and were in the boss’s office in less than a minute.

“The search team has come through finally. The missing elements for our demonstration can be found in the Sencenbaugh Family Travelling Circus and Sideshow.” Big Wheel scaled a photograph through the air to his flunkies. Stoney snatched it from the air and the two men studied it intently. “The circus moves to San Rafael in a week; I want to give our demonstration in 10 days. Mr. Stoneham, you will commence Phase 1 and gather the required resources. Mr. Atherton, commence Phase 2. Dr. Presto, I want your apparatus set up, tested, and ready on Wednesday of next week. Atherton, when Presto tells you he's ready, launch Phase 3 with the announcement to our underworld colleagues. Gentlemen, be sure this goes well, and we will be richer than even we have ever dreamed. Dismissed!”

TV Time with AVant Guard

“Hey, Alex, hurry! You’re going to miss your boyfriend!”

“Captain Hunter is NOT my boyfriend!” Alex snapped back as she climbed the stairs toward the top floor TV room, carrying a big bowl of buttered popcorn and a handful of napkins. Tammi already had drinks in place. As the opening commercials played out, the two got settled to watch one of their favorite TV shows, a monthly local special called ‘Crime Never Pays’. Tonight’s show was called “Positive Identification of Criminals”, and this episode’s standard “panel of experts” included Captain Graham Hunter of the San Francisco Police Homicide Division. Alex had first met Captain Hunter years ago when she’d witnessed a murder and her powers had first manifested, and their paths continued to cross regularly.

“So, our show won’t be on until next month,” Tammi pouted. “I checked with the production company and they pointed to a clause in our contracts that says that all shows air at the ‘discretion of the company’. Turns out they don’t even have to run our episode at all if they don’t want to - and they don’t have to give us any reason.”

Up until the prior weekend, tonight’s “Crime Never Pays” episode had been advertised as ‘Introduction to Mystery Villains’, with Palette and Miss Music of AVant Guard among the panelists. But the TV schedule had suddenly changed, and suddenly this episode had been extensively promoted, including frequent TV commercials on all three TV stations, and on billboards and posters which had suddenly popped up all over town. One could hardly walk a block with seeing two or three, it seemed. And one TV channel airing a commercial for a popular show on a competing channel was unprecedented.

“After a lot of hem hawing, they finally told me why. One of their sponsors paid them big bucks to run this specific episode tonight.” She perked up considerably with her next words. “They promised we’d be up next month for sure, and I convinced them to make a donation to “Meals for Kids” as ‘compensation’ for the delay, and you get to watch your boyfriend on TV so it’s not really that bad, huh?” She winked at her partner. “I told ‘em I’d be back next month if they’re fibbing.”

Alex winced - when Tammi really wanted to ‘convince’ her, she’d long ago learned that giving in right away was the safest course of action. “I hope you didn’t wreck anything!”

“Shhh - the commercial’s over and we don’t want to miss anything!” Tammi carefully avoided answering and turned back to the screen.

Crime Never Pays

A beautiful, athletic young woman with curly black hair and wearing next to nothing introduced the show. “Good evening, viewers. You probably recognize me as the Shadow Lady, super star mystery heroine of the long running comic book series, The Shadow Lady, named after me, of course, published by Sturdiman Comic Company. Welcome to tonight’s thrilling episode of ‘Crime Never Pays’!”

She paused and posed. The show’s marketers knew that the audience was predominantly male and tuned in largely to oogle their star, Cassandra Squire, in her “almost not there” costume. After a couple of seconds she continued. “Tonight we’ll talk about how law enforcement identifies criminals, and examine the one infallible method of identification, fingerprints.”

“Bull$#!*!” Tammi muttered, just loud enough for Alex to hear. “My ears and soniprints* are the only infallible method.” Alex didn’t argue.

* soniprint: “The distinct and 'unique as a fingerprint' gestalt of normally inaudible noises generated by the life processes of a human body”

The Shadow Lady continued. “We’ll follow our standard format, with dramatic reenactments of the toughest true crime-busting cases of some of our panel members. Every one of these reenactments of true events is relevant to tonight’s topic - the only infallible criminal identification technique: fingerprinting!” She introduced a defense attorney, the San Francisco DA, SFPD Captain Graham Hunter, a forensic scientist from the FBI and a plastic surgeon.

“We’ll get to tonight’s first case in a few minutes, but first a word from tonight’s sponsors!” The show cut to commercials, the first for the well known, highly successful, and very expensive San Francisco firm of Thatcher, Weaver and Wood, Attorneys at Law, followed by one from the famous nationwide detective and security agency, Parker and Drew Inc. The last commercial was for the one of the most popular magazines in the racks, Amazing Detective Adventures, which was celebrating 45 years of publication this very month. All three commercials were filmed locally and featured prominent appearances by The Shadow Lady. It wasn’t too terribly long before the show came back on.

Each of the 4 program segments followed the same format: a panel discussion about some aspect of fingerprint identification for about 2 minutes, a recorded reenactment of a case relevant to the discussion, narrated by the Shadow Lady, and commercials. Tonight’s lessons included:

Fingerprints are unique; physical appearance is not: The completely innocent Tolliver Trent was picked from a police lineup by 3 separate witnesses, and speedily sentenced to the electric chair for murder. His defense attorney filed a successful appeal, postponing the execution just long enough for a private detective to locate a discarded pistol near the crime scene. Ballistics proved it was the murder weapon and prints from the weapon led police to Harvey Halliston, a life-long criminal and exact look alike for Tolliver. Confronted with the twin infallible scientific proofs of ballistics and fingerprints, Halliston confessed - and Tolliver was freed.

No two people share the same prints: Lou Herman, a minor criminal, was arrested because one of his prints matched a print on a murder weapon. The defense attorney argued that two in a million people might have a single finger with an almost identical print, but never more than one. The DA pulled more prints from the gun, and none of the others matched any of Lou’s - but the full set matched Ralf Ramdon, who confessed and was sentenced to life.

Changing your prints won’t save you: Jody Donuts had plastic surgery to have skin from another area of his body grafted onto his fingertips. His new prints were untraceable - but the plastic surgery scars couldn’t be hidden. The DA’s office had been keeping tabs on a crooked surgeon. He admitted to doing the surgery and ‘fingered’ Jody, who confessed to the crime.

You can run, but you can’t hide: San Francisco police arrested Packard Ilsander for a minor crime. The SFPD had no prior records on Ilsander, but one Homicide cop thought he recognized the man, and sent his prints via telephoto to the FBI. Ilsander was wanted on murder charges in several East Coast states and the FBI had a complete set of his prints. The cop got to the courthouse with the FBI records just before the judge was about to deliver a suspended sentence and let Ilsander go. Instead, he was returned to jail for extradition to New York State jurisdiction.

After the last vignette, the Shadow Lady bounced back onto the screen and summed up. “As we’ve shown you tonight, fingerprints are the one infallible identification technique available to law enforcement. Once your prints are on record, and you commit another crime, you WILL be caught and punished because… Crime Never Pays!”

“Tune in on the first Tuesday of next month to see me, the Shadow Lady, and the next thrilling and educational episode of ‘Crime Never Pays’!”

Don’t Even Think About it!

“So the bossy lady says that the Shadow Lady is a real mystery hero in some other dimension? How does she fight crime in an outfit like that? It looks like she’s about to pop out just standing still!” Tammi commented disapprovingly.

The ‘bossy lady’ was Adventurine, Bonnie Marlow Mason, their teammate in the Alliance of Mystery Heroes.

“Not that I’m complaining, or any of your fans, either, Tams, but you regularly wear outfits that make her costume look like a full dress with hoop skirts!” Alex teased her friend.

“Not when we’re fighting bad guys!” Tammi was indignant. “My Miss Music outfit has been pop-out tested for YEARS on the trapeze and in the gym. Sure, I give ‘em a show - but only what I choose.”

“According to the comics, she dresses that way to distract crooks,” Alex replied.

“I wonder if that would really work?” Tammi mused.

“Don’t even think about it, you little minx!” Alex laughed. “You already have to fight your way through crowds of slobbering boys wherever you leave the house. We’d be trapped inside, and they’d be breaking down our doors if you dressed like that!”

“Do you really think so? You always say the nicest things!” Tammi got up to change the channel. It was time for Route 77.

Alex and Tammi Go to the Circus

“Alex, would you please stop whining? I’m supposed to be the brat, not you! You’re always dragging me off to those stupid Roller Derby ‘games’ and do I ever complain?” Before Alex could confirm that she did indeed complain, Tammi continued. “Not ever, not once! And you know, a few hours of having a great time at a traveling circus won’t hurt you! Heck, you know you LOVED the last circus you went to - it’s why we teamed up!”

“Sure I loved it, except that one of your friends got murdered, we had a run in with a Russian spy ring that almost killed both of us, and afterward you moved to San Francisco and turned my life upside down,” Alex replied sternly. Then she smiled. “So I guess it all worked out for the best. And yes, you DO complain during the whole match, every match.”

“My friends got us free tickets, there are gonna be clowns, and they say the Fabulous Zandini family are almost as good on the trapeze as ME!” Tammi bubbled enthusiastically. “And I could watch the hunky, sweaty roustabouts, for hours! And tonight’s the closing show, and they’ve got something special planned!”

A crew of mostly men and a few women, all of them muscular and sweaty on this hot day, even in their tank tops and cut off shorts, was making sure everything was still properly set up, moving portable fences, making sure the tent pegs were secure, positioning the port-a-potties and trash bins, tying warning flags to guy ropes, and collecting any tools left behind during today’s preparations. The two mystery heroines watched the hard-bodied mixed-gender team in appreciation for a few minutes as they shuffled along with a line of other excited people.

Finally, they reached the barker, and presented their tickets. The tickets were big, almost the size of Alex’s hand, and brightly colored, the front and the back jammed with text and pictures, designed to serve not only as tickets for admission, but also as highly effective attention-grabbing advertising handbills.

Large bright letters shouted:

Sencenbaugh Family Travelling Circus and Sideshow
The Cavalcade of Dexterous Wonderment

Clowns and Acrobats
Wild Animal Trainer
Daredevil Stunt Riding
Worlds Oddest Couple
And MORE!!!

As soon as they were past the barker, Tammi was mugged by a bundle of enthusiastic energy in the form of a man even smaller than she. When she was released, the tallest human woman Alex had ever seen picked her up and threw her high in the air. Tammi laughed and did some acrobatics, securely certain that the giant would catch her - and she did. After she was set down, Alex pulled her friend out of the path of the crowd streaming through the gate into a corner between two tents. The carny couple followed, and Tammi breathlessly introduced her friends.

“Good to see you guys again! Look, you’ve even got my sourpuss roommate smiling,” Tammi teased her friend, who was indeed smiling, as she introduced them all. “Alex is the best artist in the world, and the smartest, because she paints pictures of me!” Tammi boasted. “Alex, Sam and Tiny are known as the World’s Oddest Couple, and their act is one of the biggest midway attractions for Sencenbaugh’s. Besides being big and strong and incredibly beautiful, Tiny is a math wizard and she can play more than a dozen musical instrument at symphony level. And Sam’s the best juggler I’ve ever seen, and the best knife thrower too!” Tammi was even more enthusiastic than usual. ”The midway will be closed after the show tonight, though - you’ll have to wait until the next time they’re in town to catch their act.”

“Which will be in sixth months - we expect you to be there!” Tiny insisted sternly, while flashing a smile seemingly as wide as Tammi’s shoulders.

Alex swapped hugs with the two carnies. Sam was stronger than she expected, and she felt small and almost helpless in Tiny’s embrace - something that hadn’t happened since she was 12! 'Tiny is almost twice as tall as Sam, and almost as wide as he is tall. Yes, even without their other skills, these 2 must really be the World’s Oddest Couple!'

“You know,” Sam said casually as they headed toward the largest tent, “if you two ever get tired of busting up bad guys, with your powers you could be really popular on the midway of a carnival!”

Alex sighed. ‘Of course Tammi told her good friends about AVant Guard. But it doesn’t really matter, I guess - everyone in San Francisco already knows who we are anyway…’ “Thanks, Sam,” she replied sincerely. “I think I’ll stick with art. But if nobody buys my stuff, I’ll come look you guys up!”

The four entered the main tent, with Sam leading the way to the Honored Guest section in the front row. Alex was experiencing feelings of deja vu, and she hoped this circus visit would be less eventful than her last. Maybe or maybe not, but this time the excitement started while the Ringmaster was giving his bombastic welcome, before even introducing the first act.

After the initial loud, superlative-filled greeting, he had a special announcement. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, we are honored to have a special guest performer this evening!”

‘NO! She did NOT!’ Alex thought to herself in dismay.

“Tonight, for our closing San Francisco performance, we welcome America’s Darling Aerialist and nationally famous gymnast TAMMI PAIGE!”

‘But she did,’ Alex sighed. ‘I guess I should have been warned earlier.’

Three spotlights converged on Tammi (and Alex). Tiny stood and hoisted Tammi to her shoulders, where she bowed and curtsied to the wildly cheering crowd, as Alex forced a convincing smile, perhaps aided by her illusion powers. “Miss Paige will join our own amazing aerialists, Alexi and Vanessa Zandini, for a short performance later in the show.” Tiny braced herself and Tammi jumped high and did a flip, landing in the cradle of Tiny’s arms, and the spotlight left them.

“And now, folks, get ready to be amazed by our opening act, the death defying Amazing Zandinis.” The spotlight switched to a pair of platforms on tent poles high above the floor, and for the next 15 minutes, the Zandinis thrilled and amazed the audience.

About 5 minutes in, Tammi’s voice whispered in Alex’s ear. “Say, Stretch, you aren’t mad at me, are you?”

Alex smiled and shook her head. “I just feel a little chagrined that I was so surprised,” she whispered back, sure that nobody but her partner could hear her. “I should have suspected, you little narcissist, you!! Are you sure you can keep up with them, though? It’s been a while since you’ve been on a trapeze.”

Tammi could have pouted, but just nodded instead. “Only since yesterday, actually. I’ve been spending an hour with them every day since the circus hit town. It took a while to get back in the swing, I must have missed a dozen catches the first day. I’ll bet Alexi and Vanessa have rope burns from hitting the net so often. I know I do!” she chuckled, “But they are really great! And I’m really great too! You’ll love it - but not as much as I will!” She paused for a second, then: “I’ve been riding Fossa's bike. It’s really a lot of fun. Maybe you can let me drive the big bike sometime?”

In the late 1940s, San Francisco had been home to a minor mystery heroine, named Fossa after a cat-like mammal from Madagascar. She’d ridden a gadget-laden electric motorcycle, a smaller model from the same manufacturer who'd built Alex's bike. A couple of years after Alex had bought her house, Tammi had discovered a secret, a door hidden behind the heavy basement workbench - a door that led to the lair of Fossa. The bike was painted a ruddy reddish-brown and had been extensively customized, the most noticeable addition being a small cannon mounted above the front wheel with the three-pronged head of a grappling hook protruding from the barrel. Since then, it had sat, mostly unused, in AVant Guard’s secret basement workshop.

“Maybe, sometime…” Alex whispered back reluctantly. “For now, let’s watch the show.”

“OK. They want me to join the crew for curtain calls, so I’ll meet you in the bar tent after the show,” Tammi whispered back. Alex had some experience with circus performer tents; she nodded and squeezed her friend’s hand.

A half hour later, when the crowd’s attention was on the strong man lifting two elephants, each with a scantily clad buxom beauty standing on its back, Tammi slipped away. A few minutes later, the spotlights flipped back to the trapeze platforms - and all of them speared a tiny woman wearing a barely-there leotard that seemed to be made of polished, glittering liquid silver. Tammi gave a 5 minute solo routine, making the most difficult stunts look easy, followed by 10 minutes with Alexi and Vanessa. The performance was inspired, and ended with a spectacular dismount - at the top of their arcs, all three performers released, rose even higher, performed a series of synchronized flips and somersaults as they fell. The three landed in the safety net, bounced once, and then rolled down to the edge, where they completed one more somersault each as they dropped the last 10 feet to the ground. The applause was thunderous, and the three were called back for two curtain calls - each time executing some different tumbling and gymnastic moves clearly designed for curtain calls.

The rest of the show was spectacular, funny, and at times nostalgic and sad. Alex found herself grieving over Tammi’s friend Bosco the clown, who’d been murdered only a few minutes after Tammi had introduced them at the last circus she’d attended. But tonight’s clowns were lively and funny, and she shook it off. The show’s closing was spectacular. First, all the roustabouts were called to the center stage - a wonderful show of appreciation for the hard work they did, a tribute that Alex had never seen before. Then each and every performer, including Tammi following the other aerialists, made a spectacular entrance, and joined the crowd in the center ring, and then they all took bows and the lights dimmed - and at the thunderous applause, the lights came back up, and the cast took another round of bows, and the lights dimmed again. And came back up again for a second curtain call, which brought a big round of laughter because some of the performers were embracing, and others were caught in the act of doffing their costumes, and they all scurried out of the spotlights, and that was the end of tonight’s performance. “We’ll be back in six months, folks - make sure you save the date! We’ll see you then…”

Poker Party

There’s always a party the night of the last performance, and Tammi and Alex were invited. After a while, Alex and Tammi got into a pretty serious poker game with some of the roustabouts. Early in the game, with her enhanced vision, Alex noted that one of the players was highly skilled in sleight of hand and was cheating. hiding cards in his sleeves. Nobody else seemed to notice, though, and on his second turn to deal, after he’d hidden two aces, she’d had enough.

Suddenly, Tammi’s cards seemed to flicker, dark for a brief instant, then normal again. She pulled her hands closer to her so that no one else could read the message that appeared on their faces. “Don’t give anything away, Tuneful Titan! The guy who is dealing is cheating. Ask Tiny to back me up and pin his hands to the table.” Tammi nodded. Alex saw a flash of surprise cross Tiny’s face, perhaps one reason why she was watching the game instead of playing, then the big carny smiled and nodded.

“This deck is missing a couple of cards,” Alex stated loudly. “And he’s got them up his sleeve!” She pointed at the dealer. “Don’t let him move, he’ll drop them on the floor!”

Before he had a chance to object, Tiny reached over and grabbed his wrists - and though he struggled and shouted, the giant was much stronger than he was. A quick inspection uncovered the two aces, and after that, there hadn’t been much for him to say. He was fired on the spot by the Ringmaster and warned never to return to this circus again. A half dozen carnies had enthusiastically escorted him directly to his car, and he drove away with some new bruises and threats and dire promises of what would happen if they ever saw him again ringing in his ears.

It took a while for the festive atmosphere in the tent to reestablish itself, but poker is serious business, and the game quickly continued, lasting another couple of hours. At least 25 different players, mostly male, rotated through the other seats, but Tammi and Alex played the whole game. Not because they both won - Alex lost regularly, but Tammi won enough to keep them both in the game, regularly giving her partner ‘loans’ that Alex was sure would come due some other day. Alex kept a microscopically thorough watch on the other players, especially their hands, throughout the rest of the game. But everyone else played honestly, though she noted a wide variety of good luck charms and tokens and Tammi overheard quite a few quietly chanted prayers and luck spells.

The two stayed with Tiny and Sam that night, helped their friends pack up the next day, and then hopped on Alex’s bike to head home. Tammi insisted, and Alex let her drive - and when they got home, promised it would be the last time!

Part 2: Underworld Excitement

Get Out of Jail Free

Big Wheel and his crew, Stoney, Atherton and Dr. Presto, were selling Get out of jail free cards, the bidding to start at only a million dollars. Dr. Presto had invented a machine which produced a unique wavelength of radiation that, when properly focused and controlled, could modify a person’s fingerprints and facial features. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of criminals in the Bay Area who were very interested, but also very skeptical. Big Wheel had ordered Atherton to set up a demonstration to prove that Pesto’s machine did what they said it would.

About 15 men and a few women, the biggest big shots in the Bay Area underworld, were gathered in a large room in an abandoned building in an area claimed by Big Wheel’s mob. The atmosphere was tense and nervous, and nobody was sure this wasn’t some kind of trap. Enforcers from half a dozen mobs circled the building, keeping a sharp lookout for the law. Inside, mortal enemies mingled cautiously and not without friction, but the promise of shedding their current criminal pasts as a snake sheds its skin kept them relatively peaceful. There was a large canvas draped over something big in the front of the room, and off to one side, a slide projector filled a big screen with the official police mug shots and fingerprints of two men - Dave ‘Big Wheel’ Green and Max ‘Stoney’ Stoneham.

Stoney and Big Wheel moved through the room, addressing their allies and enemies by name. Presto made a show of taking his bosses’ fingerprints, height and weight, and comparing these with the stolen police records, and anyone who wanted could verify that the information projected on the screen matched up exactly with the two men in the room. There wasn’t a person in the room who doubted that these two were who they said they were.

Presto swept aside the canvas, not as smoothly as he had hoped, and unveiled his machine, an intimidating cube of metal 8 feet on a side. One side was covered with switches, knobs, dials, gauges, rows of red, yellow and green peanut bulbs, and nixie tube digital displays, along with two big reels of computer tape. A second side was covered with radiation warnings, and there was a square three-foot opening in that side that extended deep into bowels of the device.The top and sides of the crawl way were lined with hundreds of small wire saucers that looked like miniature radar dishes, and there was a wheeled stretcher on the floor. The person being treated would lie down on the stretcher, which was then pushed to the center of the machine and a heavily-insulated, radiation-blocking hatch would be closed - and when that hatch opened a few minutes later, a changed man would emerge!

Stoney left the room, changed into a hospital robe, and when he came back in, he casually climbed onto the stretcher. His worst enemy in the room, Mad Dog Mulligan, was asked to secretly write a few words on a sheet of paper, which he then showed to Stoney. Stoney read the page and laughed as Mad Dog stuffed it into his pocket. Presto then pushed his patient deeper into the tube, closed the bulkhead, and warned everyone to stand away behind a yellow line painted on the floor. The gathered mobsters moved back uneasily.

As he played his controls like a virtuoso pianist, the machine came to life. A deep hum began and swelled, needles jumped off their pins and swept across gauge faces, the rows of peanut bulbs flickered from red to yellow and then to steady green, some rows faster than others. Presto flipped switches and adjusted rheostats until every needle was standing still and solid in the green. The loud hum faded almost to inaudibility. The nixie tubes flashed on, showing 6 1 5.

“In 6 and a quarter minutes, gentlemen, my machine will transform Mr. Stoneham’s face and fingerprints, and he will emerge a new man, totally untraceable by law enforcement. He can walk into a police station, announce his name, and they will be helpless to charge him with anything!” He pushed a couple of men farther away from the machine. “Please stay behind the yellow line to be sure you are out of range of any escaping radiation. There is no danger, but repeated exposure might give you a rash.” The audience moved further back uneasily, a few going to the far wall.

With a flourish, Presto pressed a big green button, set square in the middle of the crowded control panel, then he himself stepped behind the line. As the nixie tubes started counting down the seconds, a faint smell of ozone filled the room and a new sound joined the background hum, like static from a TV late at night after the stations had shut down. The volume of the static varied rhythmically, making it difficult to talk, so the assembled mobsters impatiently stared at the countdown.

When the tubes flashed 0 0 0, Presto quickly stepped forward again and pressed the largest button on the control panel, a red 8 sided button with the word STOP printed on it, set directly below the slightly smaller green one. The hum and static stopped instantly, all the peanut bulbs went out, and the needles on the gauges all dropped back to their pins, a couple of them more slowly than the rest. When everything was quiescent, the doctor pulled a large lever which opened the armored door, then pulled out the stretcher and the man lying on it.

Stoney lay as if he were dead, and the audience started muttering. But then he quickly sat up and laughed at them all, and a dead silence fell on the room as they examined him. A tall, fit bald man had entered the tube, and a tall, fit bald man sat before them. But this man had a different head, face, and ears, and when he spoke, even the timbre of his voice was different. Nobody could possibly mistake this man for Max Stoneham, and almost nobody in the room actually believed it was really Stoney. The room filled with angry voices, and the gist of their comments was: “Fake. You switched guys!”

“SHADDUP, YAS MUGS!” ‘Stoney’ roared at the top of his lungs. It sounded like his roar! “Now listen - da Doc told you it would change my face - but it ain’t changed me! I’ll prove it! Mad Dog! Pull out dat love note ya wrote me, and show it to your guys!” Mulligan pulled out the note, opened it, and a half dozen guys crowded him, all trying to read it. “It says ‘If this is a raket, I’ll cut your nuts off.’ And da dummy spelled racket wrong!”

The room got very quiet.”That’s what it says,” Mad Dog agreed. “And I spelled it that way on purpose.”

Presto confirmed his subject’s height and weight, took his prints and projected them, proving that they were changed. Meanwhile Stoney worked the room, calling folks by name, reminding them what they’d talked about earlier, proving to everyone that he was indeed, Stoney Stoneham, with a new face and new prints.

Then the muttering began again. “But is it safe?” “Does it wear off?” were the two most frequently heard questions.

Dr. Preseto spoke up scornfully. “Big Wheel’s next - if it isn’t safe, do you think he’d go into the machine? Of course it’s safe. And you’ll have a week to watch Big Wheel and Stoney, to prove that it won’t ‘wear off’.”

Here’s the Deal

Then Atherton added, “This machine uses a very rare metal, and after Wheel gets done, we’ve only got enough left to do exactly 11 treatments. We’ll do those treatments a week from today, to the 11 of you who pony up the most cash. Deposit on a ticket is a million bucks, but if 11 other guys pay us more than you, you’re outta luck.” There was a roar of outrage over that, but Big Wheel started yelling.

“This is OUR deal, see! You don’t like it, dat’s the grit in the gears, ain’t it? Ya got a beef, remember der ain’t no problem a chopper can’t fix - and my mob’s got a lot of choppers.”

A lot of big wigs looked around, trying to figure out what it would be worth to their peers to buy this treatment. Some figured it wouldn’t be worth putting up a million bucks and ending up not being one of the high bidders and getting nothing for a lot of dough - and a few figured they’d pay five times that and more to be clear of their rap sheets.

Atherton laid out the rest of the rules. There would be a ‘leader board’ set up in one of Big Wheel’s books, showing the top 20 bidders, and the amounts they’d currently deposited. At any time, you could add to your deposit and jump up the board - until Sunday morning, after which the top 11 bidders got the treatment. A deposit had to be in even millions, no jumping over the guy above you by outbidding him by a dollar - or a hundred thousand. If you don’t show up, your treatment goes to the next guy on the list. Nobody gets their deposits back. A half dozen walked out at that. The odds weren’t looking too bad for the twenty or so who were left. There were a couple other details - how to make a deposit and a warning to keep everything quiet.

Wheel summed it up. “Ya chirps wit da pigeons, ya sleeps wit da fishes - I’ll see to it personally.”

There was silence for a while, but the disbelief had subsided - and when Big Wheel went through the treatment and came out of the machine a ‘new man’: same height, same weight, new face, new prints, new voice, same memories and personality, the exodus to the doors started - around twenty Bay Area mob bosses, each with an urgent mission to raise a million bucks or more in the next week. A stern reminder, “Remember, ya mugs, cash only!” followed them out the door.

By midnight that night, the leader board was full. Mad Dog’s mob had the most ready cash on hand, and he was on top the board at $3 million. And all the bosses had their henchmen out, picking up more cash the old fashion way - by stealing it.

Part 3: Lots of Fun in San Francisco

Jade Rouge Press Conference

The next day, a big police announcement came as a total surprise - an Appeals Court judge had overturned the conviction of the mystery villainess Jade Rouge on a technicality, and ordered her released pending a new hearing. Sensing a chance for leniency in her next trial, Rouge immediately called a press conference to announce that she was going straight and relinquishing her energy powers. Over a dozen reporters from local newspapers, and radio and TV stations showed up, even on such short notice. And AVant Guard was there as well. After all, they had captured the repentant mystery villainess.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your presence,” Jade Rouge stood and began talking. “My name is Catalina Varela, formerly known as Jade Rouge.” Without her costume, she was a tall, athletically built black woman, and she had a strong Hispanic accent. She was casually dressed wearing tan slacks and a short sleeved light blue shirt with collar and looked more like a model than a mystery villain. As she was speaking, another reporter hurried through the door. He was quite tall, carried a thin cane, and was nattily dressed in a perfectly tailored three piece blue pinstriped suit, with a white carnation and blue bowler. Catalina was stunned into silence until he removed his hat - his physical resemblance to Big Wheel was uncanny, and his sartorial choices identical, but his face was round with almost no jawline, clearly not the face of Big Wheel. She paused a second to collect herself, waiting for him to sit down. He didn’t.

His voice was different as well, but his arrogance was identical. He introduced himself and immediately began firing questions at her.

“My name is Dave Wheelwright. I’m a free lance reporter for the Deming, Oregon, weekly paper, the Deming Weekly Townsman.” Big Wheel was named Dave, and he was from Deming, Oregon!

“Can you confirm that you’re the daughter of Rafael Harnenda, dishonorably discharged from the US Army in 1946 after going AWOL on New Guinea during World War II, who lived in Clanton, Washington until he was convicted of the murder of his common-law wife in 1956 and sent to Alcatraz for life? Where he was brutally tortured to death in his cell by another prisoner?”

Caitlin collapsed into her chair, dropped her head onto her arms on the table, and started sobbing quietly. A bunch of angry people in the room jumped out of their chairs, including AVant Guard, and started approaching the loudmouth.

Caitlin raised her head and spoke loudly, cutting off what appeared to be an impending fight. “That has to be Big Wheel - the guy who used to work for me. It has to be. He must have had plastic surgery - but he’s the only one who knows that much about me.” She nodded her head sadly. “What he said about me is true. And Big Wheel is from Deming, Washington. He’s making fun of us with his phony name and newspaper.” She stood up. “Thanks for worrying about me - but arrest him!”

“You can try - but ya won’t!” he boasted. “I’m the Big Wheel, but no matter what you think, there’s no way you can tie me up with him! So I’m NOT the Big Wheel, get it?”

Spurred by their anger at Wheelwright’s behavior, the police and the heroines tried as hard as they could to prove that Wheelwright was really Big Wheel - but they couldn’t. Different face, different voice, and different fingerprints - no matter how much he looked like the gangster, it couldn’t be him.

AVant Guard used their powers to confirm this. With her zoom-in vision, Palette was unable to detect any evidence of plastic surgery - that was his natural face, and it wasn’t Green’s face, nor was he wearing Green’s fingerprints. Miss Music had the gangster’s soniprint, his ‘unique bodily sonic gestalt’ memorized from previous encounters, and this guy was definitely not Dave Big Wheel Green. Neither was surprised; they had both recognized this guy instantly, and their powers only confirmed what they already knew. They had played poker with this guy a week ago during their visit to the Sencenbaugh Circus.

“But this can’t be that roustabout, partner,” Miss Music’s whisper in her partners ear was distressed and confused. “Every time he claimed to be Big Wheel, he was telling the truth. Every time he claimed to be Wheelwright, he was lying. There’s no way he could fake that… but there’s no way that is Dave Big Wheel Green either!”

“It’s a mystery, Tuneful Titan,” Alex whispered back. “But don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. It’s what we do, right?”

Finally, even the most determined cops admitted they had no legal authority to detain Dave Wheelwright of Deming, Washington. “Ain’t that the grit in the gears, ya mugs?” Wheelwright mocked everyone with one of Big Wheel’s favorite lines as he stood to go. He stood and grabbed the new sheet of fingerprints. “Since I’ve broken no laws, you’ve got no right to keep this record of my prints.” No one stopped him. With a jaunty wave at Catalina, he strode through the door. Just before he slammed it, he looked back at the young woman. “Member, girlie - who chirps wit’ da pigeons…” and then slammed the door.

“Sleeps wit da fishes…” she sadly whispered the rest of another famous Big Wheel catch phrase, softly enough that only Miss Music overheard.

The press coverage of Jade Rouge’s announcement ended up instead providing massive coverage of the authorities failure to identify Wheelwright as Big Wheel. Atherton was on the blower for hours, making sure all their bidders knew about the story.

2nd Annual NALPI Conference

That afternoon, AVant Guard were panelists at the 2nd Annual Convention of the National Association of Licensed Private Investigators, across town. The conference this year was hosted by the Los Angeles-based magazine Amazing Detective Adventures whose publisher, Rex Watson was one of the founders of NALPI, and now, its second president. Watson had been writing detective stories, publishing the extremely popular magazine, and solving crimes himself, since before the beginning of World War II.*

*see "The Legend of Joey Sloan" for an introduction to Rex and his partner Amber Dixon

Harold W. Smith, a distinguished insurance investigator who had captured dozens of international jewel thieves while working for the world’s most famous insurers and jewelers, including Loyds of London, P. Horowicz of Chicago, and Steve and Co. in San Francisco, was giving a seminar on alternate methods of identification. He’d often had to track down suspects in countries where their fingerprints weren’t available. Elwood Fox, a Bay Area detective, was splitting his attention between Smith and another attendee, a tall, bald man, built like a linebacker, wearing a tan suit with red tie and suspenders - and red shoes. When the other guy noticed him staring, he got up and walked over to Fox’s table, pulled out a chair, and slouched into the seat.

“Hiya, Foxy! Say, I ain’t seen you since, what was it, ‘57? You sure did a number on my marriage wit those snaps you shot’a me an them hookers. Not at it did’er any good - she was in the hospital for a couple’a months, did you know that, and she got nothing in the divorce. Say, you still got any of dose pics? They’d look plenty good in my scrapbook. Does was some first class talent!”

“So you had plastic surgery, you rat?” Fox barked back, and people nearby started looking at their table, making shushing gestures. “Even with a new face, Stoneham, you give off a stench that nobody could miss!” He stood, turned to the stage, shouted to San Francisco Police Detective Stuart Duncan, who was on the panel. “Duncan, this guy is Max Stoneham, one’a Big Wheel Green’s flunkies. He musta had plastic surgery, but I’d know him anywhere!”

“If I am, you’ll never prove it!” the big man snarled angrily. “Not you or a whole room fulla useless dicks.”

Over the next couple of hours, the room full of detectives did their best. But this guy’s face, voice, and prints were totally different from those of Max ‘Stoney’ Stoneham. He was surprisingly compliant to their requests, but finally, the good guys had to admit defeat. Most of them were thoroughly convinced by his words, actions, attitude, posture, and attire that this was Stoneham, but they had no valid legal proof to arrest him. Somewhere along the way, the few crime beat reporters who’d been covering the conference got word back to their editors, and by two hours after his loud introduction, there were as many reporters as detectives in the conference room.

One of Stoneham's most determined interrogators was Rex Watson. He was furious that this thug had ruined his conference. He'd just spit another angry question at the big man when Stoneham dropped his pleasant facade and snarled back.

“Listen, bub - you guys all admit I ain't got Stoneham's prints, right? And there ain't nothin' illegal connected to my own prints, right? And everbody knows that prints is, whatchasay, 'infallible identification', right? It was on Crime Don't Pay th'other night, fer the whole world to see. Ain't your rag onea the sponsors? And that last guy what was dronin' on and on here, Smitty, said so too. So drop your horses and back off.”

He stood up quickly, roughly scattered those close to him like bowling pins, and stomped towards the door. “OK, ya mugs, you can’t prove who you think I am. Ya got nuthin’ on me, so just get outta my damn way. And get ready for a buncha lawsuits!” He also took the sheet of his fresh fingerprints.

That exit brought an abrupt end to today's conference schedule. Watson had a lot to think about as he struggled to reschedule the remaining events for tomorrow. 'The extra episode of “Crime Never Pays” about fingerprint identification was only produced a few weeks ago, long after this season's full slate of shows was already in the can. And then somebody paid the station to rearrange the schedule. And now, two guys show up who act and talk just like two major mob bosses, but their prints don't match. Tough to believe those are all coincidences!“

Once again, AVant Guard had recognized 'Stoney' right away. “Just like Big Wheel - his soniprint shows that this guy is one of the roustabouts we played poker with - but he's telling the truth when he says he's Stoneham, and he's lying when he says he's not. I don't like this game AT ALL!” Tammi complained in a whisper. “It's way past time we got involved.”

Alex nodded grimly.”There's something strange going on here, and with these two guys involved, it can't be good!“

Mobsters In the News!

Big Wheel and his cast got what they wanted - extensive press coverage of some very motivated law enforcement officers, including AVant Guard, trying and failing to prove that these two men were actually Big Wheel and Stoney. The underworld was convinced, and names and numbers on the leader board started changing fast.

Part 4: Spike in Crime

Action on the Leader Board

That night, four Binks ™ Armored Trucks simply vanished from the streets - along with the estimated $3.7 million they were carrying. Coincidentally, the next day Ma Jackson deposited $3 million and jumped ahead of Mad Dog into first place on the leader board.

At about 1:30 AM that same night, a carefully selected team of experts from the mob of Ned “Blackbeard” Thatcher (#7) busted into San Francisco’s biggest bank, only to discover a team working for Jason “the Pygmy” Cantu (#4) already on their way out with about $5 million. A pitched gunfight decimated both teams, and neither side got the money when a large team of police showed up to arrest the survivors.

Further down the list, there was some action too. Big Lenny Deonardo jumped over Duchess Linda Leboeuf into the top 11, and a couple hours later, he was shot dead. There were at least 4 bidders under police guard in various hospitals: Zach Johnson and Wildcat Burke beat the snot out of each other and both would be in traction for at least a month, “Jilly” Townsend took a bullet through the buttocks in a shootout that killed Boss Janniford, and “Big Bad” Badowskani wasn’t expected to survive the injuries he received when had somehow stumbled over a high fence around a fifth floor balcony. Betsy “the Widow” Cobb decided to drop out of the race when her latest rich husband somehow lived through what should have been a fatal accident. A couple of arrests of some of the lesser bidders, and a couple of other mishaps and the leader board was down to 11 names - and things quieted down by the middle of the next day.

There was so much going on during that 24 hours that AVant Guard missed out on most of it, but the young ladies got their share of the action, too.

The Streets of Babel-on

At 3 AM that night, burglar alarms at 4 banks and three large department stores spread widely around the city all started blaring, almost simultaneously. A large part of the police force on the streets was already occupied dealing with the earlier crimes. Dispatchers routed the forces they could to those new locations, while other station personnel began making emergency calls and waking up off-duty cops and calling surrounding cities and towns for help. An explosion at a mid-town power station darkened several blocks of the expensive shopping district, and another explosion not far away took out phone service in a similar area. Some places had backup battery systems for emergency lighting, far fewer had backup generators.

The big, silent electric motorcycle AVant Guard had named the Sonic Streak poked sedately through the streets of San Francisco. AVant Guard was finally headed home, exhausted from earlier crime fighting adventures. As Palette tried to suppress a big yawn, Miss Music heard the twin explosions. “Head back downtown,” she instructed her partner.

“Hold on, then,” Palette sighed as she whipped the big bike through a sharp turn, then raced down a dark alley. “Good thing I have see-in-the-dark eyesight,” she sighed again as they came out the other end of the alley and discovered that the streetlights around them were out. “I was hoping things would settle down,” she whispered to her partner. “Mother Gaia, haven’t we had enough for one night?! But I guess it’s what we signed up for. Any other clues?”

“Gunshots, ahead and to the left,” Tammi replied, listening intently. Then her voice sounded almost cheerful. “Police siren…” and then Alex heard it too, faintly. “Sounds like Jewel Street, about 3 blocks north,” the Tuneful Titan guessed. Alex swung left, then two blocks later, back to the right on Jewel and they could both see the flashing blue lights of a police van not far ahead.

“Fortolio’s Jewelry,” Alex announced with a whistle. “That place is so expensive you can go broke just window shopping!” She twisted the accelerator and they flew down the street, way too fast to be driving in a blacked out city.

Tammi responded with her patented battle cry. “WaHOO! Gangway!! Comin’ THROUGH!” Then, quietly and wistfully, “Say, Alex, you don’t suppose we might get a nice Fortolio reward, do you?”

“Let’s stop the bad guys first, Tuneful Titan, and then worry about the reward,” Alex laughed back. “Still, doesn’t hurt to dream!”

Dane Neroth, the gang leader known as Squatty, had been 13th on the leader board at sundown, and he wasn’t taking any chances on foulups. He was leading this raid herself, and he was committing his most powerful resources, some new recruits with super powers: a woman named Jumbalaya and an older man named Chick Magnet, who claimed they’d received their powers from aliens*, though they seemed relatively sane otherwise. He’d spent a lot of hours working with these recruits and his gang, training everyone to take advantage of their powers. Squatty was relatively new to the San Francisco underworld, as he had only been released from Alcatraz just over a year ago, but years ago he had forcibly taken command of a big gang back east, and 10 years in Alcatraz in the company of other hardened criminals hadn’t softened him, either. His team would function like a well-oiled machine - or they would answer to him!

*the story of the aliens is not complete yet; you can see a summary here: Alien Invasion

Squatty was a careful planner. He’d planned this heist for several weeks, and wasn’t quite satisfied with the plan yet, but he suddenly needed cash right now, so he was going with what he had. The big picture stuff was completed, even though there were still a lot of possible details to iron out. But all the other crimes being committed tonight had stretched the SFPD well past their normal limits, and Squatty was confident he could work out any details as they popped up.

Having a police van nearby was one of those unfortunate details. On a normal night, the alarms at the other locations would have drawn all the cops away from his target, but these guys had been loading handcuffed prisoners into the van after stopping an earlier robbery, and decided to finish their task before racing away to a new crime scene. When the power had gone off, they’d turned on the siren and the lights, and they were only a block away when one of Squatty’s gang had fired at one of Fortolio’s security guards.

As the cops finished locking their prisoners in the van, the city lights around them went out, and a second later, a pair of shots rang out nearby. Patrolman John Wall ducked into the cab as the rest of the team ducked behind the van, and got on the radio to HQ.

“This is Wall, Officer 3658, reporting shots fired at corner of Journal Street and Jewel, requesting assistance. Power outage and blackout as far as I can see. We don’t know who fired the shots. So far, no officers wounded. We will investigate. Requesting assistance. Wall out.”

The dispatcher heard nothing but nonsense. “Power jewell journal cross don’t street this outage reporting who…” followed by other jumbled gibberish. While he was deciding what to do, an understandable report came in from the police team at the mint, and he turned his attention to things he could decipher.

“Probably a bad idea to approach the police silently in the dark,” Alex spoke to the air rushing by, confident that Tammi would be able to hear her - and Tammi heard but didn’t understand. At the same time, Tammi’s voice spoke in Alex's ears, a torrent of seemingly random words, one of which was ‘siren’. For the moment, each woman ignored her partner’s jumbled words. Palette projected the illusion of glowing light on every surface within her range, and the street lit up like daylight for about 2 blocks. Meanwhile a police siren began wailing from the bike. The police were alerted, and relieved to see allies approaching quickly. Meanwhile, the heroines on the bike started jabbering at each other for a few seconds, until Miss Music held up her hand and motioned Palette to silence.

“Try” a pause “one” pause “word”. There was the sound of gunshots, and a bullet passed close enough that they could hear it, and then Alex pulled up in the shelter of the van. By now, all the cops were talking at once and it the air was filled with jumbled babble - nothing anyone said made any sense, although the individual words were understandable. Finally Palette dimmed the illusionary light around them a bit, which caught everyone’s attention, and projected in bright red letters on the side of the van: “STOP TALKING” It came out as “TALKING STOP” but she changed the order of the words around to make it right.

On the van, words appeared. They weren’t really in comprehensible order, but they slid around and quickly settled down, saying: “Something is jumbling our words.” Another writhing sentence ended up as: “Wait 5 minutes and follow us in!”

The cops tried to argue but they couldn’t say anything that made sense. Miss Music pulled a small leather folder with a badge inside from a pocket on her costume and showed her partner. Palette nodded and projected it onto the side of the van. It took a few seconds before the words were straightened out, but it read:

Special Authorization

Then, new words writhed into position: “Give us 5 minutes.”

None of the cops had seen this badge before, but they all knew that AVant Guard did indeed hold special deputy status with the SFPD. So the lieutenant in charge nodded reluctantly, and made sure the rest of his team nodded as well, and the streets went black, and Palette and Miss Music (now wearing opaque goggles) raced around the Fortolio building, looking for the entrance the bad guys had used.

Fortolio's After Dark

“Titan fast tuneful thinking!” Palette whispered.

“Read it it I’ve say what really never does.” Miss Music answered innocently. Then, her tone sounded suspicious, though her words were just jumbled. “This reminds babel me someone before of we’ve met!”

Palette got the gist of it. “Alien Rosewell Jumbalaya” she agreed, keeping her answer simple. Miss Music could hear glass shattering in a room ahead of them; she pointed, Palette nodded, and they moved cautiously to that door, passing two uniformed security guards trussed on the floor. They examined the guards closely, and independently decided they were both unconscious but not in danger, and so they quickly released them, then headed for the showroom where the action was taking place.

In the communication confusion, Squatty’s team, already well-trained to deal with the inability to communicate verbally that was caused by Jumbalaya, had been able to overwhelm Fortolio’s security team, shooting two and slugging the rest unconscious. Now teams with muted flashlights ransacked the place, one team harvesting jewelry from the showrooms while the other worked on the safe. Outside, a woman unlocked the back of a panel truck that had been parked in a nearby overnight lot since about 3 PM yesterday and then climbed into the driver's seat, carefully avoiding the switch that turned off all electric power to the vehicle’s lights.

At this point, even with Jumbalaya’s help, most gangs facing AVant Guard would have been toast. Palette would blind them with her Blackout Blots ™ and Miss Music would daze them with Sonic Grenades. But Squatty had a secret weapon - Chick Magnet!

The team in the showroom suddenly went blind, and started yelling, and of course their words were jumbled, only adding to the confusion. Near the largest group, there was an explosion of sound, sounding very much like standing next to an Atlas rocket seconds after ignition, except much louder, threaded with nausea-inducing infra and ultra sound highlights. And just as suddenly, all the male crooks were blasted by something, and those that were still standing were knocked to the floor, and something continued to push on them, as some of the bodies rolled while others contorted and slid in the same direction, away from AVant Guard. Palette and Miss Music were instantly hit by some unknown force that pulled them backward. They staggered and turned and tried to resist, but it was like something was dragging them back the way they had come. The force was very strong - they were able to slow their movement somewhat by resisting, but it was constant and inexorable, and they were inevitably drawn toward the source of that force. Fighting this force was taking all their concentration, leaving none left over to control their powers, and was already taking a physical toll as their bodies were squeezed, back to front.

When they reached the doorway, grabbing the door frame allowed them to hold their positions for a few seconds, and they could see a single man facing them. A very handsome older man, with chiseled, slightly sinister features and a thin mustache, wavy brown hair with graying temples, and an imposing build.

“Hey! It’s Chuck Maggot! Haven’t seen you in a while, Chuck!” Miss Music called, recognizing their assailant. “I got this one, Stretch!” she announced grandly, then shouted her war cry. “GANGWAY! COMIN’ THROUGH!” She managed to brace her legs against the wall and then released the door frame, pushing off powerfully - and she rocketed through the air, accelerating as she went, and crashed into the startled bad guy like a cannonball! He was knocked down, the force he was exerting vanished, and before he could recover, Miss Music knocked him out with a powerful kick to the jaw. And after that, the cleanup was pretty routine. Palette blinded them, Miss Music dazed them, and the police team arrived just in time to slap on restraints.

Unfortunately, Squatty, Jumbalaya and the safe cracking team got away. Nobody had noticed them climb into the back of the darkened panel truck, which then drove away slowly without lights. Palette theorized that they’d had to clear out early to avoid the effects of Chick Magnet’s powers. Still, they hadn’t managed to crack the safe yet. Squatty didn’t pick up any cash, but he did avoid the explosion that destroyed his home, and he moved into the top 11 anyway, with all the attrition going on.

The two heroines were saddened as they finally rode home. “I guess their powers didn’t really vanish when we destroyed the alien super power machine,” Miss Music pondered. “You know, they tried to use it on me, too, but I got loose before they got a chance.”

“After we rescued all those poor kidnapped victims from the aliens, I’d been hoping they’d all go back to their old lives and go straight,” Palette lamented. “I hope the others haven’t turned to crime as well!”

“Ah, they were easy!” Miss Music almost laughed. “Not a one of them worth worrying about. Well, without Deviser telling what to do, anyway. She sure was smart! If she still has her power, the bossy lady ought to recruit her for the Alliance of Mystery Heroes!”

“We’ll let the bossy lady know tomorrow, Tuneful Titan,” Palette agreed. “For now, I just hope the bad guys let up and let us get some sleep!”

They did get a couple hours of rest - by then, the bad guys were pretty exhausted too!

Part 5: Alacazala malakazam!

Plans

On the bike ride home, the two heroines discussed their plans for tomorrow. “I’m gonna take the smaller bike to San Rafael to check with the circus. Those two guys today can’t be Green and Stoneham - but they aren’t the guys we played poker with either. I ought to be back by noon.”

“Can’t you just call them, Tams?” Alex wanted to know. “I want to check out the Reiter Shipyard later today. Those guys must have a hideout, and once we shut down Jade Rouge, nobody’s paid any more attention to that place.”

“Have you ever tried to phone someone in a traveling circus?” her friend asked seriously. “You can call their answering service and leave a message, or you can call their agent… and leave a message. The circus on-site business manager maybe checks in twice a day with the service and the agent. Maybe. And he might call you back the same day. Not likely. I should be home before you even get up, sleepy head. San Rafael is only 20 miles away, after all.”

“OK. If I’m already out when you get back, call me on the Alliance of Mystery Heroes Wrist Radio and I’ll tell you where to meet me.”

“Fat chance, Stretch. But if you DO get up before noon, try to stay out of trouble ‘till I get back!”

Heading to San Rafael

Tammi only got a few hours sleep; she was whizzing across the Golden Gate Bridge and heading north on 101 as the sun came up. There was almost no traffic, and it was a quick, easy ride. When she got to San Rafael, she stopped at a gas station to ask directions to the circus. As she was pulling out, a pickup truck pulled in front of her and she had to skid to avoid it.

“Hey, shrimp, you ought to learn to watch where you’re going!” the driver yelled out the window. He got a better look as she dismounted. “Hey, you punk kid, are you even old enough to ride?” As he got out of the truck, a big heavy-set guy wearing dungaree overalls over a dirty white T-shirt, she took off her helmet and shook out her waist-length pony tail. He finally recognized her gender, and he kept right on blabbing. “Oh ho! A teeny tiny chick. What happened, you fell in a clothes dryer, and shrunk?”

Tammi had long experience dealing with hecklers. Since he was out of the truck, she just pushed the bike where she could get around it, and started to climb back on. He took a couple of steps and grabbed her shoulder, then yanked, while yelling “Hey, little girl, I’m talking to you. Pay attention!”

She spun with his pull, and he stumbled a half step backward when there was almost no resistance. She stepped back and spoke forcefully. “Suffer, human, for daring to interfere with a cloud-born sprite!” She pointed at him, snapped her fingers, and chanted: “Alacazala malakazam!”

Instantly he started to twitch and twist, and then he fell to the ground screaming and frantically scratching, everywhere he could reach. Somewhere nearby, a song was playing… “Well bless’a my soul, what’s awrong’a with me, I’ma itchin’ like a man in a fuzzy tree…” Within seconds he was panting and moaning, drowning out Elvis. Tammi spoke again “Alacazala mazakalam!”, snapped her fingers, and he actually started crying in relief when the itching stopped. The skin on his arms was covered with angry red welts, although none of them seemed to be actually bleeding.

“I suggest you stop being such a jackass in the future,” she said sweetly. “You never know when a teeny, tiny chick will turn out to be a cloud born sprite!”

“F@« You!” he snarled back. He lunged to his feet, staggered a step to his truck, reached in the open door, and pulled out a rifle.

She sighed and snapped her fingers. “Alacazala malakazam!” Instantly he again fell writhing to he ground, a convulsion flinging the rifle a good 15 feet. Tammi picked it up, laid it against the raised island where the pumps stood, and stepped on it. She wasn’t heavy enough to break it, but the barrel was bent enough to notice. “Alacazala mazakalam!” He didn’t stop moaning, but he did stop scratching. “You shouldn’t pick on us cloud born sprites - or anyone else. Now I’m not an expert on rifles, but I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t ought to shoot that gun,” she told him sweetly. “But it’s up to you, of course. It could be a great learning experience for you.”

The attendant rushed out of the station. “I called the police, they’ll be here soon.”

“That’s sweet, Billy!” She read his name tag. “You and Mr. Itchy there can tell them the whole story - I have to be in Santa Rosa soon. Just stay on 101, right?”

“Yeah, a bit less than an hour. Have a great ride!” BIlly agreed with a wink. She could hear a police siren a couple of miles off, so she mounted and took off, just as Elvis finished… “I’m all shook up!”

“Well, that was fun… NOT!” she chuckled to herself as she looked for the turnoff to the local fairgrounds.

The hour she spent at the circus got her some information, but it wasn’t very satisfying. There were indeed 2 missing roustabouts. They were named Nate and Baldy, they had been with the circus for a couple of months, joining at different times, they hadn’t appeared to be friends, and no one was surprised or alarmed that they hadn’t showed up in San Rafael - while the core of a traveling circus was usually closer than family, people on the periphery came and went like wispy clouds on a windy day. Nobody knew much about their backgrounds - they hadn’t said much, and nobody had asked. Neither had caused any trouble, though Baldy tended to like taking breaks more than he liked hard work. What she didn’t find was any reason to suspect that either one of them had ever been involved with Big Wheel or Stoney before.

She promised to return if she learned anything, and then she headed back home. ‘I hope Alex is still sleeping - it’s so much fun waking her up!’ Tammi smiled to herself as she rode.

On the Road to… San Francisco

A phone rang in a seedy hotel a few miles south of San Rafael. “Heya, Johnsee, it’s Louie. Dat midget amp (short for amplified, underworld shorthand for humans with super powers) broad from San Francisco, ya know, da music bimbo, she just left da circus after askin about dem two guys, ya know? Yeah, I heard her say she’s on her way back, she’ll be on da 101, ya know, and she’s ridin’ a flashy red motorcycle.”

Tammi’s quiet ride was interrupted by loudly squealing tires as a car rocketed out of the parking lot of a motel on a side street a ways ahead and roared towards 101. Unless it stopped at the stop sign, it would smash right into her, and it wasn’t slowing down! She slipped her pointer fingers into two recesses on the hand grips and pressed concealed buttons, and held on for dear life as a miniature version of a JATO rocket fired. The bike went from under 60 to over 80 in the second the rocket was blasting, and she easily made it by the intersection ahead of the car. She watched it in the mirror, hoping it would make it across all 4 lanes safely but it squealed into a tight turn, going her way, and a cloud of smoke blasted from the exhaust as the driver floored it again and the engine roared.

The passenger leaned out his window and pointed at her; she could hear the sound of pistol shots but she didn’t hear any bullets whistling nearby. He pulled his head back in, and the chase car kept accelerating.

‘Alex won’t let me put any of this neat stuff on the big bike, but this looks like a chance to try it out!’ Tammi thought, almost eagerly. She carefully flipped up a plastic lid on the console, exposing a control panel with a dozen switches, all carefully labeled. She flipped the one labeled ‘smoke’. Three balls about the size of tennis ball popped out of what looked like a exhaust pipe and exploded when they hit the road, releasing thick puffs of smoke. The chase driver slammed on his brakes, the engine stalled, and the car broke into a spin, whirling three times and sliding off the road into the median. A few seconds later, the cloud of smoke was mostly dispersed by the light breeze.

Ahead, Tammi was frantically squeezing the brakes to keep from crashing into slower traffic. She also ended up in the media, barely keeping the bike upright. She changed direction and bumped back to the chase car, where the driver and passenger were just getting out of the car, raising their pistols. She didn’t need gadgets to deal with this!

A sonic grenade blasted, louder than an explosion, midway between them, rocking the two unsteady would-be assassins, and they staggered, dazed. Tammi jumped from the bike and launched herself at the former passenger, hitting him in the stomach with her shoulder, knocking him down before he could stagger onto the pavement. She kicked him once in a strategic spot. “No more shooting at girls on bikes, bud,” she snarled, then turned to his buddy, who was still dazed from spinning off the road and Tammi’s sonic grenade. He was struggling to bring his pistol in line with the Tuneful Titan.

“Seems kind of cruel to torture you more,” she mused out loud. “On the other hand, you DID try to kill me - and you’re still trying. Alacazala malakazam!” She snapped her fingers and he dropped to the ground, dropping his gun as he tried to scratch every inch of his body at the same time. Tammi flipped another switch on the bike’s control panel, and a compressed net blasted out of the other ‘exhaust pipe’, and partially unwrapped before it fell to the ground. She retrieved it, unwrapped it fully and dropped it over the writhing bad guy, then snapped her fingers again. “Alacazala mazakalam!”

By now his writhing had fully entangled him in the net. Satisfied that he was safe for the instant, she pulled a pair of cuffs from the bike’s console compartment and restrained the other bad guy’s wrists and ankles, not without the threat of some further kicks if he kept resisting. About that time, two California Highway Patrol cops on motorcycles showed up.

It was her story against theirs.

[/font][li]This crazy bimbo on a motorcycle had somehow launched smoke bombs at their car, for no damn reason, and then assaulted them. They’d drawn their pistols to defend themselves. [/li]
[li]The bike was registered as an auxiliary police vehicle in San Francisco, Tammi had a Alliance of Mystery Heroes ID card that identified her as Miss Music, and she demonstrated her powers, peacefully. The dispatcher contacted Palette, who wasn’t happy at being awakened, and she confirmed Tammi’s identity.[/li]
[/ul]It wasn’t long before the CHiPs arrested the bad guys. They claimed they didn’t know who had hired them, just got their orders from a phone call, and they were supposed to watch the circus and bump off anyone who showed too much interest in the missing roustabouts. The cops promised they’d send any additional information to AVant Guard, and Tammi was back on her way, driving sedately and conservatively. ‘I almost smashed into those cars, and then almost lost control of the bike!’ she mused as she drove. ‘My admittedly awesome gymnastic skills and my even more awesome super powers won’t be much protection if get into a high speed motorcycle accident.’

Part 6: Wheels within Wheels

Another Player

Frank Green reviewed the plans of his younger brother, Dave “Big Wheel” Green. He was sitting in the hold of a freighter that was docked at a pier in Oakland. He’d been here for several days, guarding a vault built into the hold that was crammed with medical instrumentation and equipment, including two large tubes in which rested the unconscious original bodies of Wheel and Max “Stoney” Stoneham. While their bodies were resting in medically-induced coma states, their minds had been temporarily transferred by Dr. Presto’s machine into the bodies of the two roustabouts who had been kidnapped from the circus.

Presto was in and out regularly to check on his patients, and he’d told Frank a lot about the process during his visits. The mind transfers could be terminated and Wheel and Stoney restored to their original bodies at any time by use of the machine, or they would wear off naturally in about 2 weeks. The process would only work once on any mind, so in the future, Wheel, Stoney, and the roustabouts would be immune to future transfers. This wouldn’t matter to either pair of men - by that time, Wheel and Stony would be the kings of the San Francisco underworld, and the roustabouts would be dead. And Frank, Atherton and Presto would be rich, each having been promised $2.5 million for their parts in the scheme.

There was no method of revising faces and fingerprints, and of course, no plans to actually transfer the minds of the winning bidders into other bodies, even for a short time. Instead, when all the underworld big wigs were gathered in the same secret ‘safe’ room, Wheel and Stoney would reveal the plot, Presto, safely hidden on the boat, would reverse the machine’s effects, and the minds of Wheel and Stoney would be restored to their original bodies just as San Francisco’s Finest would break into that room and arrest the plethora of unfortunate gangster bosses. Big Wheel and Stoney would re-appear on the scene and it would be easy to take the reins of the other gangs, now without leadership.

That was Big Wheel’s plan. Frank had another.

Lunch Date

Alex got up fairly early for Alex, especially after such a late night. Shortly afterward, Palette called on the police and spent a half hour talking with Detective Stuart Duncan who had some new information about last night’s explosion of crime. In the hospital, perhaps under the influence of morphine, Wildcat Burke had spilled everything he knew about the New Identity Caper - the demonstration of the machine, the claim that it changed faces and fingerprints, and the bidding and leader board. The only thing he couldn’t spill was the location of Saturday’s big event. Big Wheel had insisted on keeping that location secret to make sure they wouldn’t be disturbed by the police when the big bosses were being treated. But he had promised to show up there personally, along with Stoney, to prove that it was for real, and the fact that he was still in town seemed to prove he was on the level.

After she left the police office, Palette contacted Miss Music on her Alliance of Mystery Heroes communicator and they met up, and headed for the Reiter Shipyard for a stakeout. They traded information as they used their enhanced senses to probe the shipyard for any signs of action.

Finally, “We’ve been here half an hour, and neither one of us has noticed anything unusual,” Tammi spoke up. “Reiter Shipyard sure seems to be abandoned, again, or still… Let’s go see if we can find some heads to bust in the Tenderloin to get a line on those guys.”

“Hold on, Tuneful Titan. Put your goggles on and tell me what you see,” Palette chuckled back at her partner.

“You mean, put on my goggles and tell you what YOU see,” Tammi groused, but slipped on her opaque goggles. Alex projected the illusion of what she was seeing on the inside of the shields, and high in the air over the shipyard, both heroines could see a tiny green sparkle against the blue. Alex used her zoom-in vision and the sparkle expanded into a green dot with red sparkles at both ends, then into the outline of a prone person, her legs spread and her arms extended backward, green wings connecting her arms and legs as she glided easily through the air. Her head was encased in a red globe and red fire blasted from a green pylon on her back.

“Jade Rouge!” Tammi exclaimed. “She must be looking for Training Wheels and Pebbles too. But why?”

“She was pretty upset at the things Wheel said about her yesterday…” Alex started to comment, but Tammi cut her off.

“Upset?!” she snorted. “She was FURIOUS! I’m surprised she didn’t use her powers and kill him right then and there!” Her tone changed, and she sounded worried. “So what do we do about her, partner? Is she a mystery villain, or just another average person, except she can fly, control energy and create force fields?”

Last night, the two had tried to discuss the release of Jade Rouge and her announcement that she was going straight, but their discussion had constantly been interrupted by battling one set of crooks or another every time they blinked. When Catalina had announced at the press conference that she was going straight, she had truly believed that, according to Tammi. But by the time the supposed Big Wheel had stormed out of the room, after revealing Catalina’s past to the world, she’d been nearly overwhelmed by emotions as her heart was pounding and her pulse racing.

“The charges against her were vacated yesterday. Even though it was on a ‘technicality’, she’s a free citizen until they either decide to charge her again, or she does something else illegal. So for now, all we can do is watch her.”

“I’ve got a better idea, Stretch. I’m starving. Let’s buy her lunch!” Without waiting for her partner’s approval, Tammi projected her voice high in the air where she could talk to the floating Jade Rouge.

“Hey, Catalina! It’s Miss Music. Me and Palette are down here checking out the shipyard and noticed you up there doin’ the same thing. Care to have lunch with a couple of mystery girls? We’re buying. Meet us at The Schooner in half an hour. We’ll be in our civvies, but don’t worry, we’ll recognize you from yesterday. Promise, no funny biz, we just want to talk about this Big Wheel $#!*.” There was a slight pause, then “If you say something, I’ll be able to hear you.”

Cat thought for a few seconds. She’d noticed them watching the shipyard a while ago, and she’d thought she’d been high enough to go unseen. She had no reason to tangle with them right now. And, though they’d known she was there, they hadn’t made any offensive moves. They had seemed sympathetic to her yesterday, and she’d had no luck with her own hunt today, and she was more than a bit hungry. And there was nothing they could legally bust her for right now, anyway. “Why not? See you at The Schooner in a half hour. But no funny stuff. I’m not in the mood.”

“Hey, hun, that goes double for us. Maybe between us we can shake loose a smile. See ya soon!” High in the sky, Jade Rouge began gliding south; on the ground, AVant Garde mounted the Silent Streak and headed for The Schooner - a many times refurbished sailing frigate which had run aground many years ago. They had civilian outfits stashed in the big compartment under the bike’s seat, and it wasn’t like their id’s were secret in San Francisco anyway.

Lunch at the Schooner

Olivia, the owner and hostess at the Schooner greeted Alex and Tammi warmly and seated them topside, at a table with a sun umbrella on the quarterdeck near the ship’s big 200 year old decorative steering wheel. Several years ago, Olivia had almost been driven from business paying ‘premiums’ to a Chinatown protection racket that Alex had helped the SFPD bust up. They were the only current patrons; perhaps the citizens of San Francisco were a little nervous about being on the streets after all the shootings, sirens, and violent activity last night. From this high vantage point, the two young heroines were able to spot their lunch guest a couple of blocks away

They watched Catalina walk up the gangplank. She was about 5’8” tall and she moved with trained grace and natural dignity. She was dressed in the same outfit as yesterday, carrying a dilapidated purse and a newspaper under her arm. Tammi jumped up and hurried to the top of the ramp, where she grabbed the newcomer by the hand and practically dragged her back to the table.

“Hi, Cat! I’m Tammi Paige. You’ve probably heard of me before - I’m a famous gymnast! And this is my artist friend, Alex, Silverstone. If you haven’t heard of her before, you will soon! She’s really good!” Both Alex and Cat looked at her funny. “What? We’ve never met before, you know? That was other people!”

Cat looked at Alex, who nodded and smiled. “You’ll find out soon enough it’s easier just to go along with her.”

Cat smiled back uncertainly, but took the conversational lead. “It’s nice to meet you both. What’s good here? I haven’t had a decent meal in months!” After they’d ordered, Alex turned the conversation to the bad guys.

“So we’re trying to find Big Wheel Green and Stoney Stoneham because they’re somehow responsible for that wild crime explosion last night - have you heard about that?” As she asked, Alex was silently begging Mother Gaia that Jade Rouge hadn’t been part of that explosion.

“I slept through it,” Cat replied, as Tammi’s voice whispered directly into Alex’s ear. “She’s telling the truth.”

Cat continued. “But the shouting by all the paper boys woke me up well before sunrise. And by now, everyone must have heard about it. It’s the leading headline in all the papers. And one of the front page stories on the Examiner Tribunal is about you guys.” She unrolled her paper and there it was. AVant Guard and SFPD Foil Fortolio Jewelry Robbery, complete with a picture neither remembered being taken. She returned to the main subject. “But why do you think Green and Stoneham are involved?”

“I think she can help us,” Tammi whispered again. “I’m OK with telling her the whole story.” For just an instant, the image of a stop light showing green flashed in Tammi’s eye right eye.

Alex told their guest everything she’d learned from Detective Duncan this morning. “Tams probably would have got more out of Stuart - he’s sweet on her, bonkers for her long hair! He doesn’t know how to shut up when she’s around, and she can get him to tell her anything she wants to know, even if he’s supposed to keep something confidential. She pretends she’s not interested in him, but she flirts and teases him every chance she gets.”

“Hey, I thought we were talking about the bad guys!” Tammi complained. “I don’t always go around telling everyone that Detective Hunter is YOUR boyfriend, do I?” That was much louder.

“Well, Tams, yes, yes you do. Always. In fact, you just told Cat, and if there was anyone else around, you just told them too.” Cat was laughing, which was part of the point.

“So anyway, we need to stop Training Wheels and Pebbles so people can sleep again. Like ME!” Tammi interrupted before Alex could continue. She turned to Cat. “So what was a nice girl like YOU doing hanging around a dump like that shipyard?” Then, “Say, if you’re done with the paper, can I have it so I can put that story in my scrapbook?”

Alex sighed. Cat pushed the paper towards Tammi, then vehemently responded to the first question. “I have my own score to settle with Green, after the crap he told everyone about me at that press conference yesterday! And Stoneham too. If I get those guys alone, they better look out!” A little less forcefully: “But there was definitely nobody at the shipyard. It looks like somebody was using the loading dock recently; the dust is scuffled and there’s fresh trash and packing materials all over, but I couldn’t find anything useful. Everything and everybody is cleared out. I was just hanging around trying to decide what to do next when you guys showed up.”

“Cat, Tammi and I will catch those guys - we always do.” Alex said quietly. “You said yesterday you wanted to go straight. Don’t let those scumbags mess up your new life.”

“You guys put scumbags in jail - why can’t I?” Cat demanded angrily.

“If that’s what you really want to do, put the bad guys in jail, you can probably be a fantastic mystery heroine. But it sounds like you want revenge on these guys, and that could end up with YOU back in jail. And that could wreck your life.”

“I have an idea!” Tammi interrupted both of them and snapped her fingers on both hands, and maybe made the snaps a little louder with her powers. “A couple of days ago, Alex and I had dinner with Marlene Smith.” She turned to Cat. “Marlene is on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and she’s running for Congress, and I work on her campaign.” Cat was confused by the change of subjects, but Alex was starting to look thoughtful. “She also owns a clothing store. I think we should go shopping!”

“Um, Tammi… I just got out of prison after 3 months. I’m flippin’ broke!” Cat snapped.

“Hold on, Cat, I think it’s a good idea.” Alex offered as Tammi smiled smugly. “A while ago, Tams captured some thugs who were blackmailing Marlene - and she offered Tammi a free shopping spree in her store. But her store is for women who are ‘hard to fit’, meaning tall. Tammi would be smothered in the smallest outfit Marlene could sell her.”

“Besides, me and Alex follow the famous ‘AVant Guard’ Code, and we don’t take rewards for mystery heroine stuff. We’d have to give up our decoder rings and secret handshakes, and turn in our masks, and we wouldn’t be invited to Alliance of Mystery Heroes socials any more.”

“However, Marlene is pretty persistent,” Alex added. “In fact, annoyingly persistent. She feels like she owes Tammi a debt, and she always pays her debts, and she’s not gonna take no for an answer. Since neither of us will take up her offer, the other night she suggested we bring by a friend. Honestly, you’d be doing all of us a favor if you’d choose a couple of outfits. Really!”

“What about Training Wheels and Pebbles?” Cat had adopted Tammi’s pet names for their current nemeses.

“We’ll go looking for them tonight,” Tammi promised. “We do our best work after dark.”

“I’m coming too,” Cat insisted. “And if you don’t let me come along with you, I’ll go hunting on my own.”

“Honestly, Cat, we’ll be glad to have you along. Maybe between us we can keep Tammi out of trouble,” Alex agreed.

“Fat chance of that!” Tammi laughed. “So let’s finish our lunch so we can get started on our shopping!”

Boxing Night in the Tenderloin

Several hours later, the shopping spree at Marlene’s Big and Tall Boutique had been successfully completed. The three women were standing on a corner on the edge of the Tenderloin, outside the Salvation Army Kroc Center. Nobody would have recognized them - over their action costumes, they were wearing poorly fitted old scruffy male clothing. And Alex was projecting illusionary appearances on the three of them that matched their clothes.

“I told you he’d be here! Ever since he and Wheel joined my gang, Maxie has always come here 2 nights a week, Monday and Wednesday, never missed a night. Didn’t matter if I was planning a big job that night, I either had to plan without him or move to another night.” Catalina said emphatically to Alex and Tammi. “It used to piss me off royally, and I used to plan the jobs with the biggest payouts for those nights and he’d get nothing, but he never changed. I was about ready to get rid of both of them when you guys caught me. But now, I’m glad to see he hasn’t changed his habits. We should be able to learn something from him.”

She continued, “He spends a couple of hours beating the crap out all the other regulars, and then the next day he bores everyone to death boasting about how tough he is. He’s a good enough boxer to be a pro, but he’d rather beat up amateurs.” She pointed to a half dozen people, of the group they were imitating, shuffling toward gym entrance. “Buncha street corner bums looking for some entertainment - that’s us tonight! Let’s go join them.”

The three straggled into the gym alongside the other prospective spectators. There was some confusion inside. This guy acted like Stoney, but when people saw his face, they were perplexed. He greeted a bunch of folks by name who’d never seen him before. He was wearing Stoney’s personalized boxing gloves when the trainer laced him up. He He went through an identical warmup routine: same stretches, same quick calisthenics, same timed sessions with the light and heavy bags. When he stepped into the ring and bombastically challenged any man in the room, most people in the room wondered if they’d somehow drifted past the Twilight Limits into the Outer Zone.

Another big, rough looking guy, with flattened nose, cauliflower ears and facial scars that suggested he been sparring partners for dozens of more successful boxers for a long time, was reluctantly pushed forward by the other boxers. Stoney ignored him until the bell rang, than turned from his corner and strode arrogantly across the room and launched a furious attack. After only a few seconds, Stoney began looking bewildered - he clearly wasn’t used to getting hit, or failing to hit with his own punches. In only a few seconds, he was being driven backward, and by the time he reached the ropes, his hands had dropped to his sides, and he was trying to curl up to protect himself. His opponent, who had endured a dozen or more similar batterings in the past, wasn’t going to pass up this chance for revenge, and pummeled the helpless Stoney with his most powerful punches, rocking his head and pounding his ribs and stomach - and there might have been a few lower blows as well.

The turnabout was so stunning and unexpected that nobody reacted right away. And nobody in the room had any sympathy for the man they were now sure was Stoneham, so why interfere? But…

“We can’t let this happen, Stretch!” Miss Music’s distressed voice whispered in Palette’s ear. “We know the real owner of that body. Besides, we’re the good guys. Secret play number 6!”

A flash of light exploded on the face of the boxer, and a short but loud blast assaulted his ears, and he straightened in confusion. That broke the spell over the watchers, and several trainers and other boxers quickly climbed into the ring. The boxers mobbed the veteran, congratulating him loudly, with one raising his hand as if he’d won the heavyweight title. Two trainers dragged Stoney from the ring, off into a corner, and left him lying face up on the cold concrete, while a third scrubbed the bloodstains from the canvas, and by the time the other two got back from their errand, another sparring match was getting started. Clearly, nobody in the gym gave a rat’s ass about the condition of this fighter they now all believed was Max Stoneham.

Stoney was almost delirious with unexpected pain and misery. Along with his moaning and almost incoherent muttering; Miss Music’s enhanced hearing was able to make out some words. Most of it was incoherent or profanity, but this stood out to her: “<string of bad words> I’ll be <same bad words> back next <more of the same> week, back to <repeat> normal, and you’ll <same words, repeated repeatedly> pay You’re dead!” punctuated by moans and gasps of pain.

“Geez, I know more curses than that… and I use them better, too!” He was started by a loud, annoyed voice in his ear, and his eyes popped open. There were three grungy men standing over him, their backs to the rest of the people in the gym - and then their faces changed, and he was looking up at Miss Music, further up to Palette, and even further up, his old boss, Jade Rouge. None of them looked sympathetic to his misery.

“Hiya, Maxie! Geez, you look awful,” Jade greeted him cheerfully. He hated being called Maxie. “Blood and bruises really suit you, you know? Never looked better!”

“Rotten $!^@#!” He coughed as he swore. “I won’t be mucked up like this much longer, and then I’m comin’ for you. I’ll enjoy it, too, but you won’t…” He coughed and gasped through the whole threat, making it barely understandable.

“On your best day, you were never a threat to me, Maxine - and you’ll never see that day again.” A thin green strand extended from her eye to his neck, and wrapped around it several times - not tight enough to hurt, but then the wrappings pulsed several times, closing just enough to send a message.

Miss Music’s voice whispered in Jade Rouge’s ear. “Thin ice, Greenie. You’re one of the good guys tonight, remember?” Jade didn’t say anything but the green strand vanished.

“So, Pebbles, how about giving us a line on Training Wheel?” Palette asked the moaning mobster. The response was as predictable as it was unrepeatable. All three women laughed.

“So what do we do with him?” Miss Music asked. “Nobody else seems interested in helping him, and we can’t just let him lie here and bleed to death. That’s not his body, after all.”

“I know a guy who can help us with that,” Jade Rouge replied. “A shady doctor, Dr. Handel, I dealt with in my ‘past life’ who can keep him doped up on morphine but alive for a few days. Last time he helped me out, it cost a bundle, but after I keep you two from busting him, he’s gonna owe me a favor. All you gotta do is… not bust him after I introduce you. Not for at least a week.”

“He’ll have time to get away if we wait a week,” Alex protested.

“Cost of doin’ business. At least he’ll be out of your town. You got a better idea for keeping Maxine here safe until we get our hands on Wheel?” Jade growled back at her. Alex didn’t, but she made a note to discuss some way of restraining prisoners safely at the next Alliance of Mystery Heroes meeting.

The Fingerprint Syndicate

Earlier that day: At about the same time that the ladies were checking out the shipyard, the 11 top bidders on the Leader Board had assembled for a secret meeting, called by Mad Dog Mulligan and Ma Jackson, the two securely atop the bidding list. Security was even tighter than the earlier meeting called by Big Wheel; there was a lot more invested now than before that meeting.

“Anybody here wonderin’ if we been conned?” Mad Dog started off, and almost instantly, shouting ensued. The consensus was that they all wondered. Big Wheel and Stoney were still around, wouldn’t they have left town with the dough by now if it was a scam? Or was there more to it than these guys had so far guessed? Nobody was sure, but it was clear that nobody trusted Big Wheel and Stoney.

“So Matthew and I think we need some insurance,” Ma Jackson added. For a few puzzled seconds, nobody knew who she was talking about - who even knew Mad Dog’s real name, and among those who knew it who would dare use it?! There was a short pause, then another rumble started, this time revealing cautious agreement. Every one of the 9 lesser bidders had been thinking the same thing, but none of them had a concrete plan yet.

Except Ma and the Mad Dog. Mad Dog continued: “I think we should pool our resources, form a syndicate, and buy some insurance.”

“Right. The Fingerprint Syndicate!” Ma joined in. “An we got somebody in mind as our insurance agents too.” One of her lackeys opened the door and a pair of large, garishly dressed individuals entered the room. “Double Vision.”

Both were tall, about 6’9” and massive, clothed in black leather, festooned with shiny silvery chains, studs and spikes, their heads covered with shiny black globes. The bulky leather pants and jackets did a good job of concealing gender; they could have been either. They had tommy guns strapped across their backs, plus very BIG knives sheathed at belt and calf. There was an emblem on the fronts and backs of their leather jackets: against the background of a sickly yellowish mushroom cloud was a flat black skull and crossbones - but the top half of the skull looked like a Wile E. Coyote bomb - a bowling ball with a fuse sticking out in the upper right. The Duchess (Linda Leboeuf), who had started her career in Hollywood during the era of silent films, was reminded of _something_ by that mushroom cloud emblem, but she didn’t have time to search her memory right now…

They were scary, OK! All the mobsters in the room, save Ma and the Mad Dog, instantly drew their own guns as Double Vision stomped into the room, as the floor shook with each stomp. Ma’s look of calm seemed forced, as she continued her spiel after they stopped next to her. “For a hundred grand each, these two will make sure Wheel doesn’t try to run out on us, and take care of him for us if he tries to welsh on our deal.”

“Never heard a them, How do we know they’re worth…” Blackbeard Thatcher started to object. One of the giants disappeared and reappeared instantly next to him, then ripped his large, heavy pistol from his grip and pointed it at him before he could react. Half the guns in the room shifted in that direction and everyone scurried away from Thatcher, who realized he was about to die.

“Worth every penny, little man,” the giant was laughing, the voice weirdly distorted by the helmet. Thatcher was a very large man himself, but he was inches shorter and much less wide than the giant facing him. The giant reached down, wrapped his free hand around the barrel of Blackbeard’s pistol, and squeezed. The hardened steel was instantly crushed. The giant dropped the wrecked pistol to the floor and laughed again as the mobsters scattered - if it were to misfire now, it would probably explode.

“Yes, Nathaniel, you had a question?” Ma asked. Even she sounded a little shaky by now.

“Never mind,” Thatcher gulped. The first giant laughed as the other stomped back to the front of the room.

“So it’s agreed? A hundred grand apiece, and these two keep an eye on Big Wheel for us, make sure nothin' happens to him and he doesn’t try to skip out on us?” Mad Dog asked. They weren’t all happy about this, but a hundred grand was chump change compared to what they’d already invested. The Fingerprint Syndicate agreed to the deal.

A Rat

That evening: One of the men who’d been watching Stoney’s sparring match slipped out of the Kroc Center and found a payphone. Within a few minutes, Big Wheel knew that his right-hand man had been towed out of the gym on a green, floating stretcher by three women. He was pretty sure he knew who those women were and that he didn’t want to be here if Stoney told them how to find him. He made a call of his own.

“Frank, tell Captain Iko to make ready to leave port as soon as I can get there. Promise him a hundred grand bonus for him, and another hundred grand for the crew. And let him know he’s dead if that damned boat ain’t in the channel 4 minutes after I’m onboard. He waits for me and nobody else. Any of his damned crew ain’t on board by then gets left behind. He can hire more crew at our next port if he needs to. And he damn well better be ready to go - I been payin' him plenty. Remind ‘im good, if he beefs, der ain’t no problem a chopper can’t fix, and we got plenty a’choppers! I bet his first mate McGuire'd love ta be the captain - and not gimme any sass, either!” He slammed down the phone and headed for his private elevator to the parking garage in the basement.

Wheel would miss out on his chance to be the King of San Francisco - but the cash the Fingerprint Syndicate had paid him already was safe on the steamer. They’d head for the South Seas, and spending the rest of his life as a millionaire on Tahiti was one heck of a great Plan B. And it was looking more attractive all the time.

In less than 2 minutes, he was driving through the streets on his way to the waterfront. It would take him probably a half hour to get there, but it wouldn’t do to get stopped by the police right now. He didn’t notice a panel delivery truck trailing a couple blocks behind him.
More Rats

“Are you sure about this? I thought your brother and his partner would be with us.” Captain Iko asked Frank.

“I just got a phone call from one a his guys - they both got blasted in a shootout wit’ da cops. They’se both dead. And the cops are onna way here, so let’s get dis tub MOOVIN’!!” Frank yelled back. “We get away, ya get an extra couple a million.”

Iko shrugged and started giving orders. He ordered his first Mate, McGuire, to the wheelhouse. Chisholm was sent to check the roster, to see if any idiots were still ashore - he didn't care who they were, but there were a few useful crew members who should be replaced as soon as possible if they hadn't made it back on board in time. He sent Maxie, his cabin boy, to tell Becker's team to cast off. A few days ago, he had spread around enough bribe money to people shoreside that he was sure the Magatta Maru could leave on short notice without being stopped. This should allow them to get out of the harbor without being boarded, and once they reached International waters, he had plans of his own. Plans that included recovering all the money he’d paid for bribes - plans that didn’t include a trio of mobsters from San Francisco. He’d dump Frank and that weird machine overboard 10 miles out, and if the Magatta Maru never came back to San Francisco again, it would be too soon for him!

The frantic activity on board the Magatta Maru only looked chaotic, but was actually well-practiced. Lambert and Kaiser had already shipped the gangplank, Kaiser's team had cast off the giant hawsers that had held the steamer in her berth, the stacks were belching smoke, McGuire was at the wheel, and the small freighter was backing out into the channel less than 10 minutes after Big Wheel hung up on his older brother.

Frank headed below and pulled his gun. A couple of shots and he’d never have to worry about anything again. His little brother had planned to get away with more than 40 million and he’d thought Frank would be happy with a piddling million? He’d dump the bodies and that weird machine overboard 10 miles out, and even after paying off Iko, HE’d be the one with more than 40 mil!
The Magic Teacup

Miss Music had been able to decipher some delirious muttering by the semi-conscious Stoney, and the trio had decided to head for the docs and look for a freighter called the Maggot Marylou (or something like that…). Jade Rouge provided transportation - she concentrated, a beam of green sprang from her eyes and where it struck the ground, something green started growing, into what looked kind of like a glowing green giant tea cup with stubby wings, with three comfortable green bucket seats inside the cup. Instead of a handle, there was a green nozzle sticking out the back, a jet engine that looked much too large for the small vessel.

“WOW! That looks just like one of the cars from the Jetstones on Saturday morning!” Tammi was excited. “Can I drive? Will it do tricks like the way Betty Jetstone flies?” Then, more darkly, “Let’s get going. The sooner we catch Pig Peel, the sooner we can get Baldy and Nate back. They better not be hurt or that Pig Peel will regret it - big time!” Then she was back in her little-girl eager persona. “If I’m flying, I get to sit in the middle, right? Say, there’s no controls!”

“You can sit in the middle if you want, Tammi,” Catalina smiled indulgently. “But there’s no need for controls, so sorry, you can’t drive. It goes where I want it to.”

“Well, that’s a relief!” Alex was relieved. “I think she really did learn to fly by watching Betty Jetstone cartoons. Barrel rolls, Immelmans, tricks they won’t have names for even a hundred years from now, everything at full speed ahead. Why, the way she flies, she’d make the Red Baron lose his lunch in the first five seconds!”

“That’s sweet, Stretch, you always say the nicest things!” Tammi smiled. “I guess it’s gonna be a boring flight then. Until we sight Pig Peel, I mean!” She turned to her partner. “Can you paint a picture of us in the Magic Teacup? With me in the middle?” On the side of the cup, an oval faded from bright green to paler green, almost white, and then an invisible hand wrote the words ‘The Magic Teacup’ on the side in green so dark it was almost black.

“Before we go, I’d like to try to camouflage us,” Alex noted. “People might start making UFO calls to the police if they see a green spark flying across the night sky.” She created the illusion of a dark cloudy sky on the underside of the green tea cup… or tried to, anyway. But nothing happened. She successfully shifted the illusion to the ground, and made it flow over her friends, and even wrapped it around a streetlight, leaving them in temporary darkness. “I was wondering what your green constructs are made of. They must be ‘solid energy’, even when they feel like stone or wood or plastic,” she told their new friend.

“That fact, and a dime, will get me a real cup of tea at the diner on the corner,” Miss Music scoffed. “Can we go get the bad guy now? If I can’t fly that thing, I want some AVant Guard action instead!”

“I guess it might be green energy, though I never heard of ‘solid energy’ before,” Cat replied, hesitantly. “I always kinda thought it’s magic.”

“Could be,” Alex agreed. “We don’t deal with magic a lot, but some of our teammates do. I’ll bet Dr. Aeon could help you figure it out.”

“Look, are we gonna catch Pig Peel or are we gonna stand around talking all night?” Guess who?

They climbed into their seats, which shifted gently to make them more comfortable. The top of the cup was closed over with a dome of almost invisible red energy. “Now it’s even more like Betty Jetstone’s car!” Tammi crowed enthusiastically. “Tea cup underneath, dome on top!” The vehicle rose smoothly into the air, accompanied by a cartoon jingle…

Jetstones, meet the Jetstones, they're a future space-age family,
From the town of Spacerock, they're a slice of future history.

“Is she ever serious?” Cat asked Alex.

“She doesn't even know she's doing it,” Alex replied with a wink.

“You want serious? I'll give you serious!” Tammi growled. She stood up, cocked her hat low over her forehead, clenched up her face, put one hand on her hip and pointed the other toward the docks. “Let’s go kick some mobster ass!”

Both her friends broke out laughing as Catalina goosed the jet and Tammi tumbled back into her seat when the Magic Teacup bolted skyward.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

From a couple of blocks away, Big Wheel could see that the Magatta Maru was already a quarter mile from the dock. For a few seconds, he nearly went insane with rage, but then he smiled when he realized how canny his older brother was. Presto had assured him that if the machine were reversed, or the effects wore off, and even if his current body were to die, he’d simply pop back into his original body, safe in the vault deep in the hold of the ship. And the same would happen with Stoney. By leaving earlier, Frank had guaranteed the Magatta Maru an extra half hour of getaway time. What a clever idea! He’d have to give his older brother another 100 grand or so as a reward for good thinking!

He heard squealing tires behind him, and a couple blocks away, he saw a panel truck slide to a halt and two very large people in what appeared to be black spacesuits jumped out. One vanished, reappearing a block closer, then the other vanished and reappeared next to the first. The process repeated - one vanished, and appeared right next to him. An short fractional second later, so did the other.

Before they could touch him, Big Wheel got violently ill. He collapsed as all his muscles spasmed violently, his bladder and gut emptied explosively, and his head seemed to burst with pain. He was unconscious when he hit the dock.

“Mother Gaia!” Palette exclaimed in horror, from not far up or far away. “Those two monsters are teleporters! And it looks like they somehow killed Big Wheel!”

“I don’t care about Big Wheel. That’s BALDY!” Miss Music yelled. “GET ‘EM!”

Simultaneously, AVant Guard hit the two giants of Double Vision with a powerful ‘Flash and Crash’ - a flare of brilliant light and a powerful blast of sound, both centered between the two giants. Normal humans might have been instantly blinded by the flash and knocked down by the blast of noise, but the Double Vision pair merely staggered backward away from the body a few steps. That was what Jade Rouge needed - the Magic Teacup accelerated, flashed between the two mystery villains, and sped out over the water, now towing Baldy’s body in a green fist.

The two giants watched the retreating heroines for a few seconds, then turned away. One disappeared, reappeared a block away, the other disappeared and popped up next to the first, then the process repeated and they were both back next to the truck.

“We’ve gotta stop those two!” Palette yelled. “We’ve got to get Baldy to a hospital!” Miss Music yelled.

The Teacup zoomed around in a tight circle, and then the green fuselage surrounding AVant Guard turned into a pair of giant green fists, each clenching one of the mystery heroines. They hands released them on the street not far from the truck. They had to break their momentum to keep their feet, and they ended up running in different directions. Meanwhile, the Magic Teacup zipped away toward downtown, towing Baldy in a green tube.

One of the giants vanished and appeared where AVant Guard had hit the street, though both women were now moving quickly away from that spot. Rather than chase one or the other of them, the giant paused for a half second, until the other giant vanished from a block away and appeared only a few feet from his partner. Then they split up, one following each of the heroines.

Miss Music was unable to hear soniprints from either of the giants - their heavy costumes and full-head helmets blocked the faint sounds of heartbeat and respiration. As far as she could determine, these two were identical. As omniscient observers, we know that the giant who was following her was female, and called herself Woe, so we’ll call her that as well. Her partner was male, named Bruto. Woe had been the first to appear an instant ago, and now she vanished again, and popped up ahead of Miss Music. The Tuneful Titan heard her vanish, as air rushed to fill the vacuum where her body had been with a noise like quietly snapping fingers, ‘snaff’ and heard her arrive, with a quiet ‘woosh’ of displaced air.

Woe was in front of her; Miss Music ducked a backhand swipe and dove easily between her legs. The Tuneful Titan was a highly skilled tumbler (“world class gymnast”, she’d tell you - as often as you wanted to hear it) and since she'd joined the Alliance of Mystery Heroes, she’d trained with some of the best martial artists in the world. Her size and agility made her VERY hard to hit in a fight, and she'd adapted her tumbling skills to combat. As soon as she was behind the giant, she kicked backwards with both her own legs, aiming for the back of one of her foe’s knees. She’d perfected this trick in training sessions. Her always larger sparring partners considered it a dirty trick, but they weren’t 4 foot 6 inch tall merely human gymnasts fighting super strong foes twice as tall and three times as massive…

Sometimes (rarely, actually) she succeeded in knocking down her teammates, but not Woe - it felt like she’d kicked a tree wrapped in an exercise mat. So she pushed off, and kept moving in that direction, and the giant lumbered after her. Woe's movements were a bit clumsy; apparently she was hampered by her heavy costume.

As she retreated, dodging attacks, Miss Music unloaded almost her full arsenal of sonic weapons against the mystery villain - with almost no effect! A powerful sonic grenade, followed by a powerful sonic screech reinforced with the sounds of a tremendous explosion and the grotesquely amplified roars of lions, tiger and bears, against the face of Woe's helmet barely caused her to flinch, but totally failed to either disable or even disorient the giant. The heavy black leather costume seemed to totally block ultrasonic and infrasonic attacks designed to produce nausea, fear, pain or disorientation. All along, the Tuneful Titan was dodging clumsy but powerful punches and kicks. Woe definitely wasn't used to fighting someone as small and nimble as the Tuneful Titan, and even through her helmet, Miss Music could hear her foe swearing in frustration.

Bruto ran after Palette. She turned to face him, and cast the illusion of darkness on the front of his helmet. This attack normally blinded her opponents, but he kept coming. She changed her illusion to extremely bright light, as bright as a searchlight, directly on the front of his helmet only inches from his eyes, but instead, the face of the helmet remained a shiny black. A dazzle of brilliant colors on the front of his helmet didn’t work either; the helmet remained a shiny black and her illusions simply failed. The surface of that helmet refused to support her illusions, like it wasn’t really a surface after all.

He stalked her relentlessly. She was much faster and more agile and she managed to stay ahead of him, but nothing she did had any effect. Finally, he seemed to explode with rage, and charged directly at her while screaming curses. She stepped aside from the lumbering attack, and stuck her shinai between his legs, hoping to trip him. He never even noticed, but her poor bamboo sword virtually exploded.

Bruto made a clumsy turn and charged her again. She dived aside in a panic, and he just barely grazed her as he roared by like a freight train. But ‘barely grazed’ hardly described the impact - she was knocked violently aside, and she barely managed to keep her feet only by grabbing a lamppost.

As he slowed to turn back, Bruto heard a scream. “ARRRGHHH! I broke my leg!” and then some more painful yelling which subsided into agonized sobs. He turned and laughed as he saw Palette lying on the sidewalk, moaning and writhing in agony. He rumbled towards her, picking up speed - he'd just stomp on her, hard, as he went by, and then he'd go help his partner. Suddenly he smashed through a lamppost he couldn't see, and then into a fire hydrant he couldn't see either. The lamppost barely slowed him down, but after he snapped the fire hydrant like a straw, the geyser of high pressure water slammed into him, lifting him a dozen feet into the air and then tossing him several yards away, where he crashed to the pavement, not permanently hurt, but temporarily a bit dazed.

Finally Woe tired of ineffectively chasing her tiny, elusive foe. She stopped and even through her helmet, Miss Music could hear her imperious command to her partner. “Bruto, we got no reason to fight these wimpy $!^@#es. We need to figger out where they took Wheel, and get HIM. Get over here NOW and let’s go.” There was an instant of silence, and a gentle ‘woosh’ and then Bruto popped into existence, not more than a foot from his partner. He was lying on the ground, and dripping wet.

Woe laughed, and Bruto snarled at her. “Looks like you're all washed up, boy! Back to the truck and let's get outta here!” Miss Music was hearing her twice, from inside their helmets - they must communicate by radio. Woe turned around until she saw the panel truck, a block away, then vanished and reappeared next to it. Then Bruto vanished and appeared next to his partner. And then they both vanished, engulfed in a glowing green sphere, which was instantly wrapped in a transparent flickering red film.

Part 7. Crime Never Pays

We Got Them… Now What Do We Do With Them?

AVant Guard raced toward their captured foes, while Jade Rouge swooped down from the sky. Palette was astounded to realize that she was absolutely furious - at Jade Rouge! 'This was an AVant Guard operation - who asked HER to butt in? Me and Tams coulda beat those guys!' But in another two steps she realized just how silly that was. 'Wait, we asked her to join us, dummy. And it's not like we were really wiping up those guys by ourselves, huh?' she laughed at herself in chagrin.

“I saw a police car and left your friend with them,” Jade Rouge was telling Miss Music as they came together. “They were radioing for an ambulance from St. Westside Hospital when I zipped back here. Who are these guys, anyway?”

“One of 'em is…” Miss Music started to reply but her partner cut her off.

Alex had been searching her photographic memory for the past few minutes. “They're not in the Alliance of Mystery Heroes records. Good thing you caught them, though, probably saved us a bunch of bruises.”

Jade Rouge groaned and flinched. “But not me, they're bruising me from the inside out! They're pounding on the inside of my shell like nobody's business, and I don't know how long I can hold them.” She inhaled sharply as if she'd been punched. “Crap, that HURT!”

“Cat, why don't you…” Miss Music began, concern for their new friend etched on her face. But…

“Quick, Tams, we gotta figure out how we can beat them if they break out!” Palette barked at her partner. She projected an image on the side of the villains' panel truck, replaying what they had seen as they had approached the dock in the Magic Teacup.

“Uh, Stretch, why don't we…” The view zoomed in, and a green outline appeared around one of the giants. We already know her as Woe.

“Look, that one's female!” Palette exclaimed in satisfaction. The giants made two paired teleports. Each time the green-wrapped figure disappeared first. When they popped up next to Big Wheel / Baldy, the Tuneful Titan tried again.

“I already knew that, Stretch. I've got an id…” Miss Music began again.

“They always teleport in tandem,” Palette announced in satisfaction. “And the gal always goes first. If we can…”

This time Miss Music impatiently interrupted her partner. “For now, Alex, I…” But…

“This is important, Tuneful Titan! Cat's in pain, and if they break out of Cat's ball, we we need to know how to stop them. Pay attention, I'm going to speed up the playback. We need some clues.” The display of the evening's events shifted to fast forward. Jade Rouge grunted as if she'd just been punched, and then let out a little scream.

“ENOUGH!” Miss Music's shriek, fortified with four important infrasonic vitamins and augmented with 12 essential ultrasonic minerals, blasted a few inches from Palette's ear. The Colorful Crusader jerked backward in surprise. She wasn't hurt, but there was no missing the anger in her partner's exasperated shout.

Cat moaned again. “Cat, pick 'em up and shake 'em like a maraca!” the Tuneful Titan suggested in a yell to Jade Rouge. “If they're bouncing around like beans in a rattle, they won't be able to throw punches.”

A smile quickly lit up the taller girl's face, while Tammi began singing in an exaggerated Hispanic accent.

"La cucaracha, la cucaracha, runneeng up and down the wall…"
"La cucaracha, la cucaracha, meee, I love you not at all!"

Jade joined in singing, though she used the traditional Spanish words. By that time, the sphere had morphed into a giant maraca, and a giant green hand grabbed the handle and began shaking it in time to the beat. It didn't rattle, but they could hear thuds as the giants bounced off each other and the shell around them.

The silly folk song continued for several more lines, and finally ended…

"Preeetty soon they're gonna swatcha, preeetty soon no cucaracha!"

With one last vigorous shake, the song was over and Jade and Miss Music both laughed.

“They're both unconscious,” Jade sighed in relief, as the hand laid the giant maraca down on the pavement. “And if they wake up again, as long as I've got 'em wrapped, I ought to be shake them up again. So what do we do with them now?”
Cribbs Takes Charge

“You can turn'em over to me for transport back to Oakland, where I'll toss'em in jail until we give them a trial. If we're lucky, maybe they'll get sent to prison, and they'll throw away the key!” A dozen people were rushing toward them, one a short, chubby bald man who was flashing a badge and doing the talking. “Though I doubt it. Karl Cribbs, Oakland PD. These two go by the name Double Vision, they are rookie enforcers for the Oakland mob, and the Oakland PD's been after them for a couple of weeks.” There were several other cops in the group that was approaching, as well as some Port Authority staff and some curious bystanders.

“You're gonna take them back to Oakland all by your own self?” Jade was amused. “They're VERY strong, and they can teleport.”

“Under their costumes, they're just a couple'a JDs. And I got Billy and Jason with me.” Cribbs replied seriously as two big cops flanked him. “We really ought to get them outta those outfits before they wake up. ”

“Now, that sounds like a good idea,” Palette agreed. “My bet is that if we can keep the girl from jumping, the guy is stuck too. So far, he's always followed her, never going first.”

“It took us days to figure that out!” Cribbs was stunned.

“Well, that's why we're famous,” Miss Music said modestly. “We also know they can't jump through Jade Green's rattle. So suppose she puts us all in a big bottle, breaks open the maraca, we take off their costumes, and then Officer Cribbs here can arrest'em and cuff'em all he wants. And then I'm going to check on Baldy at St. Westside Hospital, and then I want to check on Nate, too. After what happened to Baldy, I want to be sure Nate is OK!”

Without their costumes, the two members of Double Vision were clearly twins, a little taller and thinner than average, but nowhere near giants, both with jet black hair and golden brown faces. They appeared to be around 20. Miss Music confirmed that they were both sleeping and noted that nothing in their soniprints suggested super powers. Cribbs agreed. “Woe and Bruto with their costumes on, Wendy and Billy Cavanaugh, as you see 'em. Anne Cavanaugh, a.k.a. Dr. Boom's kids - you ever heard of her?” When Miss Music and Jade Rouge looked puzzled, he gave them a short biography.

“Annie Cavanaugh was a hugely popular silent movie actress in the 30s. She couldn't find a job when they switched to the talkies, but she was a genius inventor, too. She hated Hollywood for screwin' her over, 'pologize for the language, so she invented a super suit and started blowing things up. One of the earliest mystery villains. Fought Dr. Lambda and Flux, got beat by Lady Lambda5), then disappeared. She built those suits for her kids - guess they prefer bustin' heads to blowing things up.”

*for more about Dr. Boom, see: 1942: Who is Anne Cavanaugh, and Where is She Now?, 1942: The Return of Dr. Boom, and 1943: Dr. Boom, You Fiend!

Cribbs 'introduction' was interrupted by some crunching and grinding noises, and then a flash of heat. They turned to the source, and they were stunned to see a steaming soup of molten metal seasoned with the remains of what might be burned-up electronics, where the two discarded super suits had been lying on the pavement. Jade Green smirked in satisfaction, “Nobody will ever use those suits again!”

Billy and Jason were pretty upset and wanted to arrest Jade Rouge, but Cribbs seemed relieved. “I'm not sure we've got enough of a case to put these two away,” he told his team. “I'm thinking they'll probably get probation and community service. You know, growin' up with an unmarried mom, who spent half her time in jail, probably bullied in school and can't find a job because of their mom - get a good lawyer and a sympathetic jury, and they'll be back out in a week. At least this way, they won't be able to go back to being mob enforcers! And now they can't even complain when we don't give 'em their suits back - we'll just tell them to look up these ladies here.”

At Tammi's urging, Jade Rouge reformed the Magic Teacup, and the mystery heroines left, content to let the squad of detectives from Oakland deal with the San Francisco police. It was nice to skip the seemingly inescapable hours-long debrief they had to deal with after every battle.

Baldy and Nate go Back to the Circus; Cat Takes her Dream Job

The shady doctor's 'clinic' where they had taken Nate was closer than St. Westside Hospital, so they stopped to check on him first. They found the clinic deserted, except for Nate, who was sleeping peacefully on a cot, with no indication that he'd ever been medicated. Based on the clothing strewed around the bedroom, Dr. Handel had apparently packed a bag and run as soon as the women had visited him before.

“Guess he didn't trust us to lay off him for a week,” Palette sniffed. “I'm glad he's gone - it really made me feel uncomfortable, making a deal with a crook.”

They cautiously awakened Nate, who was stunned at his surroundings and had no memory of most of the past week. He was sore but with no disabling injuries, and definitely comforted in a scary situation by the presence of two people he recognized, and he listened with amazement at what 'he' had done over the past week. Miss Music verified that he was telling the truth when he said he had no memory of being Stoney. If he hadn't been sore from getting the crap beat out of him, he wouldn't have believed it . As it was, he kept wondering if he'd got hammered the night before, and some of his friends were pulling a practical joke on him…

He insisted on joining the three women as they flew to the hospital - he and Baldy weren't good friends, but they both worked for the same carnival, and carnies stuck together!

Baldy was as bewildered as Nate, but the doctors had already checked him out and though they wanted to keep him for observation, they hadn't found anything wrong with him, and reluctantly released him. Jade Rouge volunteered to fly them home, right now. She promised to be back shortly - Avant Guard was surprised, thinking she might just keep on going, but Cat volunteered:

“I need a day of rest tomorrow, day after tomorrow, I start working for Marlene Smith. She needs someone to manage Marlene’s Big and Tall Boutique store now that she's spending so much of her time doing her Congressional work, and we really hit it off earlier. I never felt really at ease being one of the bad guys - and tonight has showed me just how much I don't enjoy all this mystery hero stuff, either. After I fly these guys home, I'm going back to being just plain old Catalina Varela. Managing a peaceful boutique sounds like a dream job to me!”

“Well, you're definitely not either plain or old, Cat,” Alex replied, pleased at her new friend's plans. “If you ever need any advertising art, please think of me - and if you ever want to model for some paintings, let me know. I already have a couple in mind.” The wall next to them suddenly displayed a beautiful picture that looked like a cover for an artsy fiction magazine - a small winged pixie, who looked just like Tammi, only smaller, cavorting in a fantasy forest with a much taller elf, who looked a lot like Catalina. Farther away, an person wearing a standard 'African bush explorer' khaki outfit from a bevy of movies pushed through the jungle, clearly unaware of the presence of the magical beings. The explorer looked a lot like Alex.

“Wow, that's awesome!” Cat was thrilled. “I'll drop by some weekend soon! I'll but that painting, too, it will look great in the apartment I'm planning to get, as soon as I get the first paycheck I'm planning to get!”

The two roustabouts gingery boarded the Flying Teacup, and off they went, headed back for the Sencenbaugh Family Travelling Circus and Sideshow.

Just the Two of Us

“Well, Tams, it's down to just the two of us again - and that's the way I like it!” Alex told her partner after Jade and her two passengers in the Magic Teacup took to the air and headed north. “What do we do now?”

“I'm going to call a cab, go home, and get some sleep,” Tammi replied emphatically. “We were up to all hours last night, and got up early today, and it's all hours again, and even mystery heroes need to sleep sometime. For me, 'sometime' started a couple of hours ago. You can share the cab with me if you want.” Alex agreed, so they headed home. Tammi had to wake her friend after the cab ride.

“You snored so loud, you scared the driver!” the Tuneful Titan complained.

“I never snore!” the Colorful Crusader argued

“Remember, I'm the human tape recorder,” Tammi teased. Suddenly, the cab was filled with loud snores. Tammi read the cabbie's name on his Taxi licence. “David Publicover, you be the judge - have you heard this snore earlier tonight?”

It took the driver a second to realize she was talking to him - he'd been responding to Pubs for so long - and then he realized just were these two women in in his hack. He played along, chuckling as he replied. “Yeah, that's your friend all right. But she was a LOT louder before you woke her up!”

Ten Miles Offshore

Captain Iko, his first mate McGuire and the two must bloodthirsty members of his crew, Chisholm and Kaiser, crashed into the vault in the hold. There was a quick exchange of gunfire, which wounded Chisholm and left Frank dying. McGuire figured out how to open the big glass cylinders holding Big Wheel and Stoney and two more shots rang out. Some sophisticated monitoring devices, deep in the life support machinery built by Presto, noted that Big Wheel's body no longer required life support, and sent a signal that detonated explosives roughly equivalent to 3 torpedoes. The vault shattered, the hull ruptured, the hold filled with water, and an hour later, there was no trace of the Magatta Maru except for a few lifeboats bobbing around, holding about 20 crew members. The Navy rescued them a day or so later, and the Naval investigation concluded that the unlucky freighter had hit a long-lost World War II mine. But no trace was ever found of Captain Iko and his murderous team or the 3 mobsters - proving conclusively once again that… Crime Never Pays!

A Mysterious Disappearance

Shortly after Tammi left the Sencenbaugh Family Travelling Circus and Sideshow after checking on Nate and Baldy, her friend Sam made his way to the one permanently pole-mounted pay phone on the San Rafael fairgrounds. He asked the operator for a 212 number. “That will be $4.00 for 3 minutes, sir, with each additional minute being seventy-five cents.” He pumped in a handful of quarters while she was making the connection.

“Some mob boss in Frisco named “Big Wheel” might be playing with mind control. Sounds like it might be the work of Herr Reichsdoktor Preuss, finally sticking his nose out of hiding,” Sam spoke, not wasting any words. “Want us to follow up?”

“We'll have him investigated today. Bayside Bus Drop Flop 14.” The man at the other end hung up.

Sam jiggled the receiver hook to get the operator back. “I only used a minute, how about a refund?” “Send us a bill, honey!” She laughed, as he had figured she would.

Later that day, a woman of average height but very wide shoulders, casually dressed and carrying a very large purse, slipped from between the circus tents and merged unnoticed into the big late afternoon crowd, caught the local bus downtown at the Fairgrounds stop, soon boarded a a Grey Pixie bus to San Francisco. The bus was almost empty. She took an aisle seat in the empty middle of the bus, and when the lights dimmed, she pulled something gently from her purse and set it on the window seat next to her. With an effort of will, Sam relaxed his power and expanded from six inches tall to his normal height of about 4'6“. He and Tiny talked quietly until the bus reached the Golden Gate Bridge, then he shrunk back to 6 inches and Tiny put him gently back into her well-padded purse.

At the San Francisco Bus Station, she opened a transient locker and pulled out a large white envelope, then caught a cab to a inexpensive hotel in a run down section of the city, went in the front door and out the back. On her walk to her destination, a similarly inexpensive rooming house, she stopped in a Chinese joint and left with take-out for two. A key from the envelope let her into a small bedroom; she locked the door and closed the shades, let Sam out of the purse, and both carnies relaxed, returning to their normal sizes. Over dinner, they carefully scanned the documents from the envelope.

“He's a lot older, of course, and it looks like he had some rough years recently, but Dr. Presto sure looks like a much older Herr Reichsdoktor Preuss,” Sam spoke thoughtfully. He had two photos side by side, one taken earlier today with Presto's name written on it in blue ink, and one a copy of a faded black and white photo originally taken in 1943, showing several much younger men in Nazi uniforms sitting at a banquet table, glasses raised in a toast. A circle of blue ink tagged one of the smiling officers.

“Hope so,” Tiny replied “I'm really looking forward to taking another name off the list.” She paused for a moment. “So what are we going to do when we reach the end of the list?”

“Guess we'll just be carnies full time,” Sam smiled, pleased at the thought. “It's not like it's a boring life.”

Tiny chuckled and dropped the papers and photos into the toilet, where they disintegrated into a wad of what appeared to be used toilet paper, and flushed. Plan A was a go, with several contingency plans as backup. If they determined that Dr. Presto was indeed the infamous Reichsdoktor Preuss, he would simply disappear from San Francisco without a trace, and reappear mysteriously at his trial. Their service had a reputation to maintain, after all.

Just after 10:30 PM, each of them shrunk again. Tiny changed her outfit, threw on a long coat, and headed out onto the foggy street. A few minutes walking and she stood outside a shabby apartment building, even a couple steps down from their own temporary hideout. Tiny leaned against a lamppost and opened her coat, revealing a revealing outfit beneath. They would be less likely to be noticed if someone let them into the building rather than breaking in, but they had contingency plans either way. Tiny slung her purse over her shoulder and they chatted as they waited

“Looks like Herr Reichsdoktor has come way down in the word - lived in luxury for a few years, been living in joints like this dump ever since. Almost makes me believe in Karma,” Sam mused.

“What we do, all of us,” and Sam knew “we” meant the people in New York that had set this up, the ones in San Francisco who'd put together a dossier on Presto in only a few hours, all the other agents spread across the world, and the home office, “all of that makes me believe in Karma. And justice.” Small Tiny was emphatic, and tiny Sam snorted in agreement.

They heard someone coming, a pair of men, talking loudly and sounding a little nervous This could be a scary neighborhood at night, and the fog didn't help. They were headed for the building Tiny was staking out. Looked like tonight they would indeed use Plan A.

“Hey, boys!” Tiny spoke as they approached out of the fog. They both jerked back, startled and ready to run. “Either of you guys looking for a good time? Big John'll bust my ass if I don't bring back a little extra tonight. Four bucks, arroun' the world. Six bucks the botha ya, ten if ya wanna be a little rough.”

The two couldn't believe their good fortune. They checked their wallets, scraped up six dollars between them, and a transaction was struck. One of them unlocked them front door and led Tiny and his friend to his second floor room.

“You guys want a shotta whiskey before we get started? I find it makes things go down a lot more easily…” Tiny winked at them as she pulled a bottle from her purse. There weren't any clean glasses in the apartment, so they used the bottle top as a shared shot glass. Within two minutes of downing their drinks, both men were unconscious, though Tiny's unique metabolism was unaffected. They dumped the guy who'd let them in on top of the bed, fully clothed but without his shoes, and draped the other guy artfully over the couch. They knew from past experience that it was unlikely they'd even remember meeting her when they woke up tomorrow.

“So Dr. Presto lives on the third floor near the back. Should be easy.”

They locked the door as they left. Sam returned to normal size and light-footed upstairs, carrying a kit from Tiny's purse, while Tiny slipped back out to the street. Both were cautious, but they were the only two in the halls just now. Some tools got Sam into Presto's room quicker than a key would have, and a quick jab with a hypodermic needle would keep the guy out for at least 10 hours.

“Hope you're the right guy,” Sam whispered, He opened a compact fingerprint kit, dutifully checked every finger against the one document they hadn't disposed of earlier, and smiled at the match. Karma was on his side tonight!

Sam wrapped Herr Reichsdoktor Preuss tightly in a blanket, carried him easily to the window, and carelessly tossed him out. Three stories down, he was caught bye full-sized Tiny, with barely a noise. Sam climbed out on the window ledge, carefully closed the window, and jumped. Finally, they unrolled Preuss and small Tiny easily picked him up in a fireman's carry. They moved cautiously back to their own room, Sam scouting the way, Tiny prepared to hide if necessary, counting on the heavy fog to conceal them.

Back in their own room, they bound and gagged their captive, then walked back to the bus station, leaving the key in the same transient locker, and caught the early morning bus back to San Rafael, secure in the knowledge that other agents of their organization would make arrangements for the rest of Herr Reichsdoktor Preuss's travels. They caught hell for going missing from their sideshow the night before, but it seemed rather unlikely that anyone would connect two carnies who missed one night's work in San Rafael with the mysterious disappearance of a criminal scientist in San Francisco.

Four for Four

Brett Atherton felt good when he awakened. Tomorrow was the big day, and everything was going perfectly! All he had to do was finalize the secret location for tomorrow, and then leak the location to the law, and join Presto on the boat. Tomorrow the stand-ins for Big Wheel and Stoney would greet the suckers who'd paid good money for nothing, laugh at them, and then be whisked back to their original bodies when Presto shut off the machine- or so they thought. But those bodies would be dead, and he, Frank and Presto would 'inherit' and split $50 million, while all the biggest mob bosses in San Francisco would be either killed or captured in the police shootout that followed.

Then little things started going wrong. He turned on the TV to catch the early morning news and got nothing but static on any of the three San Francisco channels. Re-positioning the rabbit ears didn't help, nor did wrapping them in tin foil. Well, he'd get a new one in a few days, then - one of those fancy new sets that even had color!

Whatever his tv had caught appeared to have infected his car radio as well - he got nothing but static across the dial. Well, he planned to buy a new car even before he got a new tv - he'd had his eyes on a gull-wing Benz ever since they'd started planning this caper. At least the damn thing still ran, as rougly as usual, and as usual, a couple of times it stalled out on him while he was waiting for a traffic light.

He parked near the newsstand - but it was still locked shut. “Goldarned unreliable little coot!” he swore out loud about the 12 year old kid who operated the newsstand, as he strode the half block to the Pea Soup Diner. A departing patron left a paper on his table; Atherton snagged that paper as he headed to his own favorite table. It was a Los Angeles Chronicle but he didn't really care, as long as it had Buzz Sawyer, Terry and the Pirates and Sturdiman in the comic section.

As usual, Jaynie had his usual order standing by. As usual, he left a dollar on the table for his 98 cent meal, pointedly reminded her to 'keep the change', and then headed for work.

After Jaynie bused his table, she dropped his empty water glass and silver into a small paper sack. She dropped the single into the register, pulled out 2 pennies, and dropped them into her pocket. “Goldarned cheapskate!” she swore, then cheered up when another patron, an older woman, paused on her way out to swap 3 singles for the bag with the silver and water glass, then continued, just a few seconds behind Atherton. She rarely made $3 in tips in a single day.

Amber Dixon, President of the media conglomerate AD Publishing, which owned Amazing Detective Adventures magazine, walked quickly to a small panel truck. She thrust the bag through a hatch to the back, started the truck, and carefully followed Atherton. It wasn't difficult; she already knew where he was probably going. As she drove, she conversed with her partner, Rex Watson. The two always talked a lot when they worked a case together, and these conversations gave Amber a lot of information she used as backstory when she wrote up these cases for publication in Amazing Detective Adventures.

“I checked with local law enforcement, and the name Brett Atherton isn't even on their radar screen. He's never been arrested, not even a traffic ticket. So his prints aren't even on file,” Watson described some of the legwork he'd been doing since the phony Stoney had wrecked the NAPI conference. “But my Army Intelligence Classified clearing is still good - they sent me Basil Ashburton's prints by wire last night - and a hearty 'good luck'! I'll know if Atherton is Ashburton in a few minutes.”

“I hope you're right and he's the same guy,” Amber replied.

“Well, he's older, heavier, and has a lot less hair than he had when he was a Major in the Supply Corps during the Korean War. But so am I,” Rex admitted with a chuckle. “We were this close to nailing Ashburton for theft and resale of Army supplies when he just disappeared. His case was closed without resolution. So even though the cops don't want him for anything right now, we can turn him over to the Army.” He was silent for a few seconds, then there was a grunt of satisfaction. “Prints match. Atherton is Ashburton. Let's pick him up!”

Amber sped up, passed Atherton's car, and raced ahead to the small office building where Big Wheel rented the top two floors. Rex and Amber boarded the elevator just after Atherton, and Amber pushed the button for the second floor.

“Gol dang skirt!” Atherton swore as the door slid closed. “Next time, you better use the stairs.” There were a couple of more spicy words as well, but nothing Amber hadn't heard before.

“Why, Basil T. Ashburton, what would your mother say if she heard you talk to a lady that way?” she snarled right back at him.

For an instant, he was ready to swear again, but then he realized what she'd called him. “Too lazy to climb the stairs, and stupid…” he choked off his words when a small pistol poked his Adam's Apple, then before he could react, he felt another pistol in the small of his back. When the door opened on the second floor, Rex lifted his foot and pushed hard on Basil's rump - and he staggered out of the elevator and fell on his face. Before he could recover, he was once again the focus of two pistols.

“Keep quiet, arsehole, or you'll be talking through a hole in your throat!” Amber warned. “It's your turn to bind the bad guy, Rex,” she chuckled to her partner. He dropped a knee, none too gently, in the small of Basil's back, pulled his hands together, and snapped on cuffs.

“You don't know WHO you're messing with, ya punks. The law's got nothin' on me. Turn me over to them and I'll be back on the street by noon - and you won't see another noon, I promise you.”

“Why, Basil, dear boy, what makes you think we plan to turn you over to the law?” Amber knelt down, slapped him hard in the face. “that's for threatening us - don't do it again! You know, there's a buncha mob wigs who are gunnin' for you right now, I think any one of them would enjoy entertaining you for a while…”

“Hah! That don't scare me none! We got us a truce right now. Every one of 'em needs to stay on Big Wheel's good side, and they know I'm tight with the Wheel. Nobody'd touch me wit a 10 foot pole.”

“I guess he doesn't know yet, eh, Amb?” Rex was amused.

“Poor boy,” Amber shook her head slowly. “I guess not.” She turned to the bound man. “Presto's disappeared - we think he got on board that tramp steamer Wheel chartered, you know, the Maggot Maru? And the Maggot shipped out fast in the middle of the night last night, with the real Big Wheel and Stoney both aboard. And those phoney Maroneys, Wheel and Stoney…” she stopped. “Hey, Rex, I'm a poet!” Basil started to talk; Amber stuck her kerchief in his mouth. “It'll be a long time before it's your turn to talk, worm.”

“So those two phonys, not Wheel, not Stoney… say, that IS kind of fun to say, isn't it?” Rex responded with a laugh of his own. “Anyway, AVant Guard and that new Christmas chick took 'em away, who knows where? Meaning, you ain't got a friend left in this town, Basil. Though if you ever really thought those scum were your friends, I almost feel bad for you. But I guess you gotta take what you can get.”

“Anyway, we're not going to turn you over the the law, and we're not going to turn you over to the mobs - we're going to turn you over the the Army.”

To their surprise, Ashburton looked like he was trying to laugh. Amber pulled our her kerchief. “That suits me fine. I kept in touch with a guy in Army Intel back then; I know they never had anything on me but a lot of lies and slander.”

“I remember it a lot differently - we had you by the balls. Hey, I'm getting old, starting to forget things, so maybe I don't remember right,” Rex replied. “But you been AWOL for over 10 years, for starters, and they won't overlook that. Though personally I'd be a lot more worried about deserting from the Army during a time of war. They shoot wartime deserters, you know…” Before he could reply, Amber reinserted her kerchief.

Ashburton wasn't laughing any more as they led him out of the building in cuffs, a kerchief stuffed in his mouth, and a chain leash around his neck in case he got ideas about running.

Part 8: Epilogue

Well…. Pooters!

“Well, pooters!” Tammi complained loudly a couple of days later as she walked in the park with her friend. “I was hoping for some kind of action-packed wrap up to this whole adventure, and what happens? The bad guys and the magic fingerprint changing machine just disappear, instead of a gang war we get crickets, and we had nothing to do with it! We don't even get credit for stopping Double Vision - Cat did all the work, with a little help from me once you finally let me talk.”

“You can't have everything, Tuneful Titan!” Alex admonished her friend, ignoring her jibe. “We did go to the circus, where you got to perform in front of an admiring, awestruck audience…” Tammi made an artistic bow, “met the World's Oddest Couple, fought a bunch of bad guys, met a new friend, helped Congresswoman Smith find a manager for her store, went on a shopping spree in an expensive boutique, even though we didn't buy anything, and took out two high paid hired assassins from Oakland, all without breaking a sweat. And along the way, a few of San Francisco's biggest mobsters got knocked off or arrested, and we're gonna be on TV _again_ and we proved to the underworld that they can't escape their fingerprints, and that Crime Never Pays!”

“Yeah, but I wanted a real all hands knock-down drag-out finish, a battle royale par excellent, fight to the finish filled with AVant Guard ACTION!” Without warning, she dropped to the ground, and two softball sized red and green projectiles flashed through the air where her head had been and smashed into a stunned Alex.

Knock-down, Drag-out Battle Royale to the Finish!

“YOWW!” Alex hollered, stunned, as the projectiles burst, vanishing instantly, releasing their loads of water which instantly drenched her.

“C'mon, Stretch,” Tammi was laughing. “I can't believe you thought someone could ambush ME! I knew they were there minutes…”

BLOOSH! BLOOP! Two more balloons impacted Tammi, vanished, and left her soaked and momentarily silent. Jade Rouge dropped from the sky, followed by a large glowing green bucket filled with dozens of red and green balloons. Tiny and Sam raced out of hiding from behind some bushes to rearm themselves, while Alex's friend Donna Sparks raced in from the other direction. A three way battle quickly shook out; Sam teamed up with Tammi vs Donna and Caitlin vs. Tiny and Alex. Sam proved particularly adept at dodging, until the 5 women teamed up on him, he zigged when he should have zagged, and he took almost a dozen hits at the same time (Jade Rouge cheated and used her powers to throw several at once!).

Finally they were all exhausted, and laughing uncontrollably.

“Better, Tams?” Alex asked.

“Yeah, I guess not every case has to have a monster ending.” She hugged her friend - and the group found a hillside where they could dry off in the warm sun.

Eorth

The New Identity Caper

Post by Admin on Apr 30, 2021 21:09:51 GMT

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