Nuklear Age (51 page)

“Has the jury reached a verdict of guilty?” Judge Hangemall asked, his gavel ready to strike out a harsh dish of something nearly resembling justice.

“Yes,” Blazer answered. He stood and opened an envelope. “We find the Defendant—”

“Oink! I mean, wait!”

“Hurry it up, piggy” the Judge snapped. “They don’t make these gavels out of helium, y’know.”

“
I
wanted to give the verdict. Oink.”

“Oh, really? I couldn’t tell, what with the way you kept blurting it out at all the wrong times.”

“I couldn’t help it. Oink. I’m eager.”

“Well
I’m
the leader, therefore I get to deliver the verdict. Nyah.”

“I thought we weren’t a team no more, boss,” Granite chimed in this gravelly voice.

“What? That’s ridiculous. Where did you get that idea?”

Lord Obese chomped on some snack food without taking off their wrappers. “On accounta ‘cause you said you was tired of how indecisive we all are. Urp.”

“Oh, I did no such thing,” Blazer said. “I simply said that since we can’t seem to make a decision, we should vote on whether or not to remain a team. Of course, when I checked the ballot box, mine was the only vote cast. I believe you dolts were trying to figure out what order you would vote in.”

“Okenshi, the Juror of the Dark, remembers well the night of this proclamation. Many warriors fell to Okenshi’s silent blade, their blood flowed in the midnight rain—”

“What are you talking about?”

“…Okenshi likes to embellish.”

“It wasn’t even raining.”

“Okenshi thought he heard a drizzle around midnight.”

“Midnight?” Chonotor asked. “I think not. You are sound asleep no later than 8:46 p.m. every night.”

“Is that true? How can you even call yourself a ninja?!” Blazer asked.

“You question the honor of Okenshi?”

“You’re supposed to be a ninja! You don’t
have
honor. That’s the whole point!”

“Okenshi has the honor of the Night.”

“What is that supposed to mean, exactly?”

“Y’all just shaddup!” Judge Letgodsortitout yelled. “This gavel’s dang heavy. And ya make my head hurt. Just one of you, any of you, declare this Criminal Man and Vandal Lad guilty so we can all go home!”

“Wait a second,” interjected the nondescript gentleman who was minus one car thanks to Nuklear Man. “I resent that you costumed nuts assume you get to declare him guilty. These jerks have screwed us normal people too, y’know. I lost my car because of them. What have you lost?”

“Er,” most of the SMSTCAOAN uttered. “We, uh. He foiled one of our daring robberies.” Blazer responded. “Of, um, a doughnut shop.”

“Oh, how terrible,” the man mocked. “How about the jail time for that one?”

“We didn’t go to jail, not as such. But we were stuck under Obese here for so long that it inadvertently foiled our plans to wreck Nuklear Man’s beach party.”

“Sounds rough. Not quite as rough as trying, rather unsuccessfully I might add, to convince the insurance company that my car was utterly obliterated due to an act of Heroism. Seems the claims adjuster couldn’t salvage enough evidence from the slag to prove that it had even
been
a car. Now I’m out ten grand, I’ve still got to finish making payments on it,
and
buy a new car on top of that! I’ve been screwed over worse than all of you shmoes, I should get the pleasure of declaring them guilty.”

“I’ll declare us guilty if it’ll speed things up,” Atomik Lad muttered.

“All right!” Blazer yelled above the quarreling jury. “We’ll just say it all
together
, okay?” He was met with murmurs of agreement. “Okay. On the count of three.”

Atomik Lad tensed. “Aren’t you worried?”

“Nnnnnope.” Nuklear Man answered while petting Katkat. “We won’t have anything to worry about in exactly,” he checked his Danger: Watch. “Any second now.”

“Because of this insurance thing of yours, right?”

“The same.”

“You realize that terrifies me.”

“As it should.”

“We the jury,” the jury said simultaneously. “Find the Defendant, Nuklear Man—”

Atomik Lad cringed.

Katkat purred.

Nuklear Man smiled confidently.

Dr. Menace held back her maniacal cackle of triumph.

Count Insidious made plans for his share of the blood money.

Mighty Metallic Magno Man burst through the window directly behind the jury, who, in the midst of their simultaneous verdict, simultaneously dropped to the ground as shards of glass and recently unleashed monkeys skittered and scattered over their heads and into the courtroom.

Norman rolled up to his Heroic comrades and unfurled his gleaming tungsten self. “Yo. Sorry I took so long, but those border patrols kept insisting on doing things the Magno Way. The poor fools.”

The monkeys were attacking everyone and being very loud about it.

“No problem, Normie. I’d say you got here just in time,” the Hero gladly responded.

Atomik Lad tried to keep his cool by keeping the monkeys at bay. “Am I to assume this is your version of a plan? Gah! Back off!”

Nuklear Man grinned a proud grin. “Yup! I startle myself with my own brilliance. Now, whilst the authorities are busy wranglin’ up these here monkeys, we make with the ol’ escape. They’ll be all ‘Hey, duh, where’s Nuklear Man?’ Because they won’t have noticed our getaway amongst all this monkey induced chaos! It’s the perfect plan!”

“Is it, now? And then what do we do?” Atomik Lad, despite better judgment, asked.

“I think it’s fairly obvious,” Nuklear Man said. “We’ll go back to the Silo. They won’t be able to find us! It’s
underground!
Look as they might, we shall be snug within our subterranean headquarters! Tee hee.”

Atomik Lad sighed. “Nuke. They sent the subpoena to the Silo. They know exactly where we live. They could even spot it from an airplane if they had to since the entrance is the Danger: Main Doors which, in case you’ve forgotten, is basically a fifty foot wide metallic circle with a giant Nuklear ‘N’ on it. Hell, we’re in the phonebook! To recap, this plan sucks.”

“Sparky, just because you’re jealous of how completely inferior you are to me in every possible way is no reason to attack the integrity of the plan. Don’t you concur Norman?”

“Yeah—”

“See there?”

“—the plan sucks.”

“
Dah!
Why must I be surrounded by simpletons like you two who can’t possibly appreciate the beautiful subtlety of my ingenious plan?”

“I think you were wrong in every possible way on that one, Big Guy.”

“So says you.”

“Hey…” Norman said, pointing to some of the monkeys nearest Count Insidious, “Do those monkeys look pale to you?”

The vampire snatched a small simian and sucked it dry to produce yet another pale monkey slave.

“He’s turning our loyal army of monkeys into his own loyaler army of zombie monkeys!” Nuklear Man exclaimed. “No fair.”

“That’s great. Like we didn’t have enough things going against us, now we’ve got this. And who do we have to blame for it all? Wwwwwell that’d be Mr. Nukie Man.”

“Hey!” the Hero said. “It’s not my fault he’s a vampire!”

The first generation zombie monkeys started making their own zombie progeny, setting up clans and a hierarchy based on the closeness of one’s zombie-blood to the Count. Within minutes, the insane monkey madness was turned into a much more unsettling zombie-monkey beady-eyed stare-down.

Silence dominated the courtroom as a few brave souls started poking their heads out from whatever makeshift cover they had procured. A slap resounded from under the Prosecution’s table as Judge Hangemall rolled out from it. He came to a stop near his bench. “Er, how ever did I get under there?” he asked as though he had no idea. Dr. Menace climbed out from the Prosecution’s Table and straightened her lab coat and tight Evil: Leather Outfit. The Judge hopped over the bench, sat down, and banged the gavel a few times. “Order! Count, git them creepy monkeys outta here.”

“Certainly, your honor.” He whispered a mysterious ancient word of power and they melted into shadows.

“Now then, where were we?” the Judge asked.

“The jury was just about to deliver their verdict of guilty,” the Count answered.

“Finally,”
Hangemall muttered.

“One, two, three,” Blazer prompted. Again, he was joined by his fellow jurors, “We, the jury find the defendant, Nuklear Man…”

America gasped in anticipation. In Avalondon, someone’s grandmother died. In a hotel down the street from the courtroom, she was reborn as a baby girl two weeks premature. In Burgsville, lightning struck. And the Earth coursed through the ocean of space on wings of time with billions of souls separated by chasms of their own design.

Somewhere, a dog barked.

“…guilty.”

“Huh,” Nuklear Man said incredulously. “Who’da thunked it?”

__________

Issue 39 – Like Father, Like Son

“Awright!” Judge Hangemall said hungrily. “Now it’s time for sentencing. Nuklear Man, you are hereby ordered to pay the plaintiff the full amount of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Ha!”

Nuklear Man shook his head, slowly, like it was a real darn shame. “Why does it always end in murder?” PLAZMAAA—”

“Nuke, calm down. We live off the royalties of a merchandising empire that brings in, like, a billion dollars a year. We get about a million bucks every quarter.”

“We do?”

“Yeah, I make sure that most of it goes to charities to keep you from stockpiling weapons and hiring mercenaries to do your Heroing so you can watch more cartoons.”

“Oh yeah. There is that.”

“We’ll just have to make a few cutbacks to our budget and the donations for a little while to pay this off.” Atomik Lad paused momentarily. “It’s really not much of a hassle. Especially compared to the amount of time and energy Dr. Menace must’ve invested in this plan of hers to ruin us. It’s really quite harmless in the long run.”

“Excuse me, your honor,” Count Insidious said while levitating some legal papers out of his briefcase. “I have something here that might interest you.”

“Hurry it up then. I gots me a wrastlin’ tape I could be watching.”

The paperwork floated itself to the Judge’s bench. “You’ll see that we’ve spearheaded a class action suit against Nuklear Man for the destruction of six hundred million dollars worth of public and private property.”

“What?!”
Atomik Lad blurted.

“Wow, I’ve been
busy!”
Nuklear Man said proudly.

Count Insidious went on, “Thousands of homes, hundreds of businesses, and several blocks of city streets and property were severely damaged and/or destroyed in last week’s struggle with the Crushtacean creature.”

“We were saving the city from complete destruction!” Atomik Lad said.

“Yes, but at what cost?” Count Insidious countered. “Oh, it was six hundred million dollars.”

“Look, we regret that parts of the city were harmed while we were subduing Crushtacean, but would you rather the
entire
city were leveled instead?”

“That sounds like a threat. The threat of a clearly guilty man.”“We did what was necessary. What’s important is that no one was hurt during the attack.”

“How do you know the creature was on an insane rampage?” the Count said. “He didn’t start destroying anything until you and Nuklear Man began agitating him. I think with that indisputable evidence, combined with the findings of this case, we have established that alleged Heroes are responsible for the damages that are caused as a result of their occupation. After all, if a taxi driver runs over a nun, he is held responsible. I don’t see the difference here.”

“He’s got a point,” the Judge agreed. “I’m afraid I have to find in favor of the collective plaintiffs in this new case as well.”

“This is crazy!” Atomik Lad protested.

“Crazy that we’ve allowed ourselves to live under your tyrannical reign of spandexed violence for so many years. Y’all are gonna have to cough up six hundred million dollars.” The gavel echoed like gunshots.

The Count cleared his throat. New paperwork floated to the judge. “We’d also like to retroactively charge Nuklear Man and Atomik Lad for damages incurred during their decade-long history of destruction, even though it’s highly illegal to do so. We’re still working on the total, but we’re thinking along the lines of fifty billion dollars. Give or take.”

The mob of TV reporters stormed out of the courtroom to report on the verdict so they could then broadcast uninformed, unresearched, irresponsible reports linking all heroics with acts of terror. The ratings were going to soar.

“Psst, Sparky,” Nuklear Man whispered. “Can we afford that?”

“Oh sure. It would only take about seven hundred years.”

“And since y’all cain’t possibly pay that amount, yer gonna have to be incarcerated for your crimes against humanity. Nuklear Man, you are sentenced to life in the Metroville State Penitentiary at Katabasis. You will be kept in a hitherto sealed off dungeon in the north tower where you will be chained to a wall and forced to endure an iron mask for the rest of your living days.” Hangemall punctuated his sentence with the gavel.

“That was cruel and unusual punishment even when it was acceptable. You’re insane!” Atomik Lad said.

“You watch it, boy. Just because you’re not being tried don’t mean I can’t send you to jail for no reason too. Now then, Bailiff Civil Defender, apprehend the Defendant and git him into a temporary cell. We’ll transfer him to more ‘pleasant’ accommodations tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, good, that chain and mask thing sounded really uncomfortable.”

Civil Defender walked up to Nuklear Man with a pair of handcuffs. “Ohhhh, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

“What’re you talking about? You haven’t even known me for a whole week yet.”

“Quiet, you. Now hand over the cat.”

“Mew?” Katkat uttered while cradled between the Hero’s arms.

Nuklear Man laughed. “No, I don’t think so.”

“C’mon, drop the cat. They don’t allow pets where you’re going.”

Katkat quivered.

“Leave the cat out of this,” Nuklear Man said.