And Introducing…

Testing, 1, 10, 11. Alright, according to Optimal Outer Control, we have signal. Greetings, people of whichever Earth this reaches. Hopefully not that pirate one where Nixon is still president. This is supposed to be a world with no superheroes that receives this. I myself am a supervillain. That’s right, costume, powers, plans to wreak evil on the world, that sort of thing. Trust me, I do a lot of wreaking. Usually in bathrooms. In fact, this one time I didn’t even bother getting close to the toilet. I just stood in the middle of the bathroom, put my arm up, and went “ch ch ch, chchchchchch!” while rotating in place. You should have seen the faces on the other guys in that airport bathroom. I have it on good authority that that more than anything is why they put me on the no-fly list.

You know, on the one hand, I’m glad for you. I’m sure a planet without so much power in the hands of so few has a lot fewer problems. After all, then you’d need a whole lot of jerkwad people to be supportive of the kind of crap they pull over here. What’s that? Got an email from OOC here on this subject.

…so, in a topic that is in no way meant to change the subject, you might be wondering what I’m doing communicating with your planet now. The answer to that is simple. I don’t know. I got the idea and technology from this hero I fought the other day. Guy by the name of Jetbomb or something. A teenager with more fashion sense than situational awareness.

I was running interference for a client. Elita the Warrior Woman, to be specific. Quite the Amazonian beauty. One of the types that can throw a car at people. She is one of the bigger names just because she can go mano a womano with the big name heroes in a straight up fight. I find you shouldn’t ever bother with a fair fight unless you’re unable to kick your opponent in the balls. Anyway, I’m in the bar about a week back and she’s got a crowd over there, except suddenly a bunch of them start laughing. Not the nice laughter either. Knowing that and noticing who they’re laughing at, I figured I was about to see somebody’s head shoved through a wall. She threatened it and they backed off, to my disappointment, but then I noticed her slump down in her barstool.

I shouldn’t have been staring, but that’s when I saw the handbill. Bleh, archaic term. We use a lot less paper where I come from you know. Or they did. I’m fairly certain I didn’t blow up the planet when I left. Anyway, handbill. This author was in town promoting a book called Master and Margarita 2: Chinese Takeout. That’s when I got the idea to walk over there and just be myself to the large muscular woman who was upset over being made fun of.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I walked up the bar and called to the bartender for another White Russian and cheesesticks. It’s not really a bad guy bar without ways to kill people all over the place. My favorite are the cheesesticks. Then, acting all nonchalant, I’m like, “Hello Elita the Warrior Woman. I see you are sitting here. How are you today that is causing you to be despondent?” I don’t remember the actual backhand. After pulling myself out of the table’s wreckage, I walked back over to the bar to pick up my ready food. I lingered a second and had my mouth open, so she grabbed me by the collar of my jacket.

“Listen, I don’t feel like being made fun of, so why don’t you get out of here you little blond bumfucker.”

My response had to wait until I’d reset my jaw from the previous blow.  Ow.

“First of all, that was probably offensive to gay people. Second of all, I wasn’t intending to make fun of your carpet-munching ass at all.”

“I meant bumfuck like the middle of bumfuck, nowhere.”

“Oh. Ew, I hope they don’t do a lot of ranching out there.”

“It’s a saying!”

“I hope that’s all it is. Listen, I saw you were sad and I was naturally curious as to how anyone could actually possess a pair big enough to laugh at you. Also, would you care for a cheesestick?” I held it out for her. If you’re wondering why the specifics on the dialogue now, it’s because of some playback I’ve got built in. I started recording a little after realizing I had no idea how I got from the bar to the middle of a broken table across the room. It’s the kind of thing that piques one’s curiosity.

She took that cheesestick and we sat down and had ourselves a small talk about her favorite author who was coming in town in the next few days. She wanted to go see him at the book signing but there was a big problem. Her rather distinctive size. Publishers like to keep an eye out for anyone unusual to prevent kidnappings. Not like they’d have any security present capable of taking out a woman of Elita’s stature, but they’d make a call requesting superhuman assistance at the place.

For someone just wanting to peacefully see her favorite author, it was indeed a problem. She didn’t want to kidnap him either, and I don’t blame her. I find it’s tough to get the chain around their necks tight enough to hold them but not so tight it chokes them. There are a lot of technical matters like that involved in supervillainy. Most people don’t realize that we work very hard to create the terrifying experiences we unleash upon the world.

Actually, Elita is one of those who usually doesn’t bother, which was part of her problem. Right away I knew what to do. See, what Elita needed was a decoy.

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