"Oh not this one again."
"Oh yes this one again. You brought up Captain Peyote, after all." Captain Quaalude had moved to a nearby, half-destroyed warehouse along with his partner Grifter, Captain Conscious, The Battling Bowman, and Greased Lightning. They were all sitting around a barrel that they had filled up with scrap wood to set aflame. When The Caffiend had asked Grease to help them save the world, and she said it was a lot to think about, so to give her some time to process everything, The Caffiend went off to get Jack. leaving everyone to wait in an abandoned building along the New Jersey shoreline. As time dragged on, they began to exchange stories and now it was Quaalude
Quaalude hunched forward so his face was better lit by the firelight, "So, the Brocks had attacked again. They had this moon base and we had found their teleport so we tweedled up there. The Brocks had these anti-monad guns, but we thought they only worked on the meta active."
Grifter held up a hand and spoke in an exasperated tone, "Just a shmoe with a bow."
Quaalude nodded as he echoed his partner, "Just a shmoe with a bow. No powers to speak of... so their anti-monad weapons were useless... or so we thought." Quaalude leaned back and pointed at Grifter, "So this lunatic charges every Brock we find, just tanking shot after shot to the face, and at the time, we thought it had no effect. We disable their cloak, WASP locks onto the base, they port in a whole platoon of dudes in power armor, and as they take over the place, we split."
Grifter sighed and hung his head.
Quaalude leans forward again, "But it turns out, it does affect normies. It makes you stupid. Not intelligence, but... your ability to understand the consequences of your actions."
Grifter lifted his head up and explained in a morose tone, "It takes away your life experience so you become 'foolish'."
Quaalude nodded, "What he said. It drove Grifter here insane and we didn't know."
The Battling Bowman chimed in, "Well, how would you tell the difference?"
Grifter retaliated with a glare, but didn't interrupt.
"ANYWAYS... So we get back to Earth, Grifter was acting odd, but at first I didn't figure it out. Then he gets a bee in his bonnet to go after Zodiac. We go on a rampage after these guys for a week, until we come across Pisces. Now this guy, he's just a dude with big fish eyes who can breathe underwater. That's it. I have no idea why he was a big crime boss. He was like... a nobody. But it also turns out it's who Grifter was looking for. So he insists we capture him, so we do. We bring him back to Grifter's base. Grifter tells me he's gonna interrogate the guy alone. I thought it was odd, but I let it go."
Grifter sighed.
Quaalude holds up his hands, one finger each, "Two days, nothing. Grifter isn't answering any of his calls. I go to check up on him. I find out he built an entire water tank in his basement and set it up like a giant fishbowl. He also had gone out and captured MurderMaid, who was this assassin who could breathe under water. Grifter had them both in this tank. There was a giant plastic castle in there for them to swim through, a few chunks of coral, and as I walk in, he was sprinkling fish flakes into the water."
Grease blinked, "What?"
Quaalude pointed at her, "That's what I said! He told me he was going to wait until she laid a bunch of eggs, he'd fertilize them, then he was going to raise the babies and repopulate Atlantis."
Grifter covered his mask with a gloved hand.
Grease stared at Grifter, "Why?
Grifter shrugged, "Seemed... like a good idea at the time?"
Conscious rolled his eyes, "Why are all your stories so messed up?"
Quaalude ignored his counterpart, "Anyway... I did a quick scan of Grifter, figured out that the Brock weapons had done permanent damage, so I knocked him out. Eventually it would take about five days of treatment to reverse the damage. In the meantime, I sedated both Pisces and MurderMaid, gooped them, put them in the back of his delivery van, then took them down to the docks. I woke them up, told them, 'never speak of this to anyone.' then dumped them in the river."
Grease squinted, "Gooped?"
Quaalude pulled out one of his guns and picked a random wall. He shot a pellet that rapidly expanded as it flew out into a rather large ball of black foam that splattered all over the wall in a wide area. The foam almost instantly hardened. He put the gun away, "Gooped. It eventually disintegrates. One of the first things I created."
Conscious nodded, "Same here. It's a rather versatile alchemical brew."
Grease looked at Conscious, "Wait. Alchemical? That's magic. I thought you two were gadgeteers."
Her counterparts both shook their heads and spoke in eerie unison, "Oh no! We both use magic.
"Just like you."
Waving her hands and shaking her head, Grease stood up and backed away, "No no no no no... Hold on... I'm a... I'm a straight up, good old fashioned mutant." She hit her chest a few times, "I ain't messing around with that twisted, fucked up, magic shit. I've seen how much it fucked up my friend Goldie. I'm just a speedster."
Conscious frowned then pulled out a small pair of binoculars from his belt and looked at Grease through them, "Uhhh... Your free monads are primarily up up down with the down being counter. Not a clockwise down to be seen." He put his specs away, "Who told you that you're a mutant?"
Grease closed her eyes and held her hands out in a T-shape, "Time out. Stop. Hold it." She glared at Conscious, "HOW is this possible? I've never cast a spell in my life!"
Quaalude tilted his head to the side, "When you were growing up, did you try to get in shape? Did you work out a lot? Have dreams of being a track star or something along those lines?" She nodded and looked a bit wary as Quaalude continued, "And did you do anything special to improve yourself... like... eat special foods?"
Grease was about to protest, but stopped herself. She started talking softly like she was just now remembering something from a long time ago, "I... did... start making these special smoothies?" She cleared her throat, "I bought a bunch of vitamins and minerals and..." Her voice slowly trailed off.
Conscious pointed at her, "There you go. You just instinctively picked out what you needed to mix to have the desire effect. Alchemy isn't just potions, you can transform people and things permanently. Nobody else can copy what you do. It has to be the right combination of things, but that final leap from mere chemical reaction to alchemical brew requires an alchemist's magic touch. Literally." He shrugged, "Now it IS expensive and time consuming, but I've done some permanent speed enhancement, but just a little. I prefer to stick to temporary combat boosts. Living at super speed all the time? I honestly don't know how you stand it."
Quaalude chimed in, "Well, not everything we do can't be reproduced. It just takes a lot of time to make a formula anyone can use." He snapped his fingers, "That reminds me." He started to load up a cartridge into a gun with a needle on the end as he kept talking, "Permanent enhancement has its upside and downside. It's more expensive cash wise to use temporary boosts in the long term, but you get better performance as there is only so much abuse the human body can take." He jabbed the needle directly into his neck and pulled the trigger.
The Battling Bowman winced and turned away, "Gosh Darn It! Can you warn a guy? I don't know how you two do that without flinching."
Grease flinched a little, but didn't avert her eyes, "What's that do?" She jutted her chin at Quaalude's gun.
Quaalude didn't answer right away. His eyes rolled up into his head and fluttered for a few moments, before he blinked one last time and let out a puff of air, "Refreshing." He paused, stared at Grease for a few moments, then seemed to figure out what she asked, "Oh. This?" He pointed at the hypo-gun. "That was liquid REM. A full night's sleep in three seconds."
Conscious looked unhappy and slowly shook his head, "And you got on my case about being an addict."
Quaalude narrowed his eyes at Conscious, "You were abusing pain killers and mood modifiers." He held up his hypo-gun, "This is performance enhancing. I only use it when I'm working a case.
The Battling Bowman had turned back and was poking at the fire with a long stick, "Except you never stop working cases, do you?" He leaned to the side to look around the fire at Quaalude, "When was the last time you had a good night's sleep in an actual bed?"
Quaalude returned the look, "Back when I had real legs."
That comment derailed the conversation and everyone went quiet. The only sound was the crackling of the fire. Conscious finally broke the awkward silence, "Mom told me to invite you to come visit."
Quaalude's eyes darted to look at his counterpart, "She's not..." He bit his words back and looked like he regretted what he was about to say. Instead he looked at the fire and spoke in a much more respectful tone "Tell her thank you, but-"
Conscious lashed out with a fist to hit the side of the can. The bong reverberated around the cavernous space. He glared at his opposite spoke with a tinge of sarcasm, "Oh I get it. You're a badass! A HERO in backworld, the world without heroes!" He stood up to look down upon his dark reflection, "You're also family. You cured me when nobody else could. MOM is grateful you saved her son's life! She thinks of you as her son, TOO! But you can't even be bothered to attempt to contact her." He waved his hand in Quaalude' general direction, "All you do is... THIS. This constant brooding bull crap! If you really wanted, you could get a tourist visa from WASP and FERB and spend some time visiting. You certainly earned it!" He threw his hands in the air, "Would it kill you to spend a few days NOT constantly fighting the good fight?"
"Would it kill me? No." Quaalude took a deep breath, then let it out slow, "But while I'm taking a vacation, who's going to patrol Empire City? There's no multi-man in my world, brother. We got the Authoritarians. We got the Symbiote Alliance." He smirked more to himself than at anyone else, "We got Madog." He looked at Grifter, "Madog ever tell you how he got his name?" Grifter shook his head. Quaalude snorted, "I asked him once. He apparently woke up in an alleyway with total retrograde amnesia, lying next to a broken typewriter. He tried to type out his name and the first thing that came to mind was mad dog, but he could only hit each key once 'cause it stuck after he pressed it. So he became Madog." He slowly shook his head, "Then he took a trashcan lid, punched it with his fists until it looked like a mask, and on that day, history was made for the great hero Madog walked among us." The sarcasm was dripping from every word as he spoke, "We're the world without heroes because backworld only has two things; vigilantes and villains." He cast his eyes down as he spoke softly, "I'm no hero. I'm just the guy who never gives up and never quits."
Quaalude took off his goggles long enough to rub his eyes. Now that she could see them clearly, Grease could not help but notice that while her counterparts shared many things, Quaalude's eyes were far older.
"You know why I do what I do?" Quaalude put his goggles back on, "I started out a crook. I was angry at the world and was just trying to get revenge on everyone. I don't even know who I was trying to punish, but I was going to make them all pay. One day Grifter here kicked my ass and convinced me to quit. So I retired. Months went by and I had no idea what to do anymore. My life was going nowhere and all I had was crushing despair. One night I was watching TV and saw a press conference with then Captain John Bishop. Some reporter asked him, 'How do you plan to handle this rash of crime?' They were basically laughing at him because everyone knew the cops were corrupt and his task force was being set up to fail. You know what he said? He said, 'We can handle it with a few good men. All you need are men who won't back down. ... Hell. All we need is ONE man. Just one. That's all it would take. A man who never gives up and never quits. A man who can't be bought off, scared off, or killed off. ' And you know what the reporter said?" Grease just slightly shook her head, so he continued, "The reporter laughed at him and said..."
"'A man like that would have to be on drugs'."
Quaalude pointed at Grifter, "So I searched the city until I found Grifter on a roof top casing out a place called Tony's Original Pizza and we're been doing this ever since." He let out a long sigh, "I got a lot of blood in my ledger from back in the day and I'm just trying to balance my books. I don't have time to take a break. Maybe some day I'll zero it out and on that day... I'll come visit."
"Promise."
There was a pause in the conversation. For a few moments, the only sound was the crackling fire. Grease spoke softly while staring into the flames. She talked as if she was remembering something from her distant past. Something she didn't want to remember.
"Is Super Gal Allowed To Take A Day Off?"
"Oh not this one again."
"Oh yes this one again. You brought up Captain Peyote, after all." Captain Quaalude had moved to a nearby, half-destroyed warehouse along with his partner Grifter, Captain Conscious, The Battling Bowman, and Greased Lightning. They were all sitting around a barrel that they had filled up with scrap wood to set aflame. When The Caffiend had asked Grease to help them save the world, and she said it was a lot to think about, so to give her some time to process everything, The Caffiend went off to get Jack. leaving everyone to wait in an abandoned building along the New Jersey shoreline. As time dragged on, they began to exchange stories and now it was Quaalude
Quaalude hunched forward so his face was better lit by the firelight, "So, the Brocks had attacked again. They had this moon base and we had found their teleport so we tweedled up there. The Brocks had these anti-monad guns, but we thought they only worked on the meta active."
Grifter held up a hand and spoke in an exasperated tone, "Just a shmoe with a bow."
Quaalude nodded as he echoed his partner, "Just a shmoe with a bow. No powers to speak of... so their anti-monad weapons were useless... or so we thought." Quaalude leaned back and pointed at Grifter, "So this lunatic charges every Brock we find, just tanking shot after shot to the face, and at the time, we thought it had no effect. We disable their cloak, WASP locks onto the base, they port in a whole platoon of dudes in power armor, and as they take over the place, we split."
Grifter sighed and hung his head.
Quaalude leans forward again, "But it turns out, it does affect normies. It makes you stupid. Not intelligence, but... your ability to understand the consequences of your actions."
Grifter lifted his head up and explained in a morose tone, "It takes away your life experience so you become 'foolish'."
Quaalude nodded, "What he said. It drove Grifter here insane and we didn't know."
The Battling Bowman chimed in, "Well, how would you tell the difference?"
Grifter retaliated with a glare, but didn't interrupt.
"ANYWAYS... So we get back to Earth, Grifter was acting odd, but at first I didn't figure it out. Then he gets a bee in his bonnet to go after Zodiac. We go on a rampage after these guys for a week, until we come across Pisces. Now this guy, he's just a dude with big fish eyes who can breathe underwater. That's it. I have no idea why he was a big crime boss. He was like... a nobody. But it also turns out it's who Grifter was looking for. So he insists we capture him, so we do. We bring him back to Grifter's base. Grifter tells me he's gonna interrogate the guy alone. I thought it was odd, but I let it go."
Grifter sighed.
Quaalude holds up his hands, one finger each, "Two days, nothing. Grifter isn't answering any of his calls. I go to check up on him. I find out he built an entire water tank in his basement and set it up like a giant fishbowl. He also had gone out and captured MurderMaid, who was this assassin who could breathe under water. Grifter had them both in this tank. There was a giant plastic castle in there for them to swim through, a few chunks of coral, and as I walk in, he was sprinkling fish flakes into the water."
Grease blinked, "What?"
Quaalude pointed at her, "That's what I said! He told me he was going to wait until she laid a bunch of eggs, he'd fertilize them, then he was going to raise the babies and repopulate Atlantis."
Grifter covered his mask with a gloved hand.
Grease stared at Grifter, "Why?
Grifter shrugged, "Seemed... like a good idea at the time?"
Conscious rolled his eyes, "Why are all your stories so messed up?"
Quaalude ignored his counterpart, "Anyway... I did a quick scan of Grifter, figured out that the Brock weapons had done permanent damage, so I knocked him out. Eventually it would take about five days of treatment to reverse the damage. In the meantime, I sedated both Pisces and MurderMaid, gooped them, put them in the back of his delivery van, then took them down to the docks. I woke them up, told them, 'never speak of this to anyone.' then dumped them in the river."
Grease squinted, "Gooped?"
Quaalude pulled out one of his guns and picked a random wall. He shot a pellet that rapidly expanded as it flew out into a rather large ball of black foam that splattered all over the wall in a wide area. The foam almost instantly hardened. He put the gun away, "Gooped. It eventually disintegrates. One of the first things I created."
Conscious nodded, "Same here. It's a rather versatile alchemical brew."
Grease looked at Conscious, "Wait. Alchemical? That's magic. I thought you two were gadgeteers."
Her counterparts both shook their heads and spoke in eerie unison, "Oh no! We both use magic.
"Just like you."
Waving her hands and shaking her head, Grease stood up and backed away, "No no no no no... Hold on... I'm a... I'm a straight up, good old fashioned mutant." She hit her chest a few times, "I ain't messing around with that twisted, fucked up, magic shit. I've seen how much it fucked up my friend Goldie. I'm just a speedster."
Conscious frowned then pulled out a small pair of binoculars from his belt and looked at Grease through them, "Uhhh... Your free monads are primarily up up down with the down being counter. Not a clockwise down to be seen." He put his specs away, "Who told you that you're a mutant?"
Grease closed her eyes and held her hands out in a T-shape, "Time out. Stop. Hold it." She glared at Conscious, "HOW is this possible? I've never cast a spell in my life!"
Quaalude tilted his head to the side, "When you were growing up, did you try to get in shape? Did you work out a lot? Have dreams of being a track star or something along those lines?" She nodded and looked a bit wary as Quaalude continued, "And did you do anything special to improve yourself... like... eat special foods?"
Grease was about to protest, but stopped herself. She started talking softly like she was just now remembering something from a long time ago, "I... did... start making these special smoothies?" She cleared her throat, "I bought a bunch of vitamins and minerals and..." Her voice slowly trailed off.
Conscious pointed at her, "There you go. You just instinctively picked out what you needed to mix to have the desire effect. Alchemy isn't just potions, you can transform people and things permanently. Nobody else can copy what you do. It has to be the right combination of things, but that final leap from mere chemical reaction to alchemical brew requires an alchemist's magic touch. Literally." He shrugged, "Now it IS expensive and time consuming, but I've done some permanent speed enhancement, but just a little. I prefer to stick to temporary combat boosts. Living at super speed all the time? I honestly don't know how you stand it."
Quaalude chimed in, "Well, not everything we do can't be reproduced. It just takes a lot of time to make a formula anyone can use." He snapped his fingers, "That reminds me." He started to load up a cartridge into a gun with a needle on the end as he kept talking, "Permanent enhancement has its upside and downside. It's more expensive cash wise to use temporary boosts in the long term, but you get better performance as there is only so much abuse the human body can take." He jabbed the needle directly into his neck and pulled the trigger.
The Battling Bowman winced and turned away, "Gosh Darn It! Can you warn a guy? I don't know how you two do that without flinching."
Grease flinched a little, but didn't avert her eyes, "What's that do?" She jutted her chin at Quaalude's gun.
Quaalude didn't answer right away. His eyes rolled up into his head and fluttered for a few moments, before he blinked one last time and let out a puff of air, "Refreshing." He paused, stared at Grease for a few moments, then seemed to figure out what she asked, "Oh. This?" He pointed at the hypo-gun. "That was liquid REM. A full night's sleep in three seconds."
Conscious looked unhappy and slowly shook his head, "And you got on my case about being an addict."
Quaalude narrowed his eyes at Conscious, "You were abusing pain killers and mood modifiers." He held up his hypo-gun, "This is performance enhancing. I only use it when I'm working a case.
The Battling Bowman had turned back and was poking at the fire with a long stick, "Except you never stop working cases, do you?" He leaned to the side to look around the fire at Quaalude, "When was the last time you had a good night's sleep in an actual bed?"
Quaalude returned the look, "Back when I had real legs."
That comment derailed the conversation and everyone went quiet. The only sound was the crackling of the fire. Conscious finally broke the awkward silence, "Mom told me to invite you to come visit."
Quaalude's eyes darted to look at his counterpart, "She's not..." He bit his words back and looked like he regretted what he was about to say. Instead he looked at the fire and spoke in a much more respectful tone "Tell her thank you, but-"
Conscious lashed out with a fist to hit the side of the can. The bong reverberated around the cavernous space. He glared at his opposite spoke with a tinge of sarcasm, "Oh I get it. You're a badass! A HERO in backworld, the world without heroes!" He stood up to look down upon his dark reflection, "You're also family. You cured me when nobody else could. MOM is grateful you saved her son's life! She thinks of you as her son, TOO! But you can't even be bothered to attempt to contact her." He waved his hand in Quaalude' general direction, "All you do is... THIS. This constant brooding bull crap! If you really wanted, you could get a tourist visa from WASP and FERB and spend some time visiting. You certainly earned it!" He threw his hands in the air, "Would it kill you to spend a few days NOT constantly fighting the good fight?"
"Would it kill me? No." Quaalude took a deep breath, then let it out slow, "But while I'm taking a vacation, who's going to patrol Empire City? There's no multi-man in my world, brother. We got the Authoritarians. We got the Symbiote Alliance." He smirked more to himself than at anyone else, "We got Madog." He looked at Grifter, "Madog ever tell you how he got his name?" Grifter shook his head. Quaalude snorted, "I asked him once. He apparently woke up in an alleyway with total retrograde amnesia, lying next to a broken typewriter. He tried to type out his name and the first thing that came to mind was mad dog, but he could only hit each key once 'cause it stuck after he pressed it. So he became Madog." He slowly shook his head, "Then he took a trashcan lid, punched it with his fists until it looked like a mask, and on that day, history was made for the great hero Madog walked among us." The sarcasm was dripping from every word as he spoke, "We're the world without heroes because backworld only has two things; vigilantes and villains." He cast his eyes down as he spoke softly, "I'm no hero. I'm just the guy who never gives up and never quits."
Quaalude took off his goggles long enough to rub his eyes. Now that she could see them clearly, Grease could not help but notice that while her counterparts shared many things, Quaalude's eyes were far older.
"You know why I do what I do?" Quaalude put his goggles back on, "I started out a crook. I was angry at the world and was just trying to get revenge on everyone. I don't even know who I was trying to punish, but I was going to make them all pay. One day Grifter here kicked my ass and convinced me to quit. So I retired. Months went by and I had no idea what to do anymore. My life was going nowhere and all I had was crushing despair. One night I was watching TV and saw a press conference with then Captain John Bishop. Some reporter asked him, 'How do you plan to handle this rash of crime?' They were basically laughing at him because everyone knew the cops were corrupt and his task force was being set up to fail. You know what he said? He said, 'We can handle it with a few good men. All you need are men who won't back down. ... Hell. All we need is ONE man. Just one. That's all it would take. A man who never gives up and never quits. A man who can't be bought off, scared off, or killed off. ' And you know what the reporter said?" Grease just slightly shook her head, so he continued, "The reporter laughed at him and said..."
"'A man like that would have to be on drugs'."
Quaalude pointed at Grifter, "So I searched the city until I found Grifter on a roof top casing out a place called Tony's Original Pizza and we're been doing this ever since." He let out a long sigh, "I got a lot of blood in my ledger from back in the day and I'm just trying to balance my books. I don't have time to take a break. Maybe some day I'll zero it out and on that day... I'll come visit."
"Promise."
There was a pause in the conversation. For a few moments, the only sound was the crackling fire. Grease spoke softly while staring into the flames. She talked as if she was remembering something from her distant past. Something she didn't want to remember.
"Is Super Gal Allowed To Take A Day Off?"
