The Adventures of Stickbang and the Gadgeteer 1
3/12/16
There’s a well known, age-old tradition in the state of Pennsylvania. Every February, a bunch of people gather in Punxsutawney to eat food, listen to live music, and wait to see if a groundhog named Phil sees his shadow. If he does, that means six more weeks of winter, and if he doesn’t, it’ll be an early spring. This year, he saw no shadow; warm weather was to come.
Unfortunately, that groundhog wasn’t very accurate.
Not two days ago Philadelphia had been struck by a brutal blizzard. Though the snow had long stopped, the air was still fiercely cold, and the remnants of the snowstorm were clear to see. Unsightly mounds of mottled, white-gray snow sat piled up high on the edges of the sidewalks, and super slippery black ice clung to the hastily plowed streets.
As he stared out at the city through the office's window, Lucas wished he could be there.
"Alright, kid..." the DMA agent was organizing some papers on his desk as he spoke. "Why, exactly, do you think I called you here today?"
Shifting in his seat, Lucas tried to think. The first thing that sprung to his mind was the recent terrorist attacks in New York - on the 9th, several explosive devices had reduced the Statue of Liberty to rubble, busted up Times Square, and turned Central Park into a smoking crater. It was one of the largest attacks in world history, and Lucas had heard that several other heroes had already been called in for damage control.
"I think I do, Mark... you want me to help out with New York?"
Shaking his head and sighing, the agent reached behind his desk. "No, Lucas." the teen couldn't see what he was doing but heard a drawer being opened. "I wanted to talk to you about..." he plopped down a stack of about 15 yellow papers onto his desk, which Lucas immediately recognized. Scratches and rips on the top of each of the pages showed that they had been stapled to something then torn off. "These."
Immediately, Lucas recognized what they were.
Taking one off of the top of the stack and lifting up his glasses, Mark began to read it off. With each passing word, the boy shrunk a little more in his seat. "Did you witness a crime? Forget 911! Call 267-555-2368 to get assistance from Philadelphia's uncanniest superheroes, Stickbang and the Gadgeteer!" he turned it over to Lucas. "Then it's got a little cartoon with your faces on it."
"Yeah, I..." Lucas stammered. " I drew those myself."
Mark tossed the flier down on the table. "Alright, you've had your license for, what... six months now? That's pretty much half a year. I don't think I need to get into why you shouldn't do something like this without contacting us about first." he folded up his glasses and tucked them into his collar. "Or at all, to be honest. Seriously, 'forget 911?' What were you thinking?"
"Well, I mean, Kr'zzz and I have this problem: we spend all day patrolling the city and stuff, but we never really run into any crimes." That wasn't true... when he was on patrol, he more often than not ran into a petty crime or two. "Well, big ones, I mean."
The agent was nodding as he listened to Lucas. "What about the police scanner we gave you?"
Lucas rubbed his arm, looking everywhere but at Mark's face. "It's useful, yeah, but... usually by the time we get there the police have cordoned off everything and don't really let us help out."
"If there's anything you can help with, either we or they will call you about it. No need for a phone line." the agent got up and pushed in his chair. "Alright, you're free to go... oh, and make sure to take those stupid fliers down."
Lucas stepped into the harsh light of outside, feeling the cold sink into his skin. As he zippered up his jacket and shivered, he glanced around. Wearing a big brown hoodie that he had pulled over his skintight white costume and cape - two pieces of clothing which he never removed - Kr'zzz'c was nearby, leaning up against a lamp post. Despite the wide age gap between the two (Kr'zzz was 36, Lucas was a fresh 18), they were good friends. Thanks in part to the fact that they had been living with each other for a while now.
"How'd the meeting go?"
Lucas shrugged. "Disappointing." pulling out his keys, he approached his car. "We have to shut down the phone service."
"Why?" Kr'zzz'c asked as Lucas unlocked the doors. "Didn't you get permission?"
"I was gonna ask after putting up the fliers." he slid into his seat, Kr'zzz'c taking the passenger's side. Lucas's nose crinkled at the smell of week-old McDonald's wrappers and WD-40, making a mental note to clean out the Civic sometime. Some of his tools were scattered around in the back seat, along with several prototypes for new gadgets. "Bad idea. We gotta go take those down, by the way."
"Yeesh. How many are there?"
"Uh..." Lucas tried to remember how just how many fliers he had stapled up around the city, carefully pulling out of his parking spot as he did. It had to be under two hundred - that was how many copies he had gotten that printing company to make for him. "Let's just say a bunch. Man... we are so lucky that you have super speed."
"You're gonna have to help too, y'know." as he said that, he pulled out a cell phone from his hoodie. "I don't really think the phone line was that great an idea anyway... you never showed me how to work this thing. It's been doing this weird thing where it starts going all, 'bzzrzrzrzrzrzzzzz.'" he began to shake the phone around in his hand as Lucas looked over at him. "And then other times, it'd get all, 'beep boop beep boop beep.'"
Lucas paused, hitting the breaks. "You mean it was buzzing? And ringing?"
Kr'zzz'c met his friend's excited look with a confused stare. "Is that what it's called?"
Being from a futuristic alternate dimension, Kr'zzz was just a little bit incapable when it came to electronics. Lucas didn't blame him - it was pretty much the equivalent of a modern-day kid like him being flung back to caveman times, forced to bash rocks together to make a fire instead of just turning the heater up to be warm.
Snatching the phone from Kr'zzz'c's hand, Lucas quickly checked to see if any voicemail had been left. Sure enough, there were twenty new ones - along with a couple texts. The teen burst into a grin.
"This is great!" he said. "As soon as we get home, let's go through those, and see if there's anything good."
Though he didn't really get what was going on, Kr'zzz'c smiled along with his friend. "Sounds good to me!"
It was dark out when the two superheroes stumbled through the door of Lucas's house. As usual, his dad was reclining back on his La-Z-Boy with a beer, watching some sports Luke could care less about.
"Hi dad." the teen threw a plastic bag filled with crumpled up yellow fliers into the garbage as Kr'zzz'c left to get a drink from the fridge. "You can cancel that phone thingy, we won't be using it."
"Cool." he grabbed a handful of chips from a rumpled bag of Ruffles which was propped up against his chair. Lucas loved Ruffles. The ingenious ridged design meant there was more chip per chip.
"How are things going with, uh..." he tried to remember the name of his father's girlfriend. The only thing he knew about her was that she was some variety of Asian... he had never met her, only seen pictures. "S-Susan?"
"Good." he tossed the chips in his mouth, munching loudly.
Lucas tried to think of anything else. "Oh, did you, uh... sell any cars at the dealership today?"
"Yup." suddenly, he lurched out of his chair. Lucas nearly fell in shock as his dad began to shout angrily. "Jesus Christ! That foul was absolute horsecrap! Is that ref blind?!"
It was best to leave when he got like this. So, Luke retreated to the kitchen, where Kr'zzz'c had just finished downing an entire carton of orange juice. He dropped it in the trash, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie.
"Is your dad watching the sports again?" Dragging a stool over to sit on, Lucas figured that Kr'zzz'c must've heard the yelling.
"Yes, he is." he reached out a hand. "Phone, please."
Kr'zzz'c pulled the device out of his pocket and swiftly tossed it to Lucas. Quickly, he began to sort through the texts and was disappointed by what he found. The majority of them seemed to be jokes, including the incredibly tired "is your refrigerator running" gag showing up a total of nine times.
"Crap." he looked over to Kr'zzz'c, who had an expectant look on his face. He shot the man a shrug. "No leads there... time to go through the calls." there were twenty of them. There had to be something there, right?
Once again, the effort proved futile. Worthless call after worthless call, Lucas got more frustrated. By voicemail number eighteen, he wanted to throw the thing across the room.
"What was it?" Kr'zzz'c asked. He had returned to the fridge, digging through it for something to eat.
"Bike theft." Luke sighed. "Police showed up halfway through the guy's message and he just said 'forget about it.'"
"Don't get too down, alright? There are still two voice thingies left, right?"
Lucas brought up the next one, switching it to speaker as he went to the pantry. He grabbed a Twinkie, hearing the voice of what sounded like a 16-year-old male.
"Uh... can I get two large pizzas, one with pepperoni, one with-"
He rushed over and slammed his finger down on the phone, ending the voicemail before the coronary hit.
Kr'zzz'c laughed. "Ha! He must've confused our number with one for a pizza restaurant."
Taking a bite out of his snack, Luke rolled his eyes. "One left. Let's... let's get this over with."
A staticky voice, clearly one that belonged to an old woman, came through the phone. "Hi, is this... Stickbang and the Gadgeteer? I was wondering if you could help me out... my grandson came home yesterday with a broken leg, and he says - believe this - a huge gator bit him."
"What's a gator?" Kr'zzz'c said, looking over to Lucas. He shushed him, holding up a finger.
"I know it sounds crazy, but... there's teeth marks and everything. I've been watching the news reports, and I was thinking... maybe it's one of those meta things that are popping up. If you could call me back, that'd be nice."
Her voice gave way to a flat noise that signified the voicemail was over. Lucas tossed the Twinkie away, nearly stumbling over himself as he grabbed the phone. "We gotta call back, we gotta call back!"
Hitting a couple buttons on the phone, he got the number of the missed caller and typed it back in. Anxiously he waited for the other side to pick up, locking eyes with Kr'zzz'c. If that "gator" was a metahuman - or metagator, or whatever - it would be the duo's first time interacting with another meta.
After what felt like an eternity, they answered the phone. "Hello?" it was the old woman from before.
Lucas cleared his throat, trying to deepen his voice as he talked. "Hi, I'm Gadgeteer, one half of Philly's top superhero duo, Stickbang and the Gadgeteer. We got your call, uh, about your grandson and the gator. We're interested in the case."
"Took you long enough to call back." glancing at the clock, Lucas saw that it was 11 PM.
"Sorry, we had a busy day today. Stopping crime, and such. But yes, could you maybe tell us a little more about what happened? Could you maybe get your grandson on the phone so we can discuss this gator situation with him?"
"Oh, he's in bed at the moment." she said. "Tell you what... would it be possible for you to stop by our house sometime?"
He looked at Kr'zzz'c. The phone was still on speaker, so he was hearing every word. He gave a nod of approval to the idea. "Sure thing, you got any idea when would be good?"
"How about, uh..." she paused. "Friday, near lunch time... I think he's got a day off of school then. Here's our address."
As she read it out, Lucas fumbled for a writing implement. He settled on the Sharpie that his dad used to mark his name on his lunch, and with lack of a better option scrawled down what she had said on the wrapper of his Twinkie.
"Did you get that written down?" the old lady asked.
"Pretty much." he said. "Alright, Friday is go. See you then."
She hung up.
"She hung up." Lucas said.
Posted Mar 12, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC · edited