HOTEL HELL! (Issue #1, chapter vI)
Susumu Akinori is a giant of a man, towering over Elasto the way that the Junkheap towers over Akinori himself. A hard-faced, oak-thick man in his early 50s, the VP of Security for the Tekagi Corporation squints into the sun and sighs impatiently as the two heroes hold court in the parking lot of the Hotel Caroline. He seems to be irritated with the whole idea of having to speak with the local law enforcement, and his manner is curt, far removed from the polite and accommodating tone of other Tekagi employees.
“I have little time for you, gentlemen,” he says, his tree-trunk arms folded into an ill-fitting suit. “I am pursuing my own inquiries into the abduction of our employees, and I am a professional. Time I spend with amateurs is time I do not spend on the investigation. Now, state your business so I can get back to work.”
Meanwhile, inside the hotel, Jeff Dell and ‘Adventure Boy’ O’Malley, having gotten permission from the Sterling Squad to examine August Miyazawa’s hotel room, are poking around every crook and corner for clues about the mysterious double-kidnapping. Miss Miyazawa clearly wasn’t snatched in the same curiously sterile situation as her employer; her room looks more lived in, with the beds unmade, clothing tossed casually on a chair, and an open notebook on the desk. As Jeff pores over her notes, hoping to find some clue as to the circumstances of the crime, ‘Adventure Boy’ snoops around on his own.
Strolling over to the chair by a full-length mirror, America’s kid dynamo catches a glimpse of himself, blushing beet-red as he gingerly picks up the young woman’s delicate garments; crime or no crime, sorting through a lady’s underthings strikes him as only slightly less objectionable than the kidnapping itself. Still and all, he has a job to do, and like his old mentor always said, “Kid, when you’re in the thick of an investigation, you ain’t got time for the social niceties. Leave the prim-and-proper routine to Jeeves, and get to work: you might just save a life that way.” Finding nothing in the pockets that could give a hint of the details of this double-barreled doc-napping, he thankfully tosses down the woman’s clothing and starts looking elsewhere. His keenly tuned super-senses tell him something’s amiss down below, and so he drops to the floor and starts peeking under the bed, the cabinets, the chest of drawers…
…and the desk, under which he sees the cause of his ever-twitching nose for danger. Strapped to the underside of the desk drawers, mere inches away from him and only a foot from where Jeff Dell is combing through August’s notebook, is a bomb! Oh, sure, it’s a little more fancy-looking than the old double-dose-of-dynamite jobs he used to see in his old Red-busting days, but there’s no mistaking the size, shape and lethal purpose of the thing. There’s no timer, but a tiny red light on it is blinking, and blinking faster, and blinking ever faster…
“I have little time for you, gentlemen,” he says, his tree-trunk arms folded into an ill-fitting suit. “I am pursuing my own inquiries into the abduction of our employees, and I am a professional. Time I spend with amateurs is time I do not spend on the investigation. Now, state your business so I can get back to work.”
Meanwhile, inside the hotel, Jeff Dell and ‘Adventure Boy’ O’Malley, having gotten permission from the Sterling Squad to examine August Miyazawa’s hotel room, are poking around every crook and corner for clues about the mysterious double-kidnapping. Miss Miyazawa clearly wasn’t snatched in the same curiously sterile situation as her employer; her room looks more lived in, with the beds unmade, clothing tossed casually on a chair, and an open notebook on the desk. As Jeff pores over her notes, hoping to find some clue as to the circumstances of the crime, ‘Adventure Boy’ snoops around on his own.
Strolling over to the chair by a full-length mirror, America’s kid dynamo catches a glimpse of himself, blushing beet-red as he gingerly picks up the young woman’s delicate garments; crime or no crime, sorting through a lady’s underthings strikes him as only slightly less objectionable than the kidnapping itself. Still and all, he has a job to do, and like his old mentor always said, “Kid, when you’re in the thick of an investigation, you ain’t got time for the social niceties. Leave the prim-and-proper routine to Jeeves, and get to work: you might just save a life that way.” Finding nothing in the pockets that could give a hint of the details of this double-barreled doc-napping, he thankfully tosses down the woman’s clothing and starts looking elsewhere. His keenly tuned super-senses tell him something’s amiss down below, and so he drops to the floor and starts peeking under the bed, the cabinets, the chest of drawers…
…and the desk, under which he sees the cause of his ever-twitching nose for danger. Strapped to the underside of the desk drawers, mere inches away from him and only a foot from where Jeff Dell is combing through August’s notebook, is a bomb! Oh, sure, it’s a little more fancy-looking than the old double-dose-of-dynamite jobs he used to see in his old Red-busting days, but there’s no mistaking the size, shape and lethal purpose of the thing. There’s no timer, but a tiny red light on it is blinking, and blinking faster, and blinking ever faster…