Going Against the Grain (10/?): "Build A Brand New Day"
“You… the League…” Horrible said worriedly.
Tie Die rolled her eyes. “Billy, if I was still with them, I would have killed you the moment I saw you.” Moist stiffened beside her, afraid.
*
“I thought it best to alert Bad Horse about anything outside the norm. Can you believe that our cameras caught him affiliating with a henchman?” Leika tsked. “And of course you know the penalty for that.”
*
Leika. The cameras! Stupid! If they had caught Horrible on film, they must have caught Tie Die, too! Why hadn’t she realized? She had to-had to-
Had to what?
She couldn’t go back home. She wasn’t going back to Horrible’s, she knew that. One thing Leika was right about-I don’t need a guy; I can take care of myself. She was a villainess! She shouldn’t need to depend on anybody for anything. She pulled over and slammed her forehead on the steering wheel, ignoring the jarring, continuous honking it made. Her eyes felt watery but she blinked back the tears until she was sure that her eyes were dry. She pulled her head up suddenly. If that was how Leika wanted it, it was time to play hardball. Tie Die opened the glove compartment swiftly and took out a small cache of miniature weaponry.
What was it that Horrible said he needed, again? She listed the items in her head. A shopping list. She pulled away from the curb, making her way to the ELE headquarters for some intelligence gathering and a few choice bits of machinery.
XXXMAJORHEISTTHISWEEKENDXXX
Tie Die dropped into the basement of the large building. The League invested in the finest security available, but for a trained professional like her, a simple break-in was no sweat.
Especially since the only things to be guarded in the basement were the janitorial supplies and some ancient, unused records.
She ignored the thought and blew a cobweb from her face, creeping to one of the many large bookshelves. She ran a gloved finger down the binders. “1970, 1970, 1971-ah, here we are,” she muttered under her breath. She might not be a scientific buff like Normal-or Horrible, she admitted-but as part of her self-administered villains’ training course before entering the League, she had forced herself to sit down and look at the big technology crimes of the twentieth century, especially the ones in which the League was presumed involved. If she recalled correctly, the round, gold-and-silver-colored Metallions from the 70’s had used a certain blend of metals, alien and regular, that Horrible had mentioned could improve the chances of his memory wiper actually working. The Metallions temporarily shut down all the neurons in a person’s brain when activated with a certain sequence, which should have imposed instant death, but about two days later, the victims “woke up” unharmed. Horrible had thought he could engineer them to completely shut off certain neurons of his own choosing. Tie Die had no idea if he could, but as she knew very well, mad science was a frightening realm, one in which the principles that held Reality in place could be bent or broken altogether and somehow stay stable.
She found herself suddenly glad that Horrible was still part-time Billy. Mad science had been known to break the manipulator as much or more than the rules of Reality. Too much time in a world of logic where rational thought was meaningless was rumored to drive a person, well, mad.
Maybe that “morale-boosting” assignment Bad Horse had given Tie Die had held more weight after all.
The time she had been thinking she had also spent flipping through the pages of the logbook until she had reached a certain page. A large diagram, intricately detailed with hundreds of tiny notations and labels made of jagged, wild letters, spanned two pages in the book. Every measurement was precise, exact. Squinting at the words in the partial moonlight, Tie Die eventually gave up on the meaning and instead pulled a small blade from her pocket, ever-so-carefully drawing it vertically across the two pages near the binding, determined to leave no trace of the drawing’s former presence in the book. No robbery of Tie Die’s would bear any evidence of her at it-she hated sloppy work. She carefully sealed the paper in a plastic bag and placed it in her pocket.
Now came the harder part-stealing the Metallion itself.
She knew the layout of the Evil League of Evil well, and they hadn’t expected her. Thus, she managed to make it to the gadget room pretty easily, dodging the odd triggered projectile and flipping across a laser grid or two, and took out a decoder. This, of course, she hadn’t made herself; she had stolen it from a vendor at a superhero convention while undercover. Know thy enemy and all that. She slipped it in a slot near the door and heard an affirmative beeping while a little green light flashed momentarily.
The huge metal doors slid open with a hiss and Tie Die found herself staring at aisles of inventions, weapons, and miscellaneous gizmos. Oh, boy.
Fortunately for her, the Metallions were a former pride of the League, and was displayed in a bulletproof case in the second aisle. She found it after only fifteen minutes of browsing.
The case may be indestructible, she thought with a smirk as she cut with her miniature laser, but the lock isn’t. Obviously, the Metallions’ safety was no longer one of the League’s top priorities.
Her main objective for her impromptu mission completed, Tie Die perused the rest of the aisles for several hours, picking up little cogs and cases of liquids here and there that she remembered Horrible mentioning. The League was well-stocked, and her efforts did not go in vain. The light of the sun, which was just beginning to rise, was shining on her dimly by the time she felt she was done there. Looking left and right out of habit, she nimbly climbed up a shelf and onto a large, refrigerated container next to the window, then pulled herself through it and onto the grassy ground bathed in pale sunlight. Tie Die scrambled out of the hole and into the shadows with a small sack of stolen goods, not bothering to rest in the cool, clean air until she had gotten as far away from the League building as she could.
She knew she should feel tired but she was wide awake, adrenaline heightening her senses as she got into her parked car and drove, aggravatingly bound to the traffic laws to avoid suspicion. After an eternity of lawfully-sped driving, she arrived back at Horrible’s apartment. She stopped the car and got out, slamming the door. The noise echoed down the slumbering street, as did Tie Die’s clicking steps on the pavement as she climbed the few steps to Horrible’s door and almost kicked it open. After a second of thought, she decided that the poor door had been kicked enough in the past while, and she took the handle. The door was unlocked. She swung it open.
Listening, she was able to hear soft snoring from a few rooms away. She followed it and saw Doctor Horrible, in full lab-coat décor, sprawled across a couch with each limb hanging off, his goggles pushed so high on his forehead that they were almost falling off his head. His blond hair, stuck up in odd directions, would have given him a slightly crazed look if not for its comical effect and the cutely content expression on his face as his chest rose and fell slowly. It would have been a shame to wake him.
Tie Die didn’t adhere to the social norm, though. She walked up to the man and dropped the bag on him.
Horrible started awake with an “Umph!” as it hit his chest. His arms flailed and he blinked in the sudden light. His eyes took a moment to adjust. He focused on her. “Tie Die?” he mumbled.
“Got your supplies, Doc,” she said.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows but, finding no purchase, rolled over onto the floor, whumping as he did so. He jumped to his feet a little unsteadily. “Wha--? My supplies? You mean the Metallion plans?”
“And some other junk.”
He bent down, reaching into the sack at his feet. He pulled out a fistful of metallic cogs. A look of pure wonder spread across his face as his mouth pulled into a grin. He grabbed the bag and turned it upside-down, letting the pieces spill across the floor. His hand spread across them, sifting through the bits and pieces and checking the labels on various canisters. It was a minute before he looked up joyfully at Tie Die. “Where did you find all this stuff?”
She shrugged. “Here and there around the League headquarters. Which reminds me.” She stuck a hand in her pocket and pulled out the diagram, still sealed in the plastic bag, and the Metallion. She handed them over to Horrible, whose mouth was hanging open in astonishment.
“You… got a Metallion?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said with a dash of false nonchalance.
Horrible looked at her again and suddenly seemed to actually see her. His eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “You’re really dirty.”
Tie Die looked down at her costume. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
He fidgeted. “So, um, why don’t you go home and take a shower and I’ll work on stuff here, and maybe we can meet up-”
“Can’t. League got to my home.”
Horrible started to answer but stopped immediately after her words registered. “They-they…”
“Yep. Ransacked the place. Last time I checked, they were still there.”
He blinked. “I… ” He suddenly looked awkward. “Well, I mean, you don’t wanna stay here, do you?”
She waved him off. “No, I’ll get a hotel room or something. But when are you going to get this inventing done?”
He looked back to the spilled sack, relieved to have a better conversation topic. “Well, taking into account that I don’t have League funding or resources anymore, it’ll take longer than it usually would. This is all theoretical, you know, so I can’t really predict the time. Trial and error, right? So…”
Tie Die cleared her throat impatiently.
“Right, give me a month and we’ll see how it goes.”
“A month.”
“Ye-ah, is that too long?” He shifted his weight worriedly.
“You’re saying that you can do all this in a month?” She gestured to the plans in his hand and the pieces on the ground.
“There’s a reason why they call us mad geniuses.”
“Emphasis on mad.” She saw him look at the stolen items almost hungrily, yearningly. “I guess you want some time alone with your new toys, so I’ll just…”
He raised his eyes to her face reluctantly, but said with sincerity, “You can stay here if you want to watch…”
“Nah, I’m better off away from all the science mumbo-jumbo. See you in the morning?”
“Yeah, sure.” His eyes were back at the sack again.
Tie Die half-smiled and walked to the kitchen, stole a plate of cookies, and left the apartment. As soon as she slammed the door, she could hear Horrible muttering happily and the clink of metal against metal as he dove into the experimentation. For some reason, her smile grew larger.
Next chapter (Chapter 11)
A/N: Thanks to all who reviewed the previous chapters. As I said before, reviews are fuel for the muse! Please review! *holds out a tin cup and looks pitiful*
Tie Die rolled her eyes. “Billy, if I was still with them, I would have killed you the moment I saw you.” Moist stiffened beside her, afraid.
*
“I thought it best to alert Bad Horse about anything outside the norm. Can you believe that our cameras caught him affiliating with a henchman?” Leika tsked. “And of course you know the penalty for that.”
*
Leika. The cameras! Stupid! If they had caught Horrible on film, they must have caught Tie Die, too! Why hadn’t she realized? She had to-had to-
Had to what?
She couldn’t go back home. She wasn’t going back to Horrible’s, she knew that. One thing Leika was right about-I don’t need a guy; I can take care of myself. She was a villainess! She shouldn’t need to depend on anybody for anything. She pulled over and slammed her forehead on the steering wheel, ignoring the jarring, continuous honking it made. Her eyes felt watery but she blinked back the tears until she was sure that her eyes were dry. She pulled her head up suddenly. If that was how Leika wanted it, it was time to play hardball. Tie Die opened the glove compartment swiftly and took out a small cache of miniature weaponry.
What was it that Horrible said he needed, again? She listed the items in her head. A shopping list. She pulled away from the curb, making her way to the ELE headquarters for some intelligence gathering and a few choice bits of machinery.
XXXMAJORHEISTTHISWEEKENDXXX
Tie Die dropped into the basement of the large building. The League invested in the finest security available, but for a trained professional like her, a simple break-in was no sweat.
Especially since the only things to be guarded in the basement were the janitorial supplies and some ancient, unused records.
She ignored the thought and blew a cobweb from her face, creeping to one of the many large bookshelves. She ran a gloved finger down the binders. “1970, 1970, 1971-ah, here we are,” she muttered under her breath. She might not be a scientific buff like Normal-or Horrible, she admitted-but as part of her self-administered villains’ training course before entering the League, she had forced herself to sit down and look at the big technology crimes of the twentieth century, especially the ones in which the League was presumed involved. If she recalled correctly, the round, gold-and-silver-colored Metallions from the 70’s had used a certain blend of metals, alien and regular, that Horrible had mentioned could improve the chances of his memory wiper actually working. The Metallions temporarily shut down all the neurons in a person’s brain when activated with a certain sequence, which should have imposed instant death, but about two days later, the victims “woke up” unharmed. Horrible had thought he could engineer them to completely shut off certain neurons of his own choosing. Tie Die had no idea if he could, but as she knew very well, mad science was a frightening realm, one in which the principles that held Reality in place could be bent or broken altogether and somehow stay stable.
She found herself suddenly glad that Horrible was still part-time Billy. Mad science had been known to break the manipulator as much or more than the rules of Reality. Too much time in a world of logic where rational thought was meaningless was rumored to drive a person, well, mad.
Maybe that “morale-boosting” assignment Bad Horse had given Tie Die had held more weight after all.
The time she had been thinking she had also spent flipping through the pages of the logbook until she had reached a certain page. A large diagram, intricately detailed with hundreds of tiny notations and labels made of jagged, wild letters, spanned two pages in the book. Every measurement was precise, exact. Squinting at the words in the partial moonlight, Tie Die eventually gave up on the meaning and instead pulled a small blade from her pocket, ever-so-carefully drawing it vertically across the two pages near the binding, determined to leave no trace of the drawing’s former presence in the book. No robbery of Tie Die’s would bear any evidence of her at it-she hated sloppy work. She carefully sealed the paper in a plastic bag and placed it in her pocket.
Now came the harder part-stealing the Metallion itself.
She knew the layout of the Evil League of Evil well, and they hadn’t expected her. Thus, she managed to make it to the gadget room pretty easily, dodging the odd triggered projectile and flipping across a laser grid or two, and took out a decoder. This, of course, she hadn’t made herself; she had stolen it from a vendor at a superhero convention while undercover. Know thy enemy and all that. She slipped it in a slot near the door and heard an affirmative beeping while a little green light flashed momentarily.
The huge metal doors slid open with a hiss and Tie Die found herself staring at aisles of inventions, weapons, and miscellaneous gizmos. Oh, boy.
Fortunately for her, the Metallions were a former pride of the League, and was displayed in a bulletproof case in the second aisle. She found it after only fifteen minutes of browsing.
The case may be indestructible, she thought with a smirk as she cut with her miniature laser, but the lock isn’t. Obviously, the Metallions’ safety was no longer one of the League’s top priorities.
Her main objective for her impromptu mission completed, Tie Die perused the rest of the aisles for several hours, picking up little cogs and cases of liquids here and there that she remembered Horrible mentioning. The League was well-stocked, and her efforts did not go in vain. The light of the sun, which was just beginning to rise, was shining on her dimly by the time she felt she was done there. Looking left and right out of habit, she nimbly climbed up a shelf and onto a large, refrigerated container next to the window, then pulled herself through it and onto the grassy ground bathed in pale sunlight. Tie Die scrambled out of the hole and into the shadows with a small sack of stolen goods, not bothering to rest in the cool, clean air until she had gotten as far away from the League building as she could.
She knew she should feel tired but she was wide awake, adrenaline heightening her senses as she got into her parked car and drove, aggravatingly bound to the traffic laws to avoid suspicion. After an eternity of lawfully-sped driving, she arrived back at Horrible’s apartment. She stopped the car and got out, slamming the door. The noise echoed down the slumbering street, as did Tie Die’s clicking steps on the pavement as she climbed the few steps to Horrible’s door and almost kicked it open. After a second of thought, she decided that the poor door had been kicked enough in the past while, and she took the handle. The door was unlocked. She swung it open.
Listening, she was able to hear soft snoring from a few rooms away. She followed it and saw Doctor Horrible, in full lab-coat décor, sprawled across a couch with each limb hanging off, his goggles pushed so high on his forehead that they were almost falling off his head. His blond hair, stuck up in odd directions, would have given him a slightly crazed look if not for its comical effect and the cutely content expression on his face as his chest rose and fell slowly. It would have been a shame to wake him.
Tie Die didn’t adhere to the social norm, though. She walked up to the man and dropped the bag on him.
Horrible started awake with an “Umph!” as it hit his chest. His arms flailed and he blinked in the sudden light. His eyes took a moment to adjust. He focused on her. “Tie Die?” he mumbled.
“Got your supplies, Doc,” she said.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows but, finding no purchase, rolled over onto the floor, whumping as he did so. He jumped to his feet a little unsteadily. “Wha--? My supplies? You mean the Metallion plans?”
“And some other junk.”
He bent down, reaching into the sack at his feet. He pulled out a fistful of metallic cogs. A look of pure wonder spread across his face as his mouth pulled into a grin. He grabbed the bag and turned it upside-down, letting the pieces spill across the floor. His hand spread across them, sifting through the bits and pieces and checking the labels on various canisters. It was a minute before he looked up joyfully at Tie Die. “Where did you find all this stuff?”
She shrugged. “Here and there around the League headquarters. Which reminds me.” She stuck a hand in her pocket and pulled out the diagram, still sealed in the plastic bag, and the Metallion. She handed them over to Horrible, whose mouth was hanging open in astonishment.
“You… got a Metallion?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said with a dash of false nonchalance.
Horrible looked at her again and suddenly seemed to actually see her. His eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “You’re really dirty.”
Tie Die looked down at her costume. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
He fidgeted. “So, um, why don’t you go home and take a shower and I’ll work on stuff here, and maybe we can meet up-”
“Can’t. League got to my home.”
Horrible started to answer but stopped immediately after her words registered. “They-they…”
“Yep. Ransacked the place. Last time I checked, they were still there.”
He blinked. “I… ” He suddenly looked awkward. “Well, I mean, you don’t wanna stay here, do you?”
She waved him off. “No, I’ll get a hotel room or something. But when are you going to get this inventing done?”
He looked back to the spilled sack, relieved to have a better conversation topic. “Well, taking into account that I don’t have League funding or resources anymore, it’ll take longer than it usually would. This is all theoretical, you know, so I can’t really predict the time. Trial and error, right? So…”
Tie Die cleared her throat impatiently.
“Right, give me a month and we’ll see how it goes.”
“A month.”
“Ye-ah, is that too long?” He shifted his weight worriedly.
“You’re saying that you can do all this in a month?” She gestured to the plans in his hand and the pieces on the ground.
“There’s a reason why they call us mad geniuses.”
“Emphasis on mad.” She saw him look at the stolen items almost hungrily, yearningly. “I guess you want some time alone with your new toys, so I’ll just…”
He raised his eyes to her face reluctantly, but said with sincerity, “You can stay here if you want to watch…”
“Nah, I’m better off away from all the science mumbo-jumbo. See you in the morning?”
“Yeah, sure.” His eyes were back at the sack again.
Tie Die half-smiled and walked to the kitchen, stole a plate of cookies, and left the apartment. As soon as she slammed the door, she could hear Horrible muttering happily and the clink of metal against metal as he dove into the experimentation. For some reason, her smile grew larger.
Next chapter (Chapter 11)
A/N: Thanks to all who reviewed the previous chapters. As I said before, reviews are fuel for the muse! Please review! *holds out a tin cup and looks pitiful*