Vagrants. Disgusting, dirty, disease-infested tramps.
Photon shooed a few away. Whatever material made his hideout’s main portal bomb-proof and laser-proof and impenetrable, even to the entire nucleolectro-rod wielding robots of Planet Zangroc 5, apparently contained some sort of hobo-magnet. There were three of them, all oily-looking and slouching from malnourishment and sleeping on concrete.
One of them said something, something Photon couldn’t hear nor fathom; hobo-speak, he figured. Some secret code of uncleanliness. Even though he hadn’t touched any of them, he checked his super-suit out for smudges, as if somehow the hobos could secret a few dirt stains to his impeccable, quite heroic yellow-and-red costume. He made a note to clean his hands.
Just his luck, to be duped into a hideout that would be home to…well, homeless people. He closed the portal.
“Don’t I fight crime? Am I not the defender of this fair city?” He asked, his voice echoing through the abandoned subway tunnel under Rochester’s exchange street. He didn’t want a response, and really didn’t even expect one; Harvey, that big RIT nerd, was zapping away with his spagmometer at some intricate-looking computer board under the buzzing light of his workbench, that bright, unsafe-looking light. His cigarette smoke curled upwards towards the dank-looking ceiling, weaving in and out of all that…techno-machinery junk he tinkered endlessly with.
“You would think, that after all I’ve done for this city, someone, maybe…I dunno, perhaps, Mayor Duffy? Mizzz Brooks? George Westwing, someone! Someone could elas…elis…enlist…eliminate! Eliminate the vagrancy and dirtiness of all those homeless people at our front door!”
Harvey continued to work, not listening. The spagmometer zapped away.
Photon looked at himself in the windows of his Photonobile that Harvey constructed, parked and poised for action. It was an old Buick stocked with electronic doodads but, Photon never failed to mention, an inadequate sound system. Painted red and yellow, it reflected the white work light like a mirrorball.
“What would happen if the call of Justice were made,” He continued, setting a few stray hairs aright, “and I had to zoom out of here in the Photonobile and the doors of that portal opened up and fwoosh!!! I would no doubt injure some helpless dweeb looking for a handout. AND I’d ruin the paint job.”
*Zap!* *Zap zap zap!*
Photon looked at the back of Harvey’s lab coat. Nuh-erd, Photon thought. Here he was, the favored son of Rochester, battling evil-doers and crime lords and lake monsters, and he was stuck in a secret lab in a…a cave. Like that comic-book guy. The one with the bats. Whatever. Nerds read comic books.
*Zap!*
Why, Photon thought, staring at Harvey’s back and watching that acrid cigarette smoke linger in the air, couldn’t someone recognize that he deserved a little more? Photon took out The Yellowjacket, no thanks to Mixing Girl, or Mixolo…whatever her name was. Didn’t he deserve something else? Maybe an assistant who was a little easier on the eyes? Like that girl he saved from the mechanical bull at Daisy Dukes? Yeah, he thought, a scientist chick that could do all the work Harvey did, but without the smoking and with some really big…
There was a blast. Muffled through distance, but still big enough to throw Photon against the Photonobile and down to a knee. Dammit, he instantly thought, I got my knee dirty.
“What the hell was that?” He looked to Harvey.
“I don’t know,” Harvey said. He himself had been thrown to the ground but still had the ominous-looking spagmometer in his hand. His cigarette dangled from his lip as if ready to jump from it. He looked to The Beacon of Imminent Danger. Harvey set his jaw firmly and took out his cigarette, grinding it under his foot. “Did you turn off The Beacon of Imminent Danger again?”
“Of course I did,” Photon said. “Have you ever heard the noise it makes?”
Harvey threw his hands in the air. “Get into the Photonobile! Go find Colonel Rochester!”
“Yeah, yeah, keep our pants on.” Photon said, again wishing for a better-looking assistant. He jumped into the car and started it with a great rumble of horsepower, the sound made all the more imposing due to the tunnel they were in. Harvey pushed the large yellow-and-red button that opened the portal. With a screech of tires Photon was off, veering dangerously close to a homeless man. Harvey thought he saw Photon’s fist shaking out the window at the poor soul.
Harvey ran to the computer to call for Colonel Rochester, hoping that Photon had remembered to fill the Photonobile with gas. A certain dropping feeling went through his stomach.
Photon was always too busy yapping to remember anything.