“You got me singing
Even though the world is gone
You got me thinking
I’d like to carry on”
~Leonard Cohen
A week after the universe ended, Larry Trainor woke up and decided he needed coffee and to figure out what he was going to do with his life.
Having been given a third ‘second chance’ at life, the ex-test pilot and super hero known as Negative Man was still trying to figure out what came next after reality was reset and history re-written.
He rolled on to his side and then sat up.
Larry never wore pajamas, but since he was wrapped, head to toe, in special chemically treated bandages, he wasn’t sure if you could say he slept naked. He sat slumped for several breaths.
The apartment was sparsely furnished, drab in color scheme and looked surprisingly like one of the first off base apartments Larry had when he was in the air force.
He slipped into his red and white costume and went in search of breakfast and a sense of direction.
Luckily, he was now residing on Danny the Street, a sentient, magical stretch of real estate and safe haven for the lost and unusual, so he had a good chance of finding both. Larry walked out of his apartment building and down the street, nodding in passing to his neighbors, an odd collection of homeless, eccentrics and a couple that he wasn’t entirely sure were even human.
He received greetings in the form of nods, waves and smiles. He found the friendliness of the inhabitants of Danny both welcoming and a little off-putting. Looking like a mummy and being prone to releasing a radioactive alter ego, he wasn’t used to a friendly, positive reaction from the general population.
Danny was an odd place. It felt homey, yet slightly unreal, like a street set from an old movie or Main Street Disney, if either one was populated by homeless transients rather than actors and tourists, not that Danny didn’t have its fair share of those two groups too.
He reached the local coffee shop, ‘Caffeine Diem’ and got in line.
Kate Godwin was also an ex-super hero. She was also a transvestite…or was it transgender…? Larry wasn’t good with the terms and to be honest, with coffee this good, he wasn’t going to judge.
The take out line was long, and Larry wasn’t sure that he had anywhere else to be, so he took a seat at the counter instead. Before he knew it there was a ceramic mug of dark roast and a blueberry scone in front of him.
“Um… I didn’t order…” he began.
“You’ve gotten the dark roast, half and half, not milk, three sugars every morning for a week,” Kate told him on her way past. “And I give all my mopey looking customers a scone.”
Larry frowned at her comment, but had to admit it was a pretty tasty scone.
Once the crowd had thinned out, Kate came over, topped off his coffee and then leaned against the counter.
“So, what’s weighing heavily on your mind?” she asked.
“Not as easy getting over being dead as you’d think,” Larry shrugged.
“You’d think you’d have gotten the hang of it by now,” Kate replied with a smile.
“You’d think.” Larry nodded, taking a sip of coffee. “Between that and trying to figure out what’s going to happen to the others…”
“Others?” Kate interrupted. “You mean the Doom Patrol?”
“Yeah, we’re all here…sort of,” Larry said. “Danny scooped us up when…whatever happened, so it seems like if not the universe, then Danny at least thinks there needs to be a Doom Patrol.”
“Why don’t you look happier about that?” Kate asked, over her shoulder as she filled a coffee order. ‘You’re getting the band back to together!”
“Sort of. We aren’t all the…versions of us that I knew…know...Cliff is ‘retired’ and I don’t know what’s up with the Chief.”
“So? It’s still all four of you.”
“Yeah, but we always had a leader, or at least somebody focused on keeping us together. The Chief was the brains and Cliff was the heart. Without them…well, Rita’s in no shape to take charge and-”
“What about you?” Kate asked, leaning on the counter and helping herself to a piece of Larry’s scone.
“Yeah, that’s the part that’s bothering me,” Larry said. “I was never the guy in charge and don’t know if I can be. The Doom Patrol is not the JLA. You just can’t put any idiot in charge and expect it to work.”
“No, it takes a special kind of idiot,” a growling voice with a French accent said, as a figure joined him at the counter. “While I agree you are an idiot, Trainor, you’re just the run of the mill kind.”
Larry spun on his stool, his linen wrapped hand curled into a fist. The new arrival, a large gorilla wearing a bandolier, easily caught the fist in one massive hand and began to squeeze.
Superhero and gorilla glared at each other for several moments.
“Okay boys, that’s enough,” Kate snapped, slapping at their fists. “Mallah, let him go…now!”
Reluctantly, the gorilla opened his fist and took a step back. He and Larry glared at each other.
“Go take a seat, Mallah,” Kate said, her tone implying she was dealing with unruly boys, rather than a grown man and a scientifically augmented primate. “ If you are this geared up already, don’t think you are getting an espresso shot.”
The gorilla frowned at both Larry and Kate, but then nodded and walked off.
“And you,” Kate said, turning to Larry. “I thought Negative Man referred to your powers, not your attitude.”
“He started it!” Larry protested, before realizing that made him sound like an eleven year old. “He’s tried to kill me, all of the Patrol, about a dozen times.”
“Danny brings people that need to be here,” Kate explained, quietly. “Mallah is as lost and trying to figure it out as you are. If you don’t want to help him, then leave him alone.”
Kate handed him a takeout cup.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Your coffee,” she said. “Go take a walk. When you can behave, come back.”
“What…?” Larry stammered. “But, I…?”
“Tell Cliff I said ‘Hi’.” Kate said, turning away and moving on to other customers.
Larry stood at the counter for a second or two before picking up his coffee and going back outside.
“You ask me,” a voice said. “You could have taken that monkey.”
The speaker was a thin young man. He was short, but his spiked, white hair made him look a bit taller. He wore goggles, a white bodysuit and matching jacket.
He called himself Papercut and claimed to be a supervillain. Larry hadn’t encountered anyone that had ever heard of him.
Supposedly he’d been beaten up by the Red Tornado and the Creeper, decided he didn’t care for it or jail, so in an effort to become a superhero he had taken to following Negative Man around.
Larry looked over at him, took a breath in preparation to delivering a sarcastic remark, then changed his mind and took a sip of coffee instead.
Kate’s little talking-to sloshed over into his recent bout of introspective self pity and he had the uncomfortable epiphany that he had been reacting to Danny’s odd population the way ‘normal people’ would react to him.
As annoying as Papercut was, Larry Trainor was hit with the sudden realization that he had spent the first week of his return to life being a bit of a jerk.
“Huh!” Larry muttered, thoughtfully. He peered at the young supervillain without really seeing him and took another sip of his coffee.
He then reached out and patted Papercut on the shoulder.
“Thanks, kid,” he said, absently, as he turned and walked away. “I need to see some people, but I’ll talk to you later.”
“Um…okay,” the thin-faced man said. “What…uh…just happened?”
# # # # # # # # # #
Down the block, three little storefronts were jammed together, each painted in drab green or grey. The one in the middle had plain, yellow printing above its cluttered front window that read ‘Caulder Appliance and Repair’.
Larry walked in, a little bell above the door giving a cheery ring as he entered. “Uh…hello?”
The little shop was lined with shelves and there were two narrow aisles of them running through the center. All the shelves were packed with small appliances, household gadgets and a multitude of whatever parts and tools you’d need to repair any of them.
“Back here!” a voice called.
Larry made his way to the back of the shop. At the back wall was a counter that was part register and part workbench.
Seated behind the counter, perched on a tall stool was Niles Caulder, but not the man Larry knew as ‘The Chief”.
While Danny had managed to gather the various members of the Doom Patrol in the wake of a cosmic event, Danny wasn’t always able to grab the versions that Larry was familiar with. This Niles Caulder was not a genius, a scientist or a megalomaniac, but rather his genius lay in taking apart household appliances and devices and fixing them.
The bearded man was a bit chubbier than the original, as well as not being in a wheelchair either. He did walk with a pair of braces, due to childhood polio, rather than an assassins’ bullet.
“Good morning, Larry,” Caulder nodded, not looking up from the toaster he was tinkering with.
“Morning, Che-Mr. Caulder,” Larry muttered in reply.
“Please,” the older man said, looking up with a tolerant smile poking through his beard. “It’s fine if you call me Niles.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I can do that,” Larry said, shaking his head and then taking a sip of coffee. He glanced around at the shop. It was like being in a museum dedicated to kitchen gadgets.
“He’s still in the back,” Niles said, returning to his repair task. “Made a little progress.”
Larry nodded his thinks and squeezed past the edge of the counter, through a narrow door into the back room.
Wedged amongst even more appliances in various state of repair was a big roll top desk and an old fashioned sofa. Seated on the sofa was a bronze headless robot body. Next to the sofa was a windowsill, on which sat a potted plant and the head of Cliff Steele, Robotman.
“How you doing?” Larry said, plunking down next to Robotman’s body and sipping his coffee. “You’re looking better, now that you have arms again.”
He turned to face Cliff’s head. It was turned so it could look out the window. Larry turned it, so it was facing him.
“I don’t know what’s going on in there, Cliff, but I wish you’d talk to me,” Larry said. “Sure could use you, even if it’s just you busting my chops…I probably could use it. Feels like I’m making a mess of things…”
He shrugged and slumped back on the sofa, gloomily drinking his coffee. He occasionally glanced out of the corner of his eye at the severed head, convinced any moment his teammate would start talking or give him a hint he was awake and aware.
After several minutes, Larry Trainor realized it wasn’t going to happen and got to his feet.
“Alright, good talk,” he muttered, shrugging. “Let’s do it again sometime.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Back out on the street, Larry went to take a sip of coffee, discovered it was now empty and sighed as he tossed it at the nearest trashcan.
“Guess I should check on Rita,” he muttered.
Slipping down the narrow gap between two buildings, he came out into a small courtyard, walled in by various buildings. The grass was overgrown, dry and brown. It was dotted with several neon pink, plastic flamingos.
The far wall of the courtyard was a drab old garage.
Larry trudged through the tall grass and knocked on the garage door.
“Rise and shine,” he said.
“What?” a muffled voice answered. “Okay…um…I think.”
Rita Farr had been a successful movie actress before a strange chemical changed her into the size-shifting super heroine Elastic Girl. She, like Negative Man, had been believed killed in an explosion.
Unlike Negative Man, Elastic Girl hadn’t survived.
A scrap of her mutated flesh was discovered in the debris and through the ministrations of the Chief, back in his mad scientist days, had been coaxed back to life, resulting in a near perfect copy of Rita Farr. Not exactly a clone, as there had been DNA splicing and several other procedures that Larry hadn’t a chance of understanding involved.
Like with Niles-the-fixit-man, the result was someone, almost, but not quite, who they were supposed to be. This Elastic girl had Rita’s powers and most of the originals’ memories, what was missing was complete control of her shape changing and the emotional connection to those memories.
While she looked and sounded like Larry’s friend, teammate and crush, there was enough gone from her personality that Larry felt less like he’d gained a teammate as he was watching out for a friend’s younger sister.
Larry raised the garage door. The interior had been cleaned up and converted into a makeshift apartment. Currently Elastic girl was twenty feet tall, sitting on the broken remains of her bed, and wearing only a bed sheet.
“Aaahh!” Larry exclaimed before quickly turning around. “I…um…sorry….!”
“I grew in my sleep,” Rita muttered. “Can’t get that under control…maybe I should sleep on the floor…?”
“Um…look,” Larry muttered, reaching up behind him for the garage door. “How about you get…dressed and we’ll take a walk. I want to talk to you about some stuff.”
Without waiting, Larry slid the door shut, exhaling loudly.
Soon, Rita Farr, clad in a red and white mini-dress, purple boots and white gloves, stepped out and they were walking down the street.
“So, maybe Kate is right,” Larry shrugged. “And what Danny is doing is because it…he…the world still needs a Doom Patrol.”
“Okay,” Rita nodded.
Larry had to glance upwards when he looked at her, as she had only managed to shrink down to seven feet tall. “Okay? What do you mean?”
“If you want me to join your team, I will,” Rita replied with a casual shrug.
“My team?” Larry said, stopping. “Why do people keep thinking I could lead the Doom Patrol?”
Elastic Girl stopped, shrank down till she and Negative Man were eye to eye. She laid a hand against his bandaged cheek. “Maybe the question you should be asking is why you think you can’t,” Rita said, smiling at him, like a mom with an anxious child.
Something down the street caught her attention and Rita shot back up to twenty feet to look.
“There’s a crowd gathering at the end of the street,” she said. “Danny must have stopped somewhere interesting…lets go see.”
The next thing Negative Man knew, she was gone, a few over-sized strides taking her to join the crowd. Larry stood there for a moment, looking generally perplexed. After a minute, he shrugged and followed.
At the end of the street a dozen assorted people were gathered. Kate was there, as well as Papercut, some of the homeless and a couple local business owners. Upon reaching the crowd, rather than returning to normal size, Elastic Girl just knelt down to see what everyone was looking at.
“So, where are we?” Larry asked.
“Egypt,” a hunch-shouldered man with grey stubble and a shabby overcoat replied.
“You sure?” Larry asked, looking at the sandy expanse that spread out before them.
“What are you, thick?” the vagrant asked, pointing off into the distance.
Larry glanced up and spotted the massive stone pyramids.
“Ah, yeah, I’m an idiot,” the linen-wrapped hero muttered.
“Your self-reflection is insightful,” Mallah rumbled, appearing at his side.
“Don’t make me separate you two,” Kate said, leaning in between them.
“Wow!” Papercut breathed. “I’ve never been to Egypt before!”
“I was here once,” Rita said. “Filming a war picture…I think I was a nurse.”
“The Brotherhood had a base hidden beneath a pyramid,” Mallah added. “The tourist center had a very nice café.”
“Are we near a city?” Kate asked. “Might be nice to walk around; play tourist.”
There was suddenly a burst of energy from one of the pyramids, sending lightening-like tendrils, blue and silver, crackling out into the afternoon sky.
“…or not,” Kate muttered.
“That’s weird,” the guy who owned the comic shop muttered.
“Someone should check that out,” a teen with a canvas paperboy bag slung over his shoulder suggested.
“Why is everyone looking at us?” Larry asked Rita out of the corner of his mouth.
“We’re superheroes,” she whispered back.
“And idiots,” Mallah said.
Larry glared at the gorilla. Kate distracted him from snapping at his one-time foe, with a hand on his shoulder. “You guys want to handle it, or would you like some of us to come and help?” she asked.
“Hey, I’ll go!” Papercut exclaimed.
“You don’t need to raise your hand,” Larry told him. “This isn’t algebra class. Anybody else?”
“I will,” Mallah said.
“Um…sure, why not…am I the only one who can fly?” Negative Man said. “Gonna be tricky getting us there.”
“I could carry a couple of you,” Rita suggested.
“Hey! You guys call a cab?” a voice shouted.
The crowd turned, as an old style taxicab pulled up. The driver, who looked to Larry like he’d just stepped out of a 30’s movie, got out. He was a stocky, middle-aged man in dungarees, a much-abused turtle neck sweater and a cap. He had a friendly, craggy face.
“Where you going?” he asked, looking around the crowd. “Come on; meter’s running.”
“Sure, why not?” Larry said. “We’re going to the pyramids. You got room for…uh, let’s see…five?”
“Sure, sure.” The cabbie nodded. “I don’t want the monkey up front with me.”
He went and opened the back door and made a ‘after you’ gesture. They all bundled in: Kate, Rita, Papercut and Mallah in the backseat and Larry climbed in next to the driver. “Um…hi, I’m Larry.”
“Richard O’ Hara,” the driver nodded, holding out a weathered hand. “Folks call me
‘Hack’.”
Larry made quick introductions as the taxi bumped along the dirt road and across the sandy expanse. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Hack muttered, peering across the way.
As they got closer, they could see a crowd was gathering around the pyramids, a mix of police, soldiers, tourists and curious locals. The cab parked at the fringe of the crowd. And everyone climbed out. They got a few looks from those at the back of the crowd.
“What now?” Kate asked.
“Hey!” Papercut exclaimed. “There’s something…somebody up in all that crackly energy stuff!”
“Guess I’ll go see who’s in the crackly stuff,” Larry shrugged. “You guys see if you can get through the crowd. Try and find somebody official so we don’t get shot trying to help.”
“Anything else?” Rita asked.
“Yeah, catch me,” Larry said, as his body slumped.
A figure that looked liked a solid shadow, surrounded by a nimbus of energy emerged from Larry Trainor’s body and flew off towards the pyramid. Kate and Rita each caught one of Larry’s arms and steered his weak body back to the cab.
“Keep an eye on him,” Rita told Hack O’Hara, as they laid Larry down in the back seat.
“Now what?” Papercut asked, trying to peer over the crowd.
Elastic Girl shot up to twenty feet tall, and gingerly stepped over the heads of the crowd, apologizing as she went.
“What about us?” Papercut shouted after her.
“I’ve got an idea,” Kate said, before cupping her hands around her mouth. “Oh my god! That gorilla has a gun!”
Mallah scowled at her and then shrugged, drew a pistol from a shoulder holster and fired into the air. Numerous people in the back rows turned, saw Mallah and scrambled to form a path for him.
“Wait for me!” Papercut muttered.
Mallah spun and with his free hand grabbed hold of the front of his jacket and slung the super villain over his shoulder. He then barreled through the crowd, occasionally leaping up and over when the crowd became too dense.
“Think I’ll wait here,” Kate nodded to herself. “Hope they’re up to this…”
“Meter’s running,” Hack said, leaning back against the hood of his cab.
# # # # # # # # # #
Negative Man was a streak of crackling black, shooting over the heads of the crowd and then arcing upwards towards the tip of the pyramid.
About three-fourths of the way up the massive stone structure there was a hole blown out and floating above it was the source of the strange energy streams, a jagged ball of blue energy radiating silver sparks and blue strings of lightening. In the center was a figure.
It was a woman clad like a handmaiden from ancient Egypt; sandals with thin straps encircling her calves, thin bracelets encircling her arms, shimmering white silk wrapped around her hips and a circlet of silver, set with a single blue gem rested on her brow. Her body was lithe and smooth, but her head was that of a large cat, her blue eyes were open wide and her mouth open in a silent screech, whether of pain or extreme emotion was unsure. The maelstrom of blue and silver energy crackled around her, like a raging storm.
The crowd was torn between wanting to flee and yet sensing deeply suppressed feelings and thoughts, that in centuries past their ancestors had worshipped idols that looked exactly like this creature. It was as though one of the stone statues that adorned the pyramids’ inner chambers had come to life. She was a myth come to life and the local population was feeling a swirl of conflicting emotions trying to process how they should be feeling about it.
Negative Man streaked towards the strange cat-woman, stretching out as he flew rapidly around her, attempting to contain her in a cone made from his own radioactive body.
The two unearthly energies clashed and sparked against each other, before Negative Man shattered, like a piece of ebony glass.
In the taxi, Larry Trainor’s body twitched and a low groan escaped from between his clenched teeth.
Mallah and Papercut skidded to a halt in the middle of the crowd as the shards of Negative Man flew overhead, like a swarm of bees.
“That can’t be good,” Papercut muttered, as the gun-toting gorilla lowered him to the ground.
“Elastic Girl is seeking to calm the crowd and find someone in charge,” Mallah said. “Let us see what we can do about that…creature.”
He shouldered his way through the crowd, the skinny man in white struggling to keep up.
“What are your powers again?” Mallah grunted over his broad shoulder. “Are you going to be any use?”
“What…uh…I can… mentally control paper,” Papercut said, raising his voice to be heard over the rumble of the crowd.
“So, that would be ‘no’,” Mallah muttered to himself.
The duo pushed through the crowd and reached the base of the pyramid. Papercut was working to catch his breath while Mallah was peering up at the pyramid and the cat-headed woman. He holstered his gun and began to climb. Papercut watched him go and thought for a few seconds, before reaching into one of the pouches on his jacket. He came out with a half dozen tiny origami birds.
“Go see what’s going on up there,” he told them. “If you can, help the monkey.”
He raised his gloved hand. The wings began to twitch and flutter and then the birds took off.
Nearby, Elastic Girl had found several uniformed men, who seemed to be in charge of the police and soldiers. She started to talk and then realized she was twenty feet tall and had to shout and that the men seemed a bit anxious and intimidated. With a few moments of effort, she shrank down to normal size.
“Hi, I’m…um…Elastic Girl, a superhero. My team, the Doom Patrol is here to help,” she said, with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Yes,” one of the men said. “My men will assist however they can.”
“Really?” Rita asked, surprised. “You know us?”
‘”You are Rita Farr,” he said. “I was a teenager when you were here filming ‘Desert Combat’. You took a picture with my sister.”
“Oh!” Elastic Girl said. “I’m glad you remember me. We’re….uh…going to deal with this.”
She pointed vaguely towards the floating, energy spewing woman.
“If you and your men could…ah…maybe, move the crowd back?” She suggested. “There tends to be some fighting.” Both she and the crowd looked up at the sound of gunfire. “I’d better go help.” Rita shot up to twenty feet and jogged off to re-join her teammates.
Papercut’s flock of tiny birds fluttered, flying past Mallah as he scrambled up the pyramid. The birds flew around the raging cat woman, while down on the ground, Papercut stood with his eyes closed, letting information flow from his creations down to his brain.
“Huh!” he muttered. “Weird.”
“What’s going on?” Rita asked, kneeling down next to him.
“Um…there’s a lady with a cat head shooting blue lightening out of her eyes. It looks like she busted out of the pyramid and has already taken out Negative Man.”
“Cat lady?” Rita muttered, scratching her chin in thought.
“Yeah, you know, like that Egyptian goddess…Best…no wait…Bast…? Are we fighting a god?” Papercut asked, anxiously.
“I don’t think so,” Elastic girl replied. “Though, something familiar about this…”
“The Doom Patrol fight her before?” he asked.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Elastic girl said, picking up Papercut and climbing the pyramid. “I remember…no, it’s in here…” She reached up to point to her temple to indicate her jumbled memories. Unfortunately, she used the hand that was holding Papercut.
The ex-supervillain grabbed a hold of a giant finger and tried not to screech like a frightened child. He was only mildly successful.
They reached the top of the pyramid just as Mallah fired upon the cat creature.
She flinched so one bullet winged her. Her blue lightening flickered and she clutched at one bare shoulder. She turned and glared at the gun-toting gorilla. Energy flared wildly, incinerating the swarm of animated paper birds.
Papercut winced and pressed at the center of his forehead as the mental connection was severed.
Blue-silver lightening arced, causing Mallah to leap about to avoid being struck. Chunks of rock were blasted off the pyramid. Elastic girl lunged across and swatted some of the bigger pieces of stone away from the crowds on the ground.
“Wish I could remember where I’ve seen something like her before,” she muttered, as she set Papercut on a ledge to free up both hands. “Can you help Mallah keep her busy?”
“I guess so.” He shrugged. “We have a plan?”
“I don’t know,” Rita sighed. “I didn’t think I’d be the one in charge…I wish Larry was here.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Larry Trainor twisted in pain as the shattered fragments of Negative Man returned to their host.
“Is he okay?” Hack O’Hara asked, moving the toothpick to the corner of his mouth.
“No idea,” Kate replied, as they both leaned in the open cab door.
Suddenly Larry lurched upright, his wide-opened eyes black and glassy as marbles and what looked like black flame coming out of his mouth and nostrils.
“Yaaarrrgghhh!” He retched, before inhaling deeply and sucking the negative energy back in. His eyes returned to normal as he blinked at the cabbie and the transgender barista. “What the *&^$%! just happened!?”
“Are you okay?” Kate asked, helping out of the back of the taxi.
“No, not really,” he muttered, leaning on the cab to stay upright. He held one bandaged hand to his forehead. “I feel hot…and my chest is full of broken glass. Whatever she blasted Negative Man with he’s not reforming like before. Not sure how much help I’m…uh…gonna be.”
“Well, we need to do something,” Kate told him. “The others are jumping around, like some weird version of Donkey Kong. We need to help.”
“I don’t know what I can do,” Larry muttered.
Kate slid his arm around her shoulders and began to steer him through the thinning crowd. “The army is moving in,” Kate said, as they struggled along. “I just don’t see it getting better by bringing in more guns.”
“Okay.” He nodded, limping along. “Keep me upright and we’ll see what we can do.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Papercut threw a handful of origami stars at the cat woman, who quickly incinerated them with blue eye beams. It distracted her enough for he and Mallah to scramble around the side of the pyramid. They ducked into the hole she had blasted on her way out.
“This isn’t accomplishing anything!” Mallah growled, reloading.
“It’s keeping her here, rather than out there, zapping the city!” Papercut panted, as he patted his various pouches for more weapons. “Larry and Rita-”
“Don’t have a clue what they are doing,” the ape snapped. “She’s a duplicate with an imperfect brain and he was never the leader of the Doom Patrol! He was Caulder’s errand boy!”
“Fine!” Papercut snapped back. “I’ll distract her and you can go back to Danny! Stupid monkey!”
The two villains glared at each other for several seconds.
“I am many things,” Mallah growled, smacking a clip into one of his guns. “A coward is not one of them. I will be on my feet fighting, paper boy, long after that creature has reduced you to a pile of whiney ash!”
“You two finished?” a voice asked, seconds before Elastic Girl grew from tiny, to her normal height. One arm was longer than the other. “The Egyptian military is here and in a couple minutes they will start firing on this place. Planes have already done a scouting fly-over! If we can’t stop her-”
“We don’t even know what she is!” Mallah snapped.
“If you guys don’t think she’s a real goddess,” Papercut interrupted. “Maybe she’s an alien, or a robot or-”
“She’s a Sidhre!” Rita suddenly announced. “An other-dimensional race that scouted Earth for conquest and exploitation by pretending to be deities.”
“How do you know that?” Papercut asked.
“I just…just…do. I remembered!”
“How do you know?” Mallah asked, confused. “You’re no scientist.”
“No, but being a girl I was expected to help the Chief, typing up files,” Rita explained, smiling at her epiphany. “There were a bunch of sightings…Hawkman encountered them as well as…”
Her forehead furrowed in concentration.
“Oh my gosh!” She suddenly exclaimed in a breathless voice. “That poor thing!”
“What?” her teammates asked, confused by her sudden emotional shift.
Elastic Girl quickly exited the pyramid, growing back up to twenty feet tall. She climbed around the side of the pyramid until she found the Sidhre. Elastic Girl stood on the ledge and held out her hands out.
“Wait!” she shouted. “I don’t want to fight you! Let us help! I understand!”
“What are you doing?” Papercut hissed, anxiously.
“We’re doing this wrong,” Rita replied, over her shoulder. “She’s not attacking. She’s been sealed up in some…secret chamber beneath the pyramid. She’s panicking…she’s scared…aren’t you?”
Elastic Girl turned back to face the floating cat-woman. The energy around her had settled down, it still pulsed and crackled but didn’t seem chaotic or as violent. The Sidhre blinked her eyes and stared at the giantess.
“You don’t want to fight, and if you don’t settle down that’s all you’re going to do. Ever.” Elastic Girl continued in a soothing tone. “We can help you. Believe me, when the Chief first brought me out of the vat he was growing me in, I did a fair bit of damage. Let us help.”
She shrank down to normal size and held her arms out and the Sidhre floated towards the superheroine and let herself be hugged.
“There you go,” Rita murmured, stroking her back. “It’s going to be okay. We don’t want to hurt you. We’ll help you. It’s what we do.”
She gently reached up one hand and eased the tiara off the Sidhre’s brow and tossed it over to Mallah and Pappercut. Papercut fumbled but caught it and he and the gorilla peered at the glowing blue gem set in it.
“I’ll be damned!” Papercut breathed. “She figured out that it was the stone, not the cat lady that was making that lightening stuff!”
“Maybe Caulder wasn’t the genius of the Doom Patrol after all,” Mallah muttered, holstering his guns.
“Actually,” Rita said over her shoulder. “The tip off was the tiara didn’t match the rest of her accessories. It’s silver and all her other jewelry was gold.”
Larry Trainor and Kate paused, as they struggled to join their teammates.
“That’s our Rita,” Larry said, looking up at his teammate and smiling for the first time that day. “She always was the best of us.”
# # # # # # # # # #
They then had to scramble to keep the Egyptian military from attacking the pyramid, as well as convincing them to let the Doom Patrol take custody of the alien that had caused so much chaos.
Soon, Rita had the Sidhre, which they decided to just call Bast, settled in her apartment/garage once they’d returned to Danny the Street. Before anyone could change their mind, Danny whisked them away to Seattle. Larry got himself some coffee, reassured Kate that he would be fine, he could feel the Negative Man regenerating within him, and they both would be back to what passed for normal in a day or so.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked Mallah once he had found the gorilla sitting on a bench, listening to a street musician.
“What do you want, Trainor?” Mallah growled.
“Look, we don’t like each other,” Larry said, sitting down. “Not without reason. You have tried to kill me roughly two dozen times, but you helped today, when you didn’t have to. So, maybe, Kate is right, that, like the rest of us, you’re here for a reason. If you want, we could try and help you find the Brain.”
“Are you asking me to join the Doom Patrol?” Mallah asked.
“Maybe. Let’s say, I’m willing to call truce and would appreciate it when we run into more craziness, if you lent a hand. How’s that sound?”
“I’m not wearing one of those ridiculous red and white costumes,” the gorilla told him.
“I’m just glad you got rid of that stupid beret.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Author’s note:
I’m not even supposed to be here! In a burst of sensible, responsible adult behavior, I’d decided there was no way I could do an ongoing for the new DC2K.
So, how’d we get here?
One bout of election induced anxiety and insomnia left me with a big pile of random ideas about the Doom Patrol. Then work got stressful and to pass the time, I started fitting together all those random ideas and trying to figure out why I didn’t think I could write a Doom Patrol series. Then Gerard Way came along, reminding me why I love Doom Patrol and the next thing I knew I had pages of scribbled notes and a vague outline for the first six issues.
So, what have you guys got to look forward to?
Well, things are going to be odd, but not Grant Morrison odd. The words that spring to mind are ‘fun’ and ‘whimsical’. We are going into the corners of the DCU, but not in a dark Vertigo way, but more the stuff leftover from the Silver Age. The foundation of these stories is the weird thoughts that come to you when you can’t sleep and have read too many comics.
So, take comfort in the fact that while you’re reading this and thinking ‘what the heck is going on here?’ I’m probably thinking the same thing.
There will be little in the way of plans and rules.
The couple I have are:
END
Even though the world is gone
You got me thinking
I’d like to carry on”
~Leonard Cohen
A week after the universe ended, Larry Trainor woke up and decided he needed coffee and to figure out what he was going to do with his life.
Having been given a third ‘second chance’ at life, the ex-test pilot and super hero known as Negative Man was still trying to figure out what came next after reality was reset and history re-written.
He rolled on to his side and then sat up.
Larry never wore pajamas, but since he was wrapped, head to toe, in special chemically treated bandages, he wasn’t sure if you could say he slept naked. He sat slumped for several breaths.
The apartment was sparsely furnished, drab in color scheme and looked surprisingly like one of the first off base apartments Larry had when he was in the air force.
He slipped into his red and white costume and went in search of breakfast and a sense of direction.
Luckily, he was now residing on Danny the Street, a sentient, magical stretch of real estate and safe haven for the lost and unusual, so he had a good chance of finding both. Larry walked out of his apartment building and down the street, nodding in passing to his neighbors, an odd collection of homeless, eccentrics and a couple that he wasn’t entirely sure were even human.
He received greetings in the form of nods, waves and smiles. He found the friendliness of the inhabitants of Danny both welcoming and a little off-putting. Looking like a mummy and being prone to releasing a radioactive alter ego, he wasn’t used to a friendly, positive reaction from the general population.
Danny was an odd place. It felt homey, yet slightly unreal, like a street set from an old movie or Main Street Disney, if either one was populated by homeless transients rather than actors and tourists, not that Danny didn’t have its fair share of those two groups too.
He reached the local coffee shop, ‘Caffeine Diem’ and got in line.
Kate Godwin was also an ex-super hero. She was also a transvestite…or was it transgender…? Larry wasn’t good with the terms and to be honest, with coffee this good, he wasn’t going to judge.
The take out line was long, and Larry wasn’t sure that he had anywhere else to be, so he took a seat at the counter instead. Before he knew it there was a ceramic mug of dark roast and a blueberry scone in front of him.
“Um… I didn’t order…” he began.
“You’ve gotten the dark roast, half and half, not milk, three sugars every morning for a week,” Kate told him on her way past. “And I give all my mopey looking customers a scone.”
Larry frowned at her comment, but had to admit it was a pretty tasty scone.
Once the crowd had thinned out, Kate came over, topped off his coffee and then leaned against the counter.
“So, what’s weighing heavily on your mind?” she asked.
“Not as easy getting over being dead as you’d think,” Larry shrugged.
“You’d think you’d have gotten the hang of it by now,” Kate replied with a smile.
“You’d think.” Larry nodded, taking a sip of coffee. “Between that and trying to figure out what’s going to happen to the others…”
“Others?” Kate interrupted. “You mean the Doom Patrol?”
“Yeah, we’re all here…sort of,” Larry said. “Danny scooped us up when…whatever happened, so it seems like if not the universe, then Danny at least thinks there needs to be a Doom Patrol.”
“Why don’t you look happier about that?” Kate asked, over her shoulder as she filled a coffee order. ‘You’re getting the band back to together!”
“Sort of. We aren’t all the…versions of us that I knew…know...Cliff is ‘retired’ and I don’t know what’s up with the Chief.”
“So? It’s still all four of you.”
“Yeah, but we always had a leader, or at least somebody focused on keeping us together. The Chief was the brains and Cliff was the heart. Without them…well, Rita’s in no shape to take charge and-”
“What about you?” Kate asked, leaning on the counter and helping herself to a piece of Larry’s scone.
“Yeah, that’s the part that’s bothering me,” Larry said. “I was never the guy in charge and don’t know if I can be. The Doom Patrol is not the JLA. You just can’t put any idiot in charge and expect it to work.”
“No, it takes a special kind of idiot,” a growling voice with a French accent said, as a figure joined him at the counter. “While I agree you are an idiot, Trainor, you’re just the run of the mill kind.”
Larry spun on his stool, his linen wrapped hand curled into a fist. The new arrival, a large gorilla wearing a bandolier, easily caught the fist in one massive hand and began to squeeze.
Superhero and gorilla glared at each other for several moments.
“Okay boys, that’s enough,” Kate snapped, slapping at their fists. “Mallah, let him go…now!”
Reluctantly, the gorilla opened his fist and took a step back. He and Larry glared at each other.
“Go take a seat, Mallah,” Kate said, her tone implying she was dealing with unruly boys, rather than a grown man and a scientifically augmented primate. “ If you are this geared up already, don’t think you are getting an espresso shot.”
The gorilla frowned at both Larry and Kate, but then nodded and walked off.
“And you,” Kate said, turning to Larry. “I thought Negative Man referred to your powers, not your attitude.”
“He started it!” Larry protested, before realizing that made him sound like an eleven year old. “He’s tried to kill me, all of the Patrol, about a dozen times.”
“Danny brings people that need to be here,” Kate explained, quietly. “Mallah is as lost and trying to figure it out as you are. If you don’t want to help him, then leave him alone.”
Kate handed him a takeout cup.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Your coffee,” she said. “Go take a walk. When you can behave, come back.”
“What…?” Larry stammered. “But, I…?”
“Tell Cliff I said ‘Hi’.” Kate said, turning away and moving on to other customers.
Larry stood at the counter for a second or two before picking up his coffee and going back outside.
“You ask me,” a voice said. “You could have taken that monkey.”
The speaker was a thin young man. He was short, but his spiked, white hair made him look a bit taller. He wore goggles, a white bodysuit and matching jacket.
He called himself Papercut and claimed to be a supervillain. Larry hadn’t encountered anyone that had ever heard of him.
Supposedly he’d been beaten up by the Red Tornado and the Creeper, decided he didn’t care for it or jail, so in an effort to become a superhero he had taken to following Negative Man around.
Larry looked over at him, took a breath in preparation to delivering a sarcastic remark, then changed his mind and took a sip of coffee instead.
Kate’s little talking-to sloshed over into his recent bout of introspective self pity and he had the uncomfortable epiphany that he had been reacting to Danny’s odd population the way ‘normal people’ would react to him.
As annoying as Papercut was, Larry Trainor was hit with the sudden realization that he had spent the first week of his return to life being a bit of a jerk.
“Huh!” Larry muttered, thoughtfully. He peered at the young supervillain without really seeing him and took another sip of his coffee.
He then reached out and patted Papercut on the shoulder.
“Thanks, kid,” he said, absently, as he turned and walked away. “I need to see some people, but I’ll talk to you later.”
“Um…okay,” the thin-faced man said. “What…uh…just happened?”
# # # # # # # # # #
Down the block, three little storefronts were jammed together, each painted in drab green or grey. The one in the middle had plain, yellow printing above its cluttered front window that read ‘Caulder Appliance and Repair’.
Larry walked in, a little bell above the door giving a cheery ring as he entered. “Uh…hello?”
The little shop was lined with shelves and there were two narrow aisles of them running through the center. All the shelves were packed with small appliances, household gadgets and a multitude of whatever parts and tools you’d need to repair any of them.
“Back here!” a voice called.
Larry made his way to the back of the shop. At the back wall was a counter that was part register and part workbench.
Seated behind the counter, perched on a tall stool was Niles Caulder, but not the man Larry knew as ‘The Chief”.
While Danny had managed to gather the various members of the Doom Patrol in the wake of a cosmic event, Danny wasn’t always able to grab the versions that Larry was familiar with. This Niles Caulder was not a genius, a scientist or a megalomaniac, but rather his genius lay in taking apart household appliances and devices and fixing them.
The bearded man was a bit chubbier than the original, as well as not being in a wheelchair either. He did walk with a pair of braces, due to childhood polio, rather than an assassins’ bullet.
“Good morning, Larry,” Caulder nodded, not looking up from the toaster he was tinkering with.
“Morning, Che-Mr. Caulder,” Larry muttered in reply.
“Please,” the older man said, looking up with a tolerant smile poking through his beard. “It’s fine if you call me Niles.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I can do that,” Larry said, shaking his head and then taking a sip of coffee. He glanced around at the shop. It was like being in a museum dedicated to kitchen gadgets.
“He’s still in the back,” Niles said, returning to his repair task. “Made a little progress.”
Larry nodded his thinks and squeezed past the edge of the counter, through a narrow door into the back room.
Wedged amongst even more appliances in various state of repair was a big roll top desk and an old fashioned sofa. Seated on the sofa was a bronze headless robot body. Next to the sofa was a windowsill, on which sat a potted plant and the head of Cliff Steele, Robotman.
“How you doing?” Larry said, plunking down next to Robotman’s body and sipping his coffee. “You’re looking better, now that you have arms again.”
He turned to face Cliff’s head. It was turned so it could look out the window. Larry turned it, so it was facing him.
“I don’t know what’s going on in there, Cliff, but I wish you’d talk to me,” Larry said. “Sure could use you, even if it’s just you busting my chops…I probably could use it. Feels like I’m making a mess of things…”
He shrugged and slumped back on the sofa, gloomily drinking his coffee. He occasionally glanced out of the corner of his eye at the severed head, convinced any moment his teammate would start talking or give him a hint he was awake and aware.
After several minutes, Larry Trainor realized it wasn’t going to happen and got to his feet.
“Alright, good talk,” he muttered, shrugging. “Let’s do it again sometime.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Back out on the street, Larry went to take a sip of coffee, discovered it was now empty and sighed as he tossed it at the nearest trashcan.
“Guess I should check on Rita,” he muttered.
Slipping down the narrow gap between two buildings, he came out into a small courtyard, walled in by various buildings. The grass was overgrown, dry and brown. It was dotted with several neon pink, plastic flamingos.
The far wall of the courtyard was a drab old garage.
Larry trudged through the tall grass and knocked on the garage door.
“Rise and shine,” he said.
“What?” a muffled voice answered. “Okay…um…I think.”
Rita Farr had been a successful movie actress before a strange chemical changed her into the size-shifting super heroine Elastic Girl. She, like Negative Man, had been believed killed in an explosion.
Unlike Negative Man, Elastic Girl hadn’t survived.
A scrap of her mutated flesh was discovered in the debris and through the ministrations of the Chief, back in his mad scientist days, had been coaxed back to life, resulting in a near perfect copy of Rita Farr. Not exactly a clone, as there had been DNA splicing and several other procedures that Larry hadn’t a chance of understanding involved.
Like with Niles-the-fixit-man, the result was someone, almost, but not quite, who they were supposed to be. This Elastic girl had Rita’s powers and most of the originals’ memories, what was missing was complete control of her shape changing and the emotional connection to those memories.
While she looked and sounded like Larry’s friend, teammate and crush, there was enough gone from her personality that Larry felt less like he’d gained a teammate as he was watching out for a friend’s younger sister.
Larry raised the garage door. The interior had been cleaned up and converted into a makeshift apartment. Currently Elastic girl was twenty feet tall, sitting on the broken remains of her bed, and wearing only a bed sheet.
“Aaahh!” Larry exclaimed before quickly turning around. “I…um…sorry….!”
“I grew in my sleep,” Rita muttered. “Can’t get that under control…maybe I should sleep on the floor…?”
“Um…look,” Larry muttered, reaching up behind him for the garage door. “How about you get…dressed and we’ll take a walk. I want to talk to you about some stuff.”
Without waiting, Larry slid the door shut, exhaling loudly.
Soon, Rita Farr, clad in a red and white mini-dress, purple boots and white gloves, stepped out and they were walking down the street.
“So, maybe Kate is right,” Larry shrugged. “And what Danny is doing is because it…he…the world still needs a Doom Patrol.”
“Okay,” Rita nodded.
Larry had to glance upwards when he looked at her, as she had only managed to shrink down to seven feet tall. “Okay? What do you mean?”
“If you want me to join your team, I will,” Rita replied with a casual shrug.
“My team?” Larry said, stopping. “Why do people keep thinking I could lead the Doom Patrol?”
Elastic Girl stopped, shrank down till she and Negative Man were eye to eye. She laid a hand against his bandaged cheek. “Maybe the question you should be asking is why you think you can’t,” Rita said, smiling at him, like a mom with an anxious child.
Something down the street caught her attention and Rita shot back up to twenty feet to look.
“There’s a crowd gathering at the end of the street,” she said. “Danny must have stopped somewhere interesting…lets go see.”
The next thing Negative Man knew, she was gone, a few over-sized strides taking her to join the crowd. Larry stood there for a moment, looking generally perplexed. After a minute, he shrugged and followed.
At the end of the street a dozen assorted people were gathered. Kate was there, as well as Papercut, some of the homeless and a couple local business owners. Upon reaching the crowd, rather than returning to normal size, Elastic Girl just knelt down to see what everyone was looking at.
“So, where are we?” Larry asked.
“Egypt,” a hunch-shouldered man with grey stubble and a shabby overcoat replied.
“You sure?” Larry asked, looking at the sandy expanse that spread out before them.
“What are you, thick?” the vagrant asked, pointing off into the distance.
Larry glanced up and spotted the massive stone pyramids.
“Ah, yeah, I’m an idiot,” the linen-wrapped hero muttered.
“Your self-reflection is insightful,” Mallah rumbled, appearing at his side.
“Don’t make me separate you two,” Kate said, leaning in between them.
“Wow!” Papercut breathed. “I’ve never been to Egypt before!”
“I was here once,” Rita said. “Filming a war picture…I think I was a nurse.”
“The Brotherhood had a base hidden beneath a pyramid,” Mallah added. “The tourist center had a very nice café.”
“Are we near a city?” Kate asked. “Might be nice to walk around; play tourist.”
There was suddenly a burst of energy from one of the pyramids, sending lightening-like tendrils, blue and silver, crackling out into the afternoon sky.
“…or not,” Kate muttered.
“That’s weird,” the guy who owned the comic shop muttered.
“Someone should check that out,” a teen with a canvas paperboy bag slung over his shoulder suggested.
“Why is everyone looking at us?” Larry asked Rita out of the corner of his mouth.
“We’re superheroes,” she whispered back.
“And idiots,” Mallah said.
Larry glared at the gorilla. Kate distracted him from snapping at his one-time foe, with a hand on his shoulder. “You guys want to handle it, or would you like some of us to come and help?” she asked.
“Hey, I’ll go!” Papercut exclaimed.
“You don’t need to raise your hand,” Larry told him. “This isn’t algebra class. Anybody else?”
“I will,” Mallah said.
“Um…sure, why not…am I the only one who can fly?” Negative Man said. “Gonna be tricky getting us there.”
“I could carry a couple of you,” Rita suggested.
“Hey! You guys call a cab?” a voice shouted.
The crowd turned, as an old style taxicab pulled up. The driver, who looked to Larry like he’d just stepped out of a 30’s movie, got out. He was a stocky, middle-aged man in dungarees, a much-abused turtle neck sweater and a cap. He had a friendly, craggy face.
“Where you going?” he asked, looking around the crowd. “Come on; meter’s running.”
“Sure, why not?” Larry said. “We’re going to the pyramids. You got room for…uh, let’s see…five?”
“Sure, sure.” The cabbie nodded. “I don’t want the monkey up front with me.”
He went and opened the back door and made a ‘after you’ gesture. They all bundled in: Kate, Rita, Papercut and Mallah in the backseat and Larry climbed in next to the driver. “Um…hi, I’m Larry.”
“Richard O’ Hara,” the driver nodded, holding out a weathered hand. “Folks call me
‘Hack’.”
Larry made quick introductions as the taxi bumped along the dirt road and across the sandy expanse. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Hack muttered, peering across the way.
As they got closer, they could see a crowd was gathering around the pyramids, a mix of police, soldiers, tourists and curious locals. The cab parked at the fringe of the crowd. And everyone climbed out. They got a few looks from those at the back of the crowd.
“What now?” Kate asked.
“Hey!” Papercut exclaimed. “There’s something…somebody up in all that crackly energy stuff!”
“Guess I’ll go see who’s in the crackly stuff,” Larry shrugged. “You guys see if you can get through the crowd. Try and find somebody official so we don’t get shot trying to help.”
“Anything else?” Rita asked.
“Yeah, catch me,” Larry said, as his body slumped.
A figure that looked liked a solid shadow, surrounded by a nimbus of energy emerged from Larry Trainor’s body and flew off towards the pyramid. Kate and Rita each caught one of Larry’s arms and steered his weak body back to the cab.
“Keep an eye on him,” Rita told Hack O’Hara, as they laid Larry down in the back seat.
“Now what?” Papercut asked, trying to peer over the crowd.
Elastic Girl shot up to twenty feet tall, and gingerly stepped over the heads of the crowd, apologizing as she went.
“What about us?” Papercut shouted after her.
“I’ve got an idea,” Kate said, before cupping her hands around her mouth. “Oh my god! That gorilla has a gun!”
Mallah scowled at her and then shrugged, drew a pistol from a shoulder holster and fired into the air. Numerous people in the back rows turned, saw Mallah and scrambled to form a path for him.
“Wait for me!” Papercut muttered.
Mallah spun and with his free hand grabbed hold of the front of his jacket and slung the super villain over his shoulder. He then barreled through the crowd, occasionally leaping up and over when the crowd became too dense.
“Think I’ll wait here,” Kate nodded to herself. “Hope they’re up to this…”
“Meter’s running,” Hack said, leaning back against the hood of his cab.
# # # # # # # # # #
Negative Man was a streak of crackling black, shooting over the heads of the crowd and then arcing upwards towards the tip of the pyramid.
About three-fourths of the way up the massive stone structure there was a hole blown out and floating above it was the source of the strange energy streams, a jagged ball of blue energy radiating silver sparks and blue strings of lightening. In the center was a figure.
It was a woman clad like a handmaiden from ancient Egypt; sandals with thin straps encircling her calves, thin bracelets encircling her arms, shimmering white silk wrapped around her hips and a circlet of silver, set with a single blue gem rested on her brow. Her body was lithe and smooth, but her head was that of a large cat, her blue eyes were open wide and her mouth open in a silent screech, whether of pain or extreme emotion was unsure. The maelstrom of blue and silver energy crackled around her, like a raging storm.
The crowd was torn between wanting to flee and yet sensing deeply suppressed feelings and thoughts, that in centuries past their ancestors had worshipped idols that looked exactly like this creature. It was as though one of the stone statues that adorned the pyramids’ inner chambers had come to life. She was a myth come to life and the local population was feeling a swirl of conflicting emotions trying to process how they should be feeling about it.
Negative Man streaked towards the strange cat-woman, stretching out as he flew rapidly around her, attempting to contain her in a cone made from his own radioactive body.
The two unearthly energies clashed and sparked against each other, before Negative Man shattered, like a piece of ebony glass.
In the taxi, Larry Trainor’s body twitched and a low groan escaped from between his clenched teeth.
Mallah and Papercut skidded to a halt in the middle of the crowd as the shards of Negative Man flew overhead, like a swarm of bees.
“That can’t be good,” Papercut muttered, as the gun-toting gorilla lowered him to the ground.
“Elastic Girl is seeking to calm the crowd and find someone in charge,” Mallah said. “Let us see what we can do about that…creature.”
He shouldered his way through the crowd, the skinny man in white struggling to keep up.
“What are your powers again?” Mallah grunted over his broad shoulder. “Are you going to be any use?”
“What…uh…I can… mentally control paper,” Papercut said, raising his voice to be heard over the rumble of the crowd.
“So, that would be ‘no’,” Mallah muttered to himself.
The duo pushed through the crowd and reached the base of the pyramid. Papercut was working to catch his breath while Mallah was peering up at the pyramid and the cat-headed woman. He holstered his gun and began to climb. Papercut watched him go and thought for a few seconds, before reaching into one of the pouches on his jacket. He came out with a half dozen tiny origami birds.
“Go see what’s going on up there,” he told them. “If you can, help the monkey.”
He raised his gloved hand. The wings began to twitch and flutter and then the birds took off.
Nearby, Elastic Girl had found several uniformed men, who seemed to be in charge of the police and soldiers. She started to talk and then realized she was twenty feet tall and had to shout and that the men seemed a bit anxious and intimidated. With a few moments of effort, she shrank down to normal size.
“Hi, I’m…um…Elastic Girl, a superhero. My team, the Doom Patrol is here to help,” she said, with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Yes,” one of the men said. “My men will assist however they can.”
“Really?” Rita asked, surprised. “You know us?”
‘”You are Rita Farr,” he said. “I was a teenager when you were here filming ‘Desert Combat’. You took a picture with my sister.”
“Oh!” Elastic Girl said. “I’m glad you remember me. We’re….uh…going to deal with this.”
She pointed vaguely towards the floating, energy spewing woman.
“If you and your men could…ah…maybe, move the crowd back?” She suggested. “There tends to be some fighting.” Both she and the crowd looked up at the sound of gunfire. “I’d better go help.” Rita shot up to twenty feet and jogged off to re-join her teammates.
Papercut’s flock of tiny birds fluttered, flying past Mallah as he scrambled up the pyramid. The birds flew around the raging cat woman, while down on the ground, Papercut stood with his eyes closed, letting information flow from his creations down to his brain.
“Huh!” he muttered. “Weird.”
“What’s going on?” Rita asked, kneeling down next to him.
“Um…there’s a lady with a cat head shooting blue lightening out of her eyes. It looks like she busted out of the pyramid and has already taken out Negative Man.”
“Cat lady?” Rita muttered, scratching her chin in thought.
“Yeah, you know, like that Egyptian goddess…Best…no wait…Bast…? Are we fighting a god?” Papercut asked, anxiously.
“I don’t think so,” Elastic girl replied. “Though, something familiar about this…”
“The Doom Patrol fight her before?” he asked.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Elastic girl said, picking up Papercut and climbing the pyramid. “I remember…no, it’s in here…” She reached up to point to her temple to indicate her jumbled memories. Unfortunately, she used the hand that was holding Papercut.
The ex-supervillain grabbed a hold of a giant finger and tried not to screech like a frightened child. He was only mildly successful.
They reached the top of the pyramid just as Mallah fired upon the cat creature.
She flinched so one bullet winged her. Her blue lightening flickered and she clutched at one bare shoulder. She turned and glared at the gun-toting gorilla. Energy flared wildly, incinerating the swarm of animated paper birds.
Papercut winced and pressed at the center of his forehead as the mental connection was severed.
Blue-silver lightening arced, causing Mallah to leap about to avoid being struck. Chunks of rock were blasted off the pyramid. Elastic girl lunged across and swatted some of the bigger pieces of stone away from the crowds on the ground.
“Wish I could remember where I’ve seen something like her before,” she muttered, as she set Papercut on a ledge to free up both hands. “Can you help Mallah keep her busy?”
“I guess so.” He shrugged. “We have a plan?”
“I don’t know,” Rita sighed. “I didn’t think I’d be the one in charge…I wish Larry was here.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Larry Trainor twisted in pain as the shattered fragments of Negative Man returned to their host.
“Is he okay?” Hack O’Hara asked, moving the toothpick to the corner of his mouth.
“No idea,” Kate replied, as they both leaned in the open cab door.
Suddenly Larry lurched upright, his wide-opened eyes black and glassy as marbles and what looked like black flame coming out of his mouth and nostrils.
“Yaaarrrgghhh!” He retched, before inhaling deeply and sucking the negative energy back in. His eyes returned to normal as he blinked at the cabbie and the transgender barista. “What the *&^$%! just happened!?”
“Are you okay?” Kate asked, helping out of the back of the taxi.
“No, not really,” he muttered, leaning on the cab to stay upright. He held one bandaged hand to his forehead. “I feel hot…and my chest is full of broken glass. Whatever she blasted Negative Man with he’s not reforming like before. Not sure how much help I’m…uh…gonna be.”
“Well, we need to do something,” Kate told him. “The others are jumping around, like some weird version of Donkey Kong. We need to help.”
“I don’t know what I can do,” Larry muttered.
Kate slid his arm around her shoulders and began to steer him through the thinning crowd. “The army is moving in,” Kate said, as they struggled along. “I just don’t see it getting better by bringing in more guns.”
“Okay.” He nodded, limping along. “Keep me upright and we’ll see what we can do.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Papercut threw a handful of origami stars at the cat woman, who quickly incinerated them with blue eye beams. It distracted her enough for he and Mallah to scramble around the side of the pyramid. They ducked into the hole she had blasted on her way out.
“This isn’t accomplishing anything!” Mallah growled, reloading.
“It’s keeping her here, rather than out there, zapping the city!” Papercut panted, as he patted his various pouches for more weapons. “Larry and Rita-”
“Don’t have a clue what they are doing,” the ape snapped. “She’s a duplicate with an imperfect brain and he was never the leader of the Doom Patrol! He was Caulder’s errand boy!”
“Fine!” Papercut snapped back. “I’ll distract her and you can go back to Danny! Stupid monkey!”
The two villains glared at each other for several seconds.
“I am many things,” Mallah growled, smacking a clip into one of his guns. “A coward is not one of them. I will be on my feet fighting, paper boy, long after that creature has reduced you to a pile of whiney ash!”
“You two finished?” a voice asked, seconds before Elastic Girl grew from tiny, to her normal height. One arm was longer than the other. “The Egyptian military is here and in a couple minutes they will start firing on this place. Planes have already done a scouting fly-over! If we can’t stop her-”
“We don’t even know what she is!” Mallah snapped.
“If you guys don’t think she’s a real goddess,” Papercut interrupted. “Maybe she’s an alien, or a robot or-”
“She’s a Sidhre!” Rita suddenly announced. “An other-dimensional race that scouted Earth for conquest and exploitation by pretending to be deities.”
“How do you know that?” Papercut asked.
“I just…just…do. I remembered!”
“How do you know?” Mallah asked, confused. “You’re no scientist.”
“No, but being a girl I was expected to help the Chief, typing up files,” Rita explained, smiling at her epiphany. “There were a bunch of sightings…Hawkman encountered them as well as…”
Her forehead furrowed in concentration.
“Oh my gosh!” She suddenly exclaimed in a breathless voice. “That poor thing!”
“What?” her teammates asked, confused by her sudden emotional shift.
Elastic Girl quickly exited the pyramid, growing back up to twenty feet tall. She climbed around the side of the pyramid until she found the Sidhre. Elastic Girl stood on the ledge and held out her hands out.
“Wait!” she shouted. “I don’t want to fight you! Let us help! I understand!”
“What are you doing?” Papercut hissed, anxiously.
“We’re doing this wrong,” Rita replied, over her shoulder. “She’s not attacking. She’s been sealed up in some…secret chamber beneath the pyramid. She’s panicking…she’s scared…aren’t you?”
Elastic Girl turned back to face the floating cat-woman. The energy around her had settled down, it still pulsed and crackled but didn’t seem chaotic or as violent. The Sidhre blinked her eyes and stared at the giantess.
“You don’t want to fight, and if you don’t settle down that’s all you’re going to do. Ever.” Elastic Girl continued in a soothing tone. “We can help you. Believe me, when the Chief first brought me out of the vat he was growing me in, I did a fair bit of damage. Let us help.”
She shrank down to normal size and held her arms out and the Sidhre floated towards the superheroine and let herself be hugged.
“There you go,” Rita murmured, stroking her back. “It’s going to be okay. We don’t want to hurt you. We’ll help you. It’s what we do.”
She gently reached up one hand and eased the tiara off the Sidhre’s brow and tossed it over to Mallah and Pappercut. Papercut fumbled but caught it and he and the gorilla peered at the glowing blue gem set in it.
“I’ll be damned!” Papercut breathed. “She figured out that it was the stone, not the cat lady that was making that lightening stuff!”
“Maybe Caulder wasn’t the genius of the Doom Patrol after all,” Mallah muttered, holstering his guns.
“Actually,” Rita said over her shoulder. “The tip off was the tiara didn’t match the rest of her accessories. It’s silver and all her other jewelry was gold.”
Larry Trainor and Kate paused, as they struggled to join their teammates.
“That’s our Rita,” Larry said, looking up at his teammate and smiling for the first time that day. “She always was the best of us.”
# # # # # # # # # #
They then had to scramble to keep the Egyptian military from attacking the pyramid, as well as convincing them to let the Doom Patrol take custody of the alien that had caused so much chaos.
Soon, Rita had the Sidhre, which they decided to just call Bast, settled in her apartment/garage once they’d returned to Danny the Street. Before anyone could change their mind, Danny whisked them away to Seattle. Larry got himself some coffee, reassured Kate that he would be fine, he could feel the Negative Man regenerating within him, and they both would be back to what passed for normal in a day or so.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked Mallah once he had found the gorilla sitting on a bench, listening to a street musician.
“What do you want, Trainor?” Mallah growled.
“Look, we don’t like each other,” Larry said, sitting down. “Not without reason. You have tried to kill me roughly two dozen times, but you helped today, when you didn’t have to. So, maybe, Kate is right, that, like the rest of us, you’re here for a reason. If you want, we could try and help you find the Brain.”
“Are you asking me to join the Doom Patrol?” Mallah asked.
“Maybe. Let’s say, I’m willing to call truce and would appreciate it when we run into more craziness, if you lent a hand. How’s that sound?”
“I’m not wearing one of those ridiculous red and white costumes,” the gorilla told him.
“I’m just glad you got rid of that stupid beret.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Author’s note:
I’m not even supposed to be here! In a burst of sensible, responsible adult behavior, I’d decided there was no way I could do an ongoing for the new DC2K.
So, how’d we get here?
One bout of election induced anxiety and insomnia left me with a big pile of random ideas about the Doom Patrol. Then work got stressful and to pass the time, I started fitting together all those random ideas and trying to figure out why I didn’t think I could write a Doom Patrol series. Then Gerard Way came along, reminding me why I love Doom Patrol and the next thing I knew I had pages of scribbled notes and a vague outline for the first six issues.
So, what have you guys got to look forward to?
Well, things are going to be odd, but not Grant Morrison odd. The words that spring to mind are ‘fun’ and ‘whimsical’. We are going into the corners of the DCU, but not in a dark Vertigo way, but more the stuff leftover from the Silver Age. The foundation of these stories is the weird thoughts that come to you when you can’t sleep and have read too many comics.
So, take comfort in the fact that while you’re reading this and thinking ‘what the heck is going on here?’ I’m probably thinking the same thing.
There will be little in the way of plans and rules.
The couple I have are:
- I wrote a short-lived DP series for DC Legends, so I don’t want to just be recycling ideas.
- No Robotman: Part of what stalled my writing this Doom Patrol was I had already written Robotman and didn’t feel I had any more to say and was really daunted by every DP writer making him the center of the team. Then I had the epiphany that I could lose Cliff and write the other, neglected members of the Patrol. (Sorry Cliff Steele fans, but I’m going to keep him off screen as long as I can get away with it.)
END