Otaku Melee - Steelport

Mint was sore, and not just from kicking the Man of Steel in the face. His whole attitude was just so grating. He didn't even take her seriously at all!

She walked down the street, too self-absorbed to notice the gunshots at the Armistice across the street. In fact, she only noticed the terrified student crumpled in a heap on the sidewalk because he was in her way.

"I am a criminal," Ishimaru muttered weakly. "How did this happen? How? HOW!"

"Hey [expletive]!" Mint shouted, kicking him lightly in the ribs. "You're in the way. Go have your nervous breakdown somewhere else, I've got a world to conquer."

Something in Ishimaru's mind suddenly fell into place. Whatever his own crimes, he could not turn a blind eye to this. He leapt to his feet suddenly, much to Mint's surprise, and then turned his glare towards the ex-Princess.

"Conquering the world is a clear violation of the law!" he shouted.

He was promptly rewarded for his courageous stand against injustice with a jump-kick to the face.

"So how do these things work..."

After a rather uneventful trip through the Perseus, dodging a few armored cronies and beating up a few others, Almond found herself on the Air Deck of the airship, where were a bunch of complicated machines, some of which, Almond assumed, would fly her out of here.

The bunny girl mounted what seemed to be the simplest machine there, a cool motorcycle-esque vehicle with some rockets attached that looked like something she saw on Punisher Pumice. After some fiddling, she got it to work and blasted off the airship.

"Woaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

The flying-cycle was a lot faster than Almond had expected, and it was harder to control given her size. Despite this, she did succeed at not crashing the thing right away, although that was partially because of how high the Perseus was above ground. If anything, it gave her time to try to get the thing under control.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah."

She didn't do the best job of it, but she at least was able to sit down on the thing, which was better than being one slip away from a free fall.

Meanwhile, The One Electric was mentally taking note of the two sides of the shoot-out whilst sipping on his whiskey.

He had to admit, that despite the seemingly overwhelming opposition, the barkeep and his men were doing a good job of keeping the now two highly armed vehicles at bay. Just as he was about to stand up and get a better look around, he heard an odd sound coming from outside, oddly piercing the many gunshots and other loud noises.

"Loooooooook ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!"

There was a pretty big explosion as Almond crashed her stolen flying cycle into the purple thugs' vehicles, launching the various foot soldiers up and around and leaving those inside the Armistice a little shocked. As for Almond herself, she was blasted right into The One Electric, knocking him off his seat and more urgently, spilling his drink.

A silence settled over the area as the officers and Deckers stared at the now distinctly purple and armless Kryptonian.

As the dropped cop staggered to his feet, hanging onto one of his allies, he mumbled a thank you to the Wizard, who responded primarily by cringing and holding his staff in front of him. One of the handcuffed hackers piped up with a "'ey, is that guy a Saint?"

One of the policemen scratched his head. "...Well, he is purple." Another quickly chimed in with "Well, he's purple, but he's wearing red. Maybe he's Morningstar. We'll need to do a background check." At this, Eggplant let out a little "eep," before another Decker finally pointed something out:

"Wait, this bloke doesn't look too human. Maybe he's one of them costume chaps?"

The policemen nodded in general; one of them headed over and gently tapped the Wizard on what might charitably have been called a shoulder; the response was another yelp and further cringing. The cop held out his hand in a gesture of peace. "It's alright, kid, you aren't under arrest. You just saved an officer's life. Where you from, anyway?"

Eggplant blinked, then slowly lowered his staff and cleared his throat. "Uh, I'm from Mount Icarus, sir. Uh, Angel Land." In response to the policeman's blank stare, he continued, "Um... i-in Videoland? Are we not there?"

After a brief moment of silence, allowing Eggplant to further regret his entire life and consider hiding in the dumpster again, one of the other policemen snapped his fingers. "Right! Videoland's that new theme park opening just out of town, right? And you're promoting the log flume or a roller coaster or something?"

The Wizard considered arguing, but decided that this was the simplest way to avoid anything bad happening. "Right, yeah! So if you'll just let me get going, I have flyers to hand out." He attempted to briskly walk away, but was stopped.

"Hang on, kid. You should go see the Chief. Come with me."

He and the policeman quickly piled into a squad car with a couple cuffed Deckers, leaving behind the transformed Superman.

One of the remaining lawmen shrugged. "Guess we should get this guy to a hospital or something, eh?"

--------

The Steelport Chief of Police's office was notable for three things. One was the frankly astonishing amount of discarded liquor bottles on and around his desk; second, a series of pictures featuring the Chief and the Mayor, telling a loose timeline - the former's expression starting as adulation, then determination, then anger, and finally a mix of resignation and disgust. And finally, the pile of battered computer parts next to the desk, and the golf club next to them.

There was a knock on the door, which greatly irritated the Chief, as the only thing he found less palatable than the abject misery and pointlessness of his job was the fact that once in a while he was expected to actually pretend to still care. After downing a shot of bourbon, he let out a terse, slurred "What the fuck is it" before pouring himself some more.

Had this been an old cartoon, perhaps made in the mid fifties, he would likely have pointedly taken his bottle of booze and dropped it on the ground upon seeing the cyclopean vegetable-man sheepishly enter his room, escorted by Ron Vanovitch. Rather than being amazed by the sheer bizarreness of the creature now before him, the Chief, numbed by (as an example) the fact that literal fucking masked wrestlers controlled a good fifth of the city and had recently smashed open an armored car with Unmentionable Objects, simply leaned forward and sighed. "Alright, who the hell are you?"

Eggplant Wizard cleared his throat. "Uh, my name is Eggplant Wizard, sir, you can call me Eggy, and, well, it seems I saved one of your subordinates."

The Chief raised an eyebrow. "Your point being, mister Wizard?"

And it was at this point that, as only happened rarely, the Wizard had an intelligent thought: here he had a broken man, a broken department, but one with manpower and weapons training. With sufficient equipment, they might be able to make actual progress - or, at least, it might seem like they were long enough for them to get a bit sloppy, give him a tad too much leeway, until eventually he had managed to gain control of the entire city of Steelport.

Had he the biology necessary, he would have been sweating madly; but instead, he merely swallowed hard, did his best to hold back the shakes, and said, in the most confident voice he could muster, "Point being, I can help you take back this town, sir."

The response was an exasperated sigh. "Trust me, kid, if STAG can't, we can't. What do we have that can compete with goddamned lasers?"

At this the aubergine grinned and quickly produced some produce; more specifically a tremendous, hollowed-out squash. He grinned as he opened a window, then pulled the trigger, launching a smaller exploding gourd at an emptier part of the station's parking area, creating a violent and tremendous explosion that coated the surrounding area with seeds and pumpkin meat. "I don't know who STAG is, but I don't think they have that, sir."

For the briefest moment, there was a glimmer in the Chief of Police's eyes, albeit matched with a general expression of complete and utter bemusement.

”Sir, we’re running a hospital here, not a greenhouse.”

Superman could hear the phlegmatic voice of the doctor clear as day, could smell the potpourri of rubbing alcohol and blood that coated the emergency room, but his vision only registered a dull purple wash, with individual objects coming into focus only as they stepped in front of bright lights. He didn’t understand magic. Magic lacked the simple elegance of the systems in which he felt most comfortable, like science, or ethics.

“Yes, but you see, he used to be a, uh, a person,” insisted the police officer. “We assumed that qualified as a medical emergency of sorts.”

Super-hearing still more-or-less functioned. The doctor had a light arrhythmia, and his breath was labored.

“Hmm. Toss him on a bed somewhere. He doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. We’ll get to him if things ever slow down.”

Super-Eggplant was tossed on a stretcher, and lay there bulbous-side-up. He could imagine the Planet headline:

LAST BERRY OF KRYPTON!

With the subheading:

JIMMY OLSEN NEEDS SUPERMAN’S HELP, BUT WHO WILL COME TO HIS AID WHEN THE MAN OF STEEL IS WORLDS AWAY—AND AN EGGPLANT!

Often in stressful situations like this Superman coped by “going Clark,” falling into the persona of the objective reporter, the third party. The most elegant solutions to problems tended to come to him not when he was thinking “What would Superman do?”—Superman had a fairly limited bag of tricks, all things considered—but thinking “What would Clark do?”

He wiggled his little eggplant legs, failing to resolve himself into an upright position. The sounds of Steelport interrupted his thought processes. Thousands of voices crying out in pain, hundreds of others screaming in triumph. Love, understanding, and humanity crushed under the unforgiving wheels of crime and misrule. A world without a hero.

Superman rolled off the bed, hoping he wouldn’t simply crack open. He bounced once, manifesting a dull black bruise on his purple skin, and then landed on his feet.

The world’s greatest hero put one comically unsteady-looking purple foot in front of the other.

It took him five minutes going like that just to get out the revolving door, then dropped on his knees on the sidewalk. It was noon. The shadows of the city had all vanished, and the sun shone yellow over Steelport, triggering refreshing photosynthesis on the leaves atop Super-Eggplant’s head. His vision was improving, a bit, or else his mind had adjusted enough to recognize the beauty of the architecture, the dignity of the people, the familiarity of it all.

Alternate Earth or something else altogether, some things never changed.

He “shut his eyes,” or elected to ignore his crude optical sense, focusing on his superhearing.

“You can have a Great White after dinner, okay, mijo?”

“No, there ain’t no ‘Bulk Discount.’ An’ if there was, your ass sure as hell wouldn’t qualify!”

“‘When I am well, like the doll said I would be, I ask my mother, “What name should I give to this doll who walked about the room and played for me, and looked after me when I was sick?” “There is no such thing and no such doll,” my mother says.’”

“Janice? I think I’m coming down with something.”

“Where are you going to go, huh? What do you have, if you don’t have me? You stupid fucking bitch!”

“The cats aren’t easier, you can just fill up the bowl when it empties. The dogs, they’ll just keep eating ‘til they get sick.”

“Fuckin' defense collapsed faster'n my dick when your mom walks in. An’ I’m out seventy five dollars--”

”I don’t know who STAG is, but I don’t think they have that, sir.”

Superman honed in on the sound of the Eggplant Wizard’s voice, some twenty blocks away. What would Clark do? Clark would do his job; he would get the other guy’s side of the story. The eggplant began to walk, vaguely cognizant of the looks he was getting from civilians. It’s a gourd! It’s someone’s thyroid! No! Superman was confident that this whole thing could be sorted out with a little communication. After all, he had come on a bit strong earlier.

He would have had more reason to hope if he were able to talk.