Shiro thought it over. “Going I now for car and so be heavy with speed.”
“What?” Atomik Lad said while Tiny Typhoon scampered off to fetch his vehicle.
“Wait a second,” Nuklear Man said. “He’s driving?”
“There’s that dazzling intellect.”
“But he’s just a kid! No regular person could be that short unless he were some super deformed mutant, and we’ve got pogroms to keep freaks like that out of our pure society.”
“Where do you get these ideas?”
“I mostly piece them together from zealous right wing extremist pamphlets.”
A sporty little car zipped through the lanes of parked cars and headed for the heroes. “We’ll talk about this later,” Atomik Lad said. “That must be Shiro.”
“How can you tell? All those Japanese cars look the same.”
Atomik Lad slapped him in the back of the head. “Could you stop saying stupid things for, like, ten seconds?”
The car skidded to a halt in front of them and Shiro poked his head out the driver’s side window. “Now we go or time will explode our heads like watermelon balloons full of lateness!”
Nuklear Man leaned over. “Pssst, Sparky. He’s gone insane.”
“Which still makes him a better driver than you. Let’s go.”
__________
The trio bounced along Metroville’s streets when Atomik Lad noticed a certain deficiency in one of Shiro’s gauges. “Shiro, you might want to gas up. It’s about a forty minute round trip out to the Silo once you get out of the city traffic and there’s no gas stations along the way. I think the radiation has something to do with it.”
“Not worry. Prithee, Samurai-car-vehicle use supaa fuel!”
“Oh?”
“SUPAA THERMODYNAMICU RICE FURNACE!”
“The car runs on rice?”
“Samurai-car-vehicre efficiency is, like bone slicing katana blade bloodgushing no more walk!”
“So,” Nuklear Man began. “What you’re saying is that this car is a rice burn—”
“We
got
it, Nuke.”
“Aww, c’mon. It’s been
way
more than ten seconds!”
“Erg.”
The trip was a fairly uneventful one, if one ignored Shiro’s habit of driving on the wrong side of the road. With the Heroic Duo delivered unto their subterranean dwelling, the Tiny Typhoon drove off singing his Sake Song which went a little something like this: “Ohhhhhh, sake, sake, sake, sake, sake! Ohhhhhh, sake, sake, sake, sake, sake!” And so on.
__________
Nuklear Man stretched his titanic arms and let out a sigh. “Ah, we’ve got the whole day ahead of us, Sparky. The spring air is in the um, the air.” He took in a deep breath. “Well, that’s enough of that. Time for seventeen straight hours of Silly Sam’s Cartoon Marathon-a-Thon o’ Fun.” Nuklear Man promptly flew to his Danger: Couch and became as close to comatose as a waking man could be.
“Whereas I shall make a phone call,” Atomik Lad said, eyeing the Danger: Phone like he was about to trick it.
__________
“Hello?” the groggy yet somehow still sexy voice of Rachel mumbled into Atomik Lad’s ear thanks to the miracle of telephonology.
“Um, did I wake you?”
Her answer, quite simply, was “...”
“Ahem. Rachel?”
“Hello?” she mumbled anew.
“You awake?”
“Hard to say. Let me sleep on it and I’ll get back to you on that one.”
“C’mon, it’s practically eleven in the morning. Time for wakey.”
“Just ten more minutes.”
“I can be there in seven.”
She stretched and rolled around with a slight yawn. “Promise?”
“Oh yeah,” though he was answering her little stretching noises and not her question.
“Well then, I’ll be expecting you. Remember, it’s not polite to keep a lady waiting.” And she hung up.
Atomik Lad dashed from his Danger: Katkat’s Room to the Danger: Launch Pad. “Nuke, I’m goin’ out for a bit. Try not to do anything stu—let’s just shorten this exchange and say that you should try not to do
anything.”
Nuklear Man was sprawled across the Danger: Couch like a casually tossed corpse. Katkat did his best to imitate the same posture across the Hero’s tummy. Nuklear Man took a brief account of his surroundings. “Thaaaaat shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Good.”
“Though I can’t guarantee you that I won’t be damn sexy. I just can’t help doing that.”
“Uh, sure. You bet.” And he took off.
Nuklear Man tried to give his belly a slight scratch, but was thwarted in his efforts by the nefariously cute machinations of Katkat who had cleverly positioned himself such that his was the belly which would receive the scratches. “Curse your cunning hide!” Nuklear Man spat whilst scratching away.
“Mreowr?”
“Naw, I take it back.”
“Meow!”
__________
Nearly seven minutes later, Atomik Lad was at the front door of Wayne Hall. “Oh, I’m good,” he told himself in a strangely Nukie kinda way while picking up the phone on the dorm’s outer wall. It disturbed him. He put it out of his mind and dialed Rachel’s room.
“Hello?” He noticed her voice had a certain vexed quality to it this time.
“Er. Hiya, what’s shakin’?”
“Ooh, good timing Sparky,” Her voice trailed off with preoccupation. “Hey, would you mind floating up to my window to come in? I’m a little busy right now.”
“Well, I really don’t like using my powers on campus. It makes me feel weird, like I’m cheating or something.”
“It’ll only take two seconds. Come on, I woke up early for you.”
“Eleven in the morning really isn’t early.”
“Maybe not to Mr. Butt crack of Dawn Heroman it’s not, but some of us like to get our beauty rest.”
“Beauty rest? What, you can just charge that stuff up by sleeping?”
“Yup. It’s an old family secret.”
“So you were in a Beauty Coma for the nineteen years before I met you? That
does
explain the goddess-like glow.”
“How can I resist sweet talkin’ like that?”
“You can’t. It’s futile.”
“You got me. I’ll be down in a few.”
__________
“You seemed kinda pissed on the phone there,” Atomik Lad said as they walked down the hall back to Rachel’s room. “Something bothering you?”
She gave a deep breath as she approached her door. “Yeah,” she said and opened the door.
Atomik Lad stepped inside, took one look around, and his mouth dropped wide open. “You’re, you’re….”
“Addicted to video games, I know,” she admitted. She sat down and unpaused the screen. “The last couple of guys before the boss on this one are such cheaters. It aggravates me.”
“You’re, you’re, you’re….”
“You must think I’m some kinda dork, right?”
“Well, I was going to say perfect, but whatever.”
“Yeah, right.”
He watched her play for a few seconds. “Hey, is that Samurai Swordplay IV?”
“Yup. Me and my thirteen hit combo are going places. Namely, the final boss. We can get going once I finish him off.”
He ogled her...video game collection. “We can stay. I don’t mind. Really.”
“You don’t mind watching?”
“I’d rather play, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. You like video games?”
Meanwhile, in Sparky’s Danger: Katkat’s Room, one of the more precarious stacks of video games collapsed onto the Danger: Floor.
“You could say that.”
“I’m surprised you’re into stuff like this. Saving video game worlds must seem pretty lame when you do it in the real world every day.”
“Well, I didn’t have many friends growing up. Living in the middle of a radioactive wasteland with a madman tends to have a negative impact on your opportunities for social interaction.”
__________
“Bah!” Nuklear Man cursed. “Stupid TV, why you show me commercials? I bash you now.” He stretched out his arm, fidgeted a little, grunted a tad, and gave up. “Lousy spatial coordinates always keepin’ me from doing something rash that I’d no doubt later regret and frame Sparky for.” He scratched Katkat’s exposed belly while the witless plea for mindless consumerism played itself out on the Danger: TV. “Finally,” the Hero said with an annoyed huff. “Now we can get back to, hey, what the—that’s not cartoons! It’s another one of those blasted commercials! Oh, mighty Odin, I beseech you! Banish yon commercials from mine sight! Do not hurl me to eternal torment be-next to that arch-deceiver Loki! I swear it was Sparky’s idea, whatever it is you’re punishing me for. I tried to talk him out of it like a good father figure would. It’s just like that conniving little backstabber to frame me for a crime against the gods, curse his treacherous hide!”
__________
Back at Rachel’s dorm, Atomik Lad was just about to lay the smack down when— “WA
CHOO!”
his thumbs fumbled all over the gamepad for a moment, allowing Rachel just enough time to recover from the previous devastating series of hits and retaliate with enough force to defeat him.
__________
“Argh! Another commercial. That’s it. I’m, um. I’m going to Do Something!”
Real smooth, tough guy. What’cha gonna do?
“Shaddup, taunting brain. I’m thinking.”
Is that what we’re calling it? My, they don’t think like they used to, do they?
“Shush!”
Oh fine. Ya big baby.
His eyes wandered to a Danger: Clock. “Ah ha! The mail’s come by now. I’ll answer all my fan mail to pass the time. Well, not
all
my fan mail, obviously. There isn’t enough time in the universe for that. No, the amount of fan mail I could answer, even taking into account my Nuklear Intelligence and Speed, could only be expressed as a percentage of the whole. Say,
three
percent. Oh, my worshipers, how they adore me.”
__________
“That’s three of five, Sparky. I win.” She smiled deviously.
“Hmmphf. I still say we should rematch that third bout.”
“It’s not my fault you don’t have enough ninja concentration and willpower to resist a simple sneeze, darlin’.”
“That was no ordinary sneeze. It screwed up all my timing and everything. I just had to hit one button and you would’ve been samurai sushi.”
“Oh fine. One last match for the championship. Winner takes all.”
“Takes all what?” Atomik Lad countered.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s make it interesting,” he suggested.
“Strip video gaming?” she suggested back.
“....” Goofy grin.
“Ahem. Sparky?”
“Who, what, where?”
“Right. What did you have in mind?”
“Just now?”
She smiled. “Har har.”
“Well, if you win, I take you to a movie.”
“Okay, that sounds good to me. And if you win?”
“
When
I win, you kiss me.”
“You’re on, chump. I mean Champ.”
__________
Nuklear Man was awe struck by the sheer girth of the mailbag. “Oh,
mama
.” He rolled the bloated sack of mail toward the Danger: Main Doors. “Hmm.” He noticed a small address sticker stuck to the side. “Atomik Lad?! What’s that jerk ever done for anyone, why I oughta, uh, make sure there aren’t any mailbombs in here. Otherwise, he could get badly hurt. Because he’s weak and insignificant. Whereas I am not.” He tore the bag open and nearly crushed himself to death by way of Sparky Fan Mail Avalanche.
__________
“Mmm, I love the smell of buttered popcorn,” Rachel beamed. “It smells like victory!”
“Grumble, curse, defame, libel,” Atomik Lad muttered as they sidled along a row of theater seats near the back.
“Someone a little miffed that he lost?”
“No, no. No, I
could’ve
won if I were a heartless, callous, vindictive, lying, cheating backstabber. But I choose the moral high ground, unlike
other
people I know. And I’m better for it.”
“The Double Spinning Ninja Back Breaker Knee Thrust is a perfectly legal move!”
“Not if that’s
all you do!”
“I did lots of other moves. It’s not my fault if you can’t block it because I’ve perfected the move to such a degree that I can pull it off at the drop of a hat.”
“Musta been playing in a damn hat factory,” he mumbled.
They sat down in nearly the middle of the row. “Oh, it’s just a game,” she countered.
“Well, mostly I’m upset that I didn’t get that kiss.”
She smiled. “I could fix that.”
__________
“Ohhhhhhh, now I’ve got it. It’s so blindingly obvious, duh. All these letters to Sparky must be hate mail!” Nuklear Man said. He very nearly convinced himself. “I better tear one open to check.” And so he did. “Ahem. ‘Dear Atomik Lad, Will you marry us? Sincerely, the Metroville High Senior Varsity Cheerleading Squad.’ Great Baldur’s Ghost! These poor girls are completely insane, they spelled Nuklear Man ‘A-T-O-M-I-K-L-A-D!’” He picked up another. “This one’s bound to be hate mail. Let’s see, it’s from the Atomik Lad Fan Club Local 239. ‘Dear Atomik Lad, We think you’re Sparkilcious. Will you marry us? Sincerely, Three Score Blondes and Brunettes, ages 19 to 23.’ GADZOOKS! This mail system is a breeding ground for utter madness!” Yet another letter torn open, “‘Dear Atomiku Lad. Will you please marrying us? Sincerely, the All-Girl Saigon Gymnastics Club.’”
Nuklear Man’s eyes darted back and forth. He re-stuffed the mammoth mailbag and stuck a Danger: Return to Sender sticker on it in a golden blur of action.
He gazed up at the looming structure of mail before him. “There must’ve been a mistake. A terrible,
terrible
mistake. On a cosmic level. It’s a good thing I’m such a selfless Hero who acts for the good of all living creatures, otherwise this morbid error would have gone unfixed.” He smiled a Happy Nukie smile of glee and opened the mailbox proper. “Ooh, five letters. Let’s see here, Katkat,” flip, “Katkat,” flip, “
Katkat?!
How’d he get fan mail?! He’s just a lousy, stinkin’, no good little ball of the most adorable fur anyone’s ever seen. Hm, guess that explains that.” Flip, “SQUEAL! A letter for me! Nya-ha. I got fan mail and all Sparky got was a bunch of psycho rants. Heh,
loser
. Now then, ‘Dear Nuklear Man,’ oh baby, she’s in love with me, ‘I know Atomik Lad must get a ton of fan mail and he probably doesn’t have time to read it all since he’s so busy saving the world and everything. Since you’re not doing anything, could you make sure he gets the enclosed marriage proposal? Thanking you in advance, the Girls of Summer Swimsuit Calendar Model Team.’” The enclosed marriage proposal in question had little hearts and the phrase “Let’s make a baker’s dozen,” scribbled across it.