Eww

So, watching Red eat a siluriforme--actually pretty gross. It was like a cross between Shark Week and Hannibal Lector. No fava beans or chiati, though.

Judy's wrecking downtown and demanding rematch with Quizzer. Girl does not like to lose. I think I'm going to make some popcorn and watch her get trounced. 'Cause, I mean, even if he doesn't have that power boost like he had before, don't think Scarab knew that Quizzer's girlfriend's in town. AKA, Miss Atom.

Oh right, that Cruise Ship thing. Basically, there were two traps--one for Arsenal, and one for yours truly. Because the Arsenal's made of that funky alien metal, and my old boss was, first, a metallurgist, they figured I could use my knowledge and tech to help them catch him--whether I wanted to or not. God Agent Spider is a dick. And because I am also a dick, I refused to cooperate--because, let's face it, soldiers and high tech gizmos aside, there's not much they could've done to keep me there--unless Quizzer was brought on board too. Because if I'm going to be suffering, he's going to be suffering too.

They actually refused my first couple ideas, because like typical goody-two-shoes, they actually wanted to capture the psychopath for rehabilitation. I mean, this is the guy who tried to convert part of his mass into an atomic bomb so he could nuke the Tower, just to get at Snake Eyes. He would've killed hundreds of thousands, most of those innocents, if he'd succeeded.

It went about as well as you'd expect. The Arsenal showed up, ready to cause amounts of property damage even I find excessive in order to get his revenge, my trap goes off and Spider completely screws it up. We all--except Quizzer--get blasted. Quizzer manages to talk the Arsenal down from his rampage and be the big hero. I hit Arsenal when his back is turned because, unlike the Blue Q and Spider, I have enough forsight to know that you don't capture a rapid dog, you put it down.

Then the pain started.

Turns out the Arsenal's armored skin's a bit tougher than I thought it'd be. Of course, I'm in duranium armor and nearly indestructable, so you can imagine the sort of fight the two of us have. I think in the end I roughed him up pretty good, but he did the same thing to me. Eventually, Quizzer took his side and I emergency teleported out of there.

Not sure what happened next but the carnage stopped, so I'm guessing the three heroes came to some accord. Well, two heroes and Arsenal, at any rate. Twenty bucks says this bites Spider in the butt. The worst part is I didn't even get anything out of it save the chance to shoot an antihero in the back. None of the "high profile cargo" were who the logs said they were--all of them were soldiers in costumes and makeup. Rip-off.

Gone Fishing

Apparently Red Water wants to know what a catfish man tastes like, so we're off fishing today.

Hunting a sapient being in order to feed him to a colleague is pretty evil, right? Right. I feel good about this. Well, I mean, you know what I mean.

Hmph

This guy so doesn't deserve his wife. Hell, he doesn't even deserve the other woman.

As far as I can tell his wife is a saint. She's gorgeous and bends over backwards for the guy, does everything for her, and he still goes off to the other woman. Not only that, but he tells his mistress all sorts of stories about how draconian his wife is. From what I can see, they're one hundred percent false. I really hate people. You give your all for them and what do they do? Stab you in the back first chance they get, that's what.

I mean, I stayed by Judy's side every chance I got. I gave her my freaking pardon! And she betrayed me like the minute she got out of that coma. She was probably thinking about the backstab even before she even got in that accident. Yeah, accident. Screw you, people who insinuate I hit her on purpose. I swear, wouldn't be surprised if you're all accounts made by "Lord" Grim.

Oh, uh, the heist. Right. The whole reason I'm down here. Not yet in progress. Don't give me that look. Something fishy's going on. I passed a Siluriforme shuttle checking out the ship yesterday, and they seemed as clueless as I am. It's obviously a trap for someone--even the incompetent fishmen could see that, and I can't help but to remember the old adage--if you don't know who the sucker is, it's probably you.

More later. And when I get my heist underway, this two-timer's walking the plank.

Cruise Ship Update

The test voyage of Brannigan's new cruise ship starts in a couple of hours. The whole thing's kind of bizarre, though. State of the art cruise ship in the Great Lakes at the beginning of Fall. I have its schematics, and they seem on the level, but the whole thing, now that I think about it, stinks of a trap.

But is it for me? Doubtful. In fact, if it's for anyone I'd wager it's for the Siluriformes. It does have an awful lot of weapons.

Oh well. If it is a trap for them and not terrible planning, or a publicity stunt to showcase its new open-air climate control (i have never seen so many black boxes on an object), doesn't really matter. I'm still going to rob it blind anyway.

Okay, Hex is here. Going to hang out with her for a little bit so she'll feel like a friend and not someone I hand a baby off to.

Sorry Guys

So, I bet you're all wondering where I've been. Well, Judy and I have pretty much non-stop been making our new armors. And mine's, finally, done.

We haven't really been doing it together, though. Judy's kinda sequestered herself away in a private workshop and she's been working without breaks as far as I can tell. But whenever I knock she says she's fine, so I guess she's fine. Room's not airtight and it's starting to smell, though. She should probably take a break for a shower or to throw out those old Cup Noodle bowls or something.

You know, this is actually pretty good timing. Quizzer's had his hands full, what with Siluriformes and Nuke and Mechanor and that new girl Foundress (need to get in contact with her, but yellow jackets kind of freak me out.) as well as finals to really have the energy to deal with me. And since the Government finall shut down that Brannigan lab with the demon portal in it before they could remove stuff...I think it's time to go on a five finger discount shopping spree.

And I know for a fact Quizzer was up late last night. Doctor Cataclysm: 1, Quizzer's Twitter: 0

That Bastard!

"Lord" Grim is trying to start his own supervillain group. He's trying to get the rights to P.A.I.N. before we do. That son of a bitch.

He's just doing this because he doesn't like me. I think Red Water might try to eat him some time over the weekend. Good. Hope he succeeds.

Am I writing that because it's going to happen or just to screw with Grim in case he reads this? That's for me to know and him to find out. Bon appetit, Red.

Besides Lord Annoying, things are going pretty well with the creation of P.A.I.N. They're going pretty well in general, actually, despite the fact that Judy's not up yet--and, even then, she's had a few more mumbled words and half-awake moments in the past few days.

Rakshasa sent me a letter of congratulations. Either that means he's already back in the physical world, or his magic lets him screw with me across dimensional barriers.

Oh, and I managed to salvage quite a few pieces of Siluriforme tech. Some of it will prove useful with armor 3.0. Despite what improvements I make, I might just make it look like 2.0. I liked the look, and no one really expects armor that looks exactly like the old stuff to be that much better. That, and I don't want the pictures of me on CapeWiki to be that much more out of date.

One last bit of news--Brannigan's under investigation for having an unregistered demonic portal in their labs. Haha. Suckers.

And Now, We Return You to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

So, Siluriformes are attacking the city right now with giant mechanical fishmen. I think I might record this. It's pretty good. I can see Quizzer fighting them from the hospital window. Gotta remember to salvage some of the pieces from the mechafish a bit later. I've been wondering what Siluriforme tech was like.

Judy sorta woke up yesterday. She said a few words and then passed out again. Something like "I hate hospitals". That's supposed to be a good sign. She was at least aware of her surroundings for a few seconds. Doctors are saying she should completely come out of it within the week.

Ouch, that's going to leave a mark. I hope they don't come closer to the hospital, I don't really feel like getting involved. Quizzer can handle this. He's the "big hero" after all.

Oh, by the time I came back? Dina Might's started to redecorate my base. She still can't get ahold of Captain Visigoth--personally, I think he's in Mexico doing body shots off of strippers and kind of in general being himself.

Nothing New

I haven't been up to much lately. Mostly lazing around the base with Judy playing Hypno Bubble and editing CapeWiki. The Siluriformes attacked again. This time, Judy helped Quizzer repell them, not so much as to have the city, but more to get revenge for beiong kidnapped that first time they attacked.

Nothing much to report about Rake or Shasta. I don't know where I might find any security tape depicting either of them, and that's pretty much the only way short of eye-witness I'll be able to tell what happened then. Hm, that's a thought. Maybe I should check out some archives. Hopefully they've been uploaded to computer by now.

Siluriforme Attack

So the catfish men attacked the city again. Quizzer was able to push him back by himself this time, though.

Life would be so much easier if he'd just let me nuke them when we had the chance. I mean, the people they killed today would still be alive and..

Mwahahaha

Oooo, I have a great idea for villainy. And the best part is, I don't even have to build anything new for it. More tomorrow, after my caper's pulled off.

Siluriformes, pt 2.

Yeah, I suck. But I have good reason to not have updated, which I'll explain once I finish saying what happened a couple weeks ago.

Okay, so my plan was that if the fish men have stuff that lets them access a global positioning network, it stands to reason that they might have networked other information, in something like the internet. So, I bought a laptop linked with my home computer to the coffee shop and had my computer find a connection and translate the information for me, so Quizzer and I could find out a bit more about the Siluriformes' inconvenient plans.

Turns out, their information network is a lot like the internet. And my computer's translator isn't always spot-on. Suffice it to say that I have seen fish porn. And I am never eating cavier or sushi ever again.

So, after I scarred myself and Quizzer (who is, by the way, a dorky redhead with glasses and questionable taste in clothing) for life, I found their version of wikipedia, and found out a bit about them.

So, apparently, there was a civilzation of fish people under the atlantic a way way long time ago. A fringe group thought that all surface dwellers needed to die, but the mainstream fish folks weren't so keen on that. There was a big war where lots of weapons of mass destruction were used, and when the smoke cleared, an island was sunk and sterilized of surface life and the fish people were nearly destroyed. The survivors of the anti-surface dwellers were exiled to a prison-colony under a freshwater lake system, where they lived and evolved for millions of years before I, um, accidentally freed them when my face hit the lake bottom hard enough to make it molten for a brief moment.

And now they're back and trying to annihilate the surface dwellers once again somehow. I'd just like to point out, before I start getting hate mail, that I had no way of controling where I impacted. Seriously. Not my fault.

Anyway, after we'd had enough of searching for random things on fishwiki, Quizzer (who, because he helped me out, will remain with his secret identity intact. For now.) and I went to the dock to see if we could find out anything more.

Now, I didn't have my armor at the time because, well, my plans were taking a bit longer than I'd anticipated, so I just had my bracers. Quizzer was fully suited up. I felt like I needed an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt.

We spent a lot of time just kind of looking around, Quizzer broadly hinting that maybe I should get my sub, me ignoring him out of spite. We'd just about had it with each other when a big thing that looked like a giant tuning fork rose out of the water. Okay, well, it looked like a giant tuning fork attached to a city block sized hovercraft covered in weapons. As we watched, the hovercraft projected this big holographic image in the air that showed Captain Deadfish himself. He gargled for a while and repeatedly pointed to my Judy with a trident and made it clear that if we did anything, no more Judy.

Of course, given that I pretty much instantly put two and two together and realized just what that thing was, I knew that Judy would have probably died anyway if we let it go off.

It was a device to pull all the oxygen out of the air for, like, twenty minutes at most. Long enough to kill pretty much every complex animal on the planet--at least, every one that wasn't aquatic in some way, shape, or form. I knew what it was because, well, I kinda have one down in the lair. Nothing as big as this, of course, mine's more for a room than the entire planet. But still, same premise.

Of course, only a Deviant Reactor could power something like this. And if that Deviant Diamond was found on the ocean bottom, that probably meant that the fishmen had this technology way back then.

And, of course, I had to explain it all to Quizzer. And then I had to explain how a Deviant Reactor worked. And then I had to put the whole picture together for him.

And then he asked me how I'd recognized it so quickly and luckily the fishmen started shooting at us before I had to make up an answer.

Now, fighting the Siluriformes was easy. Especially with my bracers. The trick was trying to figure out a way to stop the reactor and save Judy at the same time. And let me tell you, Quizzer was no help at all. I had to do all the planning, while fighting, while Mr. No-technical-know-how sat back and tossed fish left and right.

See, if you pull a diamond out of a Deviant Reactor, the reactor explodes. That's why there's that giant crater in Siberia where Devias had his lab. When Mr. Liberty pulled those gems out, boom. And it takes about a day to shut down, so even if we'd been able to start the shutdown procedure, chances were high that the remaining energy would still wipe out a lot of people.

My plan was genius and Quizzer is just to narrow-minded to see it. I wanted him to use his psychic powers, after I'd rescued Judy, to send the Oxygen Devourer to about where the prison colony is and let it detonate there. Two birds, one stone. However, he was all "morally oposed" to that. So, instead, the plan was just to send it into space with a combination my bracers and his powers. Lame.

I broke into the hovercraft, fought my way to the control center, and there I faced off with Captain Deadfish.

Well, faced off implies a fight. I just really smacked him around a bit, grabbed Judy, and got out of there.

Apparently, the explosion of the hovercraft was visible all across the northern hemisphere. Nasa is a bit pissed at Quizzer and I, though. Apparently, we broke some satellite or something. Oh well. You'd think they'd thank us for, I don't know, saving the world or something.

It was such a relief to get Judy back. And Judy was very happy to see me.

Veeeery happy. It's been a reeeeeeal nice couple of weeks, if you catch my drift.

Okay, just one more post and I'll be caught up on these things. Right now I have to go out on a double date with Judy, Quizzer, and his girlfriend.

Whew

Sorry about that. It's been a hectic, um, week and a half since I last posted. For mostly good reasons, though.

Alright, guess I should fill you guys in on what happened at the museum on Saturday. Well, the date actually went pretty well. The guy at the front gave me a little flak, but he backed down when he realized I was A, willing to pay, and B, very, very large.

We didn't go straight for the diamond. Instead, we took a little tour around the museum, saw the dinosaurs, got some overpriced churros, etc. You know, museum stuff. And then we got to the diamond.

It was more impressive than I thought it would be. The gem was bigger than my head and sea green.

It also wasn't really a diamond. I saw that too. There's a type of energy created by harmonizing certain rare gems together, called the Deviant Effect, from the golden age supervillain, Devias, that invented it. It's extremely high energy and very, very unstable, unless you have the exact number of specially made and crafted artificial diamonds to back it up. The first Doctor C studied it and tried to duplicate it once or twice, so I knew a Deviant Diamond when I saw it.

"It's beautiful." Judy, oblivious, said. I started to reply when a large explosion rocked the museum, and a troop of, well, the best way to describe them is "Catfish People". Bipedal, smooth grey skin, big whiskers, spiny bits. You know, catfish people. There's a pretty good picture of them on CapeWiki. Look under Siluriformes. I wrote most of that article, so you know it's quality. They were all dressed in these silver jumpsuits with a breather-apparatus over their gills that was hooked up to this tank thing. They all had these wierd trident-electrogun things.

Anyway, after blowing a hole in the side of the museum with some sort of artillery, killing and injuring dozens, the leader--he had a fish skull on his lapel--started ordering his men around and I shoved Judy behind me. They went straight for the diamond, and started to make off with it when my least favorite meddler in a cape, Quizzer, showed up and started tossing them left and right with that telekinesis of his. They tried their electrowhatsits, but his force field kept them at bay.

Fish Skull was starting to get frantic now, having obiously not anticipated Captain Dumbname arriving. And then he fixes his fisheyes on me--at least, that's what I thought. He gargled out some garglemesh and a bunch of his goons mobbed me--I held my own, but I didn't quite realize that I was just a distraction. Before I knew it, I threw ten of those proto-fishsticks off me only to see two of them dragging off Judy. She yelled out my name, I yelled out hers, it was all very dramatic. And then, Fish Skull pointed his trident at Judy and made a loud gargling noise, probably to get Quizzer's attention.

See, I'm obviously superhuman. So they saw this girl hiding behind a big strong superhero type (ha) and probably thought she was important. Thus, a perfect hostage. Fish Skull grabbed her, and then moved out slowly with a few minions, who happened to have the "diamond" with them.

Quizzer, thankfully being one of those goody-goody types, didn't attack and endanger Judy. However, as soon as Fish Skull was out of eyesight, the fishboys remaining started assaulting us. I tried to rush after him, and Quizzer, to his credit, tried to follow too, but the minions kept us at bay long enough that, by the time we'd gotten out and beaten them all to a sushi pulp, the only sign of them was a trail of destruction leading to and from the water's edge.

"Hey, you there! Bulldozer!" He called to me. I rolled my eyes.

"I'm not called that anymore and you know it." I yelled back, fuming at this point for letting the fishmen take Judy.

"Okay." He hovered down next to me. "Look, Cataclysm. I know we've had our differences, but I can't go under water very well and.."

I shushed him. "You want me to, what, lend you my sub?"

"...yes."

"First of all, you're not charging into their base and endangering my Judy with my sub. If they want that gem for what I think they want it..." My eyes trailed to the catfish men's bodies. They looked like they had radios. And maybe some kind of GPS system...

"Meet me at the Purple Corner Cafe in an hour, street clothes." He tried to say something, but I shushed him again.

"Don't argue. I have a plan."

That's enough for now, getting tired. Later today, I'll write about the team-up that should never have happened--Me and Quizzer.

Okay, not much time

I'll give a more detailed account later, but I only have a couple minutes right now, and Quizzer looking at me and sighing while I'm typing and as much fun as it is to annoy him, I gotta hurry.

Catfish men from the bottom of Lake Michigan are trying to destroy all surface life with a giant tuning fork and a series of progressively larger diamonds. Also, I'm helping Quizzer stop them because all surface life dying would probably be bad.

Um, more later if we don't get vaporized.