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Merlyn Corps #15
By Michael Norwitz
In his laboratory overlooking London, high on the 86th floor of Canary Wharf, the man known publically only as Doc Thunderbolt adjusted the heat sensor.
"Valerie," he said to his assistant, "are the readings coming in?"
His cousin, her skin bronzed the same deep shade of his own, glanced up from her notes to the monitor. "Everything's looking standard so far," she said.
He nodded. "Something odd is going on in the volcano at Inferno Isle, and
hopefully the Calipso system will give us more information. Until then, we..."
"Doc, are you getting—"
Her words were interrupted as the beaker containing the magma sample exploded. She screamed his name, slipping into her heat-resistant suit and dialing open the security lock to the lab room.
By the time she reached him, he was already on his feet. "I'm not hurt, Val."
The pair of them watched as the other containers holding magma samples similarly burst, the samples melting across the floor in fiery pools, eventually gathering together. "Well, I'll be. It's superamalgamating."
Quickly, the super-heated magma-like substances took the form of a large humanoid, towering over twenty feet tall.
"Where's it getting the extra mass?"
"It's doing a lot of damage to the lab. It's probably melting and absorbing its surroundings. Val, evacuate the room, now."
"What are you going to do, reason with it? You can't stay here."
The menace turned out to be surprisingly fast, with one massive hand reaching out to wrap around Valerie's tiny waist. She screamed, and Doc lunged forward to pry her away. Without effort he was shrugged off, and as he struck the wall he felt a sharp pain, and then blackness overtook him.
Big Ben in, "Outside the Gates Waits Death!"
Benjamin Barrister, by name and trade, was just completing his notes for the solicitor on the Miller copyright case, when his telephone rang, in the unique tone reserved for emergency calls to his alter-ego. He picked up the receiver to hear the familiar voice of his liaison with CANIS: the Central Agency to Normalise Internal Security.
"Benjamin? It's Tanya here. Urgent mission, old chap."
"What seems to be the problem?"
"I think you'll consider it a bit of a family affair, old chap. An overheated menace has absconded with a certain redhead out at Canary Wharf.
Feel up to lending a hand?"
Benjamin's eyes widened. "I am bally well going to have a go!" he said as he donned the uniform and weaponry of Big Ben, soaring out into the evening skies.
He arrived soon after, at Canary Wharf. The damage wrought by the magma creature was evident. Doc Thunderbolt was still in his laboratory. He seemed to be examining samples left behind from the rampage. "Doc? What happened to Valerie? Where did it take her?"
Doc turned off the Bunsen burner and rose to greet the new arrival. "I don't know. I wasn't able to reach my magic ruby in time. Maybe if I had..."
Big Ben scowled. He had been told about the 'Angry Ghost' case, in which Doc's plane had crashed in Tibet, where a mystic gave him a magical blue hood with a ruby embedded in it. The hood gave Doc greater strength and hypnotic abilities. It had seemed a boon at the time, but also acted like an addictive drug. When they first met, the man had seemed almost awe-inspiring in his perfect self-control; since his adoption of the ruby he had grown more hesitant, almost pensive at times.
Still, the man's scientific genius was undiminished.
"What did you find out?"
"I had thought they were simply magma samples. I was wrong," Doc Thunderbolt said. "It's a life-form, but its cells are based on silicon rather than carbon. It looked like simple rock at first, but it's constructed from cells not unlike what we see in animals or humans. It does seem to have the ability to operate as a group entity, absorbing metal and stone around it, much like the 'Mass did with organic entities."
Big Ben nodded, remembering the monstrosity it had taken the entire Bulldog Brigade as well as their myriad allies to bring down. "Doctor, I fear that Valerie's doom is assured if we do not clock in our time."
Doc Thunderbolt nodded, and slipped on the hood. Immediately his posture straightened. "Yes ... yes," he said. Even his voice seemed to take on a new timbre, becoming again the man Big Ben had met of old. "The knowledge I learned from examining the menace's remnants was invaluable, but it is past time to act."
In no time at all, Doc Thunderbolt had retrieved his one-man T-copter and taken to the skies. Big Ben accompanying him under his own power.
"There," Doc said, the ruby glinting in the sunlight. "Valerie's protective lab suit is keeping her alive, thank God. But I don't know how hot Menace will get, and our suits are not designed for that sort of sustained exposure."
Ben swooped down, confronting the creature. "Doc! Ben!" Valerie cried out, seeing her old ally, "help me!"
Doc hovered closer, his hand reaching for his cousin's.
"Pardon the brolly, old son," Ben said, whirling his brolly clockwise with enough speed to generate a fierce, cooling wind. Menace took a step backwards, then roared, a mighty fist lashing out with surprising speed and knocking the hero to the ground.
Valerie screamed in pain as it pulled back against her cousin's grip, forcing Doc to let her go.
As Doc hovered closer, Ben staggered to his feet. "I can feel Menace's heat even through my force field," he said, watching the creature's seemingly random progress warily.
Doc scowled. "Let's see if we can make it even hotter then." He swooped off in his T-copter towards the muddy water of the Thames, sliding his hands against the walls of the canal. Ben, immediately understood his strategy, and followed suit.
Soon the pair began an angry barrage against their opponent, attempting to drive him mad with rage. The strategy to distract it from it's captive at least proved successful, and Valerie was tossed to the ground so it could focus its attention on its assailants. Even protected as they were, with cooling liquid added to their magically enhanced strength, Ben realised that Menace would soon be able to defeat them.
Valerie, head swimming, crawled her way over to the T-copter. She wiped a trail of blood from her lip and took it into a hover, seeing her companions fall to the ground under Menace's blazing fists. "Come back and get me, you horror!" she screamed, and bashed the vehicle against the lava-like creature.
Menace seemed to recognise her in some way, and set off in close pursuit. Valerie activated the T-copter's aqua-setting, which automatically generated an airtight seal and caused the propeller to rotate to the rear of the vehicle, and plunged into the Thames.
Menace reached down, grabbing hold of the copter and holding it fast, but the submerged hand began to undergo a chemical reaction, causing it to recoil as if in pain.
Big Ben witnessed the altercation and rallied. "Thank you, Valerie," he growled. "The brute must be vulnerable to common tap water."
He swooped over to a nearby fire hydrant, tearing it off its base. As water began pouring out, he began to rotate his brolly once again, creating a hurricane-like wind which directed the water over at Menace. In a rush of steam, the monster was transformed into a giant mass of inert lava rock.
Doc Thunderbolt joined his ally to examine the creature, summoning Valerie over as she ascended from the murky water. "Thank you, Ben," he said. "I don't think we could have defeated it without you."
"Just putting in my time," Ben said with a smile.
Menace trademark and copyright Marvel Comics, Inc.
Big Ben trademark and copyright Dez Skinn (some of Ben's dialogue adapted from Dez Skinn and Alan Moore).
Doc Thunderbolt & Valerie trademark and copyright Alan Moore.
I was stuck on a secret identity for Doc Thunderbolt. Clark Wildman? Too obvious. Leonard Samson? Too misleading (and too American). Jim Wade? Too obscure (even for me). There didn't appear to be a uniquely British pastiche of Doc Savage anyone could find.