AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ideas come from the strangest places sometimes. This one comes from a song by Pink Floyd, called "Welcome to the Machine" (hence the title). As always, The Impossibles and Big D belong to Hanna-Barbera. Anyone else you encounter in this fanfic is mine.
It was just another day in the garage/hangar of the Secret Security Headquarters top mechanic, Michael "Mike" Rogers. He was taking apart an engine from a confiscated villain vehicle when the chief of the agency, Big D, walked in.
"Hiya, boss," Mike said, putting the engine part into a smashed up car. "What's new?"
"I came to see how your latest project was going," Big D said.
"Very slowly," Mike said. "Just when I think I might have a minute to work on it, somethin' comes up, and I gotta hammer out the dents from an agent's mode of transportation."
And, as if that were their cue, the Impossibles entered the facility, though they looked like they had been run over by a monster truck. Multi Man and Fluid Man's hair was disheveled, and their outfits were torn. Coil Man's coils were a bit out of whack, and his left eye was swollen shut. Multi's shield was dented. The strap to Fluey's goggles was broken, and his goggles were resting on his face a bit lopsided, and he was walking with a limp. All three of them were singed, scratched, and bruised. Big D and Mike stared at them as if they had vines sprouting out of their ears.
"Do I even wanna ask what happened?" Mike asked.
"Oh nothing much," Coiley groaned. "Just another run of the mill, high speed car chase."
"And car wreck, I'll bet," Mike sighed. Of all the SSHQ agents, it was the Impossibles who have had the most repairs done to their car. "What happened this time?"
"We were chasing after the crook," Multi explained. "And he unleashed every kind of weapon known to man on us right from his car."
"Yeah, it was a regular Swiss Army car," Fluey replied, rubbing the back of his head. "We only managed to arrest him when he was watching us get clobbered instead of watching where he was going, and he slammed right into a wall."
"I'm almost afraid to ask what the car looks like," Mike said.
"All I can tell you, Mike," Fluey said, "is that the three of us made it out of that mess better than the Impossi-Mobile!"
"Ho boy," Mike said, as he and Big D followed the boys out to the parking garage. There was the Impossi-Mobile, crushed, dented, and nearly burnt to a crisp.
"Holy mother of . . . . ." Mike started when he saw it. "Oh brother, look at this mess!"
"You said you made it out of that better than your car," Big D said. "I'd say that was an understatement."
"Can you fix it, Mike?" Coiley asked.
"I've fixed worse than this," Mike said. "Nothin' you guys ever did, though. Yet. Oh brother, these teenage drivers, I tell you . . . . ."
Mike began grumbling over how teenage drivers were too reckless for their own good as he went to the phone so he could call in the team to get the Impossi-Mobile to his hangar. Big D ordered the boys to the infirmary. In the shape they were in, he didn't want to take chances of any injuries putting them out of commission.
Once the Impossi-Mobile was in Mike's hangar, he took a sledgehammer, and began hammering the car's frame.
"Those crazy kids are gonna be the death of me yet!" he shouted, as he swung the sledgehammer. "First, the Sinister Speck sets the tail end up in flames. Then, the Spinner smashes it into a mountain. Then, the Insidious Inflater puts it on a spin cycle, and busts the Impossi-Generator in here. Then, they go and crash the thing into a lamppost, thanks to the Perilous Paperman. Then, they get the sub torpedoed by the Anxious Angler. Then, the Rascally Ringmaster sends his human cannonball at the jet, crashin' head on with it. Then, they smash the boat into an iceberg. And, of course, who could forget the other incidents? There was the time the Siren pitted them agaisnt each other and they ended up in a fight which caused major damage to the car. And the time that ex-agent reprogrammed that Frankenstein Jr. robot and crushed the car. Then there was the time someone tampered with the brakes, causin' it to crash right over a bridge, and then it exploded. And the time Fluey went and crashed through the roof of the ranger station at Jellystone Park. And the time it went over Dead Man's curve and I had to build it from scratch all over again, and I can't count all the other times this car has been in here due to those high speed chases of theirs! What next?!"
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: the incidents from the Sinister Speck to the iceberg were actual events in the Impossibles' cartoons. Everything from the Siren to Dead Man's Curve are references to some of my other fanfics)
It was obvious Mike was not happy about constantly having to make repairs on the Impossi-Mobile. It wasn't that the boys were bad drivers, it was just that sometimes, high speed chases after crooks resulted in some unavoidable wrecks. But it still didn't make Mike happy. Though it was job security. After all, if the agents didn't bust up their transportation every now and again, he'd be out of a job.
As Mike was pounding out "The Anvil Chorus" on the Impossi-Mobile with his sledgehammer, a small pellet fell from a vent, and hit the floor. Mike was too engrossed in working on the car to notice, until the pellet released some sort of vapor, which filled the room.
"What the heck?" Mike asked. Then, he began coughing as the vapor grew thicker.
"Hey!" he shouted. "What's goin' on here?!"
Finally, Mike fell to the floor, unconscious. Once he was out like a light, the vent opened, and a man wearing a gas mask jumped into the hangar, and began taking apart various vehicles, collecting the parts.
"These will be perfect," he said, loading as many spare parts as he could into a large bag. "Only a few more items to go, and I'll have enough parts to build the ultimate machine!"
The man laughed hysterically, and then made his escape through the vent, with the stolen car parts in tow.