TO: Col. Gathers, Commander, OSI

STATUS: Top Secret ++ (Your Eyes Only)

SUBJECT: Suspected Super-Villain Activity in or near Shopton, Az.

FROM: Codename: "Shoreleave"

DATE: June 12, 20xx

Interviews with witnesses indicate a woman of unknown age, of medium to tall statue and thin to average size. Several male witnesses mentioned that she appeared to be big breasted...

"Hot Damn!" muttered the Colonel, "I miss my tits!" He read on.

... Suspect was dressed in a long, grey coat or maybe a cape with a hood or maybe a smaller cape across the back. One interviewee identified the outfit as "the kind that Supernanny" woman wears"...

9:23 am. Downtown Shopton was bustling in a quiet, subdued fashion. Businesses were opening. People arriving for their morning shopping. Women pushing baby carriages along the streets. Old men sitting in the park watching the traffic go by, ogling the young ladies (all young enough to be their granddaughters). No one ever noticed where she came from. She was just one in the line of women taking their children out for a stroll. She was dressed in grey, a long coat or something, coming down to mid-calf, on her head was a large hat with a heavy veil. You don't see women wearing veils much anymore. That topic occupied the old men for a few minutes.

She was pushing a twin baby carriage. Sitting it in were two large, chubby boys about three years of age. They were dressed in short pants and velvet jacket of a kind known as Little Lord Fauntleroy. They had on round hats with wide brims and a bit of ribbon hanging down the back. One was licking a large lollipop.

The nanny stopped about mid-block and her two charges hopped out of the carriage and started running around. They would sometimes dart towards the street and she'd call them back. "Kevin! Tim-Tom! Stay away from the street," she'd call but the two boys wouldn't listen to her.

Then it happened. It seemed like an accident, but of course, it wasn't.

The two chubby boys had wandered down the block in their play when they suddenly darted into the street. Cars screeched to a halt, horns were blown, there was the crash of metal as a large armored truck run into one of the stopped cars. And the Nanny reached into her carried and brought out what looked like a baby bazooka, maybe four feet long, folded in half, and two inches in diameter. She unfolded it with a snap, casually aimed towards the armored car and set off a round. The rocket-propelled grenade hit the truck's front windshield, plowed through as the rocket continued thrusting before exploding seconds later. Shards of inch-thick pexiglass and driver showered the nearby stores. The old men in the park were knocked from their benches and missed much of what happened next.

Pushing the carriage before her, the nanny approached the rear of the armored bank van and loaded another round into her RPG gun. The blast tore the doors off their re-enforced hinges. As a pair of guards stumbled from out of the back they were met by knives wielded by the two infants. Even before the guards had dropped to the ground the pair were inside the van handing out cash bags to their nanny, who stacked them in the carriage. There was a pretty high pile of loot by the time they left. The carriage, it was noted, did not sag under all the weight.

From the diaper bag hanging from the carriage's handle the nanny pulled four gas grenades, pulled their pins and rolled them in four different directions. She also pulled out gas masks for her and her two accomplices. They barely got them on before the grenades exploded in a cloud of smoke and tear gas.

By the time the gas had cleared away so had the robbers. Four men had died and over a million dollars taken.

Col. Gathers threw down the report with disgust. "Samson! Thoughts?" he barked.

"Well, obviously this is Lady Au Pair, AKA Queen Etheria, AKA Dr. Girlfriend, AKA Dr. Mrs The Monarch, AKA Sheila, or, since we have pretty good intelligence where Dr. Mrs. The Monarch was at the time, someone impersonating her."

"My left nut could have told me that, and I'm not even sure my left nut is mine! What in blue blazes is going on here? Shoreleave, surely you have some thoughts on the matter?"

The bare-chested man in the short-shorts thought for a moment. "This is a job for SPHINX! (Sphinx)."

"Great googly-moogly, man, we disbanded Sphinx. You should know, you were there!" Col Gathers yanked the butt of a cigarette out of his ivory holder and crammed a fresh stick in.

"I did query the Guild of Calamitous Intent," Shoreleave said. "They replied that Lady Au Pair was an inactivated account, so whoever was using that persona is person non grata."

"Camel Crap!" Col. Gathers applied a match to the cigarette and took a tentative puff. "Those 'children' with her clearly were the original 'Murderous Moppets,' Kevin and Tim-Tom. And those two were last reported working for The Monarch. Samson, you're familiar with the Monarch. Check it out!"

"Uh, sir, with all due respect, but we've been getting reports of a flying saucer buzzing the Eiffel Tower. Sounds like it's the Secret Martians acting up. I thought I should look into that."

"Shoreleave?"

"Gay Pride celebration."

"Damn you and your multicultural diversity!" Gather's sputtered. "Is there no one in this One Man Army I can rely on?"

"We do have a man on the scene," Samson said. "Knows the Monarch, too."

"Hot Potato! Who is this man?"

[]

"You have a lot of nerve coming here," Dr. Mrs. The Monarch said from the right-hand pair of matching thrones. "If my husband knew you were here, he would..."

"He knows I'm here. I'm here under joint OSI-Guild clearance. Your husband," Gary emphasis the last word, "took off in the Monarchmobile on unnamed, last minute business because he knows if I saw him I'd kick his butt. Guild truce or not."

Gary was dressed in a Venture Industries grey jumpsuit, with an OSI armband to show that he was on official business.

"My husband is not a coward!" Dr. Mrs. The Monarch defended, then added lamely, "but he is a busy man. What do you want?"

She seemed to arch her back thrusting her breasts forward. At least it seemed so to Gary's imagination. The flesh colored tights and tight-fitting leotard emphasized her sexual allure, as did the plunging neckline that ended somewhere around her belly button. It reminded Gary all too much of the crush he had had on her until she broke his heart.

"Where are your friends, the murderous moppets?" he asked.

"You mean the Pupae? They're around here somewhere."

"Can you find them. It's them I want to talk to."

She turned to a near-by henchman seated at the communications desk. "Call 'em."

The henchman paled under his helmet. "Ma'am, the pupae are no longer here."

"What do you mean," Dr. Mrs. The Monarch's voice took a deep and steely tone. "Where are they?"

"I don't know. The - uh - Monarch fired them last week."

"Without telling me?" she stood up and paced around the small platform the thrones were mounted on. "When did this happen? What do you know about it?"

"N-nothing, ma'am. I heard it through the grapevine and later looked it up on the roster. Their names had been deleted."

"Let me see that." The willowy woman stalked down the steps, her wings dragging on the floor behind her. She all but pushed the henchman out of his seat as she took control of the keyboard and rapidly typed in a query. "Gone!" she said in a hollow tone. "Without even telling me."

She turned on Gary, "You!," she pointed an accusing finger at him. "You did this! What have you done to my boys?"

Gary folded his arms and glowered back at her, "Nothing. I'm here to find out what they've been up to."

"Don't play innocent with me, 21! I know you had something to do with this. OSI truce my ass! Henchmen! Seize the traitor!"

Several henchman leaped up from their consoles and advanced on Gary, who had flicked out the twin knifes he kept strapped to his arms. "Who dies first?" he asked in a quiet but deadly voice, stealing the line from a Conan story. The henchmen hesitated. Although sworn to loyalty to Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, they also remembered Gary from when he was the head henchman. None of them was quite prepared to be the first to die.

Dr. Mrs. The Monarch stomped back to her throne and sat down. Looking at Gary for a moment, she relented and waved the henchmen back to their work. "So what are my little boys accused of doing?" she sighed.

"Robbed an armored bank truck, killed four civilians and made off with a million dollars. But the kicker is, they were working for Lady Au Pair..."

"Never! I have been here all the time. Ask any of the henchmen!"

Gary laughed.

"Robbing bank's pretty low for you. Is the Monarch's trust fund running dry?"

"A million dollars is chump change for The Monarch!" but she seemed nervous and uneasy. "Get the Monarch on the line," she told the communications operative. "And don't let him put you off!"

The communications officer spoke quietly into his headset, then started arguing, finishing rather audibly, "it's the missus and she's not happy."

A moment later a large overhead projector descended into the room and The Monarch's face appeared in close-up.

"Poopkins, sweetie, what's the matter?" Then he saw Gary standing in the middle of the control room. "What's he doing here! You!" He pointed an enormous finger at the web cam, "Stay away from my wife!"

"Official Guild business. He wants to know why you fired Kevin and Tim-Tom." There was no warmth in her deep voice.

"The Pupae? They - uh - asked to be let go. Were getting bored around here, don't you know. Wanted to strike out of their own."

"Funny, they never told me about any of this?" Dr. Mrs. The Monarch replied.

"Heh, heh - really?"

"What did you do to my babies?" She crossed her arms and drummed her fingers along one arm of her throne. "Well? I'm waiting."

"I - uh - sold them."

"You sold my moppets? Without asking me?"

"Well, you know I've never liked them and this very generous offer came along and well - heh heh - it was like killing two birds with one stone."

"Who did you sell them to?" Gary asked.

"Are you still here?"

"Guild Business. Someone's impersonating Lady Au Pair. She must have bought the moppets from you. Who was she?

"How do I know. It was done over Craigslist. Someone calling herself 'BorntoArch1992.' It was a little cash up-front and a ten percent commission on her first year's operations."

"Nice. You just made a hundred thousand dollars and have the OSI on your case." Gary informed him.

"You know where the OSI can stick it!"

"Monarch," Doctor the Missus said, "you're going to have to come home sometime and when you do we're going to have a long talk about selling my stuff without my permission."

"Oh, Crap," he muttered and cut the connection.

"Satisfied?" Dr. Mrs. The Monarch demanded. "Then get the hell off my Cocoon." She turned to one of the henchmen. "Get me the newspapers. What have my moppets got up to now." She slumped angrily in her throne. Gary found his own way out.

[]

Gary stopped in Shopton on the way back to the Venture Compound to look over the scene of the crime. There wasn't much to see a week later. All the damaged cars had been removed, the police tape taken down, the craters left in the road by the gas grenades filled in. Except for for some marks and the patches of new asphalt you couldn't tell anything had happened there. But Gary wasn't looking for gory details. He was looking at the site strategically. It was near the bank where the truck had been loaded for transport to a Federal Depository, a one-way street funneled traffic on to this one particular street. Busy stores with street side parking restricted this particular area to two narrow lanes of traffic. Add the Murderous Moppets to create a distraction, it was the perfect place to bottle up the bank truck. Lady Au Pair knew how to pick 'em.

But how did she get away?

Gary walked up the block until he was even with where she had stood robbing the truck. Even with a baby carriage built to carry the the added weight of the bank loot it would have heavy to push. So she would want a get away car near-by, and probably one she could push the carriage right into. He considered whether she had parked on the one-way street. She could pile in and pull out into the intersection above the accident and make her getaway there. But it would require crossing the street, which would be full of people and car. She could not control how far up the road the traffic jam would run. Gary dismissed the idea. It wasn't a good plan. Not in line with the rest of the operation.

Had she parked a car somewhere below the traffic jam? He wasn't sure whether the on-coming lane of traffic had been blocked by the accident. But he could see that if she had parked across the road crossing it would also be a problem. Frankly she couldn't risk parking too near there she planned to stage the accident for fear of her car getting blocked in by the traffic. So she had to have crossed over to a different street. That meant crossing the square here.

Gary walked past the old men who had returned to their benches, none the worse for their exciting day a week before. This side of the square had few open shops and a lot less motor traffic and many open parking spaces. And a concrete walkway lead from one side the other right here.

One of the stores on this side of the square was a barber shop. He walked in and said 'hello' to the old Black man who was seated in one of the hydraulic chairs.

"What can I do for you," the old man asked, "shave, hair cut?"

Gary felt the back of his head. "Yeah. Kill the mullet look."

"Sure thing, Mister." He dusted off the chair he had been sitting in and waved for Gary to take a seat. "That's a nice crop of hair you've got. Shame to take it off. You might want it back when you're my age."

"I'll try the Kojack look first." Gary listened to the barber work for a bit with his clippers. "Did you happen to notice any of that excite that happened out there last week. You must have had a pretty good view."

"You mean that armored truck robbery?" The old man asked nervously.

"Yeah, that's the one." There was a mirror on both sides of the walls of the shop. In it Gary could see the old man looking fitfully around inside and outside his shop.

"I didn't see anything."

"Nothing? With that big window and everything? Why, you must have had a front row seat."

No, sir. I didn't see anything that concerned me."

"You didn't see a lady in a grey coat pushing a large baby carriage or a couple of midgets tagging along with her?"

"I just cut hair. I don't pay attention to anything else. Well, I'm done. No charge today. I got to close up the shop now."

"Are you OK?" Gary asked. "You seem kind of upset."

The old man whipped away the drape from Gary and pointed range up a "No Sale" receipt on his antique cash register. Without bothering to sweep up he started to turn off his lights. "I'm closing up," he said, "I'll have to ask you to leave."

Gary too out his wallet and extracted a business card. "If you're in trouble call this number. Someone will be around to help, no questions asked." he offered the card to the old man, who refused to take it. Gary left it on the barber chair.

He went down the block to a vacant shop near the end. He ducked into its doorway and kept an eye on the shop he had just left. A moment later the old man came out of the shop and turned the other way, walking briskly. Something stopped him at an alley way. The old man stopped, then backed up a couple steps. He listened to something someone in the alley said and shook his head. Then he began arguing with the unseen person. When he turned to run, Gary sprinted towards him. But he was too late. A knife flashed through the air, thudding into the back of the old man. With a gasp of pain he collapsed onto the sidewalk. Gary leaped over him and into the alley.

Something scuttled behind some trash cans at the far end of the alley. Gary pounded down the broken concrete, past the cans and around the corner. He almost ran into a woman dressed in a long coat with sunglasses. She had blonde hair and candy-red lipstick. Gary pushed her out of his way - as gently as possible - while continuing down the street. But in the time it had taken to dodge around the woman the midget had disappeared.

He spent several minutes looking through various doorways and around and under cars before giving up on finding the little man. He went back up the alley to see if there was anything he could do for the old man. There was a crowd gathered around him and the sound of an ambulance in the distance. "Is he...?" he asked someone on the fringe.

"Dead. Someone stuck a knife in his back. Poor, ol' Sammy. Never had an enemy in the work. Why would someone do a thing like that to him?"

Gary agreed while scanning the street for suspicious or familiar faces. He noticed the woman he had almost run into earlier had left the group and walked down to a non-descript black car. He hurried after her, curious what she was doing here, but she quickly had her car started and pulled into traffic even as he was calling to her.

[]

He got out of the shower and pulled on the dark jeans and black tee-shirt that had become his defacto pajamas. Since he never knew when his night was going to be interrupted by an attack on the Ventures tended to sleep fully dressed, and if he was going to get up in the middle of the night he didn't want to have to change into dark attire. Gary padded into the only other room of the guard shack, made sure his boots were laid out where he could find them, then dropped into the chair in front of the computer. He picked up a clipboard and ran a finger down the list of things to do. He marked off a couple completed projected, and starred a couple things that needed doing the next day. He tossed the clipboard to one side and unlocked the computer. A quick check of the mail showed than no one had written to him. He switched to the writing program and began his report:

TO: Combined Guild/OSI Emergency Task Force

STATUS: Top-Secret / Your eyes Only ++

SUBJECT: Interview with Lady Au Pair (AKA Dr. Mrs. The Monarch)

FROM: Codename "Viceroy"

DATE: June 20, 20xx

Suspect "Monarch" left the Cocoon before the arrival of the joint Guild/OSI delegation and remained inaccessible for interrogation.

Suspect "Lady Au Pair" / Dr. Mrs The Monarch appeared unaware of the bank robbery of the 8th, or that the operation had been lead by someone dressed as herself. Suspect seemed surprised to learned that the Murderous Moppets (AKA the Pupea) were not in the Cocoon and had not been for some time.

Suspect then contacted her husband regarding the missing Moppets. He claimed to not know who he sold them to aside from a handle, "Borntoarch1992," over Craigslist.

Interview was terminated without further information.

ANALYSIS: While this could be a complicated piece of theater to confuse the joint Guild/OSI delegation this is not likely. Dr. Mrs. The Monarch has a history of being a straight shooter, unlike her husband. She seemed genuinely surprised to learn that her associates from her days as Lady Au Pair were not in the Cocoon and that her husband had sold them. It is not clear whether the Moppets were sold as slaves or whether a personal service contract was sold, obligating them to work for this new Lady Au Pair.

CONCLUSION: It remains imperative to identify who this new Lady Au Pair is and determine her intentions regarding both OSI and Guild of Calamitous Intent.

He addressed copies to both Col. Gather and to the Council of the Guild and emailed them off. That done he considered his next email. That would be a harder one to write.

After a long time thinking he just wrote "May have spotted Kim." and sent it. Moments later his phone rang.

"What do you mean," Triana demanded as soon as Gary answered, "you saw Kim?"

"We had unauthorized super-villain activity going on in town. I'm thinking it's Kim"

"You mean that bank robbery a weeks ago."

"Yeah. Someone impersonated Lady Au Pair to pull of the robbery and today it looks like they killed a witness to the robbery, a harmless old barber."

"Who or what's a Lady Au Pair?" Triana asked.

Gary explained about the babysitter themed villain that Dr. Girlfriend had concocted at one time. Adding that even thought she was not using that persona anymore it was still considered to be one of her trademarks, a Nom de Crime as it were. "Since Super-villains are nothing without their professional name the Guild of Calamitous Intent takes cases of Identity Theft like this pretty seriously."

"You make all this henching and arching stuff sound more like some kind of a business than megalomania. But tell me about Kim!"

Gary sighed. "I never gave it any thought until I left the Monarch and discovered there were all sorts of rules about what one can and can't do as a resigning henchman or as an Arch. Then there was the retirement fund, health benefits, liability waivers. I must have signed all that shit when I hired on with Monarch but never gave it any thought at the time. It really is like a business in some ways.

"Anyway I was looking over the scene of the robbery and was struck that part of this looked like a military operation. It was well timed. The location was perfect for a hold-up, and they used some high-energy ordinance - a rocket launched grenade or two. The Guild discourages the use of H.E. weapons and the needless killing of civilians since that tends to piss off the locals. It all points to a Blackhearts operation, or to someone trained by the Blackhearts."

"That's the all-woman assassination bureau Kim joined to get training as a super-villain?" Triana asked.

"Yeah. It looked like a Blackhearts ops but they don't do personas like Lady Au Pair, and they wouldn't work with a couple guys like the Murderous Moppets. So a rogue Blackheart with aspirations of being a Guild super-villain. That sounds like Kim."

"But killing those four guards?" Triana hesitated. "That doesn't sound like the Kim I know."

"Yeah."

They both were silent for a while, deep in thought. "But actually trying to kill Hank Venture" wasn't like the Kim you knew, either," Gary suggested. "Once you've determined to kill one person killing other people who get in your way seems a lot easier."

"So what's going to happen to her?"

"She crossed the line when she killed those guards. I don't know that there's any way out for her now. The state and local police will be after her. Since there's a presumption that she's crossed state-lines to avoid prosecution, that brings in the F.B.I. and they will in turn call in the OSI since we're charged with super-villain enforcement. The bigger issue is going to be the Guild."

"For Identity Theft?" Triana asked incredulously.

"The Guild take Identity Theft very seriously. Committing a crime while dressed as a registered Guild member is an unforgivable offense. They'll send out a hit squad to take her down just as soon as they locate her. I'm surprised the Moppets didn't warn her about that. They had to have known."

"We've got to warn her!"

"I can place a personal ad in Villanous Times but I don't know if she'll read it - in time."

"Do it!"

"You know, a lot of this is up to Dr. Mrs. The Monarch."

"Why?"

" 'cause when a Guild Eraser team goes out they take out everybody. So they'll do the Moppets as well as Kim. But Dr. Girlfriend seems awful loyal to her former henchmen. If she wants to save her boys she'll almost have to save Kim as well."

"Do you think she will?"

"That I do not know."