Champion City...
Seven years after the death of Captain Amazing...
Friday night...Ten p.m...
Waterfront District...
Old Western Avenue and Harbour Front Drive...
Moonlight and city lights rippled and played on the dark blue waters of Usher Harbour. The moon was low over the waves and only the sheerest wisps of clouds streaked across the horizon. Blinking radio towers reached upwards towards the twinkling stars and droning aeroplanes floated slowly over the brilliant skyscrapers of Champion City.
In the center of the city, facing east, stood the towering statue of Captain Amazing...now darkened and unlit for seven years in memory of the city's former great hero who had fallen in battle against the supervillain 'Casanova-Frankenstein'.
But Champion city was alive tonight.
Excitement bubbled throughout the futuristic metroplex of superheroes and supervillains. From the lost souls who scraped out an existence below the cobbled streets, to the rich and powerful who danced regally on the rooftop verandas...the night held a kind of...
...'action fever'.
It was the sterling anniversary of the first appearance of the new heroes of Champion City...The mighty 'MYSTERY MEN' who had defeated Casanova-Frankenstein and his deadly gangs just seven years ago and avenged the death of Captain Amazing.
And...for seven long embattled years...the Mystery Men had protected Champion City just as Captain Amazing had done.
Supervillains had left the shadows and bestrode the city openly once the news of Captain Amazing's death was announced. Every super criminal, new and old, tried to overrun the super-metropolis and overwhelm the new heroes with their superhuman powers and evil abilities.
But the Mystery Men had prevailed.
Yes...every villain had gone down into bitter defeat! The Locust Master! Baron Cocktail and the Happy Hour Bandits! Nerve Man! The Singe-er! Crux Windlestraw! (The Man of Antimatter!) Lady Jade and the Rhinestone Gang! The Sweeper! Fancy Dan the Danger man! The Man with the Golden Gimp!...None had prevailed against the Mystery Men!
And then...the scariest villain of all...the nameless one...the 'Harrowing Nightshade' himself!...had attacked...had failed...had fallen...
...and for one whole year...Champion City knew an 'amazing' peace once more.
...until today.
Now the city held it's collective breath...
For it was rumored that a new super villain had surfaced...
...one more dangerous than any that Champion City or the Mystery Men had ever faced before...
...one that was about to launch a wave of evil such as the world had never known...
...and that once again...the fabled 'Mystery Men'...were on the prowl for evildoers.
A trio of policeboats quietly patroled past the boats and barges moored along the old waterfront. The boats rocked peacefully in their splashy wakes and muted groans from tightening and slackening mooring ropes was momentarily heard above the distant honks of motorcars and the rumble of subterranean streetcars.
The ten o'clock patrol was on time.
Suddenly a spotlight shot out from the hindmost patrol boat and cut across the docks. It flashed all along the row of boathouses and sailboats at the end of the pier.
A dark figure took quiet note of the police boats passing by and drifted further into the shadows near an old, abandoned crane. A ship's horn was heard in the distance as the patrol boat's spotlight darted left and right...searching for evil.
Finding nothing, it winked out finally...and the ten o'clock patrol moved on.
The dark figure re-emerged from the shadows and watched the harbour patrol as they shrank back into the distant night. He pulled out a fuzzy wide-brimmed hat and a pair of glittering sunglasses. Putting them on, he stood and let his eyes adjust to the dark.
It was Adrian...The 'A' Man...last of the 'Disco Boys'.
Adrian felt better wearing the old hat and glasses. He felt that surge of 'Disco-Power' that he always used to feel back in the day. Yes...he was still a 'Disco Boy' after all...and he had a solemn responsibility to look the part...even out here on the docks. Even after all these years, Disco was still his inspiration...his rep,...his identity...his religion. Only he, the 'A' Man, was left...having eluded capture after the destruction of his whole gang at the hands of the 'Mystery Men'.
"HAAAWWWCK!...Pi-THoooo!"
Adrian spit as thought of those stupid wannabe heroes. He'd helped stomp three of them real good once...right along with Tony 'P' and Tony 'C' and the rest of the Disco Boys...and right on Casanova's front porch. Man that felt good. Tony 'P' had wanted to kill them but Casanova had just laughed and said:
"Let za vermin run home. Zey are not worze rizzking a poleeze invez-digay-shun."
Boy was that a mistake.
When the roof caved in and Casanova got thrown into his own death machine ( the 'psychofrakulator' ) he had run like hell and hid in the trunk of Casanova's ruined Corvette limosine and waited until the explosions died down.
Adrian chuckled.
Everybody else had died in the massive blast wave. Only he had had the 'Luck of the Duck' and walked away unscathed. Who'd a-thought those wimpy wannabes could mix it up like that! He'd scatted out afterwards with all of Casanova's secondary back-up computer files that were kept hidden in the limo's trunk.
Adrian patted the metallic file box of the late Casanova-Frankenstein which was stuffed under his fox-fur coat. For years he had tried to sell these files on the supervillain black market and make a final 'big score'. But no one had dared to touch them. They were all afraid of the wrath of the Mystery Men.
Tonight was different though. Tonight his fortune would be made and his oh-so-careful patience rewarded.
Someone had placed an ad in the new 'Hero classifieds' with the secret code-words he'd noised about: 'Ode to joy'. The number of this pier (sixty-six) and the name of this barge (the 'Argo') had followed along with a nifty little price code: '2001'
...which meant 200,000 dollars...and who knows?...maybe the money he would score tonight would be enough to bring back Disco! Anything was possible where Disco was concerned. Adrian recalled what Tony 'P' always used to say...
"Disco is not dead!...Disco is LIFE!"
'But', Adrian thought, he had to be ultra-careful tonight...tonight of all nights!' The 'A' Man had went to great lengths to make sure he wasn't being followed. He had back-tracked and hitched rides for hours until he was positive that nothing human or superhuman could have followed his weasely trail!
Adrian looked out towards the water again. The patrol boats were completely gone now...and nothing stirred...nothing at all.
Time to move...
Like a wary wharf rat, the 'A' Man hugged the sides of tin buildings and empty steel containers as he made his way towards the last wharf. He hugged his package close to him under his filthy fox-fur coat. Looking every which-way and ducking behind dumpsters, he slowly made his way towards a dark gray barge moored at the end of the pier.
When he got near the barge's gangplank, another dark figure, very tall and largely built, suddenly stepped out into the open to bar his way. The 'A' Man halted immediately and waited while the the tall man lit a cigarette. It was a longshoreman with an automatic weapon slung over one shoulder.
"Who da &# are you?" asked the dock guard lazily.
"It's me!" snorted the dark man in the furcoat, "Adrian...the 'A' man...man!"
The guard snorted.
"The 'A' Man huh?...Hey,...I wouldn't noise that around."
Adrian strode up to the big man.
"Ah gots bizness here fool."
"Yeah, yeah...we know." smiled the guard.
Suddenly three more guards appeared out of nowhere and surrounded Adrian.
"Whatcha got unner yer coat A-men?"
"Thass the 'A' MAN to you...and thass fo...fo me to know...ya know?"
"Izzit a gun?" asked one guard leveling his automatic weapon at Adrian.
Adrian whipped around to answer but too late...the guards were all over him.
While Adrian, the 'A' Man, cursed and tried to fend them off, the guards tore off his coat and hat and threw them onto the slimy dock. They laughed and flicked off his disco-specs and grabbed away his hidden 'package' and tried to open it. It refused to pry open and seemed crack-proof.
"This some kinda bomb 'A-men' ?"
Adrian just muttered "No...ain' no bomb fool!"
"Open it" drawled the guard, sticking his weapon under Adrian's nose.
It was not a request.
Adrian fearfully dug out a skeleton-shaped key from his polyester pants pocket and opened the metallic box with the engraved initials C.F. on the lid. Inside were glittering gold files with insane writing and technical drawings on them.
The guards flipped through the files one at a time until they were satisfied that there were no explosives in the box. They smirked at each other, then handed Adrian back his box.
"The boss is waiting down below A-men" said the first guard. "Move along...but quietly."
The guards retreated into the shadows again and Adrian, realizing that he wasn't going to get beat up (or worse) exhaled in relief. He walked up the gangplank with his box and quickly found a stairwell leading down into the main hold. It looked like an old barge on the inside for a few paces only...then it started to look like a scientist's bad dream.
Wires and techno-gear lined the walls. Puffing air hoses and bubbling tubes and glass balls were everywhere. Blinking lights and eerie noises wheezed and clicked all around him. Finally he came to large, metal bulkhead door with a huge vault wheel on it. He stopped and looked around for a door buzzer or something.
Suddenly a video camera on a robotic arm jammed itself in front of his face. Several antennas waved up and down on it and little lights blinked. He was being sniffed and scanned. Whoever he was going to meet was a very careful man...like himself. The scanning video camera purred as it sniffed him up and down, then satisfied, it retreated into a cubby hole to the right of the big door. The vault wheel in the center then started to turn and unscrew itself.
The door screeched opened and an ancient voice beckoned.
"Come in my young friend...come in. You've nothing to fear."
Adrian stepped inside the door and steeled himself for whatever or whoever.
"Come forward about three steps my friend!" said the ancient voice soothingly.
Adrian did as he was told. Then suddenly a bright light shone down from directly above his head and surrounded him where he stood.
"That's fine right there!" said another voice sternly.
Adrian began to feel his dinner twist in his guts. Raw fear had a tendency to do that.
"I brought the box" he said nervously.
"Tut, tut...I'm well aware of that" snapped the ancient voice from the dark."I'm more interested in how you came to have possession of the box."
Adrian, the 'A' Man, sighed and related everything from that fateful night seven years before. When he was done, the lights began to come on around the room.
Adrian found himself in a very large hold in the middle bottom of the barge which had been turned into some kind of laboratory. It was spacious and airy...and very clean inside...not like the outside areas...and it made Adrian feel somehow...'disheveled' (which he was). Overall, it looked almost alien inside. Compared to Casanova's castle, it was downright empty of decoration. But lights pulsed along the metal walls giving the room a sense of...'power'. Everything seemed to have a form designed around pure function. It was 'clinically' strange.
Finally an alcove at the far end of the hold began to brighten. There, sitting cross-legged in a heavy shadow and in a huge egg-shaped techno-chair, was the man with the ancient voice. On each side of his chair stood two huge guards (bigger and nastier looking than the ones outside) and each held a souped-up looking automatic weapon.
A careful kind of guy, thought Adrian.
"I am...convinced..." said the ancient voice.
"So we have a deal Man?" asked Adrian expectantly.
The old man in the chair wheezed cryptically...
"I'm afraid we have a deal whether you or I or the world likes it or not."
"So..." began Adrian, "I'll be gettin' mah moneys now right?"
The old man laughed.
"Yes...your moneys is right outside waiting for you my young Disco relic."
"Where bouts?" asked Adrian.
"Just go back to the deck and look for a medical box on the side of the wheelhouse. Open it and you'll find your...moneys."
Adrian set the precious metal box he had guarded for so long onto the floor and walked back towards the stairs. The steel door began to slowly close behind him. He allowed himself a stiff smile. Things were working out...sorta. As long as his money was there where the old man said it was, everything would be fine. If it wasn't...well...he could always send a note to the Mystery Men telling them where they could find the files.
Once he climbed the stairs and found the wheelhouse, Adrian the 'A' Man quickly spotted the medical box with it's big 'red cross' and quick-stepped over to it. He jiggled open the rusty latch and there...
...there it was!
Adrian practically fainted. A beautiful leather case with gold latches was inside the old box...just sitting as pretty as you please. He deftly clicked it open to see what was inside. He practically fainted again! It was stuffed with money...hard currency in tens, twenties and fifties! He'd done it!
Slowly, and with deliberate calm, the 'A' Man closed the medical box and turned towards the gangplank. He marched carefully down it about halfway and then stopped short.
Why,...Adrian asked himself,...are the dock guards laying down sleeping?
Suddenly, Adrian felt an intense heat on the back of his neck. He whirled around and came face to face with a fiery, crystal clear bowling ball with a skull in it!
THE MYSTERY MEN WERE HERE!