ACT II

"You left her alone?"

"You left her alone!" said Moist, holding up his hands in defense. "I didn't think my leaving would be a problem. Besides, you haven't let me in for weeks! I shouldn't have been in here in the first place."

Billy spun away from him. He knew he shouldn't be mad at Moist. It was his own fault Penny had left. He'd run off without giving her enough of an explanation. Who knew what she thought of him? Who knew how well she could grasp two years of change within the city? Was it any wonder she had run off, perhaps to find answers of her own?

But the city wasn't safe. What if something happened to her? What if something already had? He paced the room. "She could be anywhere," he said. There were a number of places he could think of her going – the shelter, her old apartment, the city park – but those places weren't safe anymore. When she found them in such disarray, would she look for shelter elsewhere? And if so ... well, then he was out of ideas.

"Look," said Moist with a shrug. "I can pull some favors with the Henchmen Union. I could get a group of us to go out looking for her."

Billy nodded in thought. That might not be a bad idea. An image came to his mind of Penny backing up against a wall as henchmen surrounded her. She'd be terrified. But they wouldn't hurt her, and they'd bring her home safe.

If she even wanted to come "home" to him... But a two-years-dead girl couldn't just wander around the streets of Los Angeles. She'd get herself hurt, or worse. No, they had to bring her home. They'd talk, they'd figure something out.

Billy sighed. "All right," he said, turning to Moist. "We'll go with your plan."

Moist sighed, perhaps glad the fault was no longer being placed on him. "So…" he said as he grappled for his phone, the item slipping between his fingers. "How did the raid go?"

Billy sighed again. "It was a bust." The League was in need of the city's supply of wonderflonium. It was all part of their plan to secure their hold on the city, then work their ultimate goal of world domination – one state and one country at a time, of course.

But the LAPD had been meticulous in making sure the League didn't get their hands on the wonderflonium. As far as the ELE could tell, the flonium was being stored in the city's abandoned underground tunnels.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the city of Los Angeles had built tunnels for horse drawn carriages, trolley trains, and later the first automobiles to help control traffic and also better connect the city through the various hills that dotted it. By the mid 1900s, someone had the brilliant idea of leveling the hills to circumvent the hassle of tunneling through them. The hills were gone now, but eleven miles of tunnel still existed beneath the city streets, all closed to the public due to earthquake safety regulations.

But the ELE had certain intelligence that the wonderflonium was down those tunnels somewhere. The only problem was the eleven miles of tunnel weren't connected. There were several pockets scattered across the city, and their entrances were well hidden. Finding their exact locations had proven tricky, and the unkempt state of the tunnels themselves had made searching difficult. What was more, it was said city officials still used those tunnels, and Billy was starting to fear the LAPD was one step ahead of them, anticipating their moves and transferring the wonderflonium to different locations before the League could get their hands on it.

What if the flonium was in a tunnel they had already searched? What if their intelligence was bad and this was all a giant goose chase? Billy shook his head. He knew he shouldn't have such thoughts. He'd been questioning the League a lot recently, and he knew most of it had to do with his involvement with Penny. The ELE just hadn't seemed to be that much of priority, even though two years ago he would have, and had, given everything to be a part of it.

It was time he got back into his previous mindset. Penny was alive. He had time now to pick up the life he'd set aside while trying to revive her.

As if on cue, Billy's phone rang with the Bad Horse jingle. There was a message from Bad Horse's chorus. There'd be another raid tonight, this time with good intel. They'd have the wonderflonium for sure.

Billy sighed when he ended the call. Despite his most recent pep talk with himself, this still felt like a waste of time.

"You're going, aren't you?" asked Moist.

"Of course, I'm going," he replied, but he sounded less than enthusiastic as he put his phone back in his pocket.

Moist stepped in front of him, hands on his hips. Billy stared. He'd never seen his henchman act so defiant. "Look," he said. "Whatever has gotten into you, you need to get over it. We will find Penny. In the meantime," he pointed at the red science coat and dark goggles that hung on a hook by Billy's lab. "You need to do what you do best."

Billy stared at the coat. He didn't feel like being Dr. Horrible put him at his best lately.

Moist took the coat off the hook and threw it at Billy. "You know what your problem is? You've gotten caught up on that girl. You've spent so much time trying to save Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes that you've forgotten what it's like to be evil."

Billy swung the coat behind him as he slid his arms into the sleeves. Maybe Moist was right. Maybe he just didn't feel Dr. Horrible-y because he hadn't truly been Dr. Horrible-y in a very long time.

Moist threw the goggles at him. Then pointed both his index fingers and his thumbs outward with his remaining fingers curled in, his hands making little guns. "Who's got a Ph.D. in Horribleness?"

Billy actually chuckled at the old catch phrase. He fixed his goggles over his eyes. Already, he was starting to feel more like his old self. Maybe the raid tonight would go well and he would remember what being truly evil felt like.


Penny had never driven a motorcycle before. She'd ridden on the back of them a number of times – several of those being with an ex-boyfriend before Captain Hammer – but she'd never actually been upfront. In truth, she hadn't been sure she'd like sitting in the driver's seat.

But now, as she rode from Captain Hammer's secret lair on the Hammer Cycle, she found herself enjoying the thrill. Watching the road zip by her was way more fun that burying her face in the back of whomever she had her arms around as a passenger.

The balancing hadn't been difficult to figure out, nor had the shifting. But as she came upon a group of fighting Los Angeles citizens, she realized she wasn't sure how to stop. As she panicked and lost her balance, the cycle tilted and began to skid. Penny leapt from the vehicle, doing a kind of tumble as she hit the asphalt. As she scrambled to her feet, she hoped her dive had looked more impressive than it had felt.

Surveying the scene, she realized she was looking at the small group that had escorted her to Hammer's apartment. They were standing with their backs to each other. Maurissa held a knife, but Steve and Stacy held up fists. Penny wondered if Steve actually knew how to fight or if he was just trying to look intimidating.

They were surrounded by a group of five – three men and two women – all of whom held knives. Penny took a deep breath and stepped forward in an attempt to defuse the situation. "Back away from them," she said in the most commanding voice she could muster.

The larger group turned to her. "Who the hell are you?" asked one of the men.

Penny had donned Captain Hammer's uniform. Her only modifications were yellow gloves and a yellow band of fabric with two holes over her eyes. It tied in the back underneath her hair.

She realized she didn't have an answer to the man's question. While she'd put some thought into her look, she hadn't thought to come up with a name for herself.

"Get out of here, Hammer Girl!" cried Stacy.

Hammer Girl. She probably wouldn't have chosen it herself, but it had a kind of ring to it. In any case, it worked. And there were more pressing matters to attend to than arguing over what her name should be.

Penny rolled her fists, taking on a fighting stance. The knife group moved toward her. Penny punched at a dark haired man as he approached. He ducked her arm and slashed at her stomach. She felt the knife roll across her skin.

Damn it! She really wasn't cut out for this! But she had started something, so now she had to finish it.

She swung her leg at the man who had swiped at her. She managed to make contact with his head, and he went down. She turned and punched at the next attacker. Her fist met his stomach and he fell back into the person behind him.

She dropped to the ground as attacker number four came at her. She swung her leg in an effort to trip them and was surprised when it worked. Never before would she have been able to work up that much force in her legs. Her super strength and agility had to be helping in ways she didn't fully understand.

The fifth attacker jumped on her back. Penny grabbed their arm holding the knife before they could use it and flung them over her head. They landed on their back on the asphalt. She spun around again, ready for the next attack, but the group of five were gathering each other up … and then running away.

Penny smiled. Maybe this superhero stuff wasn't so hard after all. Then she remembered her stomach. She looked down at her shirt, feeling around for the wound.

"Do you need help?" cried Maurissa, running over. "I'm a nurse!" She knelt in front of Penny and pulled up her shirt only to find there was no evidence of knife to have ever touched the skin. "Oh," she said, lowering the shirt. "Captain Hammer's super resistance." She stood and stared at Penny. "You're the real deal then?"

Penny nodded. "It would seem so."

Maurissa looked embarrassed. "We thought you were…"

"Some kid trying to act like a superhero," finished Stacy as she walked over. "People have gotten themselves killed posing as superheroes trying to scare away the bad guys."

Steve joined them, and they all stared at her. Penny hadn't thought the yellow ribbon had been good enough as a disguise, but they didn't seem to recognize her from before. At least, they weren't screaming and running from her.

"Tho," said Steve. He had a lisp, and his S's sounded like TH's. "Your Captain Hammer'th protégé?"

"Something like that," Penny said.

She had no idea what she was supposed to do now. Something superhero-y? Like telling them she had more people to rescue and ride off down the street? She looked over her shoulder to see the Hammer Cycle had come to a stop alongside a building next to a dumpster. It was laying on its side but appeared otherwise unharmed.

"I guess he didn't teach you how to fight, huh?" asked Stacey with an apologetic look on her face.

Penny grimaced. "Was I that bad?"

Stacey grimaced in answer. "If it wasn't for your super strength and agility, you couldn't have taken them out. Here." She held out her hand.

Penny took it, and then found herself looking up at the sky and laying on her back as Stacey flipped her over her shoulder.

"Stacey!" cried Maurissa in surprise.

Penny watched as Stacey's stern face came into her field of vision. "We need a real superhero," she said. "Not some idiot like Captain Hammer who bailed at the first sign of trouble." She seemed angry, really angry, like this was personal. She pointed at her chest. "A little girl like me just took you out." She gestured behind her. "If those guys had known anything about fighting, you wouldn't have defeated them so easily."

Penny pushed herself up on her hands. "Will you teach me?"

Stacey blinked, Penny's response not being what she had expected. "I… yeah, yeah, I will." She held out her hand and pulled Penny to her feet. "Grab your bike, Hammer Girl. We'll show you where home is."


Home turned out to be an abandoned warehouse. Though the building itself looked like it hadn't been used for years, it held signs of recent reinforcement. The windows had been boarded up with fresh wood, the front door had a shiny new pad lock, and there were two guards with guns standing outside. They looked more like young teenagers than "guards" but their guns required two hands to hold and made up for any lack of intimidation from the kids themselves. Penny wondered if they were loaded or just for show.

They looked up at the group as Stacy, Maurissa, Steve, and Penny approached, their eyes studying the new girl. Stacy gave a nod of her head as they neared, and the guard on the left reached over to slide the door open.

Inside had to be at least a couple hundred people scattered between support pillars. They sat on sleeping bags and blankets over the concrete floor. Some, judging by their worn clothing, had been homeless for a while. Others, looked as though they had been only recently displaced from their homes. Penny understood the need for guards now – they were protecting the people inside.

Penny seemed an unwelcome guest as she received several glares as she walked through the crowd and followed the group of three in front of her. She couldn't understand where all the animosity was coming from. These were people she would have bent over backwards to help two years ago, and part of her felt like she should make some kind of heroic speech about how she was going to do so now. But their glares kept her silent until she was led up a few flights of stairs to the top floor of the building.

She'd glanced a few people living on the second floor, equipment on the third, but here at the top floor there was little more than a station of computers, some foam mats, and sleeping bags. "This is our pad," Stacey explained. "You can stay here too if you want."

Penny appreciated the offer and was seriously considering accepting, but her mind was on other things. "All those people down there…"

"They think you're some kid trying to get yourself killed," said Maurissa, sitting on her sleeping bag and taking off her shoes.

"Or you remind them too much of Captain Hammer," said Stacey. "A lot people grew bitter toward him when he didn't turn up to help."

"But I am here to help," said Penny.

"Not in your current state, you're not," said Stacey, taking Penny's hands. She led her to the foam mats and instructed Penny to take off her shoes. "I'm going to teach you how to fight."

Within moments, Stacey had thrown Penny over her shoulder again.

Penny wasn't sure what she thought of Stacey's teaching methods. Rather than tell or show Penny what she should be doing, Stacy just straight up attacked her, going with a learn-as-you-go approach. While Penny figured this method was good since the bad guys wouldn't be giving her any warning ahead of time, she still found herself at a loss as how to best circumvent Stacey's punches, kicks, and throws.

"Block!" Stacey yelled as she aimed for Penny's face.

Penny hesitated, unprepared, but her super agility made up for the time and she managed to block Stacey's punch.

"Jump!" Stacy swung out her leg in attempt to trip her.

Penny jumped over her leg easily, but then Stacey stopped giving warnings and her fist connected with Penny's chin. It barely fazed Penny, but Stacy had still proven that she wasn't paying enough attention.

"You have to be looking everywhere at once." Stacey told her.

"How do I do that?" Penny asked.

"Practice," said Stacey, and they started over.

"Give Hammer Girl a break," said Steve from the computer desk after Penny and Stacey had been at it a couple hours. The sun was beginning to fall in the sky, bathing the warehouse in orange light.

Penny wasn't tired, but she was grateful for a distraction. All the effort she had to put into concentrating on Stacey's moves was beginning to make her head hurt.

She walked over to where Steve sat. The monitors piled on the desk were all showcasing various social media channels – Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook to name a few. Directly in front of Steve was another monitor running a program Penny didn't recognize. But it seemed to be taking information from the social media platforms and organizing it into data.

"What is this?" asked Penny.

"Our thity thurveillance thythtem," said Steve proudly.

Penny stared at him. She had understood his lisp, but she didn't understand how monitoring social media counted as city surveillance.

Steve turned back to the monitors. "Anything you need to know, you can find through thocial media. People will potht anything on there."

That was true… people did seem to post the minutest details of their lives on social media. As Steve opened a window for the LAPD's twitter page, she could begin to understand how this kind of surveillance could be useful.

Penny turned to look at Stacey and Maurissa. In her mind's eye, she could see all those people downstairs. "You did all this?"

Stacey shrugged. Maurissa turned her face away and said, "We were trying to help."

When Penny waited for them to elaborate, Stacey sighed, walked to the corner of the room and pushed forward a large box. Penny dug through it. There were all sorts of memorabilia in there – tshirts, toys, photos, stickers - first of Captain Hammer, then of Dr. Horrible.

"We were groupies," Stacey explained. "We followed our idols everywhere, and when they failed us…"

"Stacey's dad's a electrician," said Maurissa pointing at the display of monitors. "She got that up and running. Steve's the computer whiz. I know how to bandage people up… It wasn't something we planned. It all just fell into place."

"When we were forced from our homes, we came here," Stacey continued. "Maurissa missed the internet. I missed my dojo. And then we found other people with nowhere to go."

"It kind of grew from there." Maurissa concluded.

"And all those people downstairs?" asked Penny.

"We don't organize them," said Maurissa. "They sort of formed their own groups and leaders for that. But our surveillance team over there –" She nodded at Steve. "He can keep track of what's going on in the city. And we use that to know when everyone needs to stay inside and when they can go out, to know where and when to search for supplies, and if we'd ever need to move everyone, we'd know that too. And they'd listen to us."

Penny was impressed. They'd done more than she would have ever been able to on her own. She looked down at her gloved hands. Maybe now she could add her own contribution, one that would change this city for the better. "So, what's next?"

"The ELE," said Steve, typing away at his keyboard. Penny walked over to him. "They are after the thity'th thupply of wonderflonium, and I'm not thure the LAPD hath the rethourthes to thtop them."

Penny took a moment to process what Steve had said. If the LAPD couldn't stop the ELE, she'd have to step up to the plate. "Where is the wonderflonium?"

"The thity tunnels."

It took a few minutes for Maurissa and Stacey to explain the research they had done on eleven miles of tunnels underneath the city.

"The LAPD has been hiding and moving the wonderflonium under the city," said Maurissa. "But the ELE is catching up with them."

"Do we know where the next hit will be?" asked Penny.

"We think we do," said Stacey as Steve pulled up a map on one of the monitors. "Social media is being pretty quiet on this one."

Penny followed Steve's finger as he traced a path behind the city's Hall of Records. "Lookth like Dr. Horrible'th going to be in on thith one," he added.

"How do you know?" asked Stacey, rising from her spot on the other side of the room.

"He updated hith blog," said Steve, clicking his mouse.

Dr. Horrible's webpage appeared on screen. He hadn't uploaded a video, but there was a simple message. "Sorry for the long hiatus! Dr. Horrible is back!"

"Weird," said Stacey. "You have a villain who spends years fighting to get into the ELE, then once he achieves his goal, it's like he doesn't want it anymore. I'm surprised the League took him back."

Penny's thoughts wondered over Stacey's words. She'd known Billy's efforts to bring her back to life had cost him his standing with the League, but she'd thought he'd had purely selfish motives. He'd wanted her alive, so he'd brought her back, plain and simple. She hadn't realized how much of a sacrifice it had actually been.

She could remember the time she and Billy had spent in the laundromat, discussing hardships with the jobs they were trying to get into. She knew how much getting into the League had meant to Billy. Now that she fully considered the situation, it amazed her that he would risk the League just for her. If taking over the world had been important to him, he'd set it aside.

It didn't make sense why he would do such a thing for her, and yet he had. Doing evil hadn't been as important to him so long as he'd had a chance to save her life. Maybe there was some of the Billy she had known in Dr. Horrible after all.

"When's the raid going to be?" asked Penny, breaking from her thoughts.

"Tonight," said Steve. "Probably after dark. That'th about when they've done the otherth."

Penny looked across the room at Stacey. It would still be a few hours before dark. "Are you up for more practice?"

Stacey grinned. "Let's see what you've got."

Penny gave a half smile. She wasn't sure she had much, but if she was going to attempt to stop the ELE, she had to learn fast.