Chapter 3

The main doors to the hospital lobby flew open; this would not perhaps have been the most abnormal event of the day if they weren't of the revolving variety. The destruction was quickly overlooked and forgiven when the staff and visitors recognized the dramatic new arrival, it had been two weeks after his last public appearance. A happy buzz of excitement greeted the dark-haired, blue eyed, sculpted superhero, which he merely waved away.

A tiny, sickly boy ran up to him, tugging at the leg of his heavy woven cargo pants. He recoiled from the contact, then covered with a smile. "I'm sorry, no autographs today. No pen, you see."

"But I have a pen," the boy objected, and was ignored.

"Captain Hammer!" hailed the receptionist as he approached the information desk, though she would have hardly needed the insignia on his tight black t-shirt to identify him. She was fanning herself with one hand and playing with her wavy blond hair with the other, a certain coyness about her lips. "How are you feeling today?"

He shifted his weight and jerked his head impressively to look at her, his teeth shining brilliant white as he raked his fingers through his hair. "Why, I'm perfect."

She just about fainted, her coworkers rushing over to catch her. "You bet your ass you are," one of the women who came to her aid murmured, eyeing his backside appreciatively as he walked by.

"It's harder than it seems
having this physique
Being made of dreams

means attention's always piqued
You're wonderin' what I'm doin' here
Is there something wrong?
I assure you my screaming throng
There's nothing to fear

Hospitals really aren't so scary
I mean they've got hot nurses and stuff
I don't have to be, at all wary
because I'm buff!
Hospitals really aren't so scary
In their own kinda scary way…

Look at these fists!
I've really got some clout
I can punch the lights out
Of any doctors who insist
So I'll wave to all my fans
Remind myself I'm awesome
There's no playing opossum
When you can do push-ups without hands

Hospitals really aren't so scary
Even though they're not very cool
I am not a freak, they're just all geeks
I beat them up when I was in school
Hospitals really aren't so scary
Every doctor isn't out for blood…"

The superhero realized unhappily he had reached his destination, and mentally rhymed with an epithet. He cast around for some reason that he could delay going in and facing the judgment, prodding, and mind games of all the scientists/doctors/nerds. There was a surprising, but satisfactory one. "Penny!" The girl looked up from the papers she had been examining, beamed, and the nurse (unfortunately not one of the hot ones) wheeled her chair over. She was a sweet girl, and an amazing cook; the best and only girlfriend he ever had longer than a night. "What are you doing here?"

Penny stared at him blankly for a few moments, blinking, before deciding he was asking why she was in this particular wing of the hospital. "Just passing through. They're going to test me one more time to make sure my heart can handle walking before I'm discharged today."

Captain Hammer nodded absently, his pleasant expression frozen while his mind wandered. Women talked a lot. His eyes fell upon the IV's in her hand. Ew, needles. Quickly, he tried to refocus his attention on his safe spot, his favourite part of the female anatomy, but discovered a distracting scar peeking out of her hospital gown instead. "I'm going to be late for an appointment," Hammer told her, disturbed, "I should go."

"Wait, I wanted to ask you," she interjected, "They say that you're Dr. Horrible's nemesis, do you know why –"

"Don't worry your pretty head," he reassured her, patting her condescendingly on top of it, "I'll find him and make him pay." He wedged himself through the door and shut it behind him, congratulating himself on his escape before remembering he'd hadn't wanted to go into his therapist's office in the first place.

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Apprehensively, Moist cracked the door; the apartment didn't look that much worse than it had in the morning, so that was a good sign. "Sorry, it's kind of a mess."

"I know," the hooded, robed woman stated calmly, stepping past. Hourglass stopped abruptly, and Moist was familiar enough with her understated reactions to interpret her flat expression as taken aback, despite having already experienced the moment.

A box of prototypes retrieved from storage was turned over on the floor, a vaguely cleared pathway the only consideration given to movement through the mess. Wires had been carried up onto the computer desk, joining piles of notes, schematics, and the occasional bubbling beaker. Vanilla wafers were spilled all over the counter, an impromptu meal interrupted by scrawled equations on a nearby abandoned napkin.

Moist was relieved the scientist had merely fallen over asleep while reading on the vinyl couch. Yesterday, after trying to warm and subsequently incinerating a bowl of leftover soup, he'd found the Doc hiding on the roof with the pretense of hacking satellites, looking strangely sunburnt. A few false starts involving magnetrons later, he finally got the full story.

Apparently, the microwave could now broil a steak in less than two seconds. Moist also learned that under no circumstances should a mad scientist houseguest ever be allowed to become bored.

The timetraveler set aside her namesake instrument and helped herself to some of the scattered cookies. Huh, he hadn't known she ever put the hourglass down. Or ate.

Morbidly curious, he tugged free the research journal Horrible was studying. An article on parapsychic phenomena dampening by a not-so-subtle P Normal was now literally damp. "Genius never rests," Moist muttered, quoting his friend ironically.

This was sufficient to wake the genius in question up. "Hmm? Oh," the Doc brightened after a few bleary seconds trying to remember where he was. "Hey man. Guess what? I think I've got the kinks in my LAG device just about sorted out. If I define the origin as a volume the user shouldn't be affected anymore!"

Moist glanced over at the timekeeper, who was frowning in mild disapproval. "Hourglass is here." The Doc sat up quickly; Hourglass actually waved a little from the counter at them. Last time she'd seen Dr. Horrible, she'd given him a lecture about recklessly altering time streams that had lamentably been ignored.

The scientist was looking back and forth between the two of them, and Moist dragged his friend out onto the fire escape, not wanting to be betrayed by the Doc's slowly growing grin. "You? And Hourglass? Nice!"

"It's not like that," Moist protested.

Horrible just laughed. "Sure. Seriously, dude, you're always going to see her, she's always talking to you about the future, I'm amazed I didn't figure it out sooner."

"It's not, I mean, she's not even a villainness or a henchwoman or anything," Moist argued lamely, realizing belatedly that he was talking to entirely the wrong person about that. "She called me earlier today and said it was urgent. I had to cancel with Switch."

Multiple questions and alarm flashed across blue eyes in quick succession, and Moist understood completely. He'd been sweating buckets today himself. "You," the Doc was a couple pitches higher than usual; he looked around like he was afraid of being overheard, and lowered his voice. "You asked her out again?"

Switch's newest victim shifted his weight uneasily. "She asked me. Didn't leave any room for refusal."

"I'll bet," Horrible grimaced.

"But," the henchman added hopefully, "The ELE and the city agreed to declare Hourglass a neutral entity, she'll be safe. Besides, Bait and Switch are too busy working for Fury Leika now to bother, anyway."

His friend's expression went from 'you're going to end up on a dominatrix torture table if you're not careful, buddy' to barely concealed panic. "Fury Leika?" Following a few paralyzed moments of indecision, the Doc jumped over the railing and started climbing down the fire escape ladder. "I think I'll go ahead and give you and Hourglass some time alone. See ya!"

Moist shook his head, hoping the villain remembered to change out of uniform before too long, then shrugged and headed back in to find out why Hourglass had wanted to see him. Gift, Bad Horse, mouth, as the saying went.


AN: Sorry about the lyrics again. I used "Everyone's a hero" as kind of a contrast between the original song and Hammer singing about being creeped out by hospitals. I hope next time to write original rhythm patterns, otherwise I'll never get better. I also hope Hammer is in character and not too ridiculous, it's harder than I anticipated to write him as likable.

Technically I have this whole story planned out, and this subplot with Moist does have some importance (Yay Moist! Sidekicks need luffs too), so thanks for bearing with me. I combined these two parts into one chapter because I feel like I've been keeping everyone waiting, so next chapter hopefully you'll all get a treat.

For those of you looking for more Dr. Horrible fanfics, I wanted to mention that there's a whole bunch on livejournal that I read. One of them, Aporia by automotivesmile, has something very similar to the Little Altered-time-field Generator device, for anyone who's curious.

Lastly, yay for having a community here. :)