A Valentine treat, from your friends in the Secret Society of Super Villains. Reviewers will receive a Valentine from the villain of their choice.
Experiment 4653: Exposing the professionals known as caddies to the fear gas induces a severe state of panic, evidencing a high prevalence of acute Microagrizoophobia in the test population.
Arranging a temporary leave from Arkham had been easy enough. A single spray of fear gas and the guards were incapacitated and delirious. Dr. Crane almost regretted leaving behind such valuable data on agateophobia, but he could not allow antisophophobia to hinder him. Today's Society get-together was important, after all. Even if it was only to play golf.
The Scarecrow looked around through the sewn-over slits in his burlap mask. It had been a good day for experiments. Using the fear gas on his own caddy had caused the man to immediately start convulsing, writhing on the ground and screaming about gophers. Sinestro had raised his eyebrows at that. It seemed he took the Scarecrow's actions as a challenge, because he immediately generated a hard-light construct of a rather large gopher, and delivered his own caddy, on a yellow fear-construct platter, to Dr. Crane's feet in a terrified heap.
The other two in their party, Bane and Killer Croc, had also come from Arkham. After devouring his own caddy at the second tee, Croc had handed his clubs to the caddy assigned to Bane, who now displayed a rather justified case of herpetophobia.
They were now playing the sixth hole. Bane was preparing to tee off. For the most part, the group was remarkably quiet. Sinestro had insisted on silence when he teed off, and his ability to create constructs to ensure silence had a way of enforcing the policy. It only seemed fair that the same rules apply to all in the group.
Bane was mid-swing when they heard the splash.
A confused and out-of-breath caddy spluttered and scrambled out of the water trap. The noise was enough to throw off Bane's swing, and the ball barely missed the flustered caddy's head.
"GRAAAHH!" Bane grabbed the club and smashed it over his knee, breaking it in half. Scarecrow sighed. Bane had been attempting to tee off with the putter. The other LexCorp-issued implements had met a similar fate on the previous holes. Sinestro had commented to Scarecrow that while some golfers measured a game in balls lost, Bane could have measured it in clubs broken.
"Looks like you lose this round, Bane!" Killer Croc cackled and snarled. "Suppertime!" for an individual who looked, for all intents and purposes, to be an ambulatory alligator, Killer Croc could move surprisingly quickly. Especially when he got into the water. The caddy, drenched in water and sweat, began screaming. "No, please! I'm just looking for the Riddler's ball!" Unsurprisingly, this bit of information did not matter to Croc, who promptly chomped down on the poor man's arm. The caddy's screams filled the air as Bane seethed and Scarecrow and Sinestro watched with interest.
"Fascinating examples of hydrophobia and herpetophobia, don't you think?"
"Hmm. This is providing quite a nice bit of charge to my ring."
Bane turned to his caddy and shouted. "You! Get me new clubs! Now!"
"But, but," the caddy trembled under the giant's masked glare, "but Mister Luther says we have to add an additional charge for every club we replace. We're on the sixth hole and it would take me quite a while to get back to the clubhouse, and you broke the cart on the third tee, and—"
"YOU DIE! NOW!" The caddy screamed as he was lifted into the air by Bane. There was a loud, delightful crack as the man's spine broke over the wrestler's knee.
"Bane! You idiot!" Blood flowed from Killer Croc's mouth as he yelled. "Now we don't have anyone to carry our clubs!"
"Carry them yourself, you pathetic weakling!"
"That's it! It's payback time!"
Sinestro and Scarecrow watched with interest as Bane and Killer Croc began to fight, leaving the caddies' corpses strewn across the fairway. Their blows shook the earth below them as they punched and bit, and they had soon destroyed the tee marker, the ball cleaner, and the bench.
Sinestro turned to the Scarecrow. "You live with the both of them at Arkham, correct? You don't suppose they'll stop anytime soon, do you?"
Scarecrow looked at his fellow villain. "No," he shook his head, "and their fight is entirely useless to my research. Neither of them fears each other in the least."
"Hmm." Sinestro looked towards the fairway. "Well, you and I have already teed off, so would you perhaps like to finish this game?"
"An intriguing idea. However, we do not have any more caddies."
"Why would we need caddies?" Sinestro thrust his fist towards their golf clubs, and Scarecrow watched as they were quickly encased in a floating construct.
Dr. Crane looked at Sinestro and smiled. "You know, I do believe this day could prove very productive. There is much I could learn from your…experience."
Sinestro offered a thin smile in return. "And I too could gain some information from your…experiments."
And, chatting casually with each other, the masters of fear walked down the fairway, leaving Bane and Killer Croc to try to kill each other in peace.
Next Chapter: "Going Ape"
