Disclaimers & attributions: I do not own or pretend to own intellectual property rights held by AT&T through WarnerMedia through DC Comics. The following attributions include the original Superman as created by Siegel and Shuster before the changed all the details and brought us Superman, the very first superhero
Real Name
Jenny Elsewhere
First Appearance
PDSH website - April 2013
Original Publisher
Public Domain Heroes
Created by
Carter-Ethan Rankin
Claire Connelly was the first Super Buddy to recover from being tasered. The transwoman found her hands zip tied behind her back and ankles zipped together. Her husband, Michael Jon Carter, better known the world as Booster Gold, was unconscious next her. His twin sister Goldstar, Michelle Carter, was also out cold and not in her action suit either. The last member of the Super Buddies Repo Agency, Ted Kord, was also unconscious and not in his Blue Beetle garb. Claire heard rustling and she remembered that her hairy dachshund, Fido, was last seen in her office asleep in his bed found there. Fido reappeared and he had Claire's box knife in his mouth.
"That's a good boy!" Claire enthused. His happily wagging tail moved through so that his hind quarters swayed side to side as he approached. But Fido waltzed around her and dropped the knife within Booster's reach, if he would've been conscious.
"Really?" Claire complained, "Of all the times?"
Fido relied upon Claire for his love, affection, and meals but he was desirous of Booster's rather limited amount of all of the above so he constantly tried to please Booster. Fido just there staring at the knife, then Booster, the knife again, and then Booster again.
Claire groaned as she wiggled her way towards the knife. Having to push Fido back using her own body. He had such hurt expression that she wanted to club somebody. Which in this case was Intergang enforcers that had taken everyone by surprise. Lena Luthor's whole design by practice this time around was to avoid employing Infinity3 or Team Luthor, thereby using Super Buddies to become a surprise to Intergang. Which seemed to have failed miserably.
Claire got a hold of the box knife and after a prolonged effort, cut her wrists free. Afterwards, she liberated her ankles and the rest of the team. Fido was still remorseful, so Claire rubbed all of his sweet spots and all the while he gazed lovingly towards Booster.
"You're going to be the death of me yet," Claire quietly warned Fido. She released him and he somewhat curiously waited while she filled a pitcher full of water. Then she strategically poured water on every face as she went down the line of bodies. No one was pleased by that event. Fido happily pestered Booster but he pushed the dog away. Claire was growing tired of the complete replays of every time Fido tried to bond with Booster.
Claire herself had been born a genetic male. But between modern surgical procedures and futuristic gland adjustments throughout the next millennia, Claire's transition so that she was completely passable even though no longer needed hormne replacements. Her body now yielded the precise mix needed to make on par with a genetic female. Claire had transformed into a full blooded woman. But without a womb or uterus. SRS, no matter century, couldn't give Claire the ability to conceive or carry a baby.
"The hell?" Guy Gardner yelped as he came upon the scene. Guy himself was a former Green Lantern, Fear Lantern, and even took a turn as a Red Lantern.
"Just walk away, Gardner. I'll only warn you once," Claire grated at him.
"See ya, ya losers," Guy huffed before returning to open his bar for the coming crowds.
"How did we get blindsided by just four people?" Michelle Carter inquired. Ted was surfing MLJ criminal wanted lists. As a Justice League Unlimited reservists, both Ted and Booster had access whereas Goldstar and Claire didn't. An d even they could receive and study vetted material and sources.
"They call themselves the Gang. While they lose points for creativity, they're gen actives from the slums of Chicago. The intelligent one is simply called Brains. Her meta-factor means she is so smart they can't chart it. Basically she's a Lex or Lena Luthor who claim to be gifted as a 12th Level Intellect. So she's really, really smart," Ted began reciting, "The brunette that paralyzed us is called Ms. Mesmer. Her power should be obvious because her psychokinetic ability is wrapped up in her ability to hypnotize people. The big guy is the strongman of the group and simply called 'Kong'. The shorter guy with the reinforced helmet is called 'Bulldozer' for a reason. Between the four of them they tracked us down after we repoed that bio synthesizer that LuthorCorp hired us to recover. The Gang is part of Intergang's 100. Which is all around bad news for everyone involved."
"We need to contact Lena Luthor and see what she has to share about these four showing up," Claire strongly suggested.
"And if she still wants the machine back," Goldstar widened the possibilities.
"She'll play it cool. Our contract, specifically employed legalese meant to annoy us, It states we don't get paid until we hand the synthesizer back into LuthorCorp's grasp," Ted was revisiting the contract paperwork.
A portal grew from nothing to a gateway that a lithe Asian woman dropped through. The portal collapsed and young woman was wearing an insufferable smirk. That same portal had allowed the Gang to literally drop in unexpectedly and unannounced just prior to Ms. Mesmer freezing them mid step and allowing Brains to taser everyone.
"Yup, that was me before," she happily explained, "My name is Jenny Elsewhere. And spatial portals are my thing."
"So why did you come back here?" Ted asked. Fido had wiggled out Claire's arms and steadfastly went to sniff out Jenny. He looked befuddled at first and then began waving his tail.
"I must not be so bad after all," Jenny snickered.
"You still haven't answered the question." Goldstar insisted. She'd already donned her fighting togs. Nearby, Booster came out of his cubicle wearing his own action suit. Booster signaled for Ted to get his Blue Beetle garb on. Then he stepped between Claire and Jenny. Fido happily wagged his tail furiously because Booster was standing beside him. Claire wanted to face palm herself.
"Brains is upsetting the balance of the 100 vs. the Director of Intergang," Jenny explained, "The 100 is divided into three factions. One faction sides with Julie Sazia, the current Director. Another third are actively being persuaded to follow the Gang's efforts to promote the Big Boss from his subordinated number two ranking. And there's Knightfall and the final third looking to see who they'd appoint as director regardless of Big Boss' seeming claim to the throne. With the genetic slicer, Brains has the capacity to develop and splice meta-genes within anyone she wanted. But there's a catch. Whoever gets the artificially developed gen factor still has to go through gen latent activation. And only a quarter of the supplicants survive the activation process. Something Lena Luthor and Mercy Graves had been keeping a secret. The whole reason an earlier version of the genetic enhancer was at Mercury labs was that Lex Lutyhor had pressured Mercury Labs to appoint Veronica Cale as its President and CEO after LuthorCorp bought Mercury Labs out from underneath Derek Powers."
"So why are you here?" Claire wanted clarification.
"No faction tearing Intergang apart should have the power to create metas. Or attempt to create metas after stealing the machine back from having Powers having stole it first when Mercury Labs failed to renew the license to use it for research purposes. Luthor may own both entities but no one really knows that justyet. Mercy Graves has killed over a hundred activation applicants to create Infinity3. Now imagine the number of those bodies increasing exponentially," Jenny warned everyone, "And they've already developed a cover story to hide the truth. Intergang will be no different. And they won't bother looking for a safe activation protocol."
"And you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart?" Booster challenged Jenny's motives.
"I have my own reasons to be sure," Jenny agreed, "But for this once our interests align."
"For how long?" Blue Beetle asked as he came forward fully garbed.
"You wouldn't be my first choice in allies but LuthorCorp needs to get a handle on this technology or the lid needs to blown clear of it," Jenny explained.
"That completely danced around the question," Claire was getting irritated.
"Look, you give it back to Luthor and after they've paid you, I have a locator planted inside the machine so I can `port it to the bottom of the Mariana Trench," Jenny grinned, "Then everyone here wins."
"What about Intergang's power struggle?" Goldstar asked.
"This will keep everyone honest," Jenny shrugged, "Or, as honest as all the players usually are. Did I mention I can `port you to where Brains' is hiding the mechanism while she's trying to diagnose its limitations and create a correction in the machine?"
"You should've led with that," Blue Beetle scowled.
"Would you have believed me?" Jenny smirked again, "I know where the Gang had me teleport everyone a couple of hours ago. If they're running they wouldn't have gotten far yet."
"We have to take Fido," Claire insisted.
"He'll just get in the way," Booster groaned.
"And what do you think he'll do here by himself?" Claire openly challenged him, "He will urinate and defecate around dozens of power strips."
"Argh," Booster groaned.
"She makes a helluva point," Blue Beetle conceded.
"If it weren't for Fido bringing that box knife, We'd still be trussed up and hog tied," Goldstar reminded everyone, "What if Ms. Mesmer puts the whammy on us again?"
"Her power can't effect animals," Jenny threw out there to further the debate. Booster looked down to see Fido's imploring gaze.
"Okay already!" Booster eked frustration, "He's coming with us."
Claire knew everyone was getting irritated with Booster's seeming idiotic argument here but she knew her husband better than anyone. He knew how valued Fido was by Claire and she was the only Super Buddy without tricked out technology. So he already felt beholden to insure her safety above his own. And now Fido was in the mix.
"Are we convinced that the dog goes with?" Jenny asked, sounding bored.
"We are," Booster deflected her sarcasm. Jenny rested her hand on the wall that separated Guy's bar from their offices. Suddenly there was an area highlighted by silver energy and the interior of the circle was plainly somewhere else. If Jenny Elsewhere were to be trusted, it was the site where the Gang had retired to after hypnotizing the Super Buddies and claiming the agent's prize as one of their own.
Booster went through first. Claire held Fido as she she went trough the portal. Blue Beetle and Goldstar quickly followed.
"Good luck!" Jenny whispered loudly to them as the portal collapsed.
"Well...we're stuck here now and we have no idea of where we are," Goldstar complained. Fido's ears perked and his hackles began to raise complimented with a very quiet growling.
"Let's see where he takes us," Blue Beetle urged Claire.
"We're right here so we can protect him," Goldstar promised.
"It's okay, Claire. It's your call to make," Booster Gold told his wife. She slowly knelt to put him down. He immediate;ly started away and slowly leading the Super Buddies' advance.
"I'm hearing voices," Blue Beetle warned.
"Ted, this is a helluva time to start hallucinating," Booster hissed.
"Shut up," Goldstar said to her twin brother, "I'm hearing someone now."
Fido was intrepidly headed for the source of the noise. But he stopped at blind corner of the building steadfastly waited for Claire to pick him back up. Two women could be heard arguing with two men. Exactly the type of unit that made up the Gang.
Blue Beetle fished an optic wire out of belt. Using the fiber optic, he spied around the corner.
"It's them," he said to everyone crowding around his shoulder to get a view. Claire began congratulating Fido and rubbing his head and back. But Fido was still tense. As was Claire since she didn't know yet whether to press on or retreat. Fido wiggled out of her grip and dashed around the corner.
"The Hell?" Kong said as Fido challenged the giant of a man.
"I can take care of it," Bulldozer offered.
"No, we need to figure out where it came from and who else is with it," Brains said sourly.
"First you lunkheads need to catch it," Ms. Mesmer said sourly as Kong and Bulldozer went helter-skelter trying to contain Fido. But he continuously evaded capture. Blue Beetle flashed them with his strobe gun. Booster and Goldstar each had proton blasters built into the gauntlets. So they began firing on the temporarily blinded Kong and Bulldozer. Leaving Blue Beetle to disable Ms. Mesmer.
Claire hung back and greedily picked Fido up again as he raced into her arms.
"So now you love me," she half-jested. Try as they might, the twins couldn't hit the Gang's strong men hard enough to knock them out.
"Activating force field, now!" Booster warned Goldstar. She retreated from being ahead of him to reposition behind him. Bulldozer tipped his head so the battering ran he wore as a helmet would directly slam into the field. When he did, the force field held, but just barely. Kong applied his fists to the field while Bulldozer backed away to prepare another charge. Goldstar carefully shot Bulldozer's face in his eyes and jaw that were free and clear of his helmet/mask.
Booster dropped the field and used his Legion of Superheroes flight ring to glide over King's reach as he stumbled forward, prepared to smash his fists again against a now non-existent force field.
"Any ideas?" Goldstar asked Booster.
"We get the hell outta here," Booster strongly urged.
"We can't leave without the gene splicer. And they won't surrender it unless we destroy it," Goldstar reviewed the options again.
"Sucks don't it," Booster lamented.
"Where the hell is Claire?" Goldstar suddenly realized.
"She's getting ready to and repo the slicer while Beetle keeps Ms. Mesmer and Brains out of the fighting," Booster hadn't lost track his wife at all. He pushed Goldstar aside as Kong chose to charge him and Booster sidestepped Kong as Bulldozer's open charge barely missed him but gave Kong the full treatment as they collided together.
"Check on Claire," Booster Gold told Goldstar, "She might need the help"
Goldstar happily went to assist Claire. Blue Beetle's non-violent attacks persisted against Ms. Mesmer. Brains was left unmolested until Claire released Fido. Fido tried out his voice a couple of times. He'd never been one to bark but he squeezed a couple out of him in Brains' direction.
"Really?" Brains was almost insulted. Then she barely ducked Claire's blow. Brains opened with a knee strike into Claire's rib cage.
"Karate? You know karate?" Claire complained.
"Kung fu actually," Brains revealed, "Just like you're employing Thai kickboxing."
After every increasing sized breast implants, Claire had returned to her kickboxing classes and had to relearn her center of balance. So Brains had a difficult time penetrating Claire's inner defensive "wall".
"I don't have time for this," Brains grated.
"Make the time," Claire snarled at her. As their fight resumed, Fido defiantly approached the gene splicer and piddled on it, marking it as his territory.
"Did your dog just piss on my machine?' Brains was momentarily distracted.
"Looks that way," Claire said as her elbow strike caught Brains by surprise.
"What is wrong with you people?" Brains returned her focus on Claire.
"You broke into our office and hypnotized us to be compliant and then you zip tied us all up after tasing everyone," Claire recalled their recent events, "And you wonder why we're mad?"
"Okay, so that was a gimme," Brains conceded that point.
"Finally!" Ms. Mesmer gloated as her hypnotic power tried to overwhelm the Super Buddies again. But Fido bit her on the leg, breaking the hypnotic spell.
"Get this thing off of me," Ms. Mesmer was shaking her leg but Fido's teeth just cut further in as he increased his grip. Blue Beetle did the honors of finally knocking Ms. Mesmer out. Booster Gold and Goldstar had Kong and Bulldozer running in circles and at each other's throats. A portal opened in the ceiling and various Intergang faction enforcers dropped out of the hole. They were all from Big Boss or Knightfall.
Only Brains knew Knightfall had no interest in taking power besides her 100 regional directorship of Gotham City down throughout New Jersey and stretched south to Florida. But she saw herself as a kingmaker. And as a utopian with her vision of licensing petty crime and abolishing violent, enforceable through City legislators buying into her system. Gotham already had. NYC and Metropolis were considering it even now.
Knightfall was the visionary. Jaina Hudson and White Rabbit were her ambassadors. But Empress Penguin enforced Knightfall's jurisdiction and she'd dispatched three of her best agents. Plastic Woman, Nancy Morgan, and Black Siren arrived on her behalf. The others represented Big Boss. They included Swarm, Blue Damsel Fly, Black Hand, Mindboggler, and the Puzzler.
"Oh great," Brains mumbled, "The douches have arrived."
Booster and Goldstar temporarily stood down to reassess the brewing confrontation. Bulldozer and Kong stood by Brains while attempting to revive Ms. Mesmer. Fido returned to the safety of Claire's arms again now that the intruders had just portalled by virtue of Jenny Elsewhere...who wasn't anywhere to be seen.
But Jenny had dropped herself off around the blind corner the Super Buddies had been delivered to by her. Claire distanced herself from the competing factions. A silvery windowed portal opened behind her and Jenny reached through and pulled Claire through it.
"I know...don't thank me," Jenny smirked.
"I haven't...yet," Claire replied.
Black Hand was the third man to carry that name. The first became the creator and leader of the Black Lantern Corps, having been made so by Nekron. The second was an Irish mobster that immigrated to work for Bruno Mannheim. But a Syndicate Underground rival was named Hit Coffee. Coffee had appropriated Black Hand's identity far easier anyone would've thought. Black Hand had been very white and very Irish. Black Hand was very black and very talkative. In the end it was the Irishman's silence that convinced Intergang Black Hand had always been Hit Coffee.
Nancy Morgan had been Eel O'Brien's girlfriend. But when he became Plastic Man, he'd abandoned her. So Morgan became an FBI agent and had eventually reconciled with Plas. But when his wife, Penny Lark, accused him of murdering their child by passing on his meta-gene, she divorced him with no contest filed and she got a restraining order against him despite the lack any evidence it was needed. Plastic Man then became Patti O'Brien, the Plastic Woman, and she rekindled their love affair. Plastic Woman and Morgan being vilified to the point the only lives they could life was a return to crime.
Swarm literally transformed into bug-sized replicants of herself. But Brains was all too aware of which gen active Intergang enforcers had sided with whom. So she'd prepared a chemical cocktail to spray at Swarm. Swarm remerged with herself before she passed out.
Black Hand was being handed his ass by Morgan. Brains tended to Ms. Mesmer. They needed her awake and they'd needed fifteen minutes before figuring out how to benignly activate latent or artificially grafted meta-genes. But Super Buddies and the Big Boss' Intergang faction appeared.
The woman called the Puzzler segmented herself into being like a jigsaw puzzle. Each of her pieces were controlled by her central consciousness. And were invariably sharp enough to slice through steel. But not Booster's force field. As the puzzle pieces swarmed him, the shield began to falter under the barrage. Hitting most the puzzle pieces with his proton blaster was fairly useless. They shrugged the blows off except a select grouping that never fully separated from each other.
He wasn't as stupid as he acted. He knew those to be her physical core. So volleyed shots into the cluster and the entire "body" shuddered with painful noises. Puzzler's entire approach varied because of it. Her core stayed detached from the outer body pieces and extremities. But they flew as a protective layer as well as attacking. Booster took this as a sign of hope.
Blue Damsel Fly had her prerequisite wings and an electrostatic "bite" that she could discharge from her hands. She added wall crawling to her resume listed powers as she fought Goldstar. In minutes they were deadlocked.
"Why do you look like Black Canary?" Blue Beetle wondered.
"You really want to go there?" Black Siren was snappish.
"You get that a lot I take it," Blue Beetle ventured.
"So you really want an answer?" Black Siren snorted.
"Actually, I don't. I'm just hoping you don't have a...argh!" Blue Beetle blasted against a concrete wall.
"Siren's Cry?" Black Siren sneered, "Of course I do."
Mindboggler held Kong and Bulldozer immobile when Black Siren engaged her. Ifrit simply suspended all activity between Black Siren's mind and her body.
"Wha' the eff?" Ms. Mesmer shuddered as she came awake.
"Sorry but we need you," Brains hated to admit.
"Help me up," Ms. Mesmer put the whammy on everyone and without Minboggler's mental pressure, Bulldozer and Kong were freed.
"Ahem," Plastic Woman was still standing, "My brain doesn't work that way."
"The hell?" Ms. Mesmer fretted.
"She was Plastic Man. Now she's not," Brains voiced.
"And never outer or prouder," Plas promised them.
"How do we want this?" Kong asked.
"If we leave the gene splicer, you'll leave us alone?" Brains offered.
"Sounds good," Plas agreed.
"So we're walking away now," Brains shooed her people on.
"Gather people into their clusters," Jenny ordered Plas and Claire about. She opened a portal and Claire pushed the machine into the Super Buddies agency HQ. Plas helped her carry Blue Beetle and the twins across. That was the last Claire saw of her.
Plastic Woman gently carried Morgan And Black Siren through a threshold. Jenny sealed the portal and then literally dropped in on the Super Buddies before Big Boss' loyalists awoke.
"Why the help?" Claire was curious as Booster, Goldstar, and Blue Beetle were just barely coming around.
"Why not?" Jenny asked in reply.
"For real this time," Claire insisted.
"I don't like Intergang's options," Jenny told her, "And I have too much invested with them to simply walk. Knightfall offers a fourth option other than Sazia, Big Boss, and Brains. And that option will be for whoever earns a place at the head table."
"So, no one deserves the extra impetus of creating their own gen actives with artificially created and grafted mega-genes?" Claire wanted to be certain she understood.
"Exactly!" Jenny was pleased, "And Derek Powers doesn't deserve the tech either. But the only recourse is to retrieve it for Mercy Graves."
Fido wiggled so Claire let him up into her arms. He piddled on the machine again before making his demands known.
"Do you think that'll harm it?" Claire wondered absent-mindedly.
"I'm hoping,." Jenny laughed it off, "Besides weren't you the hotshot engineer that solved the nanite problem for ARMS Control so they could create the Shield? As I understand the tech, it saved Joe Higgins' life."
"At least some mutual friends destroyed all the data concerning LuthorCorps' end of it," Claire revealed.
"And Lena still wants your hide," Jenny cajoled her, "So let the dog piss all over it."
Jet thrusters could be heatrd from outside. Guy was already outdoors telling them off using obscenities Claire hadn't heard before. And as a transwoman, she'd thought she'd heard them all before now. Leader One entered the Super Buddies offices while the rest of Team Luthor kept Guy at bay, who was showing an amazing amount of stamina in his cursing and so Claire hadn't a single repeated term.
"I've come to settle up," Leader One told Claire, "There's a bonus for having to recover the device twice."
"Wha…?" Blue Beetle was articulate it seemed.
"Hon? How'd we get here?" Booster was a little more alert than Blue Beetle it seemed.
"How the eff did we end up back in our offices?" Goldstar won the grand prize for starting to figure it out. Fido had a quiet growl well underway. He even growled through pissing on Leader One's armored boots.
"Cute dog," Leader One grated.
"He doesn't seem to like you," Jenny smirked.
"It's mutual," Leader One admitted.
"Here's the invoice minus any extra compensation you wanted to add," Claire handed off LuthorCorp's bill.
"We were given Ms. Luthor's receipt of both the item and your bonus," Leader One retrieved the paperwork from a small storage compartment in his armor. Claire received both checks. They were for the same amount.
Leader One watched her gaping at the bank drafts, "Ms. Luthor was quite agitated that Intergang would loot your offices. She's making an offer to better secure your premises. The Mercury Labs theft leading your search to Wayne-Powers and its retrieval there was all that was expected. She wanted to make certain she was vetting her staff again to see who leaked the data concerning you're having recovered the device. Since operational knowledge was restricted so that only twelve employees knew the pertinent facts in order to catch but surprise you here it won't take long before someone cracks under the pressure."
"Inform Ms. Luthor that while it wasn't a privilege, it's a good foundation for working together in the future. Also, we'll discuss her bid for contracting an installation to further secure our premises," Claire verbalized.
"What the hell?" Leader One looked down to see Fido piddling on his other boot, "How much does this dog drink?"
"I guess he'd saved it up for you," Jenny snickered. No one mention Fido doubled his treatment of the gene splicer as well. Which was well and good enough. When Mercy Graves' techs tried to fire the machine up, it shorted out in several places.
Leader One's own boot thrusters malfunctioned as well and he'd been forced to activate all of his secondary thrusters to maintain the flight back to Metropolis. Mercy wasn't going to show the Super Buddies any knowledge of the events but Lena laughed it off, "Seems we still have redesigns to do in order to make our equipment bladder proof."
Jenny had portalled her way out while the Super Buddies team returned to being fully revived.
"And Lena voluntarily provided the bonus?" Blue Beetle was still stuck on that point.
"You'll notice the bonus and the security installation match the same price?" Goldstar asked of any one listening.
"I think that's the general idea," Booster was reviewing the sections of Lena's proposal that Claire had highlighted for serious inspection,
"A kinetic rail gun? Is she nuts? That thing could wipe out the whole strip mall if it malfunctioned," Blue Beetle protested.
"And knowing the Luthors like I do, Lena would keep a back door into our equipement so she could blame a 'malfunction' some day after she'd had us killed," Claire warned. Fido rested on his haunches as he stood vigil over Booster.
"Seems you have bodyguard," Blue Beetle smiled.
"Argh, why me?" Booster wondered.
"He just wants to acknowledge you as the alpha in our member pack," Claire explained it to him.
"In the future, animal rights have been secured as plentifully as human rights have been advanced. Its illegal to have pets," Goldstar explained.
"Well, you'll come around some day and Fido will want to be your hero again," Claire scooped him up. A phone rang and Blue Beetle answered, "Ms. Graves?"
Then he displayed a cascading series of grimaces while an irate Mercy listed of the different threats on their lives that she could easily order.
He hung up, "That was Mercy Graves. The gene splicer was rendered inert by dog urine. It seemed that Team Luthor's commanding field officer also had portions of his armor short out after Fidlo pissed all over his boots."
"Told you he was the hero," Claire dared Booster to contradict her on this.
"Look, I'm getting it. LexCorp, Mercy Corp, or LuthorCorp, whatever they'll calling it next, you're the only decent thing that Lena and Mercy could have used instead of trying to steal your patents and locking up all that license revenue. And I'll admit, Fido did good when we took him with us to retrieve the machine for the second time."
"Powers is an idiot if he thought letting Mercury Labs rental agreement end for a chance to collect the unit for reverse engineering was the best move possible since LuthorC orp is his largest competitor," Blue Beetle sounded off, "LuthorCorp would've naturally put in obstacles to prevent any rival from reverse engineering their own model. We came into this because Powers would've played off any direct action from Mercy's Everyman Project graduates or dispatched Team Luthor to do the job. We were and remain a disinterested party in the technical details and excluded from their mutual grudge match."
"So in order for an unplugged and turned off piece of equipment to short their had be an ctive power source within the splicer that fed its safeguards off of a battery disguised to look like something vital and couldn't be removed without the pass codes Mercy would have built into the machine," Claire thought it out.
"Hot damn that's sneaky," Goldstar approved.
"For now it secures the tech from getting stolen but they were so confident in their belief that any dismantling would trigger the security function but they never thought about making it water or urine proof," Claire explained.
"And you know this how?" Booster was curious. Claire revealed the file packet Jenny had sneaked in and out of LuthorCorp to obtain. Mercy's office to be a particular interest of Jenny's.
"Jenny Elsewhere left this information for me to find while we were at the mystery location that she sent everyone to. My guess is she wanted us to trigger the protection software and hardware. Instead Fido did. And he pointed out glaring weakness in the Team Luthor armor it seems," Claire shared.
"Good work Upchuck," Booster finally rubbed Fido's head and praised him. His tail wagged so hard Claire had to set him down before he knocked himself loose from her grip.
"He wouldn't throw up if you'd stop feeding him half your dinner," Claire clarified the problem.
"Sooo...that's a bad thing then?" he asked.
"Why did you think I harassed you about every time you did it?" Claire asked.
"I just thought you were being strict," Booster confessed. "Apparently not."
"You do it again and you'll clean up the mess," Claire warned him.
"Nope. No more eating table scraps," Booster didn't care to clean any of Fido's organic discharges.
"I thought as much," Claire was glad Goldstar had explained the 'no pets' thing. Just as subsequently Claire laid down the treats law.
"You can give him a treat now. He's earned it. And he'll love you forever because of it," Claire suggested. The treats bag was in her cubicle along with the food dish, a bag of food, and the water dish. Which ultimate;y would lead others to the leash.
Fido was beside himself with joy as Booster gave him te treat and Claire demanded he hook up the leash and they take a walk.
"What do we do the poop?" Booster asked as he slid past a ranting Guy Gardner.
"You bag it with the baggie dispenser strapped to the leash," Claire was pleased that Booster showed some civic responsibility towards the fecal matter in question, "Then you chuck it in a public waste basket or our dumpster behind the building."
"I just blasted away at it with my proton glove guns," Booster explained. Everyone face palmed at once. But Fido watched the fireworks that didn't go Boom! and was just happy as he could be.
"You're turn," Booster handed off the leash.
"Give him time," Claire whispered to Fido, "He's coming around."
For that, he licked her cheek just a few times.