A/N: The Buddy System was written primarily by Jelsemium with tweaking by me. The Buddy System is the second chapter of The Origin of Mask. It's been broken into three parts to make it easier to digest.
The Origin of MASK
Chapter 4: The Buddy System, Part 1
By Jelsemium and/or Qweb
The young man pushed his squishy red cap to the back of his head, shifted his backpack from left shoulder to right shoulder and decided that this was a really dumb place to put a gas station. But then, deserts weren't exactly this city boy's idea of a smart place to put anything.
He'd hitched as far as he could, but the traffic had thinned dramatically when he'd turned off the main drag a while back. He'd just about convinced himself that his information was a total crock and that there was no gas station, when he spotted Boulder Mountain.
"Mountain! More like an over grown boulder ! And not overgrown by much."
There was nobody there to hear his sarcastic appraisal, not even at the gas station.
"Oh, great!" he said in his slightly flat tenor. "Why do I do this to myself? Now I gotta walk back, too!
He swung the backpack around and fished inside for his thermos. Empty. He made a motion as if to throw the offensive object away from him, then snorted with disgust and stuffed it back into his backpack as he went to study the equally offensive gas station.
It looked ready for use, so with renewed optimism he began to hunt around for a coke machine. He found it, inside the locked garage. Conveniently located for a hard-working and deserving mechanic (Here he smiled and bowed to his reflection in the window.) But not so convenient for thirsty job applicants. He could get in easily enough, but if by chance the owner/manager came along that could prove detrimental to his pension plan.
Another thought struck him and he approached the pumps, if the water was connected. . . ahh, much better. He waited until the water went from scalding to lukewarm before drinking and refilling his thermos.
He scoped out the building as he hauled out a somewhat squished hero sandwich. Both the office and garage seemed to be built into the mountain itself, with no backside to either. He shrugged and sat down in the scant shade at the side of the garage to meditate upon his next move in his employment campaign.
Matt was making some fine adjustments to yet another mask as Alex Sector walked into the lab at the Trakker mansion.
"Matt?"
"I'll be through in a second Alex," the blond inventor said.
Alex was reminded of Matt's ten-year-old, and laughed: "You're as bad as Scott with his erector set."
Matt looked up and grinned. "He does take after his old man, doesn't he?"
Alex ran his hand over his bald pate and didn't answer, "old" was something of a sore point with him right now, and he didn't want to think about it just yet.
"What's that one do?"
"Alex, meet Penetrator, the ultimate skeleton key."
"Charmed, I'm sure. But what does it do?"
Matt placed the green mask over his head and said, "Penetrator: on." A green glow engulfed the inventor, making his outline blur. Then Matt strolled out the door… without opening it. He came back through the wall.
"My word! That is an interesting gadget," Alex frowned as a sudden thought hit him. "Isn't the name just a trifle cumbersome, though?"
"Penetrator is a very tricky device. It works by taking advantage of the fact that atoms are mostly empty space. There are four main components to it: the 'softener,' to loosen the atomic bonds, the 'discriminator' which determines whether the user goes through something or takes it with him, the 'stabilizer' which keeps the user from blowing up when he goes through an object, and the 'assembler,' which puts the user back together again."
"That sounds useful," Alex observed drily. "And I suppose each component has separate power units and backups?"
"You got it," Matt agreed. "The last thing we need is to blow a fuse in this thing. And, of course, each circuit needs a separate cue to 'warm' them up. Hence the four syllables of 'Penetrator.' They all go on …"
"When you say 'On,'" Alex finished. "May I try it?"
"Sure." Matt handed the older man the mask. "I got somewhat dizzy the first time I tried it, but I think I've worked that bug out."
"Penetrator, on"
"Penetrator, OFF!"
Alex yanked off the mask and collapsed onto a lab stool. For a minute he was afraid he was going to be ill. He set the mask on the workbench with elaborate care.
"A little dizzy!"
"Are you all right?" Matt asked anxiously.
"I think so," said Alex, regaining his equilibrium. "I think you need to work on this one a bit more."
"Blast! And I thought I had it all fixed. I didn't have any reaction the third time I used it."
"Maybe it just takes some getting used to." Alex put the mask on again. "Penetrator, on."
"It's definitely a queer feeling, but nowhere near as bad as the first time," he reported. "Penetrator, OFF."
Matt took back the mask and studied it intently. "Hmm, maybe the stabilizer interface…"
"Whatever it is, it will have to wait," Alex said, as he remembered his original errand. "Bruce called in and wants you to meet him at the gas station. He has a surprise for you."
"Do tell? Did he say what kind of surprise?"
"He might have, but you know I can't understand half of what that chappie says."
Matt laughed, "Well, I guess it's time to test out my underground toy, anyway."
Buddy was awakened by a rumbling noise.
"But there's no subway here," he muttered.
There were, however, voices coming from the garage.
He stretched himself awake, pulled his 'art kit' from his backpack, tidied himself up, and went to meet the owner of the gas station in the middle of nowhere.
Bruce Sato grinned as Matt Trakker studied the red and purple sports car curiously.
"O.K., Bruce," said Matt mildly, "what's this vehicle supposed to do? Besides giving me a reputation for color-blindness, that is."
"A bird's bright plumage can distract attention from its talons."
Matt gave Bruce a sidelong look and said: "You mean this thing can fly?"
In answer, Bruce got into the car and manhandled the gear lever. Both doors popped up and set themselves like real gull wings, the cheater raised up higher, and the taillights jumped out of the way of jet boosters.
"I'm impressed…" Matt started.
"So am I, that's a mean lookin' vehicle."
Dutch-American and Japanese-American inventors jumped guiltily and turned around to face the invader.
They saw a man, possibly in his mid-twenties, medium tall, with a stocky build. His hair, what could be seen of it under his squishy red cap, was somewhere between blond and brunet, with red highlights thrown in for good measure. Dark eyes of indeterminate color regarded them amiably from a slightly sunburnt face.
On his part, the intruder found himself facing a blond-haired, blue-eyed man, somewhat taller than himself, though probably around the same weight.
The other one was average height and weight for someone of Japanese descent, with a slight accent that made the newcomer wonder if the man was actually from Japan.
May I help you?" Matt asked politely, getting his mental feet under himself.
"Either of you the owner?"
"I am," replied Trakker. "What can I do for you?"
"Name's Robert M. Haskett, from Anaheim. I was passing through and heard that this gas station was just opening, and I thought I'd see if you could use a good mechanic."
Matt looked at him thoughtfully, "No, I could use a great mechanic."
"Good, then I'm your man." He strolled over to the gaudy sports car and handed Trakker an envelope. "Here's my rèsumè."
He turned back to the car. "This looks like a cross between a Thunderbird and a DeLorean." He looked at the Oriental, "Your design?"
Bruce nodded and the mechanic continued his inspection, ignoring the inspection that the other two were giving him. When he came to the back, he stopped in surprise.
"Hmm, XHT-8311 turbo jets, never saw those on a car before."
"You've seen them anywhere before?" Bruce asked curiously.
The applicant shrugged, "My secondary military specialty was aircraft maintenance." He changed the subject back to the car. "You into racing?"
"In a manner of speaking," replied the blond inventor.
The red-capped mechanic turned his attention to the spoiler. "But you're going to have trouble staying on the race track with the spoiler in this position."
"Really?" Trakker asked as he pulled out a sheaf of papers from the envelope.
"Yeah, too much lift, great for airplanes, not so hot for ground vehicles."
While Trakker read his rèsumè, the applicant poked around some more and admiring aloud the car's sleek aerodynamic styling, the reinforced structure, and Bruce's special safety features. He didn't quite let himself degenerate to babbling, but he wanted to show off his knowledge a little.
Matt finished reading and looked over to where his would-be-employee was staring at the inside of one of the gull-wing doors.
"Well, you certainly seem qualified, but you don't seem to have stayed in one job very long. Why is this?"
The applicant tore his gaze from some loose wiring on the inside of the gull wing door.
"After I got out of the army, I had trouble getting a steady job. So I hired out as temporary help whenever I could, trying to build up a rep. It didn't seem to be working in California, so I decided to try my luck back east. I was hitchin' my way to New York when I heard about this place."
"Hmmm, I see. Well, this looks pretty good, but I have some more interviews before I can say for sure. You said you were passing through, do you have a place to stay?"
"Umm, well, I figured there'd be a motel or something around here."
"There is, I could put you up there while I check your credentials and interview other applicants."
"I don't want to put you to any trouble, Mr…?"
"Sorry, Trakker, Matt Trakker."
"Oh!"
"So you see, it would hardly inconvenience me. And since I'm going to have to keep you dangling for a few days, I feel obligated to at least pay for your room." Trakker phrased the offer as diplomatically as he could, since he suspected the young man of being strapped, and too proud to accept charity.
"Well, that's very generous of you…"
"Good then it's settled," Matt interrupted firmly. "Allow me to give you a lift down there, Mr. Haskett."
"Call me Bob," said the applicant.
Trakker dropped Haskett off at the Boulder Hill Motel and drove away towards home. The young man, whose name was not Robert Haskett, looked after him thoughtfully.
"Now, who'da thunk that Matt Trakker, Boy Humanitarian, would get involved in something like this?"
Matt, Bruce and Alex Sector had a lunch meeting to discuss "Project Toy Tie-in." Alex rubbed his red beard thoughtfully as he examined "Bob Haskett's" rèsumè.
"Well, his credentials seem impressive enough, and anybody who'd peregrinate through the desert looking for work certainly seems crazy enough to be interested. I wonder… Well, I can find out about that when I check him out."
"Find out what?" Bruce asked, injudiciously.
"If he's ever been a Boy Scout."
"Bob Haskett," aka Buddy Hawks, had never been a Boy Scout, but he did try to be prepared for any contingency.
Originally, his plan had been to worm his way in gradually, but he was going to have to do some revisions. He didn't like moving in prematurely and risk blowing all his elaborate investigative work and careful set up. But he had a feeling that Trakker was getting ready to get a move on, so he had to step up his plans.
First, he got hold of a used motorcycle, no way was he going to get caught in this place without wheels again, then he grabbed some shuteye. He had a feeling that tonight was going to be busy, which suited him just fine, he hated sleeping nights anyway.
Late that night, he went back to the gas station to poke around to see if that really was a laser cannon mounting he had seen on that gaudy sports car. Any doubts he might have had that there was something odd going on vanished when he examined the defenses of the gas station.
"Man, this place is better guarded than Fort Knox. They really like their privacy."
He got out one of his little black boxes and went to work. The first thing he did when he got inside was help himself to a cola. The second thing he did was notice that the back wall of the garage was fake.
"Hollow," he decided upon closer examination. "How mysterious, I think I like this place."
A search through the building revealed all sorts of interesting gadgets, most of which Hawks couldn't quite figure out. He figured out how to open the door into the mountain easily enough, though.
It bothered his naturally nosy self that he couldn't puzzle out the functions of those bizarre controls, but he promised himself a further investigation at a convenient date and continued into the mountain.
He quickly discovered that he wasn't in a cavern so much as a tunnel, a tunnel with tracks in it.
"Hmm, I thought I heard a subway. I'd better fetch my wheels."
Hawks puttered through the subway as quietly as he could. He estimated that he was halfway through the mountain range, when a side door opened. He nosed in and poked around. Again there were a lot of incomprehensible machines, including a huge round table with the most bizarre looking chandelier he'd ever seen.
"Ahhhg! It's getting so a spy needs a couple of . nowadays. What ever happened to filing cabinets and secret formulas?"
He left that room in disgust. He was beginning to feel he was out of his league, and he didn't like it much.
The end of the line, which had to be some distance from the so-called mountains, was more to his liking. It was somebody's house, somebody's mansion, actually. But at least he could figure out what was in it. Including the burglar alarms. So Buddy prowled happily through the lower floor of the mansion, poking through drawers, opening cabinets, throttling alarms and testing furniture cushions as he went.
"Come on, Hawks, think, where would you put a top secret car? The garage?"
He tried it, but all the vehicles in there were straight.
"Blast, the designer dude must have it. I'd better come up with something interesting fast, I can't spend all night here."
He decided against going upstairs and went back to the room he entered in, on the theory that if it had one weird thing, it might have more. One wall had the normal door to the hall, one had the secret door to the subway, the third was a plain, ordinary, garden-variety wall. The fourth, however, was just loaded with more gadgets.
"Computers! I hate computers," He sighed. "Oh, well, at least I can recognize one when I see it." A little fiddling brought down a viewing screen and Buddy got to work, ignoring the little protests the computer was making about illegal access.
Matt put Scott and T-Bob to bed after catching them eavesdropping for the third time that night and returned to the upstairs study where Bruce and Alex were waiting for him.
Alex was frowning at the computer readouts, while Bruce fastidiously cleaned up the table and putting away the last of their midnight pizza snack. (Which they had wound up sharing with Scott.)
Alex looked up when Matt entered.
"There is something very disturbing about that job applicant Haskett, or whatever his name is."
"Whatever his name is? What do you mean by that?"
"Well, his records match what he has written down, but I had the feeling that something was wrong. For one thing, his early records are incomplete. The primary school he went to had burnt down and all their pre-computer data was lost. His high school was shut down and all their old, pre-computer records, were somehow mislaid."
Bruce stirred uneasily. "But suspicion is not proof."
"I know," Alex acknowledged. "But I have done some work with intelligence chappies before, and this smelled fishy to me. It's exactly the kind of schools that somebody trying to establish a false identity would use. So I checked the birth records, there was a Robert Mark Haskett who was born in Anaheim and he would have been this chappie's age."
"Would have been? You mean it's not him?" Matt asked.
"It couldn't be, according to the death records Robert Mark Haskett died three days after he was born.
"There couldn't be two of them?" Bruce asked.
"There could be, but there aren't. Not born at the time and place that this chap claims on his rèsumè."
Matt rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. "A plant? Could Mayhem be onto us already?"
Just then the computer interrupted.
"Alert! unauthorized access of main computer terminal."
"Scott?" Alex asked Matt.
"No, he has authorization."
Matt opened his briefcase and the mini-screen popped open.
"Give me a visual on the unauthorized user."
"It's 'Haskett!'" Bruce exclaimed, when the computer complied.
"What's he doing here? And how did he get in without setting off the alarms?" Matt was pretty alarmed himself.
"Why don't we go and ask him?" Alex suggested mildly.
"Good idea. Computer, seal off all exits and alert Hondo McLean."
"Roger."
Hondo McLean was sound asleep when his MASK emergency summons went off for the first time. He leaped out of bed grabbed his watch and bolted to the closet where he kept his mask. Halfway to the door, the schoolteacher woke the rest of the way up, and made a slight detour to get his clothes. Then he went sailing off to the rescue.
Buddy was prowling around looking for some sort of interesting papers when he heard a strange noise. "What the devil?"
He cocked his head and listened, years of this sort of thing had given him a good ear for what was going on. There was somebody else sneaking around the house. After him? He hesitated, and glanced at the computer terminal.
"You been telling tales out of school?"
He decided that this was a good time to go, and opened the door to the subway to leave.
There was a man in there, wearing what appeared to be an orange diving helmet. Deciding that he didn't like the looks of that, Buddy turned to go out into the hall. The man at that door was wearing a brown and scarlet helmet with a grill where his mouth ought to be. Buddy didn't much like the looks of that, either. He backed up towards the blank wall to put something solid against his back, in preparation for a fight.
And backed into the third man, who hadn't come through either of the doors.
"Got you!" the man with the green, elongated snout mask said triumphantly, as he grabbed Buddy from behind in a bear hug.
"I hate being got!" Buddy snarled expressing his disapproval by stomping Green Snout/Alex Sector firmly on the insole and planting elbow in Sector's solar plexus.
As Alex released him, Buddy dove forward, and did a neat handspring into Brown Mask/Matt Trakker's stomach. Bounding over that somewhat breathless worthy, Buddy ran like hell for the French doors he had noted earlier.
He barreled into the formal dining room with a rather annoyed Orange Helmet/Bruce Sato hot on his trail.
Going into the dining room gave Sato a clear view, which enabled him to go for the "Lifter, on!" the little rings of power, visible to Bruce alone, encirlced the intruder, and lifted him towards the chandelier.
When a limping Alex and a wheezing Matt came into the room, the cat burglar was floundering helplessly between the ceiling and the chandelier.
"Good, you got him!" said Alex, with a great deal of satisfaction. He forgot that Buddy hated to be "got."
The ceilinged spy clutched the chandelier and glared down on his captors. He felt like a drowning swimmer. "Swimmer?!" The comparison gave him an idea. Releasing his hold, he somersaulted over like Mark Spitz coming to the end of a lap and violently kicked off from the chandelier.
Bruce twisted around in an attempt to keep him sighted, but the kick and the shifting anti-gravity rings were enough to haul anchor on the chandelier.
"BRUCE!" Matt cried.
Bruce turned around to find himself on a collision course with twenty-three pounds of cut glass.
"Lifter, catch!"
The anti-grav rings slowed the angry rush of lighting fixture and lowered it gently to the industrial sized dining room table.
"You all right?" Matt inquired anxiously.
"I believe so, how about you two?" Bruce asked.
"I'll be fine, once we lay hands on this blighter," said Alex.
"He who grabs the tiger's tail had better have a zoo lined up."
"We'll worry about what to do with him after we get him. . . My God! Scott!" forgetting the intruder for the moment, Trakker went racing to his son's room.
"We'd better see that our friend doesn't depart through the subway tunnel," Alex said to Bruce.
Buddy went screeching around the corner to the French doors, only to find them sealed off with metal shutters.
"Blast! Now what? The subway!"
He reached the door to the computer room the same time that Bruce and Alex did.
"Lifter…"
Buddy heaved a nearby standing whatsis at Bruce before the Asian could finish the command, and dove through a convenient door. And found himself in a not so convenient dead end.
"We've got him now!" Alex exclaimed.
As the two approached the door, Buddy set a chair in the doorway and backed against the far wall. When Bruce and Alex peeked around the corner he charged at the door, launched himself off of the chair and plowed into the startled pair at shoulder height. Buddy tried to grab the masks off as he passed, but couldn't get a firm grip on either of the helmet-like devices. However, by the time the two had regained their equilibrium, Hawks had flown the coup.
"You really must stop saying 'got'," Bruce complained to the red bearded scientist.
Before Alex could reply, Matt came tearing down the stairs looking even more alarmed.
"Scott's not in his room."
"Oh, no!" said Alex in dismay. "We'd better split up and find that intruder before Scott does."
With that comforting thought in mind, the three of them headed in different directions.
Buddy was rapidly becoming very frustrated by his "locked room mystery".
"Now what? Think, Hawks. Think! Can't go to the computer room. Even if I knew for sure it controls the seals, I couldn't figure out how to disable them."
He tried prying at some of them, but even the upper stories resisted his efforts and the noise attracted one of the masked menaces. And it was becoming difficult to keep out of their way, even in the dark. He'd be in big trouble if they thought to turn on the lights.
In the next installment:
Hondo's on the job
and Buddy's in a pickle,
but not as big a pickle as Matt and MASK.