The penultimate chapter in "The Origin of MASK"
Chapter 21: War Games, Part 1
By Qweb and/or Jelsemium
"I've got you now!" snarled MASK agent Buddy Hawks as he wrenched his opponent's arm into a half nelson.
His opponent laughed musically and threw herself backwards at Buddy's broad chest. She knocked him off balance and slipped the arm lock. Gloria Baker somersaulted backward across her fellow MASK agent's body and caught him around the neck with a scissor lock.
"Who's got who?" she asked.
Buddy frowned to himself behind his mask. She wouldn't have gotten away from him so easily, if he hadn't been trying to go easy on her, he thought.
When Buddy didn't respond, Gloria tightened her strong leg muscles, choking him just a little to urge him to surrender.
Of course, he thought wryly, she was trying to not hurt him also.
"Give it up, Hawks," Gloria said with mock ferocity.
But Buddy, a former intelligence agent, lived by one motto, if you can't win the game, the least you can do is to upset the chessboard.
"Penetrator, ON!" he ordered.
It was a trick to exclude Gloria and envelope only himself in the green glow that signaled his mask's action; but it was a trick Buddy had been practicing. His dematerialized form slipped through the young woman's legs. He leaped to his feet.
Two people can cheat at that game, Gloria thought with amusement.
"Aura, ON!"
A pale golden nimbus of light shot from the visor of her mask and wrapped itself around Penetrator's glow.
Buddy tried to burst through the pulsing yellow light, but Aura's protective forcefield was one of the few things Penetrator couldn't penetrate. Gloria lifted her captive into the air.
"And just how tight can you squeeze that forcefield, ma amie?" asked Jacques LeFleur from his spectator's seat on the wide front lawn at the Trakker mansion.
"I don't know," Gloria said wickedly. "I've never tried that."
"All right. Uncle. Uncle!" Buddy said in simulated panic, which was spoiled by the laughter that shook his trapped body.
"Uncle?" threatened Gloria.
"All right, Aunt. Aunt! I surrender all ready."
Gloria set her prisoner gently on the grass, but he collapsed under the weight of his laughter. When Buddy pulled off his mask, his eyes were red with suppressed tears.
Gloria grinned at him after she took off Aura.
"How'd I do, teach?" Buddy asked her.
"Not bad," the Kung Fu instructor admitted.
It had taken her nearly an hour to wear him down and pin him.
"For a fella who doesn't fight with any science, you're pretty slippery, Buddy."
"As long as you didn't say 'slimy,' sister," Buddy growled.
He lounged back against a tree, pulled his soft cap over his eyes and, like a cat, went to sleep instantly. Gloria shook her head and turned toward her second opponent.
Jacques leaped to his feet and bowed with a graceful gesture.
"You've been taking lessons from Calhoun again," Gloria accused.
"Oui, mam'selle. Is that not the reason for this 'training camp' of Matt's — for each of us to learn from the others?"
"I just didn't know etiquette was on the agenda," Gloria replied.
Jacques flashed his even, white teeth.
"It will be at least as much use fighting Venom as the game of pool Calhoun was teaching Dusty yesterday," said the French-Canadian, as he grinned at the Texan who was also observing Gloria's workout.
"Calhoun was teaching Dusty how to play pool?" said a skeptical Buddy, though they could have sworn he'd been asleep. "That's not the way I heard it."
The night before, Calhoun Burns had persuaded Dusty to join him in a friendly game of eight ball. Dusty had claimed ignorance of the game, saying his mama had disapproved of gambling.
" 'Specially," the Texan had said. "With money we didn't have."
But Calhoun had persuaded Dusty to try, saying if you didn't bet, it wasn't gambling, just a game of skill. The Kentuckian had allowed Dusty to break, and didn't get a chance to touch a pool cue the whole game. Dusty had cleared the table three times, to Calhoun's utter fascination. The Texan was a natural master of the pool cue.
But what had sent Calhoun reeling from the room, laughing uncontrollably with uncharacteristic bad manners, was when Dusty asked him, in worried puzzlement, when Calhoun got his turn.
It was explained to Dusty that pool was like baseball, you only got a turn when the other guy made an "out." Dusty frowned and expressed the opinion that it couldn't have been much fun for Calhoun. Calhoun sobered, afraid his laughter had hurt the Texan's feelings. He assured the younger man that he got more enjoyment from watching Dusty's mastery, than he would have from making his own poor shots.
It had been, Gloria thought, just one more example of the things they had yet to learn about each other. She wondered what the other MASK martial artist had to teach her.
"I think, to preserve the purity of the exercise, we should leave our masks off," Jacques said, setting aside Mirage, which could turn a man invisible.
"That's fine with me," said Gloria. "I want to keep you where I can see you."
She bowed formally to Jacques, and they began to spar. Jacques was an expert in savate and they stuck mostly to kicks and parries with the feet.
They battled back and forth, neither gaining any advantage. Then a deflected side kick brought Gloria close and Jacques lashed out with a scything karate chop. Only the girl's superbly trained reflexes allowed her to dodge the main force of the blow to her neck. Yet, she still dropped to hands and knees shaking her head gingerly.
"I thought you were a savate master," she accused.
"True. But I did not say that savate was all I knew," Jacques replied blandly.
With his hat still over his eyes, Buddy spoke with enjoyment.
"A little savate, a little karate," he said, making the words rhyme. "What's the difference?"
"Jacques, I think you've been taking sneaky lessons from Buddy, too," Gloria said, returning to the fray with new interest.
"Always do what you do best," was Buddy's muffled answer.
The two martial artists went at it with increasing fervor, but they had each other's measure and held each other dead even.
They finally called a halt and bowed to each other in deep respect.
"How about one more, Dusty," Gloria said.
The former cowboy, former stuntman had been enjoying the beautiful day, waiting to see what training exercise Matt Trakker would come up with after he finished his combat flying lesson with Ace Riker. He'd been half asleep himself, but he wasn't surprised Gloria had called upon him. She kept picking on him.
"Now, Gloria, you know I don't hold with fightin' my friends," he drawled.
"It's just a training session," she said in exasperation.
It was getting to be an old argument.
Dusty didn't believe in fighting for no reason. Besides his family's religious and philosophical disapproval of pointless combat, Dusty had also had to be careful when he was a youngster to avoid hurting his smaller playmates.
Hondo MacLean, a Golden Glove boxing champ and former football star, had tried to overcome Dusty's reluctance. Since he was bigger than Dusty, he pointed out that the Texan was unlikely to hurt him. But Dusty couldn't bring himself to fight "for fun."
Ever tactful, Hondo had tried Dusty out on a punching bag. He determined that the younger man knew how to place a punch, and how to put his weight behind it. He also knew how to protect himself. Thereafter, Hondo had contented himself with prescribing a physical workout program for Dusty that didn't involve sparring.
But Gloria couldn't let it alone. She believed that nothing could take the place of practice against a live opponent. And she kept pushing Dusty to try it.
"Girl, are you fixin' to rile me?" Dusty drawled after she'd raked him over the coals for a while.
"Yes!" she answered.
"Won't work," Dusty replied.
"Suppose I just come over there and start pounding on you, cowboy?" Gloria asked.
"Pound away," Dusty said, knowing Gloria wouldn't really hurt him.
"What would you do if all our weapons, even our masks, broke down and Venom came after you?" she asked.
"Likely I'd run away," Dusty said, his eyes twinkling.
"Suppose someone else was in trouble and you couldn't run!"
Lying on his right side, Dusty bent his elbow down and picked up an acorn. His position left him absolutely no leverage, but he flicked his wrist and sent the nut spinning toward the tree where Buddy lay sleeping. The missile struck the center of a target left by the removal a limb, then dropped straight down to land in the middle of Buddy's yawn.
Buddy halted in mid-yawn. He pulled his cap up to free one eye and stuck out his tongue to examine the intruding acorn on its tip. Then he spat it away in a graceful arc, yanked his cap clear down to his chin and pointedly turned his back on Dusty.
"Reckon I'd throw rocks at them," Dusty said solemnly.
Gloria started to laugh.
"Reckon you would at that, cowboy," she said.
Jacques was still marveling at the accuracy of Dusty's casual throw.
"Do you think you could do that again?" he asked.
"You do and it'll mean war, cowboy," Buddy warned.
"That's funny," said a new voice. "War was just what I had in mind."
Matt Trakker, leader of the crime fighting task force called MASK, came striding up to the group on the lawn.
"Alex was just saying we haven't tested the defenses at the gas station. He suggested that we choose up teams, one to attack and one to defend, and 'have a go at it'," Matt said, imitating his English friend.
"Okay by me," Buddy growled, sitting upright. "It's obvious a guy can't get any sleep around here."
Actually, Buddy was excited about the idea. The desert gas station was his turf, his baby. He knew a lot about its defenses and had made a few "adjustments" of his own.
Naturally he chose to be on the attacking team.
Down the road from the gas station, beyond the agreed-upon limit of its sensors, Bruce Sato looked over the members of his assault squad. Only Brad Turner was mounted upon his own vehicle, the Condor motorcycle. For the most part the attackers were driving borrowed vehicles. Matt had claimed this to be only fair, because none of the defenders was especially familiar with the bunker controls.
Wearing his Lifter mask, Bruce sat at the wheel of Dusty's Gator. Calhoun Burns, whose diving seaplane was still on the drawing board, joined Bruce in the orange jeep. He stood in the back, Gulliver mask on his head, hands gripping the firing arms of the "Electronic Ouch" cannon.
Brad sat astride Condor next to Buddy, who was cocky because he was in sole control of Hondo MacLean's Firecracker pickup truck. Brad's famous features were hidden behind his flat-faced, chinless, yellow Hocus-Pocus mask. Buddy wore his green, pointy-nosed Penetrator mask.
Dr. Julio Lopez had won the coin toss, so he sat in the driver's seat of Matt's Thunderhawk, his dark eyes alert behind Streamer.
"This isn't fair. I don't even have a mask," grumbled Ace who was sitting in Thunderhawk's passenger seat. Make that copilot seat, he told himself firmly.
Ace was the only one whose face was exposed. Matt was having trouble making the Ricochet mask throw out the twirling force "boomerang" which he envisioned. At the moment, the boomerang was spinning around inside the mask, blowing up each prototype as soon as it was tested. Matt had encouraged the pilot by pointing out the last blast had only blown out the face plate, proving that at least they had the force aimed in the right direction.
Matt did have a spare mask, Ultraflash, but since it was built to fit the MASK leader, it was very uncomfortable on Ace's longer head. He had elected to do without it. But he hadn't expected to do without flying as well.
Julio flashed him a grin, but of course Ace couldn't see it through the orange Streamer mask, which looked like something a motorcycle racer might wear. The doctor's amusement was plain in his voice, however.
"Now, amigo, am I to blame because your luck is bad?" he teased.
Ace sighed.
"No, but can't we at least take turns," the former test pilot practically begged.
"When we meet up with Venom, we'll all get turns," Julio said soberly.
Bruce nodded in satisfaction as his squad arrrayed itself for attack. Without saying a word, which would have been relayed to the bunker, Bruce signaled the charge.
In the center of the underground control room, Matt looked over his half of the MASK team with equal satisfaction. Only Alex Sector, Hondo and Jacques wore their masks. The others felt they would be able to see the weapon controls better without added encumbrance.
"Then you all know your stations?" Matt asked.
"Sure, Matt," Dusty replied. "You're the dealer. Gloria, Jacques 'n me are sittin' in with you. Alex is our wild card and Hondo's the ace in the hole."
The others laughed at his terminology.
"I thought you didn't gamble, cowboy," Gloria said.
"Now, Gloria," Alex countered in his clipped British accent. "Don't you ever watch television? Every cowboy plays poker."
"But only for matches," Dusty said seriously.
Alarms blared a warning, lights flashed. The MASK agents leaped for their stations as the computer said: "Warning. Hostile vehicles approaching."
Normally the MASK computer wouldn't class MASK vehicles as hostile, but Matt had reprogrammed it for the war game. He had also reset all the weapons to minimum strength so as to not injure anyone or damage the equipment. The lasers, for example, could range in intensity from charbroil to suntan. For this exercise, they were set at hotfoot.
Sensors reported the four vehicles were splitting up to attack from different directions.
The defenders took their seats. Alex disappeared into the back. Matt shoved up four switches on the main control panel.
"Defense system engaged," he reported as green lights went on all over the board.
As they topped the rise just in front of the cheerful-seeming desert gas station, Bruce and Calhoun were treated to an awesome show.
Steel shutters clanged down to curtain the station's windows. The gun under Jacques' control popped out of the office wall. A steel curtain speedily encircled the repair bay. Nozzles rotated to the top of the twin gas pumps forming gun mounts that came to life under Gloria and Dusty's skillful handling. The constantly revolving gas sign stopped its radar search. The front of the sign flipped open, revealing a double-barreled threat that swiveled around to look down Gator's throat.
Bruce realized he'd better stop sightseeing. He sent the jeep leaping back the way it had come as Matt's stun blast churned up the dust behind its wheels.
Behind them, the once friendly gas station presented a menacing face to the world. Built into the solid rock of Boulder Mountain, the concrete and steel bunker was ready to face any threat, even that of MASK.
Next episode:
Masks, vehicles and weapons get a workout.
The invisible hand returns.
And everything goes well until it doesn't.
A/N: The battle in the following chapters is based on the Boulder Mountain play set and the MASK credits. The gas station weapons were never used in the show because then Venom would have known where the MASK hideout was!