The Amazing Adventures of the Sensational Squirrelman

Heart-stopping Issue Number Two!

I… am the Sentinel! Unwitting subject of alien experimentation, for fifty years now I have witnessed all that is, all that was, and all that could be! Recently we watched the arrival of a stranger to our fair metropolis, Action City – a stranger who lives behind a face both familiar and foreign to him! Now what will become of him when he realizes the full ramifications of his situation? Will he be able to adapt, or will his mind rebel at what he is experiencing? Let us turn our watchful eyes toward him once more, as he discovers the full extent of his plight in…

Squirrelman, Squirrelman, Does Whatever a Squirrel Can

Morning came far too quickly for Matthew.

He woke up, groggy and disoriented. Jesus what a dream, he thought. Much more intense, much more realistic than the other times. He sat up and ran a hand through his brownish hair, yawning. He blinked away the sleep from his eyes and rolled over to the other side of the bed, standing up and opening the vertical blinds.

“What the hell…” he whispered.

The view that greeted him was not that which he was accustomed to – he had expected to see the brownstone building across the street, the billboard above it proclaiming this month’s advertisement for a restaurant chain or a perfume or a brand of jeans, beyond it, mostly greyish sky and a few skyscrapers that formed the skyline of the city that was his home.

What he saw now was vaguely familiar – the brownstone was still there, but the billboard above it was not held by poles, but rather, floated in the air – and it wasn’t a simple poster on the billboard, but a fully animated image, a commercial twenty feet wide and ten feet high. A flying car floated past his window as he stared at the huge buildings beyond the brownstone, gleaming spires and floating skyways and little dots that had to be more flying cars, the old skyline he knew so well not even apparent. He stared in shock as two schoolkids flew past, one with a helicopter rotor sticking out of his backpack and the other boy seemingly under his own power. A woman in the street – Mrs. McGillicuddy, he recognized - yelled at the boys to stop using their powers, but the kids laughed and flew off away from the old lady.

“This is still a dream,” Matthew said to himself. “I’m still unconscious. I must have really hit my head running for the bus. That’s it, that’s what this is. I’ve suffered some head trauma and the doctors are working on me right now.”

He turned around and saw the squirrel costume littered across the floor, leading to the bathroom. He picked up the pieces of the costume and when he reached the bathroom he saw the bowl was still filled with the vomit from the night before. His face wrinkled in disgust and he looked at the bowl to find the flush arm and still, even in the light of day, couldn’t find it.

“How the hell do you flush this thing?” he said out loud, and the toilet flushed. He stepped back in surprise, then leaned forward again. “Flush.” The toilet flushed again.

“Voice activated,” he muttered. “Very clever. I never knew I had such a vivid imagination.”

Then he saw himself in the mirror. He’d always been slim of build, and since turning thirty he’d made an effort to go to the gym on a regular basis. But he’d never been buff, or cut. In shape was what he’d call himself.

He never knew what in shape was until now. He was IN SHAPE. Every muscle defined sharply, not even an ounce of fat on his body. His face was the same, a little rougher, a little more macho – the jaw more sharply defined without the little bit of fat he’d carried before. His hair was much shorter – almost brush-cut. And there was a hardness to his eyes, the frown lines a little more defined as well. He stared at himself and then nodded. Of course, he thought. In a dream, why wouldn’t I have a dream body?

Still carrying the costume, he went into the living room, and discovered that the changes to his apartment had not stopped with a voice-activated toilet. In the first place, his coin collection was gone. A flat-screen television hung in the place where the bookcase holding the coin binders had been. Further, the bookcase holding his stamp collection had been moved, and was in front of the where the doorway to his office had been – it wasn’t there. The kitchen was a mess, dirty dishes and dirtier pots cluttering the counter top. He threw the costume on his cluttered dining room table and went to the bookcase that held his beloved stamp collection. He picked a binder at random and pulled it open – it was mostly empty, many of his prize stamps gone entirely. He pulled at the other binders, one at a time, and most of the collection he’d built since high school was just not there, or else hastily, almost sloppily, positioned in the binder. He pulled on one binder he didn’t recognize and the entire bookcase moved aside, revealing a hidden doorway and the office behind it.

Cautiously, he stepped inside. The lights came on automatically, and he saw all sorts of memorabilia – from Squirrelman’s adventures. Newspaper clippings from the Action City Examiner framed on the walls – Squirrelman Cages Jungle King, Squirrelman Fries Up Squidface Calamari, Battle Royale: Squirrelman vs. the Scream Queen. Spare costumes. A belt filled with odd gadgets. A shelf of odd shaped awards and metal and wood plaques from various municipal committees and citizens’ group. Photos of Squirrelman and various other costumed crimefighters. And an odd flatscreen computer monitor on a desk cluttered with notes about a variety of criminals. As he approached the computer the door behind him slid shut and the computer sparked to life.

“Good morning Matt,” the computer said in a vaguely female voice.

“Of course you talk,” Matthew muttered to himself more than in response.

“Naturally,” the computer answered, as a hologram of a small brownish animal – a ferret, Matthew realized. “Although, I’m not actually talking, Matt.”

“You’re not?”

“Well, no.” The ferret scrambled over the desk clutter and looked at Matthew quizzically. “All PSYFERRET terminals are equipped with nanotelepathy.”

“Psy-ferret?”

“Pseudo SYnaptic File Encryption, Retrieval, Radio Emission Technology. My emission frequency exactly matches the synaptic relays of your hearing centres. Thus you, and only you, can ‘hear’ me.”

“And I call you…?”
(*Farrah*)

“Farrah… Matt, are you feeling alright?” The hologram ferret quirked its head to the other side. “My bioscan uplink is detecting an unusual synaptic flux… did you have a run in with Doctor Forgetful?”

“If I say I don’t remember that won’t help, will it?”

“Very funny, Matt. Shall I run a complete bioscan?”

“Uh… not right now, okay? I … need to … get to work.”

“Of course. If you’ll place last night's outfit in the auto-wash, I’ll have it cleaned for you by tonight. Your gym bag is prepared, of course.”

Matthew looked around and saw a grey gym bag on an odd-shaped machine in the corner. He picked it up and opened it. Inside was another Squirrelman costume.

“Uh… thanks, Farrah.”

The hologram ferret gave a little simulated squirm of holographic pleasure.

“Of course, Matt. I exist to serve.”

Matt went out to the dining room and picked up the dirty costume, then brought it back into the secret hideout office, placing the outfit inside the auto-wash.

“I’ll … see you later, Farrah.”

“Have an exciting day, Matt.”

Matthew headed for the shower and puzzled out how to work it without taps, then nearly scalded his skin off when he didn’t specify how hot he wanted the water to be. Once that was done he got dressed – still basically the same wardrobe, he saw, although a few of his favourite shirts were missing. He dressed as he normally did – although the pants were baggy on his slender rock-hard acrobatically muscular body now. He grabbed his gym bag with the costume inside and his satchel with the normal accounting things he normally had with him and headed for the bus stop, which he was relieved to see was still on the corner of Siegal Avenue and Shuster Boulevard. He stopped inside the Siegal Deli to grab something quick to eat on the bus, and kept seeing familiar faces here and there. Old Joe behind the counter still greeted him in Yiddish, and Matthew answered back in English, and they got along fine as they always did. Matthew bought the morning paper from Mack, the news vendor, but instead of his normal paper, he bought a copy of this morning’s Action City Examiner- the first section seemed filled with news items about the various costumed crimefighters in the city, and elsewhere in the country – New York seemed to be the heaviest hit during a late demon invasion from the forces of Lord Shel'q of the Thirteenth Dimension. Matthew marvelled at his imagination’s ability to deliver such complete and detailed accounting of a world that only existed inside the previously hidden recesses of his mind. He waited for a few moments when a gust of wind whipped up the street dust around him and the other waiting passengers and a flying bus slammed to a halt in front of them.

A flying bus, Matthew thought. Sure, why not?

He and the other passengers got on and Matthew spotted a seat next to a huge greyish green man who was taking up three spots. Matthew elected to stand. On the metal rail that the passengers were holding onto, an eighteen-inch tall woman in a business suit, with dragonfly wings growing out her back, was sitting. She looked down at Matthew and scooched over from his hand as he grabbed the rail suddenly when the bus took off.

Matthew was treated to a site he’d never seen – a flying tour of a great gleaming metropolis, a futuristic super-city that rivalled anything he’d ever seen in movies. Tall crystal skyscrapers reflected a morning light clearer than any he’d ever seen growing up in a city like the one he’d grown up in. He saw beautiful architecture unparalleled in his experience – buildings made from rose-coloured quartz, glittering electronic super-structures, pyramids and ziggurats, domes and needle-thing spires, all surrounding a huge park, and in the centre of the park, an almost perfectly round lake, from which burst forth a five hundred foot statue of a costumed crimefighter – mask, boots, cape, tights, underwear on the outside, the whole thing seemingly made of gleaming gold. The crimefighter seemed about to take off in flight, balanced on one foot, one hand curled into a fist by his side, the other reaching for the heavens, a look of concern and determination on his face.

A small child, maybe three years old, was staring at the statue with all the rapt admiration Matthew was.

“Do you know who that is, Billy?” the boy’s mother asked.

“Cap’n Action!” Billy answered proudly.

“Do you know what he did?”

“Saved the world from bein’ blowed up by a space ship!”

“That’s right… the city was destroyed but the world was saved. And President Eisenhower declared that from the rubble of Indianapolis, a new city would rise, greater than any the world had seen… named for the man who gave his life to save the world.”

“Cap’n Action!”

“That’s right, sweetheart. And that’s why the city is called Action City. The Greatest City in the World. Now, do you know what Captain Action always used to say?”
(*”Now’s the time… to take Action!”*)

“Nowza… um… nowza time to take action!”

“That’s right, hon. Good for you!”

Matthew's stop was next so he moved away from the boy and his mother and stood at the door waiting for the bus to stop. When it did – with a jolt – he jumped off the floating vehicle and made his way to the office building where Mattheson and Richardson Accounting made its home.

Only to discover it was not there. Instead, a huge gleaming office building, all steel and glass, thirty storeys high, stood in its place. Matthew entered the skyscraper (which, although it stood thirty storeys high, was dwarfed by the other buildings around it) and found on the Lobby Directory that MR. Accounting (with suitably corny-looking costumed crimefighter logo) was located on the fifteenth floor. Matthew took the elevator up and saw the offices he and his partner shared. It seemed he and Ron had it much better here in his imaginary dream world. He stepped through the glass and chrome doors which opened electronically with a schliff! sound - and he saw an unfamiliar face behind the front desk.

“Good morning Matt,” the receptionist said.

“Good morning, uh-“
(*Rachel*)
“-Rachel.”

“Stretch is waiting in his office. He wants to talk to you.”

“Thanks…” Stretch? I haven’t called Ron ‘Stretch’ since college basketball…

With the same dizzying flash-memory as the night before giving him directions around the office, Matthew found ‘his’ office and deposited his bags, then went to find his partner. He knocked on the door.

“Yeah? Come in,” Ron’s voice answered.

Matthew stepped in and saw that his partner, good old reliable Ron, was still the same. Same clutter, same desk, same everything. Different office, though… and he seemed to be going through a lingerie catalogue – semi-clad women were sprawled across all manner of office equipment.

“Whaddaya think?” Ron asked, offering Matthew the catalogue.

“About what?” Matthew asked back, taking the catalogue and flipping through it.

“Well, Rachel’s about due for her five-year upgrade, and I thought, why upgrade when we can find new? Now, robo-receptionists aren’t cheap, but I figure you and I might find a way to make a little on the side…? You know, convince our friend to do an endorsement or two? Planters’ Peanuts have been after him for years, you know…”

“Ron can you talk English for two minutes? Where’s Mandy?”

His partner looked at Matthew with as serious an expression as Matthew had ever seen him wear.
(*Matt and Ron scrambled over the rubble of their former offices, heaving aside bricks and stones, Matt not caring if anyone saw him use his enhanced strength. A gang war gone totally apocalyptic between the Lower Uptown Lungfish and the Dock Street Do-Badders had resulted in their offices being reduced to a pile of rubble… Mandy was under the rubble. Mandy…*
*The Mandy-thing shambled toward him, and the glowing form of Blue Ghost beside him appeared to glow brighter.
“It’s not her, Squirrelman…” the dead costumed crimefighter explained. “Dr. Necro is using the dead bodies of our friends and relatives for his undead horde, to keep us off balance… but we must remember that we are luminous beings, not this crude matter… your friend no longer resides in this rotting shell…” Matthew saw himself tear off the head of what had been Mandy’s body…*)

“That’s not funny Matt.” Ron looked very sad. “And you haven’t called me Ron since school. What gives?”

“Sorry… Stretch. I… don’t know about getting a new receptionist.” He glanced at the catalogue. The prices listed for the brand new top-of-the-line robo-receptionists in his dream world were comparable to brand new fully equipped luxury sedans or SUVs in the real world. “They’re awfully expensive.”

“That’s why I said, maybe our friend, wink wink, can do an endorsement, nudge, nudge?”

“Umm… Stretch, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, sure, no prob, Matt. Anyhow, have a talk with our ‘special client’ next time you ‘see’ him, would ya?”

“Stretch, you’re about as subtle as a hand grenade.”

Rachel, the robo-receptionist, knocked softly at the door and poked her head in the office.

“Matt, you wanted to be notified of any unusual activities in the Lower Uptown area? Well, Doktor Affe and his Simianstaffel are attacking the Museum of Pre-Reconstruction Memorabilia.”

Stretch looked at his partner.

“Say, Matt, don’t you have an appointment with our special client?” the lanky man asked.

“Huh?”

“You don’t have any appointment scheduled for a special client,” Rachel interrupted.

“Rachel, excuse us, would you?” Stretch waited for their receptionist to close the door, then looked at his partner. “Matt, Doktor Affe attacking the Museum sounds like a job for Squirrelman, wouldn’t you say?”

A little light of realization went off in Matthew’s mind.

“Right… the special client. I gotcha.” Matt handed the catalogue back to his partner. “Don’t buy any new receptionists until I get back.”

“Sure thing, partner!”

Matt headed for his office and looked at the gym bag. A memory flash told him where the secret door to the hidden way out of the building – three storeys up and behind an air-conditioner – was, and he shrugged and decided to go with it. It was just a dream, after all. No harm in indulging a little escapism, especially when you’re in a coma or something, Matthew thought, pulling out the pants and the outerbriefs and the shirt. He figured out how to attach the tail – there was no helpful memory-flash to help him out – and he pulled on the boots and the gloves and looked at the mask for a moment, standing there in a superhero costume like he was going to a Halloween party, not quite believing what he was doing, and he took a deep breath and pulled the hood over his face and shifted the eyepiece lenses into place. He was absurdly glad there was no mirror in his office – he didn’t want to see himself in this ridiculous get-up. He stepped over to the door to his private washroom and opened it, stepping through into the closet-sized bathroom and pressed the right sequence of tiles, opening a secret door into a shaft heading for the secret exit the memory-flash had provided for him. He looked at the inside of the shaft and realized he didn’t know how to make his claws appear either, but a moment of concentration and the hot squeezing feeling in his fingertips and toes and suddenly two-inch curved claws grew out of his fingers and feet. He climbed up the featureless shaft and headed for the exit, flipping the switch that opened the hidden door and headed out into the wind-swept eighteenth-storey outside wall.

Matthew felt the rush of adrenaline surge through him as he looked down almost two hundred feet to the street below, and suddenly he felt himself grinning madly, joyfully, suddenly completely aware how alive he felt, how real it all seemed, how close to dying he was. Every cell seemed overfull with life, and he laughed suddenly, and scrambled along the wall, leaping and twitching long the concrete and steel and glass canyons of the skyscrapers of Action City.

He leaped aboard a passing flying bus, heading down Fox Avenue and toward the Perez Street Bridge, where he leapt off again and swung through the steel superstructure of the bridge. He leapt onto the rooftop of the nearby row of buildings and ran along the edge, thrilling at the responses, the athleticism, of his superfit body. He stopped short at the edge of the buildings and looked across the plaza to see something he’d never in a million years would have imagined he would witness.

A huge monstrous iron-grey supertank with Nazi swastikas on the sides was planted on the front steps of the Museum of Pre-Reconstruction Memorabilia. In the open roofed conning tower of the supertank were six figures – one large and dark and hulking, moving with clear purpose, one, tall and shapely and obviously female, clad in white and blond of hair, one small and rapid-moving, one still larger than the purposeful one, and two similarly-clad nearly identical in purple and yellow forms. Squirrelman squinted to see the forms a little clearer, while flying police cruisers flew into the airspace around the Museum. At once, a dozen huge grey forms spilled out of the supertank, aiming rifles and firing off purple-red ray beams.

Squirrelman ducked one purple red ray and looked over the edge of the roof trying to get a better look.

“Here, Squirrelly,” a man’s voice said. Matthew spun around to see a man standing on a three foot by five foot playing card, floating just off the edge of the roof, riding it like a surf board. The man, blond, dressed in a white body suit and black ace of spades on his chest, white strip-mask hiding his eyes and nose, tossed Matthew a pair of micro-binoculars.

“Thanks-“
(* Ace*)
“-Ace,” Matthew answered, looking at the microbinoculars to figure out how to work them. As he did so, three other colourfully clad people met with them on the roof.

One was a large muscular man dressed in a clown outfit – The Clown. The other, a long lean blond woman, was dressed in a black and red checked outfit, carrying a large paddle – his partner, Harlequin. The third was Ragdoll, who held herself apart from the others.

“What’s the rumpus, gang?” Clown asked.

“Looks like herr Doktor has his apish eyes on something inside the Museum,” Ace answered.

“Good guess, Sherlock,” Ragdoll sniped.

Matthew raised the microbinoculars to his eyes and took a good long look at the scene in the plaza unfolding before them. The sight he saw, plus accompanying memory-flash, told him all he needed to know.

Doktor Affe, the large dark figure moving with purpose, was a huge mountain gorilla in a Nazi Commandant’s uniform. The white-clad woman was Ingrid, his shapely assistant, who would have been a total knockout if she didn’t have a chimpanzee’s face peering out her long starlet tresses. Chatterbox, the rapid-moving chimp jumping around the conning tower, and Great Ape, the huge mutated Orangutan stood by, awaiting the Doktor’s orders, and as Matthew watched, the sinister simian pointed to the pair and they leapt off into the Museum’s interior. In the plaza, gorillas in Nazi uniforms aimed purple pulse rifles at the assembling police.

Matthew lowered the binoculars and began to laugh. A snicker at first, but then he let it out, one long huge braying laugh, unlike any he’d ever laughed before, one tinged with a little madness, but he didn’t care.

“What’s the joke, son?” the Clown asked.

“This! All of it!” Matthew answered between gasps. “Nazi gorillas with ray guns? It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of! What kind of a sick mind thinks of this sort of thing? I am SO getting therapy when I wake up!”

“This ain’t no dream, pal,” Ace looked on as the Simianstaffel fought off the police, who were clearly outmatched, despite air superiority. “Ol’ Dok down there plays for keeps.”

To illustrate his point, a police cruiser exploded midair, sending bits of burning debris into the plaza below.

Matthew finally got a hold of himself.

“Well, let’s go then,” he said, stepping to the edge of the building.

“What?” Ragdoll looked at him with shock on her face.

“Come on, isn’t this where we rush in an stop his nefarious scheme? That’s how I’m supposed to talk, isn’t it?”

“Squirrelly, this is a little out of our league,” Harlequin said, looking at her partner, who looked unsure. “It’s not like we’re a team or anything.”

“Doktor Affe is normally a job for Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty,” the Clown added.

“C’mon, they’re in Washington and they’re like eighty,” Ace answered, eager to see where Squirrelman was going with this. “Man, can you imagine fighting this lunatic for sixty years? I’d go bonkers.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t hurt to transplant your brain into a new gorilla body every ten years or so,” Harlequin said, looking out over the plaza at the mad monkey in question.

“Oh, come on, how hard can this be?” Matthew looked out over the plaza. “Ragdoll – get inside and find out what Ape and Chatterbox are up to. Ace, Clown, Harley, see what you can do about the simianstaffel. I’m heading for herr Doktor.” Matthew had no idea where this new confidence and attitude was coming from, except that he knew he was dreaming, so why wouldn’t this dream team of costumed crimefighters follow his suggestions?

“No guts, no glory, eh?” Ragdoll quipped – actually almost smiling – then heading off.

Squirrelman looked at Ace.

“Can your flying card carry me too?”

“Sure, hop on, Rocket J.”

Ace flew off with Squirrelman in tow – there wasn’t enough room on top for Ace to steer and Matthew to ride. As they flew through the air, Ace asked, “What’s up with you? Normally you’re the last to suggest a team up.”

“Really? Oh… Guess I felt like a change,” Matthew answered. “Catch ya later!” he added, letting go and falling onto the super-tank’s conning tower.

“VAT!?” Doktor Affe roared. His monocle feel off his face “You dare, you schwein!”

“Oh Doktor!” Ingrid simpered in a voice not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s.

“Give it up, Monkeyman!” Matthew challenged.

“APES ARE NOT MONKEYS YOU FOOL!!” the sinister simian screamed. “Monkeys – are what you humans are! Monkeysee! Monkeydo! Show him vat I mean! AAAH HAH HAHA HAHA HOO HOOO OOOK OOK OOK!!”

The two purple-and yellow clad teen boys – Monkeysee and Monkeydo, members of TeenSupreme, wore bands of odd looking technology strapped to their heads, which came to electronic life and the tumbling twins leapt into action, tackling Squirrelman and falling off the conning tower of the super-tank. The three acrobatic wonders leapt and twitched and spasmed around the super-tank, barely hitting, enough to keep Squirrelman occupied while Doktor Affe kept up his orders to the Simianstaffel. The Twin Teens were obviously being mind-controlled by the bands around their heads, but Squirrelman couldn’t get them off either of his opponents.

In the plaza the Clown, Harlequin and Ace weren’t faring much better. Ace’s titanium edged playing cards were being hurled with deadly accuracy, but only to incapacitate – Ace wouldn’t take a life. A gorilla Nazi without a purple plasma pulse gun is still an angry gorilla. Clown and Harlequin – themselves no slouches in the acrobatics department, were leaping and jumping around, managing to keep from getting killed. Clown’s superhuman strength was a match for one mountain gorilla, but against twelve he had his hands full.

Then Squirrelman saw something that gave him an idea. Harlequin was using her electro-paddle to stun the Simianstaffel.

“Harley!” he yelled, holding out one hand. “Over here!”

Without hesitation she tossed him the electro paddle, which he swung and connected with Monkeysee’s head, shorting out the circuitry in the mind-control band he was wearing. Monkeydo also went limp suddenly.

Clown yelled out, “Squirrelman! Here!” and Squirrelman tossed the garish crusader the paddle. Clown twisted the handle as far as it would go and slammed it into his opponent. The electro-charge arced from gorilla Nazi to gorilla Nazi, and the entire Simianstaffel collapsed to the ground in a heap of grey uniforms and black fur.

“No! No! Curse you verdamment meddlers!” Doktor Affe bellowed.

“Never fear herr doktor your great plan is reaching its goal!” Chatterbox shrieked suddenly, leaping out the front door of the Museum. Great Ape carried Ragdoll’s limp, unconscious form with him, holding her overhead dramatically. Chatterbox leaped onto the supertank carrying a piece of equipment with him. Matthew didn’t recognize it, but he knew it couldn’t mean good news. He went after Chatterbox.

“No!” Great Ape roared, and tossed Ragdoll at Squirrelman.

Matt had a split-second to decide – save Ragdoll and let Doktor Affe get the technology he’d come to the Museum to obtain, or risk someone else trying to catch her as he dodged and tried to stop Chatterbox.

It wasn’t really a decision – he caught Ragdoll’s quadruple-jointedly limp body and fell to the plaza bellow, the air knocked out of him as she fell on top of him. Chatterbox presented his leader with the equipment.

“Now! At last!” Affe roared. “AAAHH HAHA HAHA HAH HOO HOOO OOOK OOOK OOK!!” He placed the piece of equipment within a compartment in the conning tower’s control board and all manner of lights and screeching of metal on metal and old gears whirring into life began to move and pulse within the super-tank… which began to shift form, taking the shape of… a giant Nazi robot ape!

“Yep, a sick twisted mind, alright,” Matthew said. “That’s worse than Nazi apes all right.”

“Zick? Twisted!? PERHAPS!! “ Affe roared. “BUT GENIUZ! Never deny, GENIUZ!!” The sinister simian raised his arms in the air, knuckled hands curled into huge fists, and beat as his chest in a display of unbridled simian power.

“Oh, Doktor!” Ingrid cooed.

“What’s worse than Nazi apes?” Ragdoll murmured, regaining consciousness. She looked up. “Oh. Giant Nazi Robot Apes. Figures.” She rolled off of Squirrelman and stood up, rolling the kinks out of her neck. Matthew spasmed and he was on his feet. The others – Clown, Harlequin, and Ace, joined by Monkeysee and Monkeydo who were shaking off the mind-control effects – gathered around the pair.

“Chatterbox! Great Ape! Deal with zem!” Doktor Affe ordered, working the controls of the giant Nazi robot ape.

The chimp and the orangutan leapt to obey, Great Ape swelling in size and mass until he was fifteen feet tall. Chatterbox began to hoot, his screeches rising in pitch until the box he wore at his throat began to glow.

Suddenly Matthew found himself standing alone in the plaza, as all his erstwhile teammates had dodged.

“Squirrelly!” Ragdoll screamed. “Just fucking dodge!"

“Okay, okay, I’ll dodge,” Matthew muttered, jumping clear just in time as Chatterbox aimed a beam of solid sound right in the spot Squirrelman had previously occupied. The concrete of the plaza courtyard exploded around him, sending shards of cement into the air. Matthew felt his body twitching and spasming uncontrollably as he dodged the sharp heavy shards of falling masonry.

As Matthew jumped out of the way, Clown tackled – or tried to tackle – Great Ape, who grabbed the garish crusader and tossed him at the Twin Tumblers, Moneysee and Monkeydo. Chatterbox’s vocal sonic cannon kept Harlequin and Ragdoll occupied, as Doktor Affe rode away on the giant Nazi robot ape, roaring out his evil maniacal joy.

“Today, Action City, Uncle Zam! Tomorrow, Vashington! Next veek zum time- ze VOR-“

A streak of white and gold from the sky smashed through the giant Nazi robot ape’s head, and it shuddered to a halt. The white and gold streak emerged from the ground and flew straight into the air, through the giant Nazi robot ape’s head again, and the metallic monster crashed to the ground. In mid-air hung a muscular man with platinum white-blond hair, a square jaw, dressed in a white body suit with a golden M on his chest, and a cape of gold flapping gently in the breeze. In one hand he carried Doktor Affe by the scruff of his neck; in the other arm, gentlemanly he held Ingrid.

A memory-flash provided Matthew with the hero’s name: Ulysses Kent, also known as Majestic.

He certainly lived up to his name. He floated serenely down to the ground and tossed Affe onto the heap of his Simianstaffel. Chatterbox and Great Ape raised their hands into the air. Majestic carefully placed Ingrid to her high-heeled feet on the ground.

“He’s gonna try and take the collar,” Ragdoll muttered.

“I was cruising through the stratosphere and noticed you could use a hand,” Majestic said, his voice deep and sonorous and everything a man’s voice should be. In his entire life Matthew had never even seen so alpha an alpha male. The men all deferred to him, the women all watched him, rapt with attention bordering on desire. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Matthew said, a little stunned by the events that continued to play out in his coma dream. He’d never known he’d had such an active imagination!

The police arrived in their riot gear and were amazed at the scene – Affe and his apes all defeated or surrendered, a giant robot super-tank wrecked in the Museum plaza, and best of all, Majestic!

“Me? Good heavens, no,” Majestic said when the cops offered him the collar. “I barely deserve the assist. I was only in the right place at the right time. These fine folks did all the work.”

Matthew felt himself puff up with pride, as though having received an incredible compliment, despite the truth of Majestic’s words. The cops looked confused and doubtful, but gave the collar credit to Squirrelman and his amazing friends.

“What the name of this team, anyway?” a cop asked as he scanned each of their Action City Costumed Crimefighter Identity Cards.

“We’re not a team,” Ragdoll said.

“Yet,” Clown added. Ragdoll rolled her eyes but didn’t argue further.

Before the police had finished taking down all the info, Majestic turned his head and said, “I’ve got to go. Ladies.” He nodded, smiling, to the women, who both smiled brightly. “Gents.” He nodded, one colleague to another, to the men, who nodded back. And with that, Majestic flew off in a brilliant streak of white and gold.

As the police carted off the apes and began to clear the wreckage, the costumed crimefighters made their way back to the rooftop where they had first joined forces.

“Well, isn’t this where we decide we work well together as a team?” Matthew asked the others.

“We do work well together,” Ace admitted.

“And as a team we’d be eligible for health insurance,” Clown added.

“Clown, the day I team up with a bozo like you is the day I shoot myself in the head,” Ragdoll snarled.

Harlequin smiled with false sweetness. She didn’t take insults to her partner lightly. “Then that’s even more reason for us to team up, dear,” she said to Ragdoll.

“Bite me, bitch,” Ragdoll shot back.

Matthew stepped between them.

“Girls, I like a good cat fight as much as the next guy, but now’s not the time…” He pointed to the news camera crews that were beginning to arrive.

“Right, whatever,” Ragdoll said, and headed off on her own. Monkeysee and Monkeydo were still being examined by the paramedic emergency response teams. Clown and Harlequin shook Ace and Squirrelman’s hands and headed of as well. Ace got back onto his flying playing card and looked at Squirrly.

“Meet up and Julius’ for a beer later?” the card-slinger asked. Matthew had a memory-flash of a quiet, almost hidden bar, filled with costumed crimefighters quietly enjoying their drinks after a tough night of fighting crime and injustice and other things them fought for or against.

“Uh… rain check, pal,” Squirrelman waved and headed back to the office.

As he changed back into his suit and tie, he thought, No wonder I head out every night looking for crime to fight. This is fun! Who wants to be an accountant when they can be saving the city from mad Nazi Ape Scientists? He stopped himself as he was tying his tie and looked at himself in the mirror.

Yep… definitely going to need a therapist when I wake up, he thought smiling at himself. Until then I might as well enjoy myself.