The Amazing Adventures of the Sensational Squirrelman

Revenge-seeking Issue Eight!

I am… the Sentinel! I alone watch all that is, was, and might be as it plays out before my alien-induced senses! Hurtled through time and space, the Sensational Squirrelman longs to return home! What will he find there when he returns? What mysteries, what adventures await him? Have the inhabitants of the Negaverse taken over? Have Reed Sterling and his merry band of stalwart companions, the Sterling Squad, been victorious? And what of the escaped inmates of the Kane Sanitarium? So much can happen in Action City on a given day – but how much can happen after long months? Is Squirrelman returning to our fair metropolis to find himself alone in a wasteland? Or will it be…

Squirrelman’s Triumphant Return!

Squirrelman opened his eyes.

Everyone stood close, tensions high, concentrating on the Mobius block and the device locked inside. Reed Sterling pulled a device from his belt and punched a code on the buttons, his eyes never leaving the Mobius block. When the code was finally punched in, he pressed the enable button, and the block began to hum. A line appeared running vertically along the centre of the block, and with a hiss and sudden flare of golden light, the block slide apart, revealing something in the middle of bright glowing golden light.

Doc Sterling reached his right hand into the golden light and pulled. Reality around his hand seemed to stretch and bend and with a slight pop, the Kirby Gauntlet was freed from the Mobius block. It was a huge golden metallic gauntlet, with deep red art-deco circuitry running from knuckles to the blood red knobs on the sides of the forearm protection. Reed seemed to be fighting it, pulling it away from the Mobius block with difficulty.

“Wild,” Jeannie said.

“Concentrate, everyone,” Doc Sterling said harshly through gritted teeth.

“Now… to fully activate it, I need to spread the fingers wide…”

Sweat poured down his face as he slowly forced the fingers apart – first the thumb, then each of the other fingers in turn. Reality warped and stretched and pulled in odd waves around the Kirby Gauntlet, the low hum rising in intensity and volume as he did so. Small black dots of anti-light began to pop and form around the Gauntlet, crackling in the rippling waves of bent reality.

“Matt – concentrate on your home alternity,” Reed managed to say through gritted teeth.

Squirrelman realized instantaneously what had happened.

“No wait! Dirk’s got the Gauntlet Sinister!” Squirrelman yelled, leaping to grab Doc Sterling’s wrist. Reed forced the Kirby Gauntlet’s fingers into a tight fist.

“What?” Doc Sterling asked tersely.

The Sterling Squad suddenly all grabbed their temples as vertigo swept across them. An alarm sounded on one of the computer consoles. Carmine rushed over – he was the first to recover – and said, “Yep, chronological crisis. A temporal anomaly has just been fixed.” Reed replaced the Kirby Gauntlet in the Mobius Block.

“Listen,” Squirrelman explained. He described the rupture caused by the Kirby Gauntlet and the invasion by the Sterling Syndicate. He told them about the Timekeeper and how all of them had been lost in time. How he had saved them all. The Squad looked sceptical at first but Reed and Carmine were both smiling.

“I remember you,” Reed said. “That encounter got me thinking about time travel and alternate futures, which ultimately led to my discovery of alternity physics.”

“I remember you too,” Carmine added. “We thought the Germans had got you for sure. When you disappeared off my back I accidentally ran into the Wind – nice old guy – and he saved me from a German grenade.”

“Whoa, so you saved yourself?” Curt asked. “This is giving me a headache.”

“Wait… so, let me get this straight,” Jerry said. “You spent months looking for us, and showed up here before you left? How does that work?”

“Don’t worry about it son,” Reed said, clapping his son on the shoulder. “We’re all safe, that’s what matters. The Timekeeper knows what he’s doing.”

“Oh my god, Dad!” Jeannie said. “I totally can’t believe you’re so calm about this! We all were lost and lived and died in other times – except you – and we were saved by Squirrelman! Wait’ll I tell Princess!”

“Yes dear,” Julia said. She stepped over to Squirrelman and kissed him on the masked cheek. “Thank you, Matt. For me, and my family. You’re always welcome here.”

Reed shook Squirrelman’s hand. The rest of the Sterling Squad crowded around him, clapping him on the shoulder and shaking his hand. Ironwood bowed low, ceremonially, and Molly looked down at him, considering him for a moment, then reach up and lifted the bottom half of his full face mask and kissed him passionately before he could stop her.

As they were about to say their goodnights, an alarm sounded.

“Holy socks!” Reed said from a console. “There’s an emergency in New York! We’d better go!”

Squirrelman looked at Reed as the rest of the team ran for their flying Sterlingcar.

“Reed, my enemies are still out there, in the night somewhere,” Squirrelman said. “I’d go with you, but…”

“Yes of course,” Reed said, understanding at once. He shook the grey clad guardian of Lower Uptown’s hand. “Good luck!”

“You too!” Matt said, heading for the balcony and leaping out into the night.

He was fully the master of his abilities now., confident and sure. He swung off a flag pole jutting from the side of Sterling Spire and grabbed the flag there, tearing it from its moorings and using it as a parachute to slow his descent. He slowed his fall enough that he fell toward the Spire and kicked out hard, jumping away from the Sterling headquarters and toward other buildings, landing hard but rolling with the impact, and head off across rooftops and along elevated trainways, back toward Lower Uptown… back toward his foes.

He reached the rooftop he’d run away from, but there was no sign of them. It had been a few hours after all. However, his experiences in time had taught him a thing or two about tracking people, and so he set off to find them. As he suspected, in the alley far below, he found tracks leading off in different directions. Ram-Man’s huge hooved feet were the easiest to spot, and they went off with two other tracks, both expensive pairs of shoes. He clambered along the walls and ran along the streets, seeking his quarry. He rounded a corner and spotted three of them breaking into an old hideout of Squidface’s.

Squirrelman smiled to himself and climbed up the wall. There was a skylight atop the hideout, a memory flash told him, and he went to find it. He opened the dirt-smeared window and looked inside. Squidface flicked a switch and lights went on.

“So now what?” Black Crow asked the other two.

“Now we’re rid of that psycho bitch we go back to what we do best,” Ram-Man said, cracking his knuckles. “Bustin’ heads and makin’ some dough.”

Squirrelman dropped from the skylight onto Ram-Man’s head, face-planting the misshapen malcontent into the concrete floor with a loud crack as the goat-faced criminal’s jaw broke.

“Hello, boys,” Squirrelman greeted them, leaping off Ram-Man’s head and flipping mid-air to kick Black Crow in the stomach, winding the avian scientist. The grey guardian of Lower Uptown landed in a low crouch and twitched out of the way of Squidface’s tentacles as he flailed toward him. Squirrelman grabbed the two longer tentacles and tied them into a tight knot as he flipped over the cephalopodic criminal. The dapper little gent landed hard on his ass.

“Squids, you of all of these losers should know better,” Squirrelman said, flipping off the wall and landing hard on Ram-Man’s back, slamming the goat-faced goon back into the concrete floor. He looked down at the crook and said, “You? Stay there.”

Squirrelman jumped over Squidface’s flailing tentacles once more and grabbed Black Crow by the ankle, as the cowardly crook was trying to fly to freedom. The added weight of the grey guardian caused the former scientist to falter in flight, and Squirrelman directed him into an overhead beam. Black Crow fell to the ground, unconscious.

Matt smiled. He was enjoying himself – not the kind of enjoyment he’d once felt before he arrived here, the joy of punishing other people, but a kind of joy that came from making fools of these jerks. He landed on Ram-Man again, because the huge deformed goon was a tough nut to crack, and this time Ram-Man stayed down. Squidface had pulled a gun and started firing it at the grey guardian. Squirrelman twitched and dodged and jumped around the empty warehouse until Squidface’s gun was empty. He grabbed the cephalopodic criminal’s tentacles and wrapped them around the support beams, tying him in knots.

“Squids, one day you’ll learn,” Squirrelman said, grinning under his full face mask. He activated his police summoner, and in a few minutes their flying cruisers had arrived. Squirrelman got credit for the three collars and set off once more.

Heading back to the alleyway where the costumed criminals had parted ways, he saw that Dust Devil’s larger footprints and Jungle King’s bare clawed feet went in the same general direction, so that’s the way he went. A memory flash told him that Jungle King would probably head for the Big Cats Enclosures at the Action City Zoo, while Dust Devil would likely try and reach the entrances to Downtown, where he could find work with the Underground.
Squirrelman decided to go after Dust Devil first. If the costumed criminal reached Downtown Squirrelman would have a hell of a time finding him – the tunnels and old derelict buildings beneath the city were a rat’s warren. Dust Devil would escape.

Squirrelman raced along the walls of Lower Uptown, heading after the costumed criminal. A memory flash told him where the nearest entrance to Downtown was located, and true to form the crook was heading in that direction. But first… there.

Dust Devil had stopped for something to eat, holding a bunch of night owls hostage at Phillie’s, an all night diner on the corner of West and Ward. The goon was filling his face with pie and burgers and beer. Squirrelman walked into the diner, the little ringing bell on the door announcing his presence.

“Hiya DeeDee,” Squirrelman quipped, jumping over the chair Dust Devil threw at his long-time foe. The costumed goon raised his arms and the air began to whirl, napkins and cutlery filling the air. Squirrelman dodged behind the counter to avoid being blasted. The hostages took advantage of the battle to escape in the confusion. Squirrelman jumped over the counter again, tossing a fresh batch of french fries straight from the deep fryer at Dust Devil. In his containment suit the blowhard couldn’t be hurt, but instincts are hard to escape and he dodged the boiling hot potato strips. Squirrelman used the distraction to grab a kitchen knife and hurled it with deadly accuracy at the costumed criminal.

The knife pierced the villain’s side, slashing a hole in the containment suit. Dust and wind blew out with explosive force, and then Squirrelman was alone in the diner. He walked over to a broom and dustpan and began sweeping. By the time the police cruisers had arrived, the dusty villain had been cleaned up and contained in plastic garbage bag. Squirrelman took the credit for the collar and headed for the Action City Zoo.

A light rain had begun to fall from the sky night sky above, and the Action City Zoo was quiet and seemingly abandoned. Squirrelman found two guards, wounded and unconscious but still alive, and administered a quick field dressing to their wounds before he continued his search for his feline foe.

In the Big Cats Enclosure all the cages had been opened. Outside in the habitat he found Jungle King, waiting.

“I knew you’d find me eventually,” Jungle King said simply, running clawed fingers through the thick fur of the lionesses by his side. “You’re a worthy opponent, and you’ve always found me before. So I said to myself, why not let you come to me?”

Squirrelman realized he might have rushed headlong into a trap. He stepped forward onto the balls of his feet, ready to jump at a moment’s notice.

And the moment came. Six or seven big cats leapt at him at once, from all sides. He jumped and slashed at them himself, leaping and twitching out of the way, into the bare branches of the fake trees. The lionesses climbed up after him, the tigers leaping up under him. Jungle King looked on, laughing an odd mrowling laugh.

Squirrelman’s back arched in pain as a big male lion raked its claws along his back, drawing blood.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Matt muttered to himself, scrambling away from the big cats. Jungle King roared once and the huge felines moved away from their prey.

“I’m done toying with you, Squirrelman,” Jungle King laughed. “I want to tear out your throat with my own fangs. I want to see the light fade from your eyes, with the taste of your blood in my mouth.”

“Yeah, yeah, worse than you has threatened me with the same,” Squirrelman said, catching his breath in the bare tree branches high above. He watched as Jungle King started to climb the tree in leaps and bounds.

Matt knew the best way to defeat his feline foe was to get him away from his forces – separate him from his pride, and so reduce the number of threats he had to face at one time.

“You want to taste my blood?” Squirrelman taunted, climbing higher in the tree. “Come and get me, cat man.”

Squirrelman jumped out of the tree and grabbed the railing of the habitat, hauling himself out of the pit and onto the bush-lined paths of the Zoo. True to his reputation as a hunter, Jungle King wasn’t about to let his prey escape so easily, and he leaped across, clearing the railing with ease and chasing after the fleeing Squirrelman.

Cat chased rodent along the bush lined paths and around the various habitats, empty now for the night. Squirrelman was struck by the silliness of it, like he was in some sort of old cartoon. He jumped up onto the Zookeeper’s Offices and broke in through the window, breaking into the weapons locker and quickly finding what he sought.

“Come out, come out, little rodent,” Jungle King purred as he slipped in the front door. There was a rush of compressed air and Jungle King stared with dismay at the tranquillizer dart sticking out of his chest.

“You… you shot me?” Jungle King said with stunned dismay. “That’s… not… very sporting…”

Sleep overcame him as the tranquillizer took effect. Unconscious, the feline fiend transformed back into his normal human form.

“Yeah, I shot you,” Squirrelman said, panting with pain and exhaustion. He called for police intervention and asked for medical attention in lieu of credit for the collar. The police, impressed with his night’s tally of captured criminals, graciously gave him both.

It was almost dawn, and despite his sojourn through time, and although many months had passed in his experience since her had begun the evening chasing after his foes, he knew that facing the Arachnid would take all his strength, so he decided to call it a night and get some rest. He took back alleys and crawled along under elevated trains until he reached the roof of his apartment, then snuck in through the sky light and crawled wearily into bed.