Deprecations on the Themed

Deprecations on the Themed by Cap'n Neurotic


Panic fell from the sky.

As he fell, Panic loudly cursed Miitrian’s over-zealous cronies for jumpstarting his powers in mid-air, sending him sidestepping into yet another dimension, sans airship. Or, at least, he would have been cursing loudly if his mouth had been able to act on the signals it was receiving from his higher brain functions. Unfortunately, as was generally true in Panic’s life, all higher brain functions were powerless before his more primal instincts, which, in this case, demonstrated themselves in the form of a continuous incoherent bellow of terror. Never before had his “fight or flight” response wished for a more literal translation of “flight” so powerfully.

He was distracted from his impending doom by a voice faintly calling his name from a distance.
Dumbfounded as to how he could hear the soft voice over the rushing wind roaring in his ears, he suddenly realized that this deadly plummet was taking an awfully long time, with no ground in sight . . .

“You really need to find yourself a new dream cycle to ride; that one’s getting old.”

The young man known as Panic awoke from his dream to find Taps, the source of the mysterious voice, standing above him. “You’re telling me,” he replied, pushing himself upright in the recliner which had lulled him into sleep. He wasn’t in the least surprised that Taps had known that his recurring dream had been playing out yet again; her Talent (although they don’t call it that here he reminded himself) allowed her to “tap” into a wide variety of information, from computers to telepathic hive-minds to the collective unconscious zeitgeist – sometimes whether she wanted to or not. “Was my dream so bad that you had to wake me to get some peace?”

Taps shook her head, her long unkempt hair obscuring her plump features. “I wouldn’t have bothered you for that; your subconscious needs to work that stuff out.” She brushed her hair back out of her face to give him a meaningful look; the infopath (as she had dubbed herself) had been after Panic to confront the root cause of his dreams ever since she had accidentally tapped into one a couple of weeks earlier. After pausing long enough to allow Panic a chance to agree -- a chance he, once again, ignored -- Taps carried on. “No, I just sensed a good old fashioned rant brewing on the horizon and didn’t want you to miss out.” And with that she grabbed the groggy teen by his skinny wrist, pulling him out of the recliner and dragging him down the hallway and into the meeting room populated by figures decked out in costumes straight out of the comic books his friend Burn used to smuggle into the orphanage .

“Superheroes,” he thought, still not quite believing it despite having lived among them for the better part of a month. As a “Traveler-with-a-capital-T” (as his one-time would-be mentor Cutter would say) Panic had visited a wide array of worlds and seen some unusual things – heck, his home world was filled with people displaying Talents ranging from telepathy to telekinesis to Panic’s purview, teleportation -- but even alternate Earths populated by dragons, cyborgs, or sentient slime molds paled in comparison to a world where people willingly slapped on capes and cowls in order to stop crimes - - or commit them, as the case may be. Taps’ fellow team-members were seated in a semi-circle, facing towards their gruff leader, who had apparently finished his diatribe just moments before.

“Oh, darn, did we miss the rant-storm?” Taps asked, crestfallen.

“Afraid so,” the stocky hero known as Heavyweight said, “although we might just be sitting in the eye; you know how easily these things can flare up.”

Taps nodded sagely. “True enough; but I hate that we missed the initial wave. Catching the aftershocks just isn’t the same, is it, Panic?”

Panic, true to his name, froze up at being drawn into the conversation; the others teased their leader about his tendency to rant up a storm constantly, but the grizzled hero had made Panic nervous from the first time they met. He wasn’t sure if joining in the ridicule and alienating the target or staying silent and alienating the rest would be the bigger faux pas in the long run, but then again, long run thinking had never been Panic’s strong suit; for most of his life, short-term survival was all his uncontrollable Talent had allowed for.

A feminine voice rang out, saving him from having to decide. ““Don’t worry, Taps,” the speaker said with an inhuman undertone which always reminded Panic of Theremin music, “I can fill you in.” With that, the slender figure with skin of polished glass pushed past the formerly ranting hero with a wink. Much to Panic’s surprise, the older hero just rolled his eyes and took a seat with no protest. A strange ripple flowed across the body of Mirrorgirl as she transformed herself into a virtual doppelganger of the now seated and mildly scowling leader of Vox Aequitas, Cloudburst.

“Do you know what I hate more than anything in the world?” Mirror-Burst called out stridently in a near perfect imitation of the real Cloudburst’s voice, the imitation marred only by how over-the-top the performance was. “Criminals. Law-breakers. Nasty little vermin. Need to be shipped off to Cloud Cuckoo Land and never heard from again.”

Panic -- who wondered briefly if Cloud Cuckoo Land was a real place in this world or not -- couldn’t help from glancing at the real ‘Burst, whose face was fixed in a purposefully neutral pose.

“But you know the one thing I hate more than criminals?” Mirror-Burst continued, beginning to pace around the room. “Super-villains. Take a two-bit hood, add a death ray or two, and you’ve suddenly gone from having a nuisance to having a deadly nuisance.”

Panic’s unease was gradually dissipating as he was drawn into Mirror-Burst’s performance, although he couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at the real ‘Burst occasionally. He could almost swear there was the tiniest hint of a smile on the care-worn face.

“And if there’s one thing I hate more than super-villains,” Mirror-Burst continued, now gesticulating wildly to emphasize his/her points, “it’s super-villain teams! Bad enough dealing with them one on one, but get two or more of those maniacal pests together, and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. And if there’s one thing I hate more than super-villain teams –“

“It’s using clichés like ‘hell in a handbasket?” Heavyweight called out, laughing.

Mirror-Burst met this comment with nothing less than Cloudburst’s patented we’ll-talk-later glare. “No, you sorry excuse for a sorry excuse, it’s super-villain teams . . . with a theme!”

Mirror-Burst’s whole body shuddered in such melodramatic disgust at this last statement that it generated a ripple of laughter among the audience.

Puzzled by the reference, Panic was compelled to ask, “What’s wrong with themed groups?”

“What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with them?” Mirror-Burst bellowed incredulously.

“Why they’re just so . . . so . . . silly!” he/she said scathingly.

“Oh, come on!” Panic flinched at the outburst from the real Cloudburst; if the journey to this world hadn’t temporarily burned out his Talent, that jolt would have been enough to trigger a fight-or-flight teleport jaunt across town. “’Silly’? Seriously, that’s supposed to sum up my argument? That they’re ‘silly’?” He sighed. “Okay, folks, the next time I recommend sending the Lillian Gish of the looking-glass set here out on an infiltration mission, would one of you please remind me of this scenery chewing fiasco?”

“I happen to think that it was a very accurate portrayal,” Mirror-Burst said, shifting back into the form of Mirrorgirl halfway through the sentence. Cloudburst merely snorted a laugh in reply. Although partially transfixed by the fact that ‘Burst was actually demonstrating a sense of humor, Panic’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Sorry, but new-to-your-dimension guy here still wondering what’s the deal?”

Cloudburst turned towards him, a crooked smile playing across his face. “It’s a bit hard for me to articulate,” he began, flashing a dirty look towards Heavyweight to forestall any smartass comment, “but basically there’s something about these groups which form around arbitrarily chosen schema that really chaps my hide. You want to form a gang based on how their powers and abilities are going to help you in your latest scam -- that I can understand. You want to form a gang based on how their powers and abilities relate to chess pieces or playing cards or computer terminology – that’s just a product of unbalanced minds, and it makes me want to punch them even harder than usual.”

“I don’t know,” Mirrorgirl countered, “I find some of them highly entertaining.” Another shimmer ran across her surface as she transformed into a rapid succession of monstrous shapes, some familiar (werewolf, nosferatu), some less so (a being seemingly made of cornstalks; another made of black ooze), and some surreal (a clown and a car?). “Beware, Panic!” the mirror-menagerie called out, its voice shifting with each new form, alternately growling, burbling, and (oddly enough) honking, “for you now face the incomparable power of The Kingsmen, each wielding a power based on the works of Stephen King!”

Panic wasn’t sure which was odder; the fact that there were apparently super-villains who were inspired by Stephen King – an idea that Brother Staple, the headmaster of Panic’s former school at the Order of the Infinite would have gleefully accepted as proof that King’s work was the source of all corruption – or that Stephen King was a common touching stone across dimensions.

“So, seriously – they based themselves on Stephen King novels? It, Christine, ‘Salems Lot, all that?”

“Well, actually,” Taps answered, “their founder wasn’t the most literate villain around, so he mainly recruited based on Stephen King movies and mini-series. So, ‘sleepwalkers,” yes, ‘gunslingers’, no. Luckily, as a team they’re even worse than most of those films were, so they weren’t much of a threat -- outside of giving ‘Burst an aneurism, that is.”

“Too true,” said ‘Burst, “although they were nothing compared to that stupid bunch of doofuses that The Immortal Bard threw at us a while back . . . what were their names . . .”

“Oh, you mean Bad Poetry,” Taps chimed in. “What a bunch of losers: Blank Verse, Poetic Conceit, The Rhyme Schemer, that mouthy punk Limerick.” She scrunched up her nose at the last name, her voice dripping with venom. Panic looked at her quizzically; Taps was strictly behind-the-scenes support, not a field agent, so rarely had enough direct contact with the criminal element to warrant such an obvious personal distaste. “The Immortal Bard kidnapped me as leverage,” she explained, “and that Irish brat taunted me mercilessly while he guarded me.”

The sound of a throat clearing caught their attention, and Taps groaned as she watched Mirrorgirl (who was clearly enjoying her chance to play the cut-up) morph into a short, scrawny, red-headed figured decked out in horribly ugly green pantaloons.

“There once was a techie named Taps
Who used lots of computer apps
But then at her peak
Zorg made her a freak
And now her whole life turns up craps.”

Taps mock-glared at the mock-Limerick. “Horrible little brat, he was; glad to see the end of him. Still don’t know how he knew about Zorg giving me my powers, though . . .” This last sentence she mumbled so that only Panic could hear her.

“Hey, ‘Burst, just thought of something,” said Heavyweight with a wicked grin. “What about super-hero groups with themes? Y’know like – The Weather Front?”

‘Burst glowered at him. “First of all, I think building a team around a common thematic element is just a ludicrous for heroes as it is for villains, although possibly less indicative of insanity . . . possibly. And second of all, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of The Weather Front.”

“That’s not what their by-laws say . . .”

‘Burst sighed. “Look, I got sucked into their first adventure, and when they did the obligatory ‘Gee, everything must happen for a reason, let’s stick together and fight crime with our eerily similar weather based powers’ shtick, I only got out of it by allowing them to browbeat me into being an ‘honorary founding member’.”

“Like Superman and Batman in the Justice Society,” Panic chimed in, earning himself a wall of blank stares that told him that, while Stephen King may be universal (or, more accurately, multiversal), DC comics, apparently, were not.