I shed my bookbag, winter coat, and civvies,
stripping down to my Ms. Megaton Man leotard and panties. Koz took my bookbag
before I could retrieve my yellow gloves and boots, let alone my red cape,
brass buttons, or translucent-orange visor. “You won’t be needing that stuff,”
he said, throwing me a pair of white silk boxing trunks instead. “Here, put
these on,” he said as he grabbed a pair of red boxing gloves that hung on a peg
on the wall.
I noticed Alice2, the Mod Puma, had shed her boots
with their razor-like talons, so we were both barefoot. Presumably, she wasn’t
wearing her taloned gloves, either, under her boxing mitts. She had slipped on
a pair of black boxers nearly indistinguishable in color from her navy blue
tights.
All that was left after my gloves were tied was the padded head
guard that boxers wear around their faces for protection during sparring
matches, and a mouthpiece to protect the dentistry. “Is that really necessary?”
I asked, as Koz proffered these.
“Better safe than sorry,” said Koz.
We climbed into the ring, my mama from another dimension and I, and went to opposite corners. Alice2 was already hopping up and down and pounding her mitts together. She had already worked up a sheen of sweat on her brown skin from all the aerial acrobatics, and was warmed up and raring to go. I, on the other hand, had sore thighs just from walking from Ann Street over to Main Street and then down a zillion steps to Megatonic U.’s underground lab, and still recovering from having moved all my belongings from my old apartment the week before.
Koz rang the bell. He had a towel around his neck now, and a plain, grey sweatshirt that read, “Property of Megaton University Athletic Department.” There were also bottles of water, a spit bucket, and a first aid kick. “Don’t just stand there, Missy,” he shouted. “Move!”
I turned in time to see Alice2 coming at me, but not in enough time to avoid her judo kick to my abdomen. “Oof!” I groaned, and dropped to my knees like a sack of potatoes.
“Get up!” shouted Koz, who pried apart the ropes and was leaning in next to me. “Keep moving!”
I staggered to my feet. Alice2 had bounded away a few feet but was circling back. She threw a punch and hit me in the shoulder, since I hadn’t raised my gloves and could do nothing but turn. “Put up your dukes!” said Koz. Reluctantly, I raised my gloves to protect myself.
Alice2 punched my left forearm, which hurt like hell. “Use your gloves!” shouted Kozmik Kat. “Bob and weave! Bob and weave!”
“You know you’re just spouting clichés,” I said. “You think you’re dispensing advice, but you’re not.” Nonetheless, I tried bouncing around on the balls of my feet and began parrying with Alice2.
I started to absorb her blows with my gloves which I held in front of me, and soon learned better than to stand still when she kicked. I was on the defensive the whole time, but at least she didn’t land any blows.
“That’s better!” said Koz. “Keep it up, Missy.”
I took a few swings and noticed for the first time Alice2 smiling. Was she laughing at my pugilistic amateurishness, or just happy to see my trying? I threw a punch at her head—I have no idea if it was a jab or a hook or what—and she blocked it with her gloves easily. But I had put my full weight behind it and it pushed her back for the first time.
I began to advance. I backed her into a corner, and she rope-a-doped me—I think that was the term—taking all my light blows against her raised arms and gloves. I started to feel winded and my arms felt heavy. I dropped my gloves and I guess she rabbit-punched me straight in the kisser. It wasn’t with all the force she was capable, but it sent me back on my ass. I could taste blood in my mouth.
Koz rang the bell. He leapt into the ring, helped me to the feet, and practically carried me over, then plopped me on a corner stool.
“You’re not using your megapowers,” he observed. “I know you well enough to know when you’re dogging it.”
Koz was right; I wasn’t resorting to my mega-strength. Instead, it was like when I had moved furniture into and out of my third-floor apartment recently: I was tuckered out as if I was just a normal, out-of-shape civilian who’d been sitting on her ass in a college library writing her senior thesis—as if I hadn’t any megapowers at all.
“I’m not going to use my Ms. Megaton Man powers against the Mod Puma,” I said. “It wouldn’t be fair. Alice2 is a non-megapowered costumed crime fighter who’s waged a war on evil all her life, or whatever. She’s on our side; I don’t want to permanently injure her or anything.”
“Yeah, well, if you rely on your civilian strength—of which you have zilch—you’re going to get your ass kicked,” said Koz. “You are, in fact, getting your ass kicked.”
He leapt out of the ring and rang the bell for the second round. Achingly, I rose to my feet. The taste of my busted lip still in my mouth, I plodded forward.
The Mod Puma lunged at with another judo kick. I easily evaded her this time. She landed in a crouch, spun on a dime, and leapt at me again, leading with a punch. I didn’t know any judo, but I kinda grabbed her arm, spun, and flung her over my back. She landed with a thud back in her corner.
“Good!” said Alice2. “Ain’t my girl good?”
My father, the Silver Age Megaton Man, was leaning on the ropes, watching all this from the side. “She’s a chip off the old block, all right.”
The Mod Puma marched toward me again, this time round-housing punches in my direction. I dodged them and gave her an uppercut to her abdomen; turnabout is fair play.
“Oof!” she said, grabbing her midsection. She limped off to the side.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t using my megapowers, honest. Was I?”
“No, I’m good,” she said, wincing.
Koz rang the bell and leapt into the center of the ring. “That’s enough,” he said. “I’m calling this match. It’s a draw.”
Koz helped Alice2 off with her gloves while I went to my corner. Now it was me hopping up and down for a change, taking jabs at an imaginary punching bag. I was just getting warmed up.
Clyde climbed into the ring with his own pair of gloves. They were huge and mushy, and barely fit his oversized hands. Koz and Alice2 helped tie them.
Meanwhile, as I continued hopping up and down, Avie and Grandma Seedy returned. Avie was now wearing a skin-tight leotard of purple and green. “Isn’t this great?” said Avie. “The helmet and gloves and boots will come later.”
“Are you allowed to use the logo of Warren Woodward University?” I asked. It was a kind of WW stacked on top of one another, and it was spread across her big boobs.
Grandma Seedy smiled. “Don’t you worry yourself none about intellectual property rights. We’re the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning. We’ve got lawyers.”
I didn’t have time to envision what my half-sister would look like completely decked out as the Wondrous Warhound right now. I had other things on my mind.
“You’ll be getting this training later,” said Alice2 to Avie, as she and Koz climbed out of the ring. She stood next to Seedy and Avie while Koz up his position near my corner. Again, he rang the bell.
My father and I met in the middle of the ring and butted gloves, a ritual Alice2 and I had foregone. We began dancing around, our gloves protecting our faces, eyeing each other warily. The considerably greater weight of the Silver Age Megaton Man shook the platform of the boxing ring under our feet, wobbling the ropes. Yet, despite his overly-muscled physique, my dad seemed relatively lithe and agile.
I moved in and started beating on his arms, each of which were as thick as my entire. “Woo!” he said. “That stings.” I must have been accessing more of my megapowered strength.
He countered with a sweep of his arm—not really a punch—that grazed me, clearing me back to a corner.
I charged again, somehow inducing him to throw a punch over my head. With several uppercuts, I pummeled his ribs above his metallic belt, like I had done with my bare knuckles to the Human Meltdown high over the Bay of New York. Similarly, I heard them crack.
“Ooof!” cried my father, buckling at the knees. “Boy, I’m going to feel that in the morning.”
I punched him in the chin. He went to his knees and sent up his arms to protect his face. I beat on his elbows six or eight times, until I was out of breath.
“Why did you abandon my mama?” I demanded between gasps of air. “Why did you leave and never come back?” I was shouting. I dropped my arms.
The Silver Age Megaton Man sat back on his heels in the center of the ring. He looked up at me through the vacant cyclopic lens of his goggles. His mouth hung open with an incredulous expression, a bruise forming on his massive chin.
“I didn’t abandon Alice,” he said. “I was on a mission. I went to Rex…I needed access to another dimension. I hopped on the Time Turntable…then, I lost contact. Rex had no way of bringing me back. You saw how erratic that platter…”
“Why didn’t you try harder?” I was screaming at him.
Clyde flinched, worried that I was going to punch him again. “I made every effort, Clarissa, believe me,” he said. “But it’s not exactly easy to get back home to your dimension when you don’t have a Time Turntable at your disposal, and don’t know where to find one. There was no Rex Rigid, no Megatropolis Quartet. I had no idea I had made your mother pregnant, no way of knowing you had been conceived. I never forgot about Alice, and I tried every possible way I could think of to get back to her. Then, some years later, when she popped into my reality,” he nodded to Alice2, “I couldn’t believe my good fortune. She had no recollection of our night of bliss, of course—no memory of having met me at all. I was heartbroken. I had to woo her all over again…”
“No pun intended,” said Koz.
“I fell for the dumb lug,” said Alice2, who climbed through the ropes back into the ring with a stool. “For me, it was the first time. For him, the second.”
Alice2 placed the stool behind Clyde who, with some effort, struggled to sit on it, still clutching his side. He sat forlornly, defeated, in the middle of the ring. “Alice was already the Mod Puma. Had been, since she was a teenager, I was surprised to learn. We teamed up, went on patrol together…”
“A familiar story,” said Koz.
“Eventually, I forgot all about the world I had left behind,” Clyde continued. “The new one was mostly the same, with some subtle differences. The megahero teams were all different; they had never heard of Megaton Man, for example. But my life was complete now. I established myself all over again as America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero. Then, one day, the Time Turntable returned…”
“To make a long story short,” said Alice2.
“What do you mean, short?” I shouted. “You were gone my whole lifetime!”
“I regret, that, honestly,” said Clyde. “I had no idea. Here, I thought I was being faithful to your mother…” He patted Alice2 on the arm with his mushy boxing gloves.
“My mama thought you were dead and gone,” I shouted. “To her, you were dead. She wouldn’t even tell me who you were all this time. I had to piece it together myself. You can’t just come back now and change all that. You can’t make up for lost time.”
“I know that,” said Clyde quietly.
There was a long silence.
Alice2 spoke up. “Do you love your sister, Clarissa?”
“Avie? Of course I love her.”
“If Clyde had never left your dimension, if he’d come right back to your mother, Avril would never have happened,” said Alice2. “Alice One would never have met her daddy, and you wouldn’t have a half-sister. Is that what you’d prefer now?” She turned and looked at Avie, who still standing next to Grandma Seedy. “What’s your father’s name again? Cray?”
“Creighton Bellisle,” said Avie, nodding.
“Of course not,” I said. “But that’s not the point.”
“That is the point, Clarissa,” said Grandma Seedy. “You can’t control the history behind you, just as you can’t control the destiny in front of you. You have to live your life in the reality you find yourself.”
I walked over to the ropes and looked down and my grandma. “But how can you concentrate on living your life when you know there are all these other possible timelines, other possible realities, just a dimension away?”
“It’s easy when you have no other choice,” said Seedy.
“That’s awfully convenient,” I said.
“It’s the only show in town,” said the Mod Puma. “Unless you’ve got a Time Turntable at your beck and call. And even Rex can’t seem to control the damn thing. Don’t forget, I got marooned, too. I couldn’t get back to my proper reality either, until now.”
“I thought she was dead,” said Seedy. “I blamed Rex for killing my daughter. All these years, hating him. And it was kind of his fault. But she insisted on being a megahero…”
I looked at Avie in her incomplete Wondrous Warhound uniform. “How can you encourage my sister to be a costumed crimefighter, Grandma Seedy, when you know the risks? When you almost lost your own daughter?”
“I’m not encouraging her,” said Seedy. “I’m just not standing in her way. I tried discouraging Alice, but that didn’t seem to help. These girls got a mind of their own.”
“Oh!” I said disgustedly. I climbed out of the ring and hopped to the floor.
“Here,” I said to Avie, proffering my gloves. “Help me off with these things. Please.”
“It’s going to be alright,” said Avie to me in a whisper. “This material is like bullet proof. And when I get the mask and gloves and stuff, it’s going to be really cool.” She wanted me to be proud of her, but I had too many emotions flooding through me. She almost had tears in her eyes as she began untying my gloves.
“You may need those,” said a voice at the doorway.
I looked up. The man who appeared to be Dr. Joe had walked in, along with Grady Grinnell, both still in their lab coats. Between, them, stopping to enter the room, was a giant, golden, ungainly robot.
“You may need those when you spar with this big fella,” said Dr. Joe.
“Doctor Software!” I cried. “And the dreaded Contraptoid!” I realized I was standing face-to-face with Megaton Man’s almost greatest foe—after Bad Guy—back when Trent Phloog was Megaton Man. I looked around the room and realized that none of had ever face Doctor Software. I looked at Kozmik Kat, who shrugged.
“It was before my time,” said Koz. “Want me to run up to the bookstore and bring back Trent, for confirmation?”
“There’s no time for that,” I said.
Avie had begun loosening the laces of one of my boxing gloves, but hadn’t taken it off.
I marched right up to the robot, between the two men, and punched the Bot as hard as I could in the gut. It flew back through the open door and crashed into the wall across the hallway, which must have been of solid concrete. I smashed into several pieces, clattering in several directions along the corridor.
Grady Grinnell sighed. “I knew we should have gotten while the getting was good, Uncle Joe. “We should have absconded with the Bot, bided our time, and perfected our plans for world domination.”
I spun and returned to Avie, who finished removing my boxing gloves.
“Ms. Megaton Man, you just set Megatonic University back another thirty or forty million dollars,” said Seedy. “Young lady, what are we going to do with your temper?”
I glared at my grandma. “You know this man isn’t Dr. Joe,” I said. “He’s Dr. Joe’s counterpart from another dimension, just like Alice Too is my mama’s counterpart. This Joseph Levitch goes by the name Julius. He’s also known as Doctor Software.”
“So what if he is?” said Seedy. Unexpectedly, she walked up to Joe and put her hand on his back. “So what if he’s the escaped lunatic and criminal mastermind who recently escaped from a high-security prison? I still need somebody who knows his robotics, don’t I? I can’t run Megatonic University all by my lonesome.”
“You would knowingly let Doctor Software and his nephew—who tried to kill me—back into this facility?” I said. “I can hardly believe it.”
“Sure,” said Seedy. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“But I’m the real Dr. Joe,” Dr. Joe protested. “I assure you.”
“You’re not sticking with that story, are you?” said Koz. “’Cause Clarissa said you didn’t recognize her when you saw her just a while ago.”
“I ordinarily don’t know what day of the week it is, without my pocket planner,” said Joe. “And I can’t keep track of all these Megaton Men and Women, not after my father died creating the Original Golden Age Megaton Man—they all run together anymore.” He felt the pockets of his lab coat, searching for something. “Besides, I didn’t even create Clarissa—for a minute, I thought she was a new lab assistant or something. As you know, I’ve been working on the Next Megaton Man out in California for months—I think we may have found a good candidate—another Phloog relative, of course.” He discovered something in one of his pockets, but not what he was expecting. “That reminds me, I have a workaround for your failing wristbands, Clyde.”
“You’re not my Uncle Julius?” said Grady, incredulous. “You lured me back here, out of hiding, with the promise that we were going to take over the world together this time…”
“’Fraid not,” said Dr. Joe. “I just humored you to get that Contraptoid contraption up and running again.” He surveyed the wreckage through the doorway. “Obviously, you’ll need to go back to the ol’ drawing board on that one.”
Dr. Joe pulled a white paper bag from the hip pocket of his lab coat. It looked like the kind of bag they give you at the pharmacy when you get your prescription. It was stapled closed, with a label and receipt and everything. “Ah, yes, this is it.”
“What’s that?” asked Seedy. “Is that what we were discussing over the phone?”
“Precisely,” said Dr. Joe. “It’s the new Megaton Man serum I was telling you about, in gelatin capsule form,” Joe explained. “After the debacle with Mervyn Goldfarb, and the Big, Blue, Bulky Guy that resulted, I realized I needed a safer system than the unstable and unpredictable Megasoldier Syrup.” He tossed the white bag to Clyde, who was still sitting on the stool in the center of the boxing ring.
“What am I supposed to do with this, Dr. Joe? I’m already the Silver Age Megaton Man. Don’t you remember? You actually created me.” He tore open the bag. There was a large plastic orange bottle with a prescription label for Clyde Phloog and a white childproof cap. “Woo! I can never open these.” He handed it to Alice.
“You’ll notice there are three colored capsules,” explained Dr. Joe. “Red, yellow, and blue.”
Alice2 had opened the bottle and poured the contents into Clyde’s enormous palm.
“What do they do?” asked Clyde, looking at the several dozen capsules.
“The blue ones will temporarily suppress your megapowers,” said Dr. Joe, “and return you to something more like your civilian proportions. The effect should last for from four to six hours, then naturally wear off.”
“And the red ones?” asked Alice.
“Should you need to return to being the Silver Age Megaton Man again before the blue one wears off,” said Dr. Joe, “say, in an emergency, you just pop a red one. That should do the trick.”
Clyde stared into the palm of his hand. “There are something like thirty blue capsules and twenty red,” he said. “Then there’s one yellow one. What does that one do?”
Dr. Joe scratched his head. “I’m not sure. Wait, oh yes. Now I remember.”
“Well, what is it?” demanded Kozmik Kat.
“If you take the yellow one, you will rid yourself of your Megaton Man megapowers forever,” said Dr. Joe. He gulped.
“Is that all?” said Koz. “And you mixed them all in the same bottle? What if he’s colorblind? They all look like shades of red to me, through these crazy cyclopic-lensed goggles.”
Clyde pinched a blue one between his fingers and poured the rest back in the bottle, which Alice2 still held. “Mod Puma, can you hand me a water bottle?”
“What, is you arm broken?” Alice demanded, capping the bottle. “Get up and get it yourself.” She tossed the bottle to Koz.
Clyde, still favoring his ribs where I pummeled him, got up off the stool with pained effort and climbed out of the ring, looking for a water bottle. He found one near the bell.
“You’re going to take that?” I asked. “Didn’t you hear what I said? This is not Dr. Joe—it’s Doctor Software. It’s obviously a trick.”
“I told you, Clarissa, I’ve been cooped up underground here for too long,” said my father. “If some capsule can restore me to my ordinary physique—as long as it’s temporary—then I’ll be free to go out and about.” He prepared to down the capsule.
“I wouldn’t take that, if I were you,” came a voice came from the doorway.
A second man, dressed exactly like Dr. Joe, had stepped over the strewn wreckage of the Contraptoid and entered the gymnasium, followed by Preston Percy. Preston carried a garment on a hanger covered in a drycleaner bag along with a suitcase. “I just picked up the real Dr. Joe from the airport,” he reported.
The second man who looked like Dr. Joe stood face to face with the first man who looked like Dr. Joe.
“This man is an imposter,” they both said at the same time. “I’m the real Dr. Joseph Levitch.”
Clyde gulped. He had already swallowed the capsule.
Next: Will the Real Dr. Joe Please Stand Up?
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We climbed into the ring, my mama from another dimension and I, and went to opposite corners. Alice2 was already hopping up and down and pounding her mitts together. She had already worked up a sheen of sweat on her brown skin from all the aerial acrobatics, and was warmed up and raring to go. I, on the other hand, had sore thighs just from walking from Ann Street over to Main Street and then down a zillion steps to Megatonic U.’s underground lab, and still recovering from having moved all my belongings from my old apartment the week before.
Koz rang the bell. He had a towel around his neck now, and a plain, grey sweatshirt that read, “Property of Megaton University Athletic Department.” There were also bottles of water, a spit bucket, and a first aid kick. “Don’t just stand there, Missy,” he shouted. “Move!”
I turned in time to see Alice2 coming at me, but not in enough time to avoid her judo kick to my abdomen. “Oof!” I groaned, and dropped to my knees like a sack of potatoes.
“Get up!” shouted Koz, who pried apart the ropes and was leaning in next to me. “Keep moving!”
I staggered to my feet. Alice2 had bounded away a few feet but was circling back. She threw a punch and hit me in the shoulder, since I hadn’t raised my gloves and could do nothing but turn. “Put up your dukes!” said Koz. Reluctantly, I raised my gloves to protect myself.
Alice2 punched my left forearm, which hurt like hell. “Use your gloves!” shouted Kozmik Kat. “Bob and weave! Bob and weave!”
“You know you’re just spouting clichés,” I said. “You think you’re dispensing advice, but you’re not.” Nonetheless, I tried bouncing around on the balls of my feet and began parrying with Alice2.
I started to absorb her blows with my gloves which I held in front of me, and soon learned better than to stand still when she kicked. I was on the defensive the whole time, but at least she didn’t land any blows.
“That’s better!” said Koz. “Keep it up, Missy.”
I took a few swings and noticed for the first time Alice2 smiling. Was she laughing at my pugilistic amateurishness, or just happy to see my trying? I threw a punch at her head—I have no idea if it was a jab or a hook or what—and she blocked it with her gloves easily. But I had put my full weight behind it and it pushed her back for the first time.
I began to advance. I backed her into a corner, and she rope-a-doped me—I think that was the term—taking all my light blows against her raised arms and gloves. I started to feel winded and my arms felt heavy. I dropped my gloves and I guess she rabbit-punched me straight in the kisser. It wasn’t with all the force she was capable, but it sent me back on my ass. I could taste blood in my mouth.
Koz rang the bell. He leapt into the ring, helped me to the feet, and practically carried me over, then plopped me on a corner stool.
“You’re not using your megapowers,” he observed. “I know you well enough to know when you’re dogging it.”
Koz was right; I wasn’t resorting to my mega-strength. Instead, it was like when I had moved furniture into and out of my third-floor apartment recently: I was tuckered out as if I was just a normal, out-of-shape civilian who’d been sitting on her ass in a college library writing her senior thesis—as if I hadn’t any megapowers at all.
“I’m not going to use my Ms. Megaton Man powers against the Mod Puma,” I said. “It wouldn’t be fair. Alice2 is a non-megapowered costumed crime fighter who’s waged a war on evil all her life, or whatever. She’s on our side; I don’t want to permanently injure her or anything.”
“Yeah, well, if you rely on your civilian strength—of which you have zilch—you’re going to get your ass kicked,” said Koz. “You are, in fact, getting your ass kicked.”
He leapt out of the ring and rang the bell for the second round. Achingly, I rose to my feet. The taste of my busted lip still in my mouth, I plodded forward.
The Mod Puma lunged at with another judo kick. I easily evaded her this time. She landed in a crouch, spun on a dime, and leapt at me again, leading with a punch. I didn’t know any judo, but I kinda grabbed her arm, spun, and flung her over my back. She landed with a thud back in her corner.
“Good!” said Alice2. “Ain’t my girl good?”
My father, the Silver Age Megaton Man, was leaning on the ropes, watching all this from the side. “She’s a chip off the old block, all right.”
The Mod Puma marched toward me again, this time round-housing punches in my direction. I dodged them and gave her an uppercut to her abdomen; turnabout is fair play.
“Oof!” she said, grabbing her midsection. She limped off to the side.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t using my megapowers, honest. Was I?”
“No, I’m good,” she said, wincing.
Koz rang the bell and leapt into the center of the ring. “That’s enough,” he said. “I’m calling this match. It’s a draw.”
Koz helped Alice2 off with her gloves while I went to my corner. Now it was me hopping up and down for a change, taking jabs at an imaginary punching bag. I was just getting warmed up.
Clyde climbed into the ring with his own pair of gloves. They were huge and mushy, and barely fit his oversized hands. Koz and Alice2 helped tie them.
Meanwhile, as I continued hopping up and down, Avie and Grandma Seedy returned. Avie was now wearing a skin-tight leotard of purple and green. “Isn’t this great?” said Avie. “The helmet and gloves and boots will come later.”
“Are you allowed to use the logo of Warren Woodward University?” I asked. It was a kind of WW stacked on top of one another, and it was spread across her big boobs.
Grandma Seedy smiled. “Don’t you worry yourself none about intellectual property rights. We’re the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning. We’ve got lawyers.”
I didn’t have time to envision what my half-sister would look like completely decked out as the Wondrous Warhound right now. I had other things on my mind.
“You’ll be getting this training later,” said Alice2 to Avie, as she and Koz climbed out of the ring. She stood next to Seedy and Avie while Koz up his position near my corner. Again, he rang the bell.
My father and I met in the middle of the ring and butted gloves, a ritual Alice2 and I had foregone. We began dancing around, our gloves protecting our faces, eyeing each other warily. The considerably greater weight of the Silver Age Megaton Man shook the platform of the boxing ring under our feet, wobbling the ropes. Yet, despite his overly-muscled physique, my dad seemed relatively lithe and agile.
I moved in and started beating on his arms, each of which were as thick as my entire. “Woo!” he said. “That stings.” I must have been accessing more of my megapowered strength.
He countered with a sweep of his arm—not really a punch—that grazed me, clearing me back to a corner.
I charged again, somehow inducing him to throw a punch over my head. With several uppercuts, I pummeled his ribs above his metallic belt, like I had done with my bare knuckles to the Human Meltdown high over the Bay of New York. Similarly, I heard them crack.
“Ooof!” cried my father, buckling at the knees. “Boy, I’m going to feel that in the morning.”
I punched him in the chin. He went to his knees and sent up his arms to protect his face. I beat on his elbows six or eight times, until I was out of breath.
“Why did you abandon my mama?” I demanded between gasps of air. “Why did you leave and never come back?” I was shouting. I dropped my arms.
The Silver Age Megaton Man sat back on his heels in the center of the ring. He looked up at me through the vacant cyclopic lens of his goggles. His mouth hung open with an incredulous expression, a bruise forming on his massive chin.
“I didn’t abandon Alice,” he said. “I was on a mission. I went to Rex…I needed access to another dimension. I hopped on the Time Turntable…then, I lost contact. Rex had no way of bringing me back. You saw how erratic that platter…”
“Why didn’t you try harder?” I was screaming at him.
Clyde flinched, worried that I was going to punch him again. “I made every effort, Clarissa, believe me,” he said. “But it’s not exactly easy to get back home to your dimension when you don’t have a Time Turntable at your disposal, and don’t know where to find one. There was no Rex Rigid, no Megatropolis Quartet. I had no idea I had made your mother pregnant, no way of knowing you had been conceived. I never forgot about Alice, and I tried every possible way I could think of to get back to her. Then, some years later, when she popped into my reality,” he nodded to Alice2, “I couldn’t believe my good fortune. She had no recollection of our night of bliss, of course—no memory of having met me at all. I was heartbroken. I had to woo her all over again…”
“No pun intended,” said Koz.
“I fell for the dumb lug,” said Alice2, who climbed through the ropes back into the ring with a stool. “For me, it was the first time. For him, the second.”
Alice2 placed the stool behind Clyde who, with some effort, struggled to sit on it, still clutching his side. He sat forlornly, defeated, in the middle of the ring. “Alice was already the Mod Puma. Had been, since she was a teenager, I was surprised to learn. We teamed up, went on patrol together…”
“A familiar story,” said Koz.
“Eventually, I forgot all about the world I had left behind,” Clyde continued. “The new one was mostly the same, with some subtle differences. The megahero teams were all different; they had never heard of Megaton Man, for example. But my life was complete now. I established myself all over again as America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero. Then, one day, the Time Turntable returned…”
“To make a long story short,” said Alice2.
“What do you mean, short?” I shouted. “You were gone my whole lifetime!”
“I regret, that, honestly,” said Clyde. “I had no idea. Here, I thought I was being faithful to your mother…” He patted Alice2 on the arm with his mushy boxing gloves.
“My mama thought you were dead and gone,” I shouted. “To her, you were dead. She wouldn’t even tell me who you were all this time. I had to piece it together myself. You can’t just come back now and change all that. You can’t make up for lost time.”
“I know that,” said Clyde quietly.
There was a long silence.
Alice2 spoke up. “Do you love your sister, Clarissa?”
“Avie? Of course I love her.”
“If Clyde had never left your dimension, if he’d come right back to your mother, Avril would never have happened,” said Alice2. “Alice One would never have met her daddy, and you wouldn’t have a half-sister. Is that what you’d prefer now?” She turned and looked at Avie, who still standing next to Grandma Seedy. “What’s your father’s name again? Cray?”
“Creighton Bellisle,” said Avie, nodding.
“Of course not,” I said. “But that’s not the point.”
“That is the point, Clarissa,” said Grandma Seedy. “You can’t control the history behind you, just as you can’t control the destiny in front of you. You have to live your life in the reality you find yourself.”
I walked over to the ropes and looked down and my grandma. “But how can you concentrate on living your life when you know there are all these other possible timelines, other possible realities, just a dimension away?”
“It’s easy when you have no other choice,” said Seedy.
“That’s awfully convenient,” I said.
“It’s the only show in town,” said the Mod Puma. “Unless you’ve got a Time Turntable at your beck and call. And even Rex can’t seem to control the damn thing. Don’t forget, I got marooned, too. I couldn’t get back to my proper reality either, until now.”
“I thought she was dead,” said Seedy. “I blamed Rex for killing my daughter. All these years, hating him. And it was kind of his fault. But she insisted on being a megahero…”
I looked at Avie in her incomplete Wondrous Warhound uniform. “How can you encourage my sister to be a costumed crimefighter, Grandma Seedy, when you know the risks? When you almost lost your own daughter?”
“I’m not encouraging her,” said Seedy. “I’m just not standing in her way. I tried discouraging Alice, but that didn’t seem to help. These girls got a mind of their own.”
“Oh!” I said disgustedly. I climbed out of the ring and hopped to the floor.
“Here,” I said to Avie, proffering my gloves. “Help me off with these things. Please.”
“It’s going to be alright,” said Avie to me in a whisper. “This material is like bullet proof. And when I get the mask and gloves and stuff, it’s going to be really cool.” She wanted me to be proud of her, but I had too many emotions flooding through me. She almost had tears in her eyes as she began untying my gloves.
“You may need those,” said a voice at the doorway.
I looked up. The man who appeared to be Dr. Joe had walked in, along with Grady Grinnell, both still in their lab coats. Between, them, stopping to enter the room, was a giant, golden, ungainly robot.
“You may need those when you spar with this big fella,” said Dr. Joe.
“Doctor Software!” I cried. “And the dreaded Contraptoid!” I realized I was standing face-to-face with Megaton Man’s almost greatest foe—after Bad Guy—back when Trent Phloog was Megaton Man. I looked around the room and realized that none of had ever face Doctor Software. I looked at Kozmik Kat, who shrugged.
“It was before my time,” said Koz. “Want me to run up to the bookstore and bring back Trent, for confirmation?”
“There’s no time for that,” I said.
Avie had begun loosening the laces of one of my boxing gloves, but hadn’t taken it off.
I marched right up to the robot, between the two men, and punched the Bot as hard as I could in the gut. It flew back through the open door and crashed into the wall across the hallway, which must have been of solid concrete. I smashed into several pieces, clattering in several directions along the corridor.
Grady Grinnell sighed. “I knew we should have gotten while the getting was good, Uncle Joe. “We should have absconded with the Bot, bided our time, and perfected our plans for world domination.”
I spun and returned to Avie, who finished removing my boxing gloves.
“Ms. Megaton Man, you just set Megatonic University back another thirty or forty million dollars,” said Seedy. “Young lady, what are we going to do with your temper?”
I glared at my grandma. “You know this man isn’t Dr. Joe,” I said. “He’s Dr. Joe’s counterpart from another dimension, just like Alice Too is my mama’s counterpart. This Joseph Levitch goes by the name Julius. He’s also known as Doctor Software.”
“So what if he is?” said Seedy. Unexpectedly, she walked up to Joe and put her hand on his back. “So what if he’s the escaped lunatic and criminal mastermind who recently escaped from a high-security prison? I still need somebody who knows his robotics, don’t I? I can’t run Megatonic University all by my lonesome.”
“You would knowingly let Doctor Software and his nephew—who tried to kill me—back into this facility?” I said. “I can hardly believe it.”
“Sure,” said Seedy. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“But I’m the real Dr. Joe,” Dr. Joe protested. “I assure you.”
“You’re not sticking with that story, are you?” said Koz. “’Cause Clarissa said you didn’t recognize her when you saw her just a while ago.”
“I ordinarily don’t know what day of the week it is, without my pocket planner,” said Joe. “And I can’t keep track of all these Megaton Men and Women, not after my father died creating the Original Golden Age Megaton Man—they all run together anymore.” He felt the pockets of his lab coat, searching for something. “Besides, I didn’t even create Clarissa—for a minute, I thought she was a new lab assistant or something. As you know, I’ve been working on the Next Megaton Man out in California for months—I think we may have found a good candidate—another Phloog relative, of course.” He discovered something in one of his pockets, but not what he was expecting. “That reminds me, I have a workaround for your failing wristbands, Clyde.”
“You’re not my Uncle Julius?” said Grady, incredulous. “You lured me back here, out of hiding, with the promise that we were going to take over the world together this time…”
“’Fraid not,” said Dr. Joe. “I just humored you to get that Contraptoid contraption up and running again.” He surveyed the wreckage through the doorway. “Obviously, you’ll need to go back to the ol’ drawing board on that one.”
Dr. Joe pulled a white paper bag from the hip pocket of his lab coat. It looked like the kind of bag they give you at the pharmacy when you get your prescription. It was stapled closed, with a label and receipt and everything. “Ah, yes, this is it.”
“What’s that?” asked Seedy. “Is that what we were discussing over the phone?”
“Precisely,” said Dr. Joe. “It’s the new Megaton Man serum I was telling you about, in gelatin capsule form,” Joe explained. “After the debacle with Mervyn Goldfarb, and the Big, Blue, Bulky Guy that resulted, I realized I needed a safer system than the unstable and unpredictable Megasoldier Syrup.” He tossed the white bag to Clyde, who was still sitting on the stool in the center of the boxing ring.
“What am I supposed to do with this, Dr. Joe? I’m already the Silver Age Megaton Man. Don’t you remember? You actually created me.” He tore open the bag. There was a large plastic orange bottle with a prescription label for Clyde Phloog and a white childproof cap. “Woo! I can never open these.” He handed it to Alice.
“You’ll notice there are three colored capsules,” explained Dr. Joe. “Red, yellow, and blue.”
Alice2 had opened the bottle and poured the contents into Clyde’s enormous palm.
“What do they do?” asked Clyde, looking at the several dozen capsules.
“The blue ones will temporarily suppress your megapowers,” said Dr. Joe, “and return you to something more like your civilian proportions. The effect should last for from four to six hours, then naturally wear off.”
“And the red ones?” asked Alice.
“Should you need to return to being the Silver Age Megaton Man again before the blue one wears off,” said Dr. Joe, “say, in an emergency, you just pop a red one. That should do the trick.”
Clyde stared into the palm of his hand. “There are something like thirty blue capsules and twenty red,” he said. “Then there’s one yellow one. What does that one do?”
Dr. Joe scratched his head. “I’m not sure. Wait, oh yes. Now I remember.”
“Well, what is it?” demanded Kozmik Kat.
“If you take the yellow one, you will rid yourself of your Megaton Man megapowers forever,” said Dr. Joe. He gulped.
“Is that all?” said Koz. “And you mixed them all in the same bottle? What if he’s colorblind? They all look like shades of red to me, through these crazy cyclopic-lensed goggles.”
Clyde pinched a blue one between his fingers and poured the rest back in the bottle, which Alice2 still held. “Mod Puma, can you hand me a water bottle?”
“What, is you arm broken?” Alice demanded, capping the bottle. “Get up and get it yourself.” She tossed the bottle to Koz.
Clyde, still favoring his ribs where I pummeled him, got up off the stool with pained effort and climbed out of the ring, looking for a water bottle. He found one near the bell.
“You’re going to take that?” I asked. “Didn’t you hear what I said? This is not Dr. Joe—it’s Doctor Software. It’s obviously a trick.”
“I told you, Clarissa, I’ve been cooped up underground here for too long,” said my father. “If some capsule can restore me to my ordinary physique—as long as it’s temporary—then I’ll be free to go out and about.” He prepared to down the capsule.
“I wouldn’t take that, if I were you,” came a voice came from the doorway.
A second man, dressed exactly like Dr. Joe, had stepped over the strewn wreckage of the Contraptoid and entered the gymnasium, followed by Preston Percy. Preston carried a garment on a hanger covered in a drycleaner bag along with a suitcase. “I just picked up the real Dr. Joe from the airport,” he reported.
The second man who looked like Dr. Joe stood face to face with the first man who looked like Dr. Joe.
“This man is an imposter,” they both said at the same time. “I’m the real Dr. Joseph Levitch.”
Clyde gulped. He had already swallowed the capsule.
Next: Will the Real Dr. Joe Please Stand Up?
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