Episode 82

...from the Files of Hydrogen Guy

Part II

The Usual Coffee Shop. It is a dismal, raining afternoon.

Hydrogen Guy
Feeling better, DB?

Deuterium Boy
All except for my wounded pride, HG.

Hydrogen Guy
Don't worry about it. Happens to all of us from time to time.

Deuterium Boy
Yeah, but we're supposed to be good at this by now, remember? After saving the world, Universe, blah blah blah, how many times, you'd think stopping a simple bank robbery would be a cake walk.

Helium Girl
Like, what is "cake walk", anyway? People are always, like, saying how totally easy is it's supposed to be, but like I've never seen anybody doing one. If it's so easy, why don't like, people do it all the time?

Hydrogen Guy
I really couldn't say.

Helium Girl
Maybe it's, like, not totally easy after all, maybe it's like, this thing where you have to walk around a room with a cake balanced on your head, or something, or like the entire floor is covered with cakes and you have to get from one side to the other without stepping in cake. That would be, like, totally hard, not easy at all!

Deuterium Boy
Is this some kind of bizarre attempt to make me feel better?

Helium Girl
No, like, I'm just saying.

Hydrogen Guy
If we could leave aside the issue of cake walks for a moment...

Helium Girl
Pff, it's always you, you, you.

Hydrogen Guy
... I think this guy with the bucket just caught you unprepared for... whatever it was in the bucket.

Deuterium Boy
Pond scum. It was like I was fighting living, animated pond scum.

Helium Girl
Flash backs to some dates I've had...

Hydrogen Guy
Pond scum. That seemed to shape itself into whatever the guy wanted.

Deuterium Boy
Yeah. And that suppressed my deuterium powers somehow.

Helium Girl
What? It, like, stopped you from using your powers?

Deuterium Boy
Well, obviously. You think I would have sat there wrapped in coils of pond scum if I could've just gassed my way out of it?

Helium Girl
Why? Like, I mean, why couldn't you use your powers?

Deuterium Boy
I don't know!

Hydrogen Guy
DB, you said the stuff just seemed to lose its shape and slumped off a couple minutes after the guy left?

Deuterium Boy
Yeah...

He indicated the still-damp stains on his shirt.

Deuterium Boy
Though it was still slimy and gross as all hell.

Hydrogen Guy
That, and the way it seemed to do what he wanted without any apparent controlling mechanism, would seem to suggest that there's some kind of distance-limited telepathic link between this guy and his scum.

Helium Girl
He, like, controlled it with his mind.

Hydrogen Guy
That's what I said.

Helium Girl
Yeah, in like, six times as many syllables.

Deuterium Boy
You have an idea, HG?

Hydrogen Guy
Maybe, DB... It needs some thought, a little research, and a whole lot of tea. Fortunately, we have this...

He reaches under their table and produces a large pickle jar filled with green and brown slime. Helium Girl wrinkles her nose in disgust.

Helium Girl
Eww!

Hydrogen Guy
Nice of our boy to leave a generous sample of scum behind. I'll call Chuck and we'll run it through the Hydrogen Lab.

Helium Girl
'scuse me, do you mind, like, not waving that... stuff around when I'm, like, trying to drink a mocha latté?

Hydrogen Guy
Oh, I think the lid's a little loose -- whoa -- whoa --

Helium Girl
Eek! Stop it! Stop it! Deuterium Boy, make him stop!

Hydrogen Guy
Naaah! Slime! Gonna get it onnn youuu....

Helium Girl
Eeek!

Deuterium Boy
*AHEM* Hydrogen Guy, put it away.

Hydrogen Guy
Sorry, DB.

Helium Girl
You are so immature. I cannot believe you're on the Justice Council and I'm not.

Hydrogen Guy
Sorry. Something about a big jar of scum just brings out the kid in me...

Deuterium Boy
Apparently... So Mr. Brilliant Scientist and Superhero...

Hydrogen Guy
Ah, yes, right.

Deuterium Boy
While you and Chuck are making mud-pies back at the Cave, what do you want us to do?

Hydrogen Guy
Find out if the cops need anything more from you, I guess, and try and track down Mr. Slimey.

Deuterium Boy
No problem. I want a rematch.

Helium Girl
Can we make it quick? I have a manicure at two.

Eggs and Tony sat perched on the edge of the couch in Hank Hernandes' cluttered basement apartment. The coffee table in front of them was covered in ancient pizza boxes, newspapers, magazines, and, inexplicably, a set of instructions in Japanese for an inflatable raft. Eggs glanced briefly at this in confusion, then pushed it aside to make room for his Molson Ex.

Eggs
So what's up, Hank?

Tony
Yeah, you sounded pretty pumped up about somethin' on the phone. What is it?

Hank was sitting in an battered armchair across the coffee table from them. He was smiling as if he had just won the lottery - which, of course, he had, in a sense.

Hank
Fellas, I have two things to show ya. The first one, is this.

He reached behind the chair and produced the sack from the bank. Tony and Eggs snatched their beers out of the way as he dropped it on the coffee table. It toppled over and bundles of twenties, fifties and hundreds spilled across the table.

Eggs
Damn 'n' onions!

Tony
Holy -- Hank, was that you who knocked over the Royal this afternoon?!

Hank beamed.

Hanks
That's right, Tony, it was.

Tony
Sheeeit!

Eggs
Hang on, Hank. Dey says on the da news da guy took down Deuterium Boy! Dat couldna been you?

Hank
Damn straight it was, Eggsy. There's over forty G's there as hard proof.

Tony
How'd you do it?

Hank
That's the other thing I wanted to show ya.

He reached behind the table again, and this time dragged out a black metal bucket. He left it sitting in front of him on the floor. Tony and Eggs tore there eyes away from the money and peered over the coffee table into the bucket. Their faces contorted in disgust.

Tony
Jeezus, Hank, you knock over somebody's septic tank, too?

Eggs
You tryin' t'be funny, Hank?

Hank
Nope. This is how I robbed the bank, guys, and how I'm gonna rob a whole lot more banks, too. And this is the stuff that took down Deuterium Boy.

Eggs looked at him.

Eggs
I don't geddit.

Hank
I'l explain it to you... you guys remember that gig in the swamp, when we was workin' for Ironcore? How that catwalk fell down, and I fell off and into that holding tank?

Tony
Yeah.

Eggs
We told da cops you was down there, but they didn't listen.

Hank
Don't worry about it, I'm not sore anymore. I'm glad I got left down there, cause when I woke up, I found this stuff.

As Hank spoke, the algae-like substance in the bucket started moving. Tony and Eggs jumped back.

Tony
It's alive!

Hank
Yeah, kind of... lemme tell you what happened. I was down there, right, lookin' around, tryin' to figure out how to get outta the tank, when suddenly I hear something movin' around behind me. Then I turn around, and it's this big puddle of this slimey stuff, movin' around... and then it jumps at me!

Tony flinched away from the bucket and made an "Ewg!" sound.

Eggs
Den what?

Hank
Well, I tried to run from it, but it was too slippery down there, right? And there was all this junk down there, too, like a rusty old bucket. So I slip, and then I trip over this rusty old bucket. Then the slime, it's all over my legs and tryin' to crawl up to my face...

Tony
Aw, man, c'mon!

Eggs
Don't be a baby, Tony. He's here, isn't he? Y'know dere's a happy ending.

Hank
So, to be honest, I'm kind of freakin' out at that point, so I grab the nearest thing I can, which is that old bucket, and start trying to beat it back. Which, y'know, if you actually think about it, shouldn't work, right? It's like tryin' to stop water with a Louisville Slugger.

Eggs
But you're sayin' it did work?

Hank
Yeah, kinda... see, I start hitting the stuff with the bucket , and then it pulls it outta my hand! So then I think, that's it, I'm a goner, but the stuff doesn't move in for the kill like I'm expectin', it crawls into the bucket!

Tony
That's weird...

Hank
So I sit there for a few minutes, waiting to see what it's gonna do next, and it doesn't do nothing. So I get, and not turning my back on it or anything, I start walking around trying to figure out how to get out of the tank. After a while, I kinda forget about the slime. After a while, I figure I'm in serious trouble - there ain't no way to climb out. And I start wishing I had a ladder. Suddenly I hear this noise like the slime is moving again, and I turn around, and the slime is shaping itself into a ladder! It goes all the way up to the top of the tank! I look down, and I see this ladder's sitting on the ground, with this one rope of slime or whatever leading back into the bucket. Okay, so like now, I have no idea what the hell's goin' on. I go over and look at the ladder, and it looks real and solid and everything. Then I get brave, and I sort climb up one step, and it seems solid, like a real ladder, like it'll hold. Then I think, hell, it's either this or nothin', and I start climbing.

Eggs
You're outta your mind, Hank.

Tony
I never woulda done that!

Hank
Hey, that place was deserted, remember? That's why Ironcore chose it for his hideout. I coulda starved to death down there before anyone found me... So anyway, I'm about halfway up the ladder, when it suddenly occurs to me I should go back down and take the bucket with me. I'm stopped there about halfway up, and the more I think about it, the more it seems like something I just gotta do, even though I had no idea why. So I went back down, and grabbed the handle of the bucket, and the rope attaching the ladder to the stuff in the bucket breaks off and goes back in the bucket, like it knows what I'm tryin' to do. So I climb back up the ladder, all the way to the top this time, and climb out of the holding tank. As soon as I take my foot off the ladder, it goes all soft again, and then gets pulled back into the bucket. And I'm standing there with just this slime in this rusty old bucket, and no more ladder.

Tony
Whoa. That is weird, man.

Hank
Anyway, I go and find one of the boats, lucky it's still there, and then I get outta the swamp and head back down the river to the city.

Eggs
With da bucket.

Hank
Yeah. Anyway, I've been workin' with the stuff for a few months now, practicin' with it, and learning what it can do. Ironcore's last paycheque saw me through 'til I was ready to make my debut, if you wanna say it like that.

Tony
So... what can it do, Hank?

Hank grinned again.

Hank
Just about anything, Tony. It can shape itself into just about anything I can think of, if it's small enough. That ladder it made the first time was about as big as it can do.

Eggs
Let's see.

Hank
Pass me a brew.

Eggs hands him a bottle. Hank glances down at the slime, and it started to move. A knot of slime about four centimetres across pushed out of the surface, and extended towards Hank's out-stretched hand. The end of the knot rapidly formed itself into the familiar shape of a bottle opener in Hank's hand, and then the knot sank back down into the bucket. Hank held up the opener for the others to see, then used it to pop the cap off the beer.

Tony
Whoa... that is something else.

Hank took a swig of the beer.

Hank
It's just like the real thing. See...

He rapped the opener on the edge of the table. It sounded heavy, like metal.

Hank
Solid as iron. Feels like metal, too, the only thing is the colour.

Eggs
Here, lemme hold it.

Hank passed it over. Eggs held the green-brown bottle opener in his hand, and ran his finger over the smooth, metallic surface. He passed it to Tony, who peered at it, and tapped it against his hand a couple times before handing it back to Hank.

Hank
Never seen anything like it, eh?

Tony
Man, that's incredible.

Hank held the opener a few centimeters above the surface of the slime, and the others watched the formerly solid object seemed to melt back into slime. Hank flicked a few traces off his fingers.

Eggs
What else can you do?

Hank
Anything. Tools, knives, vines that creep along the floor and under doorways, small animals that can move around... and all of it just about perfect replicas, except, like you saw, for the colour. It can't do real small detail stuff, either, like hairs.

Eggs
What about keys?

Hank
Only if I'm holdin' an exact copy, or a mould or something. I tried, it doesn't work to well. But who cares, if I can make a complete set of locksmith's tools?

Tony
Hank, this is big. Really big.

Eggs
What's it eat?

Hank
It's just like a plant, it needs water and sunlight. It absorbs water to get bigger - I left a bunch of it at the bank today, no big loss, cause the bucket was startin' to get heavy anyway. Once in a while if it's gettin' a little thin I toss in some potting soil, for the nutrients y'know, it seems to like that.

Tony
What you gonna do with it?

Hank
Anything I want. Guys, I'm getting out of the henching biz and workin' for myself. The reason why I told you all this, and gave you this demonstration, is that I wanna know if you wanna work with me. I'll need some extra hands, I think, for crowd control at banks and stuff like that. How about it?

Eggs
Us workin' for you? Or partners?

Hank
I was thinkin' partners. Not a three-way split, cause let's face it, it's my bucket, my slime, that's our meal ticket. I'm thinkin' fifty for me, twenty-five for each of you.

Eggs
Make it forty-thirty and thirty, you got a deal.

Hank
Hey, I got a colony of algae to support here.

Tony
Thirty percent, Hank.

Hank
Aww... I'm far too generous... but hey, the amount we'll pull in, who cares. Okay, forty for me and the slime, thirty for Eggs, thirty for Tony. You guys won't get a deal like that from Ironcore or the Crustacean, lemme tell you... Now this stuff --

He gestures to the bag of money on the table.

Hank
I'm thinkin' will cover the set-up costs. We'll need some guns, good ones.

Tony
Hey, what about the necessities of life? Booze, cars, drugs, chicks... you shouldn't deprive yourself, man.

Hank
I'm being fiscally responsible here. I don't know, maybe if there's some left over. Plus, we gotta think about what else we'll need for our first big job.

Eggs
What's that gonna be?

Hank frowned.

Hank
I dunno. I dunno, yet. But we'll think of something.

Hydrogen Guy and Chuck War were staring intently at the image on the Hydrogen Scanning Electron Microscope screen when Deuterium Boy and Helium Girl returned to the Hydrogen Cave. Hydrogen Guy glanced up briefly at them as they stepped off the elevator.

Hydrogen Guy
Hey, any luck?

Helium Girl
Kinda, but like, I'm not really happy with the enamel she put on them? It kinda makes my cuticles look fat...

Hydrogen Guy
Um... yeah. DB?

Deuterium Boy
We got an ID on him... Henry Hubert "Hank" Hernandes.

He passed a stapled sheaf of papers to Hydrogen Guy. Hydrogen Guy flipped through it, while Chuck War looked over his shoulder.

Deuterium Boy
He's a career henchman, that's his rap sheet. The list of supervillains and crime bosses he's worked for is over a page long.

Chuck War
Hernandes... yeah, I think I vaguely remember him. Kind of a thin, wiry guy, right?

Deuterium Boy
Right.

Hydrogen Guy
His most recent employer was Terrier Ironcore..... was he at the chemical plant raid a couple months ago?

Chuck War
Yeah, I think so. He was one of the ones who fell when the catwalk collapsed.

Hydrogen Guy
Was he injured?

Chuck War
I don't remember.

Hydrogen Guy
Hmm... so he falls off a catwalk in an old chemical plant in the middle of a swamp, then a couple months later shows up with bucket of mutant pond scum. Sounds like a criminal origin story if I ever heard one. Any idea where he is now?

Deuterium Boy scowled.

Deuterium Boy
No. He's disappeared into the woodwork.

Chuck War
Yeah. Guys like him are good at that.

Helium Girl
Ohmygod, you mean he's got, like, wood powers, too?

Deuterium Boy
What kind of fumes are you getting from that nail polish, anyway? ... What about you guys, are you having any luck analysing the slime?

Hydrogen Guy
Here and there. Number one thing we determined, it's definitely inert. On the surface it doesn't look like any different than the stuff you hope doesn't grow in your hot tub. But check out how it looks under the SEM...

Deuterium Boy
Is that the cellular structure?

Hydrogen Guy
Yup.

Deuterium Boy
Huh. The slime cells look kind of like algae but, shaped weird, almost like...

Hydrogen Guy
Like what?

Deuterium Boy
Neurons?

Hydrogen Guy
Exactly.

Helium Girl
Hm?

Hydrogen Guy
Brain cells.

Helium Girl
Oh, those.

Hydrogen Guy
What's more, see these little organelles, here and here?

He points to brown blobs inside the cells on the SEM screen.

Hydrogen Guy
No other terrestrial cell we could find has structures like those, but according to Chuck's xenobiology book, they're similar to structures found in the brain cells of some telepathic species.

Deuterium Boy
So the slime is actually mutant algae that's become a sort of slimey green telepathic brain.

Hydrogen Guy
Isn't science fun?

Deuterium Boy
Okay, I get it now! That's why I couldn't use my deuterium powers on it! Because of the yellow effect.

Hydrogen Guy
Exactly.

Chuck War
Okay, back up a second. You lost me. How did we go from the scum having a brain-like cellular structure to it neutralising DB's powers? And what's this yellow effect?

Helium Girl
Thank you!

Hydrogen Guy
You're kidding me, you've never heard of the yellow effect?

Chuck War
I think I missed that class.

Hydrogen Guy
You spend so much time hanging around guys with super-powers, I would've thought you'd have heard of it... If there's some specific thing that a super-power doesn't work on, or some situation where it can't be used, that's called the Yellow Effect. It's after the old Green Lantern comics, because Hal Jordan's ring could do anything in the Universe but it couldn't affect anything yellow.

Chuck War
I never read comics when I was a kid.

Helium Girl
Oh, okay, I get it. It's a geek thing, and Chuck didn't know about it because, he's like, cool.

Deuterium Boy
Y'know, if we wanted comic relief --

Helium Girl
All right, all right.

Chuck War
So your hydrogen powers have a yellow effect?

Hydrogen Guy
Yes. Elemental fields don't work on conscious matter.

Chuck and Helium Girl both looked surprised.

Chuck War
That's a new one. How long have you know this?

Deuterium Boy
A long time ago HG asked Doug if he could use his powers to erase someone's memory, since the brain is chalk full of hydrogen.

Helium Girl
Who's memory did you want to erase?

Hydrogen Guy
Never you mind.

Chuck War
So why can't you affect conscious matter?

Hydrogen Guy
It's essentially a self-defensive mechanism - if the brain was subject to elemental fields, then any time we used our powers we'd get bio-feedback and scramble our grey matter on the atomic level.

Helium Girl shrugged.

Helium Girl
Sucks to be you, then. Doesn't bother me, like, how much helium is there in people's brains? ... But, wait, like, you can fiddle with atoms in people's bodies, right?

Hydrogen Guy
Sure. We can jigger around with the atoms in any part of our own or another sentient's bodies except their brains, or whatever does the thinking in the sentient in question. For example, Boise's Silicon Kid couldn't work on the processors of a sentient computer. I don't know how exactly, but whatever is present in our brains that makes us conscious is incompatible with an elemental field. Probably it's an emergent quantum phenomenon of some kind --

Helium Girl
Y'know, I don't really wanna know anymore.

Chuck War
Okay... so even though the scum is almost 99% water, you and DB can't do any of your alchemy on it because it's entire mass is like a giant brain.

Hydrogen Guy
Kind of. Possibly it's a kind of low-level collective intelligence. Or possibly it's not intelligent, it's simply psycho-responsive - the scum responds to Hernandes' though-waves, so whatever receptors it has make it resemble conscious matter closely enough that the field can't tell the difference.

Helium Girl
You could've stopped talking, like, five minutes ago, and I woulda been fine with that.

Deuterium Boy
But the effect was so strong that when I was surrounded by it, I couldn't even turn to gas.

Hydrogen Guy
Yeah. Interesting, eh?

Helium Girl
Not really.

Hydrogen Guy
There are other people in the room besides you, you know.

Helium Girl
Okay, why don't I go make espresso.

Hydrogen Guy
Why don't you, then?

She left them by the SEM and headed for the kitchen.

Deuterium Boy
So how do we handle this guy, HG?

Hydrogen Guy
I don't see a big problem. Most weapons people use against us are metal anyway, not much hydrogen content there. We'll just treat whatever Hank bulls out of his bucket the same way, and try to avoid being tied up by tentacles.

Chuck War
Well, there's no "yellow effect" for my Argon Blast Cannon. And I bet the slime vaporises nicely, too.

A phone rings in the background.

Hydrogen Guy
Helium Girl, can you get that?

Helium Girl
No!

Hydrogen Guy
Thanks, dear!

Deuterium Boy
I'll get it...

He sprints to the flashing red phone by the Hydrogen Comm Centre and picks it up.

Deuterium Boy
Hai... Parker! ... Okay... okay ... yeah, we've got a mop... uh hunh... okay, we're on it.

He hangs up the phone.

Deuterium Boy
HG, Hernandes and a couple other thugs just hit a bank on 203rd.

Hydrogen Guy
The game's afoot. Quick, to the Tritium Truck!

Deuterium Boy
We blew it up, remember?

Hydrogen Guy
Nuts. Err, Chuck..

Chuck War
Yeah, we'll take the War Rig. C'mon, Helium Girl.

Helium Girl
But, the espresso's ready, and my nails are still wet!

Deuterium Boy
Deal with it.