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Isn't it funny How a bear likes honey?


"So do you go by Deuterium Boy all the time?"

"Actually my name's David, but people usually just call me DB," he said, pushing the elevator button. As the doors closed, a muzak version of "I'm a Super Girl" started playing.

"How long have you been doing this?" Jake asked.

"Jeez, I guess it's been a few years now, since shortly after the accident, which," DB noted, making a pistol of his right hand and pointing it at the ceiling, "was not my fault, no matter what HG tells you."

"Right," Jake nodded.

A small ding, like the bell on an old microwave, signaled their arrival at the main level of the Hydrogen Cave. The elevator, unlike the rocket tubes they'd just traveled down, moved so fluidly it was hardly noticeable. The doors hissed opened with a Star Trek sound effect that Jake was positive wasn't there when they got on.

The room they stepped into was expansive, but not massive. It was roomy, but tastefully decorated. The elevator opened onto a small, tiled dais, with a step leading down, between two railings, to the main room. To their left was a large screen television surrounded by a fashionable couch/love seat set with a matching coffee table. A foosball table sat a few feet away. Off to the right was a massive computer with a Christmas-tree's worth of blinking lights and enough monitors to make a television news producer nervous. The far wall of the cave was made up like a small kitchenette, with a refrigerator, microwave, and espresso machine.

DB stepped off the elevator and indicated the entire room with a sweep of his arms.

"Well," he said. "This is it. Home sweet cave."

"Wow," Jake replied.

"Like it?"

"I dunno," Jake said, stepping off the dais. "I was expecting something on the order of the Bat Cave, but this, this is more like the diner set from 'Saved By the Bell.'"

"Well, it helps to have some place comfortable to crash after a day of defending the Earth from space gnomes and getting attacked by cyborg monkeys."

"You have 143 new messages," interrupted a monotone voice.

"Excuse me," DB said. "I'll just be a second. Have a seat and watch some TV or something. Ok, computer, what's new?"

"You have 11 personal messages, 23 local news items, 67 international news items, and 89 death-match challenges for Fuzzy Bunny Fragfest 12."

"Give me the personal messages first," DB said, taking a seat in front of the computer.

Jake wandered over to the "living room" of the cave and sat down on the couch. He stood up again, then pulled the television remote that he'd just sat on out from between the cushions.

"Message number 1," the computer intoned. "Dear Mr. Marcolin, we're sorry to inform you that your credit card was declined. We will need a different form of payment before your membership to SuperHeroBabez.com can be..."

"Skip it," DB said.

"Dear sir, are you tired of working for yourself for pennies a..."

"Forward it to Spamcop, then delete it. Give me the local news."

"Jonas Sanders, CFO of Octan Oil Products International, says that he's confident the Canadian government will see the benefits of building a natural gas pipeline through British Columbia rather than through the Northwest Territories. Sanders also said that recent terrorist acts would not deter his company from..."

"Next. I don't want to hear about terrorist acts right now."

"Larry 'Beano' Horowitz, inmate of the UBC Mental Hospital, attempted to commit suicide by eating his mattress. Doctors say..."

"They should have let him." Dropping his feet off the computer's console and back onto the floor, DB leaned forward and tapped a few keys. "I'll read the mail later. Any luck on the 'Winnie the Pooh' thing?"

"143 synchronicities between the 'Winnie the Pooh' stories and Maple Ridge have been found," the computer replied, "none of which match the Chimera filter specifications."

"Keep looking," DB said. "And run a scan through the PD archives and see if you can find any references to someone called 'the Old Man' or anything similar."

"Processing," replied the computer.

At that moment, Jake found the "on" button on the impossibly large remote control he'd been studying for the past five minutes. The size of the remote wasn't the major impediment to his success, nor was it the number of buttons. What slowed him down was the fact that half the labels were written in some form of alien glyph. When he finally did manage to turn it on, the television lit up and the image of a dancing Geri Halliwell appeared. The volume, however, was set to Monster Truck Rally levels and "It's Raining Men" came thundering out of the four-foot tall speakers on either side of the television set, almost rocketing Jake backwards like Michael J. Fox in the beginning of "Back to the Future."

Jake, disoriented by the volume, started pushing random buttons in an effort to quell the thundering. DB paused for a moment to admire Halliwell on the screen before sauntering over to help. In a moment, the volume was back down to Construction Site levels and Jake could at least think.

"Sorry about that," DB said. "HG likes to mute M3 until he sees something by Dido, then he turns it up full blast. Then he disappears into his room after the video's over."

"That's ok," Jake said, wiggling a finger in one of his ears. "Chris has a thing for Sterling James and listens to Alice at volume 11 in the patrol car."

"Don't you need to keep the radio down in case you need to report in or something?"

"Report in?" Jake asked. "What's that?"

"I dunno, I'm a super hero," DB replied. "We can beat people up without getting slapped with civil suits."

"I was being sarcastic," Jake said, sitting down on the couch again. "Chris isn't a conventional cop. I don't think he's ever 'reported in' or done anything remotely similar."

"I take it by your tone of voice that that bugs you?" DB asked.

"Sometimes," Jake nodded. "I mean, the guy has two unsolved cases in 8 years. That's pretty good. But sometimes I think he'd get his cases closed faster if he spent less time playing Gauntlet at the arcade or listening to bands at the Voodoo."

"Hey, that reminds me, I'm being ungracious. You want a drink?" DB asked, moving off toward the refrigerator. "A beer? Pop? Gourmet hot beverage? Carffee?"

"Carffee?!" Jake choked. "Not only am I amazed that someone else drinks that stuff, I'm surprised they let it out of the country."

"Not you too," DB replied. "I'm surrounded by heathens. Think of it this way: you remember when you were a kid and you discovered that licking a 9-volt battery hurt but you kept doing it anyway because it was a cool hurt? That's how Carffee is. Besides, my supplier is a gypsy so I don't question the legality of importing the stuff."

"Beer," Jake said, wrinkling his nose at the proffered Carffee. "Anything but Bud."

"Puh-leez," DB said, throwing Jake a Spring brown ale.

"Sorry," Jake replied, catching the bottle. "My tastes are too base for such bizarre things as Carffee, I guess. Ford loves the stuff; but, then again, Ford also spends many an afternoon eating at Soup-On-A-Stick or getting bizarre herbal concoctions at Hetta's Health-E Hut."

"So, you guys been partners long?" DB asked, returning from the kitchen.

"Not really," Jake replied. "Just about a week. My partner went on maternity leave and his partner was killed."

"Oh," DB said thoughtfully. "I'm sorry about that."

"Well, I hardly new the guy," Jake said with a shrug. "It's hard losing anyone on the force, but I wasn't really that close to him. I've been friends with Chris for a while, so the transition wasn't that bad."

"Yeah, it helps when you're friends with your partner."

"Right," Jake agreed. "Even when your partner drags you on trips to haunted houses."

"Or gets you turned into a sloth."

"What?"

"Never mind," DB said. "It's a long story."

"Is being a sloth part of the super hero routine?"

"No. And neither is being the potato queen," DB replied. "But hey, things happen. You learn to adjust. Thank God our medical plan covers therapy."

"I think I much prefer the more mundane life I lead now," Jake mused.

"You would. So your partner has a thing for amusement park funhouses?"

"No," Jake said. "I meant real haunted houses. With real ghosts and crap."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I was skeptical at first, but then there was the guy whose mother-in-law's disembodied ghostly head lived in his aquarium."

"What?"

"Saw her myself," Jake said, holding his hand up in a swearing-in pose. "Scout's honor. There was also the old woman whose father haunted her coffee pot and the guy whose two-headed dog spoke Latin."

"Latin?" DB asked. "What did it say?"

"Oh, nonsensical stuff like 'Beelzebub anatis eructo est,'" Jake said. "But the fact that the dog was speaking Latin was cool enough."

"Two heads you say?" DB remarked.

"Some form of Siamese twin," Jake guessed.

"Yeah, but it's no inter-dimensional triangle," DB replied.

"Sorry?"

"Nevermind."

"So how do you guys afford all this stuff?" Jake asked, gesturing to the cave.

"A lot of our toys we get at a discount from the GC impound auctions," DB said. "The rest of the stuff we buy on credit."

"Your credit card bills must be hellacious."

"Well, we get a fair income by selling Hydrogenalia on E-Bay. You know how much an autographed yellow feather can fetch?"

"Fans'll buy anything," Jake agreed.

"Medusa Joe had a mini-camera on him and got some great shots of HG and I with the water-statue we created in the background. Those things sold for a mint once we autographed 'em."

"Water statue?" Jake asked.

"Yup," DB replied. "Quite big actually. Had to almost blow me to bits to generate enough power to do it. Then we walked it through Ottawa."

"That must've been pretty cool."

"Hang on a second," DB said. He stood up and walked into the kitchen area to an upright filing cabinet. After a moment's worth of fishing around, he returned with a picture frame, which he handed to Jake.

The picture showed Hydrogen Guy and Deuterium Boy standing, facing each other, with their hands on the glowing Ruler of Elendil. They were standing in what must have been, until a few moments before, a fair-sized river; as it was now, the banks were nearly empty. The reason was just over their shoulders. Behind the two superheroes was a humanoid figure made entirely of water, rising up from the riverbed with its head back and arms out, like Satan above the witches' Sabbath in the "Bald Mountain" sequence of "Fantasia."

"That's a damn cool shot," Jake remarked.

"You want it? Take it," DB said. "We've still got about 50 prints of it. If we put them all eBay at once it would devalue them."

"So now I know how to fund being a superhero," Jake said, still looking at the picture, "how to get all those wonderful toys."

"Well," DB said, "we can't afford everything we want."

"I dunno," Jake thought out loud, "this place is pretty spiffy."

"Thanks. We like it."

"It's very homey. You should have smoking jackets or an arcade or something. That's what it needs, pizza. Then it'll be just like a Chuck-E-Cheese."

"What a horrible thought."

"I'm serious. You guys should be walking around in smoking jackets and have a great big sign that says 'Hydrogen and Ward' over the door."

"Yeah," DB chuckled. "A great big sign that says 'Secret Super Hero Lair,' like something from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

"Wait a minnit," DB said, suddenly staring off into space. He stood up and walked around in a circle a few times, like a dog trying to find the most comfortable inch of floor to lay down on again. He put his hand on his forehead and muttered, "think, think, think," quietly to himself. After a moment, he turned to Jake and said, "I think you may be on to something."

"What?" Jake asked. "About you guys being more like Bruce Wayne and..."

"No, no, that's not it," DB interrupted. "About living under a sign. Winnie the Pooh lived under a sign, didn't he?"

"I don't know," Jake confessed. "I never actually read the books and it's been years since I've seen the movie."

"Computer," DB called. "How do the Winnie the Pooh stories start?"

"Here is Edward Bear," the computer said. "Coming down the stairs now, bump, bump, bump..."

"No," DB said. "Skip ahead to where it actually starts the story."

"Once upon a time," the computer began, "a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie the Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders."

"That's it!" DB shouted, thumping the heel of his palm against his forehead.

"That's what?" Jake asked.

"The Druid said we would find the head to all this where Winnie the Pooh lives."

"I don't get it," Jake replied.

"Chimera is at the head of all this," DB said, excitedly. "Winnie the Pooh lived under the name Sanders. Chimera is under Sanders!"

"Oh," Jake said. "Um... I think you lost me about 40 synapses ago."

"Chimera is being controlled by Jonas Sanders! Sanders is 'The Old Man!'"

"Octan's Jonas Sanders?" Jake asked.

"Yes!" DB shouted. "That's why The Druid couldn't just come out and tell us. I'm betting Sanders is using Chimera to strong-arm BP supporters into leaving or switching to Octan."

"That's some mighty fine reasoning," Jake admitted. "Provided it's right. But, if Chimera is working for Sanders, then I'd say it's pretty likely that Kentaro killed Doh because Doh was going to deny Octan's request for EPA approval."

"That'd be my guess too," DB said. "We gotta get a hold of HG and Ford."


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