"The alcohol," I suddenly exclaimed. "He's destroying the city's alcohol supply!"
And that was when a horrible realization dawned on all of us. We had, actually, forgotten to tape that week's episode of Buffy. But also, we had completely forgotten that Dr. Ugly was on the loose, and now things were getting serious.
"We've got to do something!" said Laurel. "If he destroys all the city's alcohol, he'll destroy the local economy, drive hundreds of stores and shops into bankruptcy, plunge major bottlers and distillers into ruin-"
"And he'll piss me off!" I shouted.
"Well, we can't go out there without a plan," Crank Boy said. "I mean, he's obviously got a plan, so we need one too, or else we're just rank amateurs out there."
We fell into silence, then.
"Okay, here's an idea," I said at last. "I fly somewhere relatively far away, and fly back with as much alcohol as humanly possible, and we just keep stockpiling from out of town. That way, no matter how much alcohol Dr. Ugly destroys, we can stay as likkered up as we want, and he'll never even know!"
After a slight pause, Laurel said, "That doesn't solve the problem of Dr. Ugly on a rampage."
"Oh, that's the problem?" I replied. "I thought the problem was that I am going to run out of booze soon."
"Will you please for one tiny moment divert even the slightest portion of your mental faculties to thinking about something other than your own intoxication?" Laurel snapped.
"Huh?" I replied. "Sorry, I was just thinking about making myself a nice big gin and tonic."
"This is no use," Crank Boy said sullenly. "The fact is, we are rank amateurs. We don't know the first thing about fighting super villains. We can't even decide who gets to be Captain. We should just stay here, wait for the acid to wear off, and do a big pile of mushrooms."
Crank Boy must have noticed the sudden sad look that crossed my face.
"Don't tell me you don't have any mushrooms," he said. "Oh, God, it's worse than I thought…."
"Pull yourself together, dammit," said Laurel. "The acid hasn't worn off yet. That means we still have time for a completely unexpected burst of ass kicking on our parts. We just need to try to remember absolutely everything we know about Dr. Ugly and try to figure out a weakness. Think, people, think!"
A strange silence fell over the room, as our brains found themselves in the sudden position of having to actually do work. For me, that hadn't really happened since just before graduating college, when I made the foolish mistake of attempting to study for a final and wound up giving myself a hernia in my forehead.
"Weeeeeelllllllllllll," Crank Boy said at long last, "he certainly is ugly, isn't he?"
I nodded.
"That's a good try, Crank Boy," Laurel said encouragingly. "In this case, though, his ugliness isn't so much of a 'weakness'… as it is an actual 'strength.' Do you see the difference?"
Crank Boy's face knotted up for a moment, and then he smiled.
"Ah, right, gotcha," he said. "You know, you're pretty sharp, Laurel. Maybe you should be Captain. I don't think I can handle it."
She shook her head. "Oh no, not me. I'm not ready for that kind of responsibility. No way."
They turned their attention to me.
"Huh?" I said. "Oh sorry, I was just envisioning a giant swimming pool filled with margarita."
"Come on, Captain Scotto," she said. "We need a plan, and we need one fast!"
"Weeeeeelllllllllllll," I said at long last, my brain surprising me with that rarest of mental events - synapses firing on a topic unrelated to intoxication. "Didn't Percy always have kind of an unnatural fondness for the work of Michael Landon?"
There it was… the jeweled egg that held the crux of our attack, if only we could properly tease a plan from its mysterious shell.
"What about… I mean, can't we just shoot him with a big gun or something?" Crank Boy offered, but Laurel shushed his foolishness.
"Tell us more, Captain Scotto," she said.
"Weeeeeelllllllllllll," I said, slowly warming up to the challenge, the acid in my brain actually bridging the gaps where no synapse had properly fired since childhood. "What if we… somehow managed to convince him… that Michael Landon had returned from the dead?"
"Go on," Laurel said, using her powers of positive reinforcement and encouragement for the betterment of all humanity.
"And what if we managed to convince him… that Michael Landon wanted Percy to be his one and only true love?"
"That's kind of creepy, Scotto," said Crank Boy.
"Right, sure, but think about it: right when we get him convinced that Michael Landon is alive and wants Percy to be his one and only true love, we get his defenses down, and then we… then we…"
The tension in the air was palpable.
"Then we what, Captain?" Laurel asked.
"Then we… jump out, and… shoot him with a big gun or something?"
Laurel slumped in her seat.
"Oh come on," I exclaimed, "work with me, people! Seriously, I can fly over to Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London and steal the Michael Landon wax figure, and we can bring him back, and we can dress him all up in leather chaps and make him all hot and sexy, truss up his beautiful curly locks into an appealing, teasing morass, and I'll like make him dance a little dance, you know, a little hip shake here, a little pelvic thrust there, and then when Dr. Ugly is all, like, oh my fookin god it's Michael Landon about it, you guys can pop out from somewhere and blow his ugly fookin head off, right?"
"You know," Laurel said at last, "it's so crazy it just might work!"
"That's the spirit!" I said. "Now all we need is the wax figure of Michael Landon, and a big gun, and we're set!"
Fortunately for us, my flying suit could take me to London and back in just a hop, skip, and a jump. Oh, and a flight across the ocean as well. And in the meantime, Butch's Guns was literally right down the street from my house, on the corner of 75th and Aurora. It would be trivial for Crank Boy to wander in and jack something really big and brutal.
"That's it, then, we've got a plan," Laurel said. "Is there anything else we need?"
A long pause followed, after which I started to ask Laurel a question. But before I'd even finished, she was already fishing the last half sheet of acid out of her purse. We split it three ways.
"Right, then," I said. "We meet back here in half an hour!" And with that, we actually dared leave the house once again.