Part Four
Brain’s call to the Duke worked to perfection. The Duke
and his caravan arrived at the abandoned New York Public Library no less than
half an hour after Brain called, mentioning the “gift” that he had for him.
That gift turned out to have been a woman with black hair and her face painted
in black-and-white makeup, wearing a black corset beneath a black leather
jacket, along with a black bouffant skirt and matching knee-high boots.
“Which one of youse is dah Duke of New York?” she asked
with a distinguishable Boston accent.
“I am,” the Duke stood forward.
She approached him with a seductive gaze. “Well…I’m
heres.”
“And who are
you?”
After a few smacks on the gum in her mouth, she answered,
“Name’s Jean, but youse can call me ‘Jeannie’. Ya know, like Barbara Eden? Duh
pigs brought me in ‘bout a week ago, and I hears ‘bout dis ‘Duke’ and how he’s
a real bad mother—”
“Shut yo mouth!”
“I’m only talkin’ ‘bout you, Duke. I can be yer new squeeze,
know what I’m sayin’?” She cozied up to him, the scent of the raspberry gum in
her mouth seeping into his nostrils. “I really dig duh powerful types like
youse.”
As this scene of seduction played out, it was observed
from the shadows by the Superintendent, Brain, Maggie, Cabbie, and Snake. Brain
and Cabbie began to feel nervous in the presence of the Duke himself, whereas
Snake started to become impatient from waiting.
“Where’s this team of yours?” Snake asked the Super.
“I don’t know,” the Super answered, growing impatient
himself. There the Duke was, only a few men accompanying him. They were all
easy pickings for the Titans – that is, if they came when the Super contacted
them.
But, alas, they were a no-show.
To make matters worse, the Duke took “Jean” (Cara’s
latest disguise) up on her offer and escorted her back to his car to return to
his hideout. As he did so, Cara shot an uncomfortable glare towards her hidden associates,
mouthing something to them. Between the makeup and the rapid movement of her
black lips, the closest they guessed to what she said was, “Get me out of this!”
The Super, however, looked at this more as an alternative
rather than a setback. “Change of plans,” he announced to the group. “We’re
going to infiltrate the Duke’s lair before he gets there.”
“Are you crazy?!” Helman roared at him.
“You can’t just waltz into the Duke’s place,” Cabbie
said. “That’s suicide!”
“Well, it’s exactly what we’re gonna do!” the Super
declared, before he pointed straight at Cabbie and strictly demanded, “And you’re gonna take us there in your
well-fortified cab!”
The Super’s strict demeanor was enough to force Cabbie
into complying. He drove the group to the Duke’s hideout in the Grand Central
Terminal. Of course, he didn’t park all that close to the hideout, so as not to
alert the Daleks on guard near one of the decommissioned train cars.
At the last minute, the Super cooked up a plan: Brain and
Maggie were to distract the Daleks, while Snake and the Super snuck into the
Duke’s hideout and waited for him to return with Cara.
The Super’s plan worked rather well, with Brain managing
to carry an actual conversation with the Dalek guards about their Dalekanium
chassis. But, as Snake and the Super infiltrated the hideout, they happened on
one room where the President was sitting while being looked after by two of the
Duke’s goons. Snake made short work of them both, although he was wounded when
one of the goons fired a crossbow arrow into his leg.
“Mr. President,” the Super approached him. “Do you still
have the key?”
The President motioned to the briefcase that he was still
handcuffed to. “Y-Yes,” he stammered, visibly distraught from his ordeal. “P-Please
get me out of here before they find out that I have it.” His plea fell on deaf
ears, as the Superintendent was more interested in detaching the briefcase from
the President than saving his life.
Noticing his actions, Snake grew suspicious. “What are
you doing?”
The Super didn’t answer. Instead, he jimmied the lock on
the briefcase open, finding the key inside – a blue card with a microchip
design irradiated through bioluminescence, shining on the satisfied face of the
Superintendent. “This is exactly what
I’m looking for,” he said, taking the keycard out of the briefcase and
pocketing it away in his suit jacket.
Now Snake was getting angry, not just from the Super
ignoring him but the way he was diverging from the plan entirely. “Hey!” he
hissed at him. “That’s not the reason we’re—”
BAM!
With the empty briefcase, the Super clocked Snake over
the head, rendering him unconscious. The President witnessed this in baffled
surprise that quickly transfixed into mortification when the Super handcuffed
him to his chair. “W-Why are you doing this?!” the President asked him.
“It’s for your own good, sir,” the Super told him. “I’m
sorry.”
He vanished into the darkness
thereafter, leaving Snake and the President to be captured by the Duke and his
men, mere minutes later.
-----------------------
Assisted by their saviors –
the Titans – Gumball and Anais helped Oswin to stand upright again, following
the missile attack on her. “There’s not a scratch on you!” Gumball observed of
her Dalekanium chassis.
“Are we seriously just gonna ignore the fact that there’s
a Dalek right in front of us?” a skeptical Garfield “Gar” Logan (the “Beast
Boy”) asked his fellow Titans.
“Yeah, and it hasn’t once attacked us,” Conner (the
“Superboy”) indicated.
“Because she’s not like the rest of them,” Gumball
explained.
“She?” the
fiery Kory Anders noted his pronoun usage.
“Her name’s Oswin Oswald,” Anais told the Titans. “She
was once a human before the Daleks converted her into one of them.”
“And you trust her based on this information?” Dick
Grayson (the “Nightwing”) inquired.
“That and the fact that she’s protected us from this
nightmare reality we’re in, ever since we met her,” Gumball stated.
“A likely story!”
All heads turned towards the shadows that the
gravelly-sounding voice spoke from. Gumball and Anais saw a balding,
gray-suited gentleman emerge. “Who the what are you?!” asked Gumball, spooked more by the man’s menacing aura than
the way in which he entered the scene.
“Super,” Grayson addressed the man. “We got your call.”
“And yet none of you showed!” The Super irately grumbled.
“Where were you?!”
“We were on our way to you, until we saw these two kids
in danger,” Gar said, gesturing to Gumball and Anais.
Noticing the Watterson siblings, the Super nodded
understandingly.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “The Gladiator’s companions.”
“Wait. You’ve seen Cara?” Gumball reacted in alarm.
“Where is she? Is she safe?” the deeply concerned Anais
asked.
The Super grinned. “She will be, once I’ve inserted this into the Dalek’s machine.” He
pulled out the bioluminescent keycard from inside his jacket to show Gumball,
Anais, and the Titans.
Conner beamed with hope as he looked on it. “Is that what
I think it is?”
“The literal key to stopping the Daleks,” the Super
verified. “All that remains is to find out the precise location of their
machine.”
“MADISON SQUARE GARDEN,” Oswin stated.
The Super raised one of his bushy eyebrows in question.
“I beg your pardon?”
“THAT IS WHERE THE DALEKS ARE KEEPING THEIR MACHINE –
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN.”
Her intel left the Super feeling immensely satisfied.
“Well, thank you for that vital information. I promise your sacrifice will not
be in vain.”
“Her sacrifice?” Anais quizzically reflected on the
Super’s words. Before she knew it, a green gelatinous portal opened right
behind Oswin and the Super kicked her right through it.
The portal closed immediately afterwards.
Gumball saw the device that the Super used to open the
portal. It was the same make and model as the one he had seen Rick Sanchez and Cara
use during their recent scrape with the Overtakers back in Elmore. He was too
stunned and infuriated by what the Super did to Oswin to even bother asking
where he got Rick’s portal gun from.
“Why did you do that?!” he yelled.
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