Back on the B Side

Jumping back to the end of the fight with the giant lava monster over Lightfoot Island, we find most of the B Team (Comet, Pork Chop, and Grave Grizzly, but not Ghost Lad) freshly released from Rapture's lair. They watched the monster go down, then made their way back to Scrap Pile HQ to see if they could figure out how to find Techmaster.

Techmaster, if we haven't already covered this somewhere, was a special effects man turned supervillain who was horribly maimed when Ghost Lad phased his hands into a lightning machine. He lost both hands, and his face was badly burned. When last we saw him, he had high tech artificial hands and was about to unveil his giant mechanical hornet before the lava spirits got it and turned it into Dirge's volcano monster.

At the base, they met Nimble, who was there looking for her brother, Disco, who of course had just headed out to Atlantis. Grave Grizzly declared that he could find Comet just fine without any help and staggered off to play accordion in an alley somewhere. Chromaticat was teleporting around, and Mister Chompers was there, telling Nimble to kill people. So, apparently, there's something about Disco's family that lets Chompers communicate with them.

Their research led them to an abandoned warehouse disco place, which they noticed was guarded by swarms of bees. Pork Chop got 'em going and Nimble used her super-speed to disperse the converging swarms with a mini-tornado. Inside, oh yeah, this is actually where they found Mr. Chompers. He was locked up in a bathroom next to the lobby. Farther back in the club, they heard screaming and found a big supervillain lab all set up in the main dance hall with Ghost Lad and his buddy John Jameson shackled to a machine and being tortured by Techmaster.

Techmaster had actually started with Jameson, for maximum effect on the main course. As the team burst in, he was pushing a big bluish-white gemstone into Jameson's chest to the tune of breaking bones and screams.

Pork Chop was delayed by a pair of shadow creatures that ambushed him. He quickly dispatched both with a chair he had picked up. At the other side of the hall, they found that Corrosive Soul was there too. She pointed at Jameson, who howled and turned into a white-furred wolf man. This seemed to surprise Techmaster as much as anyone.

Comet crashed into people, Pork Chop threw chairs, and Nimble used her rock-hard purse as a weapon, although at one point she was overwhelmed by the howl of the Man-Wolf and ran away until she could gather her wits and come back. Corrosive Soul used her mind control powers to briefly turn the team against each other, then summoned a group of green fire demons when the fight looked like it might not go her way.

Battered by purses and Comet-fists, Techmaster used the distraction of Corrosive Soul's conjuring to slip out the back door. Pork Chop managed to trigger the emergency sprinkler system and snuff the fire demons. The Man-Wolf eventually went down, too. Surrounded and battered, Corrosive Soul literally fell apart, but her head continued to cackle as it rolled over to Nimble, then abruptly melted into a skull and turned to dust.

The unconscious Man-Wolf turned back into Jameson, but the gem appeared to be grafted to his chest so that they couldn't remove it without badly injuring him. And they got Ghost Lad out so, apart from Techmaster escaping, mission accomplished.