Working at the Car Wash

The Scrap Pile is back! Well, mostly. We're still hoping to get an occasional Giant Size issue with Magi, but complications bleeding in from the lesser world make it hard for him to be around much.

Back from their disturbing ordeal with the Warmaster; Land Shark, Torpedo, and Disco came home to find that they had been away for over six months. A lot of people thought they were dead, but Morgana had kept everything running in their base, despite Caravel's attempt to talk her into selling everything and renting the building out to Boost Mobile.

After they got settled in and announced their return, they were invited to be on the talk show, "Literal Hotness" with Thod (pronounced "Todd") Roades. Disco got out his tightest spandex outfit and helped Land Shark spruce up his look as well.

Once they got there, Thod ambushed them with questions about the imperialist message in Torpedo's origin story, the toxic masculinity of Land Shark's destructive powers, and concerns about representation, calling them, "The Sausage Pile" at one point. Torpedo took the opportunity to claim all of America as a colony of Atlantis. Then Thod asked them why they were showboating on a talk show instead of investigating the brain thief at Patriot's Landing.

On their way out, Disco befriended a cat with light powers. They learned to communicate with each other on an empathic level using strobing color shifts. Disco also discovered pretty quickly that Rainbow Kitty could also teleport. Somebody said this meant they were replacing Magi with a cat.

Checking with Hero Corps, Torpedo learned that the organization was looking for someone to investigate a DMV office in Patriot's Landing, a rough Lightfoot Island dockside neighborhood named for the hero, Acting Patriot.

At the office, they found a woman wearing high tech, if somewhat haphazardly assembled, gadgetry interviewing customers. While Torpedo and Land Shark went to talk to management, Disco checked out the costumed stranger. An assortment of conversations told them:

• The woman was Fire of Saturn, who had been known to associate with the Lizard Moll, but wasn't otherwise listed as a known criminal. 
• The people whose brains had been stolen had all recently gotten a new or renewed license from the same clerk.
• The clerk, Brian Ferrys, had started acting strangely after taking a weekend job promoting a run-down car wash on Weatherhead Island, a smaller island immediately adjacent to and generally treated as part of Lightfoot Island. 

Fire of Saturn

Fire of Saturn got a little antsy as the questions continued, and left. The rest of the team decided to follow her back to the Lizard Moll's office over the Mermaid Tavern. Because the B Team had some history with the Lizard Moll and Joe Casanelli, they checked in with them first, but they were busy investigating the theft of Nazi mad scientist Fritz von Meyer's skeleton.

The Lizard Moll gave them some additional information, saying she believed that a poorly conjured spirit in a self-constructed biomechanical body was the problem. It had taken to calling itself "Corrosive Soul" and was attempting to carve out its own territory in the Lightfoot Island underworld.

The Lizard Moll, aware that the Scrap Pile had recently lost its tech guy, suggested that Fire of Saturn help them out. Fire of Saturn took this opportunity and several others to explain that she wasn't really a criminal, just a well-meaning inventor who had been "put in a bad situation" by her former employers. She was happy for the opportunity to prove herself to the good guys.

Taking the Scrap Van over to the car wash, they were greeted by a conspicuously immobile clerk and asked to put on hospital gowns while they waited. Meanwhile, the car wash started spraying some kind of foul-looking fluid on the Scrap Van and pelting it with ball bearings. Pushing aside the gowns, they found that the operators were thinly disguised floating brains with tentacles. They fought the brains, giving Fire of Saturn a chance to use her fire and ice powers.

Once the brains were dealt with, they looked around, finding some extracted brains in coolers and a bunch of de-brained corpses stashed nearby. There were quite a few more bodies than brains. They waited and some cyber-vampires showed up in a van to collect the brains, so they ambushed those guys or at least tried to and got caught. Anyway, they won that fight too, with one vampire still conscious in a block of ice for interrogation.

The B Team

Ghost Lad had agreed to scout out the North Coast Guardians' HQ for the Scrap Pile, partly because he was still hoping for an opportunity to meet Disco. Although he knew he could get in without being seen or even having to open a door, he still wanted some backup, so he contacted The Comet, a young crime-fighter who had recently taken up the mantle of the original Comet, one of the first known super-heroes.

He also brought in some less wholesome allies, hoping that perhaps they would have useful connections. Grave Bear had once been an up-and-coming stand-up comic who went to a lot of the same parties as Ghost Lad, but he was now a humorless undead man-beast. The two now shared a strange "ghost link" which sometimes enabled them to communicate telepathically. Pork Chop, on the other hand, was a former associate of The Angry Beet who was now trying to clean up his act.

The four of them decided to get some fake IDs so that Ghost Lad could have plenty of nearby support while he scouted the area. To this end, Pork Chop and Grave Bear went over to the Lightfoot Island docks to talk to Zombie Lizard Moll. While they were doing that, however, Ghost Lad and Comet decided to go have a quick look-around anyway.

The Interlocking Technologies lab that supported the North Coast Guardians was across town, in one wing of what used to be a hospital. Ghost Lad got them in and found a lab coat for Comet easily enough, but it wasn't long before a member of the fairly small staff noticed an unfamiliar face and referred him to "HR" in Beta City proper.

Ghost Lad, meanwhile, found a mysterious locked elevator at the end of the hallway. Upon attempting to phase in, he was repulsed by a force field. Not to be dissuaded, he gave it another go and pushed through. Down the elevator shaft, Ghost Lad found a large underground chamber with a smaller central dome surrounded by hibernation capsules. Creepy human-sized ant-cyborgs were crawling all over everything.

Ghost Lad took pictures of the facility but, to do so, he had to briefly become visible. One of the antrons saw him and fired off a shot with some kind of bee gun. Alarms went off. Upstairs, Comet was attacked by Jellyfish, Blue Shift, and several decimators and psybots.

Back on Lightfoot Island, Grave Bear and Pork Chop caught up with Firetemple (one of the Lizard Moll's super-powered enforcers) and made their case to the Lizard Moll. She was no fan of the North Coast Guardians and agreed to have some badges customized for the B Team. This wouldn't take long, because much of the work had already been done for some reason. Grave Bear sent out a ghost-brain message to Ghost Lad and discovered that he and Comet were under attack at the lab.

Comet and Ghost Lad were holding their own, although Comet's defensive "blast field" was being gradually weakened by the decimator's null ray. Pork Chop and Grave Bear rushed to the rescue in their freshly-rented car and everybody slugged it out. Then a whole mob of fresh "Ultra" agents stormed in from nowhere and the group decided it was time to run away.

They decided that, before they took what they had to the Scrap Pile, they needed a hacker to get into I.T.'s computers and find out more about what they had seen. Another trip to the Lizard Moll's den seemed in order.

This time, the Lizard Moll wanted something in exchange for her help. Her ex and mob rival, Joe Cassanelli (AKA NecroDon) had set up a warehouse in her territory. She wanted our heroes to burn it down.

They said okey-dokey to this, and, after a bit of ghostly scouting, they proceeded to trash the place. It was defended by some goons with guns and a large, undead Liberace. There was also a crazy-looking mad scientist guy with a shrink ray. Giant-sized Grave Bear punted Liberace into the harbor, and Comet took out Downsizer after Grave Bear took a few shrinks.

The Lizard Moll was satisfied with their work and hooked them up with one of her hackers.