DARING – Is shot while trying to prevent Dekker’s getaway.
The sounds of gunfire attracted Junior’s attention. He raced toward the offices, letting the two battered cronies escape. Upon entering the room, he glimpsed Dekker jumping out of the window. He started to pursue the villain, when he came upon Daring’s body.
“Daring! Are you okay?” he asked, crouching over the prone hero.
“It’s a good thing we came prepared,” coughed Daring. Junior ripped open Daring’s shirt, revealing a bulletproof vest. “Still hurts, though.”
“You just rest here, boss,” said Junior as he heard the truck’s engine roar to life. “I’ll go after those guys.” Junior leapt out of the window, just in time to see the truck pull out of the parking lot. He ran over to the roadster, jumping into the vehicle and quickly started off after them. Putting the pedal to the floor, the car zoomed after the truck. Luckily, the large truck was conspicuous, and soon, Junior caught up with the truck as they raced around the twisting roads.
The two thugs appeared out of the back of the truck and started to fire upon Junior. Junior was safe as long as he stayed behind the roadster’s bulletproof windshield. He tried to get beside the truck, but the truck would swerve from side to side, blocking his every attempt. Junior was just about to open the roadster’s hidden compartment of switches, when he noticed the two thugs had stopped firing. He glanced up to see the two men were lugging one of the large crates.
His foot hit the brakes just as they threw the crate out onto the road in front of him. The crate shattered open, spilling out its contents all over the road. Junior frowned as he watched the truck disappear over the hill.
“Old Timer’s got to have better luck than me,” he muttered.
“What do you mean, we’re late!?” hollered Old Timer through his spacesuit’s speaker. He, along with Johnny Highpitch and Teresa, stood in front of the Compound X mine, speaking with the mine’s overseer. Their giant space saucer was parked in the distance. Earth hung over them in the sky.
“All I’m saying is that there was a group of individuals with the exact same paperwork that came through here about an hour ago,” he explained. “I assumed that you were with them.”
“Good sir,” interrupted Johnny. “Are you insinuating that these men are still down there?”
“Unless there’s some back way out that I don’t know about,” replied the overseer.
“Thank you for your time,” replied Johnny. He ushered his two companions to the entrance of the mine.
“Doggone rattlesnakes,” muttered Old Timer. “They beat us here!”
“But they don’t know we’re here,” stated Teresa. “The element of surprise is ours!” They continued inward, until they came to a fork in the tunnel.
“Which way?” asked Teresa.
“Wish I knew,” muttered Old Timer.
Johnny Highpitch shushed his compatriots, attuning his super-hearing to the passageways ahead. There was dead silence as Johnny listened intently. After a long pause, he said, “This way.”
They followed him down the right tunnel, and soon enough, they came across a light in the distance. There, they came upon three men working the wall of the mine. One of the three men was mammoth, tossing aside boulders as if they were pebbles. On the table was a small cylinder filled with a glowing substance. This substance was the unstable mineral known as Compound X.
The trio slowly crept up on Ox and his men. Ox turned at the sound of Johnny’s voice as he said, “Put down your tools and come with us. We have some questions needing answered.”
Instead of complying with johnny’s order, Ox shouted, “Get them!” His two minions rushed Johnny and Old Timer. Each member of the Brilliant 5 are trained in 5 forms of self-defense, but wearing bulky spacesuit greatly diminished their fighting form. The result was a pair of men tossing around the ground, their fists glancing off of each other’s helmet.
Fortunately, Teresa had anticipated this. She had brought along a pneumatic gun, no bigger than a derringer. It contained a small capsule of knock out gas. While the thugs were busy tussling with Johnny and Old Timer, Teresa came up behind them and injected the gas directly into the thug’s air hose. Within seconds, they were out cold, leaving Ox to fend for himself.
Ox didn’t mind the three-to-one odds, but even he needed to breathe, and Teresa’s knock out gas gun would work just as well on him as it did his minions. But Ox’s master had planned for every eventuality. Ox pulled the ray gun from his belt, but before he could fire it, Old Timer tossed a stone at him. The stone knocked the ray gun out of his hand.
Angry, Ox grabbed the thing closest to him and threw it back at them. The item, in this case, was the canister of Compound X. The unstable mineral exploded upon impact, bringing the whole ceiling down on their heads.
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Written by J M Emmons. The story and all characters are copyrighted by J M Emmons.
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