©2004, James C. Taylor
You have absolutely no rights to this material except reading it.

Given exceptional physical strength, vitality, and healing from an accident with a spacecraft, Deborah Kim Myers is the tae kwan doe tigress Karate Kitten!

Trapped on Earth when his spacecraft had an accident, intergalactic policeman John Carter uses the power of the lightning people to fight crime as Lightning Man!

Lightning Man and Karate Kitten in Capacity Crowd.

--§--

"What's wrong with me?" Cathy Brindamour held her hands to her side, out, and forward, her face creased in a plaintive frown. The guard in the prison's visitor room leaned forward for action, then stopped, remembering she was gesticulating for a camera.

On the television across from Cathy, James Finerty, Professor Infinity, was pacing back and forth. "There's nothing wrong with you. Your powers work fine." Professor Infinity was a man who had figured out how, using a strange form of energy he discovered, to give people super powers. Cathy was one of the first people to whom he did so. After several of them turned on him or were failures in the villainy department, he turned the power on himself, making him so powerful that once apprehended, he had to be kept in a special power-dampening chamber to prevent his escape.

"I'm not talking about my powers!"

Finerty frowned. "Well, if you're looking for a compliment, you're not my type. Your hair is too frizzy."

Cathy stamped her foot. "No! What's wrong with me as a criminal? I'm sitting here right in front of a cop and he hasn't made one move to try to apprehend me."

"That's probably because you're not wanted for anything."

"But I've committed crimes."

"Not, apparently, anything you can be arrested for." Finerty stopped pacing. "You aren't, by any chance, here to break me out, are you?"

"No. Can we quit talking about you and get back to me?"

Finerty opened his mouth, but was cut off by Cathy's sentence.

"I want to be taken seriously as a villainess!"

Finerty clasped his hands behind his back. "Well, first of all, get a new code name. Capacitor Cathy doesn't exactly strike fear into anyone's hearts."

"But it's my name."

"Also it would help to have a better arch enemy than Lightning Man. Even his own teammates don't take him seriously."

"But he can shoot electricity!"

"So can a stun gun, only people don't laugh at the stun gun."

"What else?"

"Commit crimes people care about. I don't know. Maybe if you tried to kill him instead of robbing parking meters."

Cathy snapped her fingers. "I could do that!"

"Rob parking meters?"

"Kill Lightning Man."

"Remember the cop."

"I don't have time to think about the cop. I have to go plan the murder of Lightning Man." Cathy bounded up and out of the visitor's room. Finerty just sighed.

--§--

Later, at a Midwest City home improvement trade show, a gang of crooks who wanted a cut of that day's receipts got a surprise instead!

"Here I come to save the day!"

"Mighty Mouse?" the thug at the door muttered.

"No," said the man raking cash into a bag. "It's Lightning Man!"

"And Karate Kitten!" Lightning Man yelled. "I hate when you guys do that."

"And I hate when you show up. Fill him with lead, boys!" The men who had been holding the security guards at bay with pistols aimed and fired at Lightning Man. However, he flew so swiftly it was hard for them to get a bead on him. Lightning Man fired a bolt at one of the guns, blasting it out of the crook's hand and turning it to slag. "Let me show you what's Watt!" he said, smiling.

Karate Kitten swatted the other one with a copper tube. "Way to get him to pipe down, K.K.!"

The door man rushed at her with his gun blazing. She ducked aside him, turned, and then kicked him in the back of the knee, bringing him crashing to the floor. "Good job, K.K.! Now he doesn't have a leg to stand on." Karate Kitten frowned at him. "Come on, it's funny!"

"Laugh at this, funny boy." The leader whipped out a long range squirt gun and fired it at Lightning Man. Karate Kitten lept the table between them and kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling into a tub. "How 'bout a bath, jerk face?"

Lightning Man applauded. "If one of you good citizens would be kind enough to call the police, we'll be on our way. To the Lightningmobile!"

Karate Kitten rolled her eyes and followed him out the front door to their compact hatchback. As they got in and buckled up, he turned to her. "Thank you for making a joke in there. I wish you would talk to me, though."

Karate Kitten adjusted the mirror in the hatchback and put the car into reverse.

"Come on. You can talk now. You have all your memories back.*" [*As seen in the epic 96 Tears, Ed.] He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a cellular phone. "You're not still mad at me are you? It's not my fault Fly Guy was chasing your parents. How could I know the Mysterian's space ship would crash into those cars? I said I'm sorry."

"It's not that." Karate Kitten eased the car into traffic. "It's this whole Batman and Robin thing. We don't need a Lightningmobile. You can fly for crying out loud."

"Yeah, but how can you be my sidekick if we don't travel together."

"I'm tired of keeping you alive. Now that I have my life back, there's really nothing in it for me to save your hide."

"Are you saying I can't fight crime by myself? I'm a cop on my homeworld, remember?"

"Uh huh. What's the crime rate there?"

Before Lightning Man could answer, the phone began to vibrate.

"It's the Lightning Signal."

"It's a cell phone."

"Killjoy." He answered it. "Lightning Man here." As Karate Kitten weaved through the city streets Lightning Man mumbled agreement and wrote down an address. "We have a case. We need to get to this address stat."

"What's the problem?"

"Capacitor Cathy has said for me to meet her there so she can kill me. I think it might be a trap."

"What was your first clue?"

--§--

Karate Kitten parked in front of the ramshackle repair garage on the outskirts of the city, right next to a car with it's hood up and battery cables snaking from underneath. As they got out of the car, the only other sound they could hear beside their breathing was a squirrel jumping from the power pole to the roof of the garage.

"Quiet." Lightning Man looked from right to left. "Too quiet."

"Is that all you did on your home planet was watch our old movies and television shows?"

"It was quality entertainment. If you had to watch an episode of 'Princess Klevtak Makes a Sandwich' you'd understand why I chose to amplify your transmissions and watch them instead."

As Karate Kitten and Lightning Man walked around the backside of the building, Capacitor Cathy stealthily crept around the other side to the front of the building and grabbed the jumper cables of the second car.

"What's 'Princess Klevtak Makes a Sandwich?'"

"It was the best original program on our planet. It consisted of Princess Klevtak making a sandwich. Not a different sandwich each episode, mind you. Her making the same sandwich the same way every single day. After the first year, I realized that nothing was going to change."

"How long before the rest of the planet caught on?"

"They were having the tenth anniversary special the day I left after the Mysterians."

Lightning Man and Karate Kitten rounded the corner from the back to the front in time to see Cathy complete the circuit.

"Ooh! What a rush. I should stay powered up long enough to get rid of Lightning Man."

Lightning Man stood arms akimbo. "No one gets rid of me that easily!"

Karate Kitten raised her eyebrows and tilted her head back. "And believe me, they've tried!"

"Leave, Karate Kitten! This is between Lightning Man and me!"

Karate Kitten sat down on the macadam. "Do I look like I'm springing in action to you?"

"Looks like I was right, K.K.; this is a trap."

"Nothing gets past that keen analytical mind."

Capacitor Cathy and Lightning Man stood staring at each other. Karate Kitten looked from one to the other and then back. "Attack him! Stop her! Do something!"

Lightning Man looked over to Karate Kitten, arms still akimbo. "She'll have to go first. Until she tries to kill me, she will have committed no crime." He turned back to face Cathy. "Unless that car doesn't belong to her."

"It's my car. But don't worry, you're about to charge me with assault with battery."

"Don't you mean assault and battery?" Lightning Man said as Cathy ripped the battery from her car and hurled it at Lightning Man. He flew quickly straight up, the battery whizzing below his feet. "I guess you meant what you said."

"Just like I mean to kill you!" Capacitor Cathy ran over to the power pole and pulled it out of the ground, snapping the high tension wires from the top.

"Cathy, I haven't seen you in weeks, maybe months. Why the sudden need to kill me?"

Cathy swung the large pole at the flying hero, missing him by a foot. "I'm tired of people treating me like a joke."

Lightning Man zigzagged in the air. "It could be worse."

"Yeah," Karate Kitten said, looking at her flying compatriot. "You could actually be a joke."

"You're not helping."

"You don't need my help. You're a highly trained law enforcement officer."

Lightning Man dodged another swipe of the power pole. "Fine. But don't come looking for me when the garbage disposal is plugged up."

"You two live together?"

"We have separate bedrooms!" Karate Kitten yelled.

"I don't care about your morals." Cathy dropped the wooden pole. "I'm going to get back at my enemy by striking through his loved ones."

"Oh, crud." Karate Kitten sprung to her feet rather quickly and easily, however, when charged up Cathy was even faster. And stronger. She grabbed the Tabby of Tae Kwan Do in a bear hug.

"Ow. You're hurting me."

"That's the general idea."

Lightning Man hovered over the two women.

"Come down now or I turn her ribs to sawdust!"

Lightning Man landed gently behind Capacitor Cathy. "I'm down. Now what?"

"Now, you die!" Capacitor Cathy lunged for Lightning Man as he turned to run and grabbed his shoulders. "Charge!" she yelled, as lightning arced from his body into her. "Oh, yeah, big boy. Give mama all you got."

"You can't handle all I've got" Lightning Man said with a tightened voice and contorted face.

Karate Kitten walked over to the discarded power pole and, straining, lifted it.

The arcing became blinding as she continued to absorb electricity. "You have more than I thought."

Lightning Man fell to his knees. "That's what all the ladies say."

Karate Kitten picked up the dangling power line with the wooden pole.

"Joking till the end. Well, too bad I'll get the last laugh."

"Time for your cable special!" Karate Kitten swung the downed power line into the already highly charged villainess. A cascade of sparks showered the area as Capacitor Cathy and Lightning Man were blown apart.

Karate Kitten ran over to her fallen comrade. "Are you all right?"

Lightning Man looked up at her through half open eyelids. "You did know I could have overloaded her by myself, right?"

"What's a partner for?"

"Partner?"

"If you hadn't tried to save my life, you'd probably be okay now. So if you still want a partner, I'm in."

"What I want right now is seventeen million aspirins. But I'll take you." Lightning Man staggered to his feet. "Use the cell phone to get Cathy an ambulance."

"You mean the Lightning Signal."

Lightning Man smiled weakly.

Then the fabric of space time was ripped asunder and a red headed woman stepped through the void. She was wearing metallic looking purple armor. "Lightning Man, Karate Kitten, we need your help or an entire dimension of reality will be destroyed!"

Join us next time as our dysfunctional duo try to stop The Disaster in Dimension Alpha!

Good stuff. I really enjoyed the sharp, witty dialogue.

Thanks. I am a dialogue freak. It's my favorite way to tell a story.

JCT, this was my first trip to the Writer's Block.
I'll be back!