Somewhere remote. Not so quiet.

The Brain screamed. It was a buzzsaw sound, a feedback loop of electronic distortion that echoed and re-echoed through the mostly empty base.

“What? What is it?” Mallah yelped, swinging down from a gantry, his red beret flying from his head, such was his hurry. The gorilla landed heavily, the bandolier around his chest clinking loudly. He scrambled towards his master-his lover-his friend.

“I don’t-I can’t-I-IIIIIII-” the Brain shuddered in his cannister, electricity crawling across his dome. Mallah made to scoop him up, but a fat spark of energy hurled him back, his hands smoking.

Mallah snarled and awkwardly got to his feet. He looked at his hands, lips curling. “You burned me!” he said.

“I-I-” the Brain tumbled sideways, rolling across the floor. Choking noises emenated from the voice box on the front of the case. Impossible noises, really, given that the Brain lacked either lungs or an esophagus.

Mallah sprang towards his companion, eyes wide in sudden terror. “No. No, no, no.” The gorilla set the cannister upright and tore open the casing, revealing innards of wires and tubes. From a pouch on the bandolier on his chest, he plucked an old fashioned syringe. Inside was a glowing liquid…a dollop of the fiery juices of one of the aptly named Lazarus Pits. While it lacked the complete revivification properties of its main mass, the precious few ounces in the syringe had stabilizing effect on one in the Brain’s condition.

Mallah jabbed the syringe into a carefully selected tube, injected the softly glowing liquid into the Brain’s re-feed systems. Impossibly, the brain in its dome case seemed to writhe, and a gabble of sound burst from the voice box. Then, nothing.

“Brain?”

“I-I am fine. Now. Thanks to you.”

Mallah shook his head. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. But I think I was…drowning?”

Issue # 14

'WATER PRESSURE!' (Bungle in the Jungle, Part Two)

Bolivia. HIVE-B06. What’s left of it.

Five minutes previous, three former members of the Society of Sin had been enjoying the peace and quiet of continued survival. Three minutes after that, the peace and quiet had been rudely, abruptly shattered by a group of color-coded intruders.

The intruders were collectively known as the Masters of Disaster. They lived up to their name.

Jean-Louis Droo, the Houngan, reached blindly for the doll he’d been working on when the wave of filthy jungle water had slammed into him. Finding it, he yanked it out of the water and stuffed it safely into a pouch on his belt. Then, he scrambled to his feet and ran.

He felt no shame. He was a long distance combatant, after all. He needed the high ground. A safe place to ply his magic.

Unfortunately, the woman named New Wave wasn’t in the mood to let him reach either. Boiling water spouts rose up around Houngan, circling him like monstrous serpents. A face appeared in one, distorted, but recognizably feminine.

“Going somewhere, pal?” New Wave gurgled.

“Anywhere but here,” Droo said. He looked around. Nowhere to go. “Why are you doings this? We have no quarrel with you?” Droo already knew the answer, but he needed time.

“Best reason going. Bucks,” New Wave said. “Surf’s up!” The columns of water tilted abruptly and Droo found himself flying backwards, propelled by the blow.

Nearby, the glob-like entity known as Plasmus waded through the ankle deep water on the gantry he’d been standing on with Droo when the Masters had attacked, his formless face twisting into a leer.

“You think to defy Plasmus?” he hissed, glaring up at the woman clad in red and yellow who stalked towards him, the water turning to steam around her.

“Oh yeah,” Heatstroke said, flexing her hands. “We’re getting good money to barbeque you, you walking sack of-”

“Nein!” Plasmus shrieked, charging forward. He raised his hands, reaching for her. Heatstroke gestured. Her eyes widened as Plasmus continued to move forward.

“Oh shi-” She looked down. “Darryl! My heat powers aren’t working on him!”

“Way ahead of you, baby!” the blue and white clad Coldsnap said from below. Rising on a suddenly formed column of ice, made up of the water that New Wave had flooded the base with, he thrust his arms forward, towards Plasmus’ back. A wave of pure cold, ice crystals glittering in the flow, crested over Plasmus and the protoplasmic criminal screamed in fury as he froze only inches from Heatstroke, his sizzling fingers spread.

If her fellow Society-member’s distress registered with her at all, the green and black clad Phobia gave little sign as she fairly danced towards the last member of the Masters, the similarly attired Shakedown. Big and balding, Shakedown raised a hand and the floor beneath her feet began to tremble.

“I-I-I’m s-sorry about t-this,” Shakedown said. Phobia laughed.

“I’m not,” she hissed. “You have such delicious fears…has anyone ever told you that?”

“I-I-” Shakedown shuddered as something uncoiled in his head. His breath came in short gasps and he staggered. His powers went wild as his concentration slipped. Jagged cracks appeared in the floors and wall as his psyche was besieged by a host of gloating childhood terrors and adult inadequacies. He screamed and fell to his knees, the floor buckling around him.

Phobia laughed and spun around him, her cape snapping with lively energy. “Cry for me, little boy!” she said, in a sing-song tone. “Cry for me little piggie! Cry-”

A fist composed of water smashed across the back of Phobia’s skull, sending her sliding, facedown, across the floor.

“Get ahold of yourself, idiot,” New Wave snarled. “It’s not like you that much of a brain to worry about!”

Shakedown didn’t reply, instead clambering to his feet, his face pale. He saw Phobia’s limp form and stalked towards her, his face darkening.

A few feet away, Houngan pulled himself to his feet. He was having trouble breathing and he wondered, idly, whether anything was broken. He looked around. Phobia and Plasmus were providing adequate distractions. If he could gain the advantage, just for the moment, he could effect an escape. The others were so much baggage anyway. Not worth his trouble.

Quickly, he pulled another doll from his costume. Unlike the other, this one only had a limited range. It was his most basic tool. But it would do. Popping its chest cavity open, he dunked it in the water, collecting a palmful. Whispering a brief prayer to the Loa, he activated it. He had never tried anything like this before.

New Wave was already sliding towards him when he activated the doll with a jab from his stylus. “Hiding, fancy man? It won’t save you-”

She stopped. Screamed. Water exploded from every pipe, every corner. Houngan only had a moment to ponder whether that had been the best course of action when the base abruptly filled with water and then he was caught, whirling, in the maelstrom.

Nearby.

“Anybody hear that?” Plunder said, ducking beneath a low hanging tree limb. He cradled his rifle like a child, his featureless, gray mask revealing nothing.

“Hear what?” Bane said. He yanked a vine out of his path. It snapped back, narrowly missing Plunder.

“Water,” Knockout said, sniffing the air. “Lots of it.” She ran a hand through her crimson tresses and grinned. “Sounds like a fight as well.”

“Great. More idiots horning in on my bounty,” Plunder said.

“Exactly,” Bane said. “Let’s go.”

They moved quickly, but carefully. Plunder lagged behind, adjusting his rifle. Knockout glanced back at him.

“Keep up, or we’ll get all the fun,” she said. Plunder shrugged.

“Ain’t fun to me, babe. It’s a job.”

“Quiet, both of you.” Bane held up a hand.

The trees in front of them were flattened abruptly as a tidal wave of dirty water crashed towards them. Before they could react, the water swept them up and drove them back. Bane grunted as his back struck a tree and fell forward. He had the briefest sensation of drowning, before the water dispersed and he collapsed onto his hands and knees. He looked up, his mask dripping. No sign of his companions-

Something rose up over him. Bane hurled himself aside, rolling across the marshy ground. A hissing purple fist struck the tree behind him and reduced it to slag.

“Murderers,” Plasmus snarled.

“Not this time,” Bane said, rising to his feet, hands out. “We’ve come to-”

“Kill us!” Plasmus said, charging forward. His fingers cut the air where Bane’s head had been. “I should have burnt that treacherous Brain to a cinder when I had the chance!”

Bane avoided another blow, his mind working furiously. Plasmus had the ability to burn the flesh off his opponent with a single touch, and wasn’t biologically human in any real way. Which meant, yearn though he did, he could not simply pummel the beast into some semblence of sanity.

No. He had to be smarter than that. His eyes locked on something beyond the raving creature. Plunder’s rifle.

Bane dove between Plasmus’ legs, fingers reaching. He snatched up the weapon and sprang to his feet, spinning around, yanking on the trigger. A burst of explosive energy struck Plasmus in the chest, and he exploded. Bane lowered the rifle.

“Ah.”

“Sweet, ain’t it?” Plunder coughed. Bane looked up. The bounty hunter hung upside down from the tree, his leg tangled in several thick vines. He clutched a pistol in his hand. “I was going to help.”

“Really?”

“No.” Plunder twisted and fired. The vine snapped and he tumbled to the ground, landing with a grace that Bane wouldn’t ordinarily have expected. “Figured if you got a bad case of the deads, I could collect that bounty.”

“Quite a coincidence,” Heatstroke said, staggering out of the brush, her costume torn and wet. “Me and Darryl were just talking about that. Weren’t we, honey bunny?”

“Yeah,” Coldsnap said, lunging out from behind Bane, ice forming between his hands. A ball of pure cold slammed into Bane’s head, knocking him back a step. “And we don’t like to share!”

“Neither do I!”

Coldsnap turned, but too slow. An uprooted tree swung and caught him in the chest. Bones snapped on impact and the blue clad villain flew backwards, limp and loose. Knockout laughed and tossed the tree aside.

“Ha! That was fun!”

“Darryl!” Heatstroke shrieked. Flames engulfed Knockout instantly. Plunder spun and fired. The energy bolt creased the pyrokinetic’s skull and she dropped like a rock.

“Anybody know who they are?” he said, turning back to Bane and Knockout. Knockout brushed ash from her arms and shook her head.

“More jackals. Just like you.”

“Thank you for that ringing endorsement.”

“Both of you be silent,” Bane said, tossing the rifle back to Plunder. “We must find the others.”

“Then look no further,” something gurgled. The trio turned. Something slopped towards them, its immense, coiling shadow spreading ahead of it.

New Wave grinned down at them, her features stretched across a twelve foot blob of water. She looked like nothing so much as an ambulatory wave. In one oversized paw, the limp forms of Houngan and Phobia floated.

“Late to the party, chumps. Especially if you wanted a piece of this action.” Her eyes fixed on Plasmus’ slowly recongealing shape. “Hand him over, and we’ll call it clean.”

“Hell to that,” Plunder said, swinging his rifle up. His first shot blew a chunk of liquid out of New Wave’s shoulder. She snarled like a wave crashing on the shore, and slammed her empty fist down, narrowly missing them. Plunder scrambled towards the trees, firing as he ran. Knockout got to her feet and looked at Bane.

“Ideas?”

“Destroy her concentration. Get the sinners while she’s distracted.” Bane said. He dug his fingers into the spongy ground and wrenched loose a section of sod. With a grunt, he hurled it at New wave. It slammed through her midsection and she turned. Knockout bunched her legs and leapt with all of the strength she could muster, her amazonian form becoming a bullet of meat. Arms spread, she struck the liquid limb imprisoning Houngan and Phobia and crashed through, carrying them both with her to the ground below.

New Wave screamed and turned, but a blast of energy took her head off and caused her form to explode into fat drops of water. Bane looked up. Plunder, in the branches of a tree, waved a hand.

“Had to get some distance.”

“I thought as much.” Bane turned towards the spot where New Wave had fallen. Her shape was rapidly coming back together, even as Bane squatted beside her. She snarled at him wordlessly. Bane shrugged and snapped out a fist, catching her across her newly solid jaw. She toppled backwards and lay still.

Standing, Bane glanced towards Knockout. “How are they?”

“Alive,” Knockout said, slapping Phobia lightly. “Awaken, pup.”

Phobia’s eyes snapped open. Knockout tumbled back, clutching at her temples. “Ahgyk!”

“Plunder!” Bane snapped, pointing. As Phobia climbed to her feet, Plunder fired, grazing her temple, even as he had done to Heatstroke minutes earlier. Phobia flopped back. Knockout, growling, raised a fist. Bane grabbed her wrist, stopping the blow in midswing.

“We need her alive.”

“She put me back in the firepits!” Knockout hissed, wrenching her hand free. She spun on Bane. “She made me see-”

“Nothing of any importance,” Bane said, softly. Knockout opened her mouth. Closed it. She looked away. Bane let his hands fall. He turned to Houngan, who was groggily trying to get to his feet. Bane helped him up.

“You are Jean-Louis Droo?”

“I-who?” Houngan shook his head, coughing. “You?”

“Me. Us.” Bane nodded at the others. “We came to help.”

“Who? Us?”

“We are being paid quite handsomely,” Bane said. Houngan looked at him. Then at the unconscious forms of New Wave and Heatstroke.

“To help us?”

In reply, Bane fished the hologram sphere he had been sent by Mockingbird out of his belt and activated it. Houngan’s eyes widened…

An hour later.

Shakedown crouched beside New Wave and shook her shoulder urgently. “N-New W-Wave? W-w-wake up.”

Her eyes shot open and she slapped his hand away. “Get away from me!”

Shakedown stood and backed away as she rose to her feet. “Where are the others?”

“I found Darryl a couple of hundred feet away. He’s b-b-busted up pretty b-bad-”

“Heatstroke?”

“Right here, oh glorious leader,” Heatstroke groaned, sitting against a fallen tree. Blood trickled down her head. She touched her skull and looked at her fingers. “I think I’ve got a concussion-”

“Cry me a river,” New Wave said. “We’ve got to find them.”

“What about Darryl?” Heatstroke said. New Wave grunted.

“Fine. We’ll get him squared away first. Then we’ll find them.” She slammed her fist into her palm. “And we’ll finish this.”

“B-b-but what about the others?” Shakedown said. “W-we’re not the only ones after t-this b-bounty…”

New Wave grinned. “That just makes our job easier.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Next issue: BUNGLE IN THE JUNGLE continues, as a veritable tsunami of super-villains falls on the Secret Six! Luckily, the Society of Sin has an ace in the hole-what is, THE DOOM-DACTYL?