#brainbots

People of Metrocity,

One thing being a hero and being a parent have in common is that both will make you highly distrustful of prolonged silences.

Don't get me wrong. You want it to be quiet. Sometimes you wish everyone would just behave one time, for the love of science! But when it actually happens... You worry. You wonder.

Because you know that something is really, really wrong.

That one whiny wanna-be villain hasn't been a pain in your neck for a couple of weeks? They're probably planning something big. Better get that new heroic battle mech up and running before the... ah... excrement hits the circular mechanical cooling device.

When on the other hand, your little girl is quiet for more than fifteen minutes at a time... Well, apparently THAT means she's gluing rainbow-colored cardboard "unicorn horns" to your brainbots. And painting them. With turquoise glitter. That you very strongly suspect your henchfish probably provided even though he claims that nooo of course not, he would never!

(Minion, you're my best friend and I love you, but you're a terrible liar.)

It's a good thing I'm a patient man. And that both my favorite fish and my little princess have both perfected adorable big-eyed sad looks. I really couldn't be angry.

In other news, guess who surprised us all by actually managing to finally escape prison?!

Remember Time Warp. Yep. He's back. This time with a new persona. Which is possibly worse than the first. And that is saying so, SO much.

He's now calling himself The Orthodontist. I wasted three entire hours trying to figure out exactly what in the word-I-can't-say-anymore was supposed to be villainous about dental surgery... AAAAND then I found out he had trained pigeons.

Yes. PIGEONS.

Apparently, he'd gotten a little confused and had meant to call himself The Ornithologist.

Which is honestly no better.

It's a little like the anticlimatic (pun intended) names they insist on giving hurricanes. (Note to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: have you ever considered naming major storms things like Attilla, Draco, or Baba Yaga? It might encourage people to obey evacuation orders more readily. Because, seriously, nobody feels an urge to run from something named Bill or Edna.)

But that's not the point. The point is that The Orthodontist actually meant to call himself The Ornithologist. On purpose. And somehow failed. Really! I happen to know very well there are dictionaries in the prison library! It never occurred to you to look it up?! Not that it would have mattered because your blasted name is the blasted ORNITHOLOGIST!!!

I mean, at least dentists have drills! That's something!

Ornithologists? They've got birds. That's it. Birds. In this case, not even scary birds. I mean, come on! You couldn't build some giant robot raptors or smuggle in some particularly angry Cassowaries like a NORMAL PERSON? You had to go with Columba livia?! Literally the most boring and commonplace avians in the country?!

Which were NOT well-trained, by the way. The Ornithologist Orthodontist, dressed in footie pajamas (again) loudly proclaimed on Zoom (again) that he planned to have his "army of feathered friends" carry off the statue of Metrocity's first mayor, Robert Lars Dziedzic, which was (somehow?!) going to make him the new ruler of the city. (I'm still trying to untangle the logic in that one.) What actually happened was that Feather-Brained Federation did... Ah... Exactly what pigeons do to old statues. Only more. Because there were over four-thousand of them.

Let that mental image sink in for a while.

The invisible car was not so invisible. The street was a disaster. And Bird-Brain the Dental Man? He was running and slipping all over the sidewalk in his jam-jams shrieking "EEEEWWWW!" at the top of his lungs like a little girl.

But wait! It gets better!

Remember what I said about the excrement hitting the circular mechanical cooling device?

Yeah. There's that big turbine outside the City Hall. And when the pigeons decided it was time for bombs away, things happened. Very, very bad things.

Thank heavens for the reflective energy forcefield generated by my spikes! But still! That was the most humiliating spectacle I've ever had to endure! I mean, I actually had to fight this guy! Talk about a waste of an evil laugh!

So, yeah. If you saw a bunch of sparkly brainbot unicorns frantically scrubbing Founders Square downtown today... Just know that that has been my week. I hope yours was less chaotic.