Australian desert has been known to cause abnormalities in the brain. So I avoid those places."
"Interesting. Have you ever been to Antarctica?"
"A few times. The position of the stars annoyingly didn't match human memory. For unexplained reason I was nearly killed. I will never return."
"What about the River of Five Colors?"
"Once. I accidentally went in March, so there were no colors. You have to go in October, you know."
"How about--"
"Forget that for now," interjected Leafhead, pressing a button on his lapel that caused a Teleportal to be conjured across the room. It wasn't like a vortex-portal from a movie (a disturbingly unstable doorway made of streaked blue lights and hurricane-force winds that force characters to shout at each other while tea-cups shatter and picture-frames fly off the wall like frisbees) but was a portal of controlled finesse... like a mellow wall of watery glass on Star Trek. I had no reservations about stepping into the unknown.
"You will appear behind a dumpster in an alley," assured Leafhead as I walked across the room. "Remember you're 89 years old and your name is Rivernik T. Bongotrip."
"Haha, what?" I asked, and then stepped through the portal before he replied. I quickly forgot the name he'd assigned me.
As planned I appeared behind a dumpster in rat-central. The sensation of the portal was practically non-existent, as if merely walking through a doorway into the next room of a house. Not teleporting exactly... there was no disassembling/reassembling of the bodily cells. The link between the starting point and the destination is created by the temporary negation of any in-between land, space or water. But even this doesn't really happen either, for the whole thing is actually a Hypnosis-Computer that merely tricks the brain into believing that any land, space or water between where you are and where you want to be has vanished, and so for this time such a strong placebo-effect is placed over the mind that one realizes one can in fact step over this gap instantaneously in reality, if you will, and does.
With my sword-cane I hobbled out of downtown's armpit towards the golden lobby of The Palace.
The Palace was one of those epic single-screen movie-houses that are often seen being tragically boarded up in smallish cities at alarming rates. It was like walking into a kingdom of infinite imagination.
Leafhead's arch nemesis was acting as the first usher.
"Your name?" he uttered as I reached the velvet rope.
"My name?... That would be Dr. Christopheros Agapetus."
"Doctor?" asked Scar-face. "Of what?"
"Jellyfish."
"You're a doctor of Jellyfish?"
"That's right. I devote my life to the study of jellyfish... and the radical, controversial, discredited yet entirely plausible theory that certain jellyfish membranes contain a hidden chemical capable of slowing down the human aging process to what could only be described as a grinding halt."
"Interesting," said Scar-face.
Looking back, it was stupid of me to say something that strange, for it obviously tipped him off as to the fact that I was working with Dr. Leafhead. Not only strange, it was also the exact sort of dangerous power that Scar-face's people were hoping to attain.
"For important doctors, we have important seats," explained Scar-face as he handed me a ticket. "In the front row."
"I don't like the front row."
"Nonsense. It's great for the neck. Take the ticket."
I wanted the conversation to end so I took the ticket. Scar-face unclasped the velvet rope and I stepped into the heart of the theater.
"Can we get you any popcorn?" he asked.
"No," I answered. "Don't care much for popcorn. I once had an bad experience when I decided to see if I could get popcorn to pop while inside my stomach by swallowing a bunch of unpopped kernels and then rapidly drinking a cup of scalding water. An X-Ray later revealed my stomach lining to look like Swiss cheese and dead flowers."
I could hear my random rambling but couldn't seem to do anything about it. I realized my costumed transformation into Christopheros Agapetus (or Rivernik T. Bongotrip) was for whatever reason causing me to speak and act exactly like Dr. Leafhead. It was the worst possible thing for staying under the radar.
"Only a few minutes until starting time," said Scar-face ominously, ignoring the insane popcorn comment.
I don't know what I expected when I walked into the final doors, maybe a few scattered loners who were actually undercover agents waiting around for Leafhead's spy, but I found myself in the middle of a big-scale movie premiere. At this point nearly every seat was filled with excited chatters munching down on junk-food and sugary-drinks. Most of them were in costumes and carried props, as if the film had already developed a cult following before it had even been released. Then I remembered Leafhead claimed the story of Red Cape Man had been around for awhile as different mediums. The whole scene was that of a loud, fun party. I quickly sat down in the first empty seat.
"Great costume!" shouted the stranger beside me, who was dressed as Red Cape Man.
"Huh?" I asked.
"Great costume!" he repeated. "You're dressed as Spacefreak Ferngrove, aren't you?"
"Who?"
"You know, Ferngrove... Dr. Greenskull's mentor? You look just like him."
"This is just how I normally look."
"If you aren't a liar, that's an impossibly bizarre coincidence," stated the fan. "You've even got Ferngrove's trademark white-cane."
"You know a lot about this stuff, eh?"
"I grew up with Red Cape Man!"
"How'd you get into it?"
"My grandparents introduced me to it when I was a kid. They were big fans of the original radio series. I then became obsessed with the comic-book version."
"Your grandparents? How far back does this thing date?" I asked.
"The first episode of the radio drama aired in the early 40s."
"That's weird."
"Why is that weird?"
"I'm not sure," I said.
"Then the comics started up in the mid-70s," continued the fan. "We've been waiting decades for the movie to finally get made."
"Hmm."
"You really don't know anything about the RCM Universe?" asked the baffled fan.
"Not really," I replied.
"Did a friend loan you the costume?"
"No, I told you this is how I normally look."
"I will admit that your makeup is indistinguishable from reality," conceded the fan. "So what'd you, just like, walk in randomly off the street or something?"
"Pretty much."
"I can't believe you were able to get a ticket. I pre-ordered mine online like 8 months ago. I even had some friends who camped outside for 3 nights in a particularly dangerous neighbourhood just in hopes of maybe getting to stand in the lobby and listen to the muffled audio through the wall."
"Just lucky, I guess."
"You must be rich."
Suddenly I noticed Scar-face walking down the aisle to the front of the crowd.
"Welcome to the world premiere of Red Cape Man!" he shouted, with no microphone. The crowd went insane with cheering and clapping.
"Congratulations on being the first group ever to see the long-awaited movie adaptation of your favourite fantasy franchise!"
More cheering and clapping.
"Before we start the movie I just wanted to give our thanks to The Palace theater and staff. As well as to ask you to help support the cause to save this historic building from demolition next year. With no further delay... I give you Red Cape Man!"
A door closed. A curtain rose. Lights slowly turned off. The movie had started.
The funny thing about the movie was that it was pretty good. From the objective movie-goers point-of-view it was a perfectly entertaining thrill-ride. From Leafhead's point-of-view I understood the frustration about having autobiographical stories of your li
fe stolen and placed in the context of a big-budget popcorn movie in which you're portrayed as an evil villain... all without ever seeing a penny of due royalties.
It seemed as if the agents had clues about Leafhead's inventions but were still unclear about what exactly he was up to most of the time. I got the impression that certain details hadn't been purposefully changed but were instead a guess as to what they thought was actually going on at the house. In the movie Leafhead frequently looked through a telescope that had clearly been inspired by images of the Universe-Interpreter, only in the movie it enabled one to see into the future... a power I was sure had nothing to do with the real machine. Instead of a portal to Mars there was a spaceship that Greenskull intended on taking to Saturn (this was being saved for the sequel) in order to steal a Fountain of Youth. Dr. Greenskull also had at his disposal entire squadrons of robot slaves that I had yet to lay eyes on, minus the wristwatches and the harmless robot arms.
Other details were blatantly altered for the purpose of vilifying Leafhead. His lair was not a country mansion with a thriving terrarium but rather a dank cavern system occupied by any number of ghouls, goblins, trolls, zombies, swamp-creatures and basically every other type of movie monster you could think of thrown together in one nutty location. Near the end of the film Red Cape Man and the Purple Robed Freak find themselves lost in the labyrinthine horror-house, with only minutes to locate a bomb-timer set to unleash a cloud of lobotomizing chemicals over a prominent Metropolis. One can be sure they save the city and escape to fight another day, but I'd hate to spoil the exact details of how they manage to do such a thing... so that is