There were three of them, each odd in their own way.
First there was Doctor Madd, the German student with the metal hand. He wasn’t actually a doctor — he said his parents had named him Doctor, in the hopes that it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It hadn’t; he majored in philosophy.
Then there was Cat. She was half-cat, half-woman. Introduced herself to Anne by saying, “Everybody calls me Pussy Galore,” but that was a lie. Nobody called her Pussy Galore, because that would just be an embarrassing thing to call somebody. Still, you’ve got to give her credit to sticking to her dream, which really was just for someone to call her Pussy Galore.
After that came Emma, a space pirate who really couldn’t have given less of a shit. She’d been born on a spaceship to a family that fought aliens, she’d grown up on that spaceship, and it was only in the past couple years that she’d had to come down to Earth to get an education.
And you want to know something? This Earth — even this Earth that was filled with so many superpowered beings — paled in comparison to space pirates.
Because space pirates.
She was drinking from a bottle of rum even though it was still mid-afternoon. If she drank enough, she could look at someone and believe that they might be a space alien.
Once the introductions were over, Anne asked, “What do you guys want with me?”
“Ve vere hoping you might join our team,” Doctor Madd said.
(I know Doctor Madd’s accent is super racist against German people. I think I’m going somewhere with it. There’s gonna be a joke, a twist, maybe even something meaningful? Let’s see.)
Anne nodded her head, thinking about it. There were advantages and disadvantages to any team membership, and she’d have to weigh them. First, though, she had to ask:
“You guys are villains, right?”
MEGAPULP 