The Merchant Mariner was the first Superbud to enter the basement after the robbery/kidnapping/whatever. He grumbled, pissed off for two reasons.
One, he’d barely gotten any time to swim, because some Atlantean prick had accosted him pretty early on, begging for the Mariner’s help in the latest Atlantean Civil War. As the Mariner tried explaining, he didn’t really give a shit. He was half-man half-Atlantean, but he didn’t like the way that Atlanteans always swam naked, so he had chosen to identify with the human half more strongly.
Still, the Atlantean had persisted, and Mariner had persistently told him off. By the time the Atlantean bugged off, Merchant Mariner figured he’d better get back to base. He didn’t have any real responsibilities to take care of, but he didn’t want to take time away from the next part of his routine: beer drinking.
This leads us to problem two, which is that someone kept drinking all the beer he left in the communal refrigerator.
He knew he’d left an extra 12-pack down here in the basement, for times of desperation like these. Still, it wasn’t cold how he liked it.
Even worse, he figured it was probably Billy Baker the sixteen year old wunderkind who was stealing the beer. Drunk supergenius? That’s just asking for trouble.
Eventually he stumbled across the beer he was looking for, under a fold-up table on the far wall, past the team’s many trophies.
He was so occupied with his own thoughts — and so happy to have beer, even if it was lukewarm — that he completely missed the fact that The Golden Man was missing.
MEGAPULP 