Jam vs. Peanut Butter

~RMS WILL OF IRON, G.S.O HIGH-SECURITY PRISON, ATLANTIC OCEAN~

Of all the places to keep supervillains, the RMS Will of Iron had two major advantages over the others.

Firstly, it was floating in the middle of the ocean. Any supervillain worth their salt knew that a prison in the middle of the ocean wasn't worth breaking out of. Guard dogs they could handle, electric fences and shield domes were easy enough, but the fickle mistress that was the sea was more daunting than a thousand dogs or twenty miles of fencing. What was the point of trying to escape if, almost immediately afterwards, you had to deal with sharks, currents and storms that made all the fanciest robot guards look pleasant by comparison? On the whole, anyone who ended up in here preferred constant boredom to the threat of drowning.

Secondly, it had the one thing no other major supervillain prison had tried - the counseling and rehabilitation center. The Global Superhero Operation had argued that, on the off-chance a villain was truly repentant of their crimes, then they should be given the opportunity to reinstate themselves as functioning members of society. This viewpoint was met with a lot of derision from the public at first, especially considering the damage supervillains did to major cities every year, but when Emperor Malady was released into the public and ended up with a well-paid financing job, you had to admire the results.

And it had seemed to be working for the man known as Doctor Vortex, too. He had come to the Will of Iron a gibbering wreck, babbling nonsense about his destroyed base and condiments that none could make sense of. But, piece by piece, he'd slowly been transitioning back into Damien Harolds, the mild-mannered - if somewhat jumpy - mathematician and science major from Manhattan. As long as you didn't put any spreadables near him, he was an affable chap who was easy to get along with, and the wardens had high hopes for his eventual release.

The fateful day started off like any other day. Damien had got up, got showered and dressed - all in a very punctual fashion, as was his way. He had walked into the communal kitchen area, ready to prepare himself a healthy breakfast of bran flakes and orange juice. He had just turned the television on - some asinine fashion show was on, but he couldn't care less - and had just poured himself out a rather measured dose of the cereal. So far, so good.

And then he'd turned to get the milk and saw a blue-coloured face upon the screen.

"That's right, y'all! My Super Swimwear Special begins this May, showing off all the hottest and skimpiest Fornax summer fashions live from the glitz and glamour of fa-bu-lous Las Vegas! So if you wanna get an eyeful of yours truly - and I know you do~ - hit up our website and buy yourself a ticket to this once-in-a-lifetime fashion opportunity! Featuring live music by Ironheade, Patrick O'Batahan and so much more, as well as free pizza to our first 5'000 lucky guests! This is Lisa, leaving you with..."

GLORP.

"CHIMICHANGAS!"

Three hours later, and the border patrol guards got the shock of their lives as a giant robot squid suddenly punched it's way out of the complex, dived beneath the ocean and vanished. Just how long it had been built in secret, or where the materials came from, none could say or even venture to guess. And the man on security that day, a notorious slacker and donut addict, was fired for not noticing the blaring alarms or the massive hole in the cellar wall where the machine had broken out as it first roared into action.

But the point was, Doctor Vortex had relapsed. And, more pressingly, escaped.

-------

~ZOOFIGHTS CITY BEACHES~

Three weeks later...

"Naw, that's totally fine, sweet-cheeks! Alright, pencil it in! See ya~!"

With a beep, Lisa hung up her phone, grinning to herself. So far, this day was turning out amazing. All of the preparations for her big Vegas show were going swimmingly well - the venue was booked, the tickets were all printed and the commercials were plastered over as many channels the company could afford to book. And with the early start in January, getting the actual venue ready, catwalk and all, in time would be a snap. All she had to do was relax for a while, and the beach at Zoofights City was the perfect place to do it.

With a contented sigh, the jam girl leaned back against her towel, squishing slightly as she did so, and let the sun do it's work. She could hardly wait for May to come around, for the people to come flocking in droves like they were to this beach right now, and crowd around the displays for her outfits. Then the hour would come in which the lights would dim, the music would pump through the speakers and she would strut down the isle in naught but two pieces of alien fabric held together by lifting a middle finger to physics. Oh, the photos, the cheering, the fainting...

Now, that was publicity!

Idly, Lisa snaked out a tendril towards the cold drink she'd set aside on the sand and dipped it in.

Of course, it wouldn't be just about the brazen skimpiness. Recently, the industry was trying to target a lot of plus-sized models with summer options, and who was Lisa to ignore the opportunity to spread a little goodwill now and again? A selection of fashions tailored towards the larger woman was included in the lineup, and with her ability to change shape the jam girl could easily fill them in. That ought to score some points with the PR staff and the newspapers, easy as pie!

But for now, it was time to relax. To take in the sun, to slurp up a drink, to hear the screams of panic-

...wait.

Lisa sat up, brow wrinkled in confusion as she scanned the horizon. All around her, people were running up the beach, shrieking with terror as they abandoned their towels and ice cream and what have you in their mad bid to escape. The jam girl, however, was taking a much bigger interest in the giant robotic squid hauling itself out of the water, metallic sides shimmering as it stepped up from the surf towards the land. It looked like something only a mad scientist would build in his spare time, or something from a primary school arts and crafts table, complete with weird fake pearls on the side, and why did that weird logo on the side look so familiar...?

Curious, the blue bombshell sat up from her towel and slithered closer to have a look. Somehow, the thing seemed to notice her, and stopped it's advance up the beach as she approached, the metallic eyes leering down unblinkingly at her from up on high. As she stared back, unsure of what to do or say next, something seemed to detach from the contraption and hover towards her in the manner of a dragonfly, zipping this way and that in unrelated directions as it came on at her.

It wasn't long before the craft, shaped like a futuristic chair merged with a UFO, became more distinct. And it didn't take much longer for the shock-haired, grinning scientist to become distinct amongst all the bleeping lights and weird gizmos.

"Well, well, well," chuckled Doctor Vortex, peering down from his patented hover-chair. "So this is what my creation has been up to all this time!" Lisa blinked at that remark, confusion crossing her face.

"...do I know you?" she tried.

"Don't play coy!" snapped the white-coated madman. "How can you forget the day I made you?! Or the day after that, where you suddenly became sentient and destroyed my precious laboratory?!"

The phenomenon of the Life Review, embodied in the expression of "one's life flashing before one's eyes" is one rather abused by modern media nowadays. Yet the expression was the best one to describe the way Lisa's nanites suddenly kicked into gear, reviewing all the memories stored in their collective databanks in mere seconds. A .avi file played out before her eyes - of staring crossly at a poster somewhere, of busting down a door, of looming over a scrawny, gibbering wreck of a man with a giant cartoon hammer in one hand...

"...you're Doctor Vortex?!"

"That's 'The Esteemed Doctor Vortex' to-" began the supervillain. But he never got to finish, for he was interrupted by a gout of laughter from the jam girl, who nearly fell over and splatted on the sand in her hysterics. Rather than try to interrupt - a futile gesture, he correctly guessed - the mad doctor merely leaned back, steepling his finger impatiently as he waited for Lisa to stop jiggling with laughter.

"Are you done?" he asked, after about two minutes had passed.

"Yeah," gasped Lisa, rising back to her feet.

"Good." The maniacal grin had returned as Vortex regained his confidence and his train of thought. "Because I'm not. I haven't forgotten what you did to me, you freak - and I'm going to pay you back for it ten times over!"

"Yeah, right," taunted Lisa, sticking her tongue out. "Last time I checked, when I blew up your lab that included all of your equipment and your computers with it! Dunno where you got the giant squid, though, but as far as I know you ain't got shit anymore - money, plans or weapons. So go ahead," she added, GLORP-ing into the shape of Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact. "Make my day."

Vortex let off a mad cackle at that. "Oh, that's where your wrong! I did have something - my Robo-Squid! All of my data was backed up onto it as my lab went down, whilst it remained safe in it's underground lair! And a little salvaging work was all it took to provide the materials I needed - the materials for my revenge against you!"

"Oh?" Lisa folded her arms. "And what have you cooked up this time, screwball?"

"THIS!" With a dramatic whap, the marauding madman slammed one fist upon a button on his control console, opening up a hatch at the bottom of the hover-chair. As Lisa watched, something brown and semi-liquid dropped out of the hatch, splatted thickly onto the sand in front of her, and lay there quivering. It had an odd, shiny look about it, as if had been coated in plastic laminate or some other similar material.

There was a long, awkward pause.

"Um," muttered Lisa, trying not to make the obvious joke.

"Wait for it," was all Doctor Vortex said, like a child waiting for a firework to go off.

And then a brownish tentacle suddenly lashed out from the wobbling lump, aimed right at Lisa's head. The jam girl quickly bent over backwards, folding almost in half as the appendage soared past her face and smacked off a lamp-post just behind her, the impact ringing in the baking air. And as the shape-shifter quickly slithered backwards and away as the blob retracted the now-useless limb and twisted towards her, her nose registered the faint yet familiar whiff of...

"Peanut butter?!"

Vortex gave a laugh, clapping his hands in childish delight. "It's genius!" he cried, "pure genius! And to think, all I had to do was tweak a few proteins here and there in the original blueprints! He is your twin, in all but flavour and consistency!"

"He looks nothing like me!" snapped Lisa. But from the corner of her eye, she could see the goopy, nutty mass slowly crawling towards her, homing in on her like a dog after a baked ham.

"And even better," crowed the madman. "His nanobots are programmed to disable yours - by pulling them apart and cutting off their electrical network! So your little electric touch trick isn't going to work on him at all! All he has to do is wrap himself around you, and when he's done he's going to deliver you right into my hands, cleared of all that idiotic personality you got somehow!"

Had Lisa the time, she would have come up with a particularly scathing retort on how the scientific sicko didn't seem to have much of a personality himself. But when you're trying to dodge lashing tendrils being aimed your way by a giant brown blob, which is also rapidly growing spidery legs to chase after you, that's a tricky proposition. In the end, for all of the pop culture references she could have made, Lisa decided there was only one response to the manic cackling of the weirdo floating above her and reveling in her predicament.

And that was turn tail, morph into a snake and slither away at top speed.

"AFTER HER!" bellowed Doctor Vortex to the Peanut Butter. The blob responded by pulling back it's tendrils, thickening its new legs and scuttling after the blueberry babe.

The chase was on.

-------

It amazed Lisa just how little the people of Zoofights City were fazed by strange things now. Anything that would have made people anywhere else freak out or take photos were simply shrugged off nowadays, even though things had died down a little recently after the Kobbers departed for other places. So nobody really batted an eyelid at the sight of a giant snake made of jam in a two-piece sliding down the road as fast as it could. After all, nothing really compared to a giant shadow-powered mecha trying to obliterate all of reality a good four years back.

The giant spider made of peanut butter was a good one, though. It made people stop to watch what happened.

And what happened was this: Lisa turned her head, saw that the brown blob was now skittering after her, and swore under her breath. This was obviously going to be one of those days, wasn't it? Unless she found a way to shake this thing off, she wasn't going to be able to present anything on the big day, let alone in the latest nanowear from Betelgeuse IV!

A thought occured to her at that moment - didn't that wacko Vortex say that this thing was a re-do of her? Perhaps if she threw enough organic matter at it... From the corner of her eye, she noticed she was passing by a local fruit shop in her headlong rush, and the whole plan came together in her head with a snap. It also came together with a GLORP as, skidding to a stop, the blue bombshell morphed into an octopus and, reaching out with half of her dripping tentacles, snatched up several handfuls of fruit and veg.

"Catch this, butter-face!" she hollered, and with lightning speed she threw every last one of them at the approaching Peanut Butter. For a moment, as the barrage of apples, bananas and more besides hit the squidgy mass and briefly embedded itself into the surface, it looked as though the plan was going to work and the blob would be distracted by all the food.

And then the fruit simply popped out of the butter, leaving the rubbery surface unscathed. And still coming after her.

"Welp." So much for that plan. Guess it was back to running away again.

Thinking quickly, Lisa GLORP'ed into another shape - a coiled spring about the size of the average man, which rapidly squashed down as the Peanut Butter approached with rapid speed. The amorphous antagonist was also changing shape as well, into a wide, flat shape much like a blanket or net. The cape-like creature leaped forward, spread out wide to try and smother it's target, but by the time it did Lisa had already sprang up into the air out of harm's way, and the Peanut Butter flopped uselessly to the ground. Unharmed, Lisa landed upon a nearby lamppost, looking down upon her pursuer with a cocky grin.

"Not exactly quick on the processor, are ya?" she taunted. Of course, she wasn't going to wait to see what kind of a response the enemy would come up with, and at once she changed shape again, taking on a muscled form reminiscent of Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan. Hollering out the famous call on reflex, the jam girl leaped from her perch onto the overhang of the shop window, bouncing off it trampoline style up and onto the roof in one smooth, quick motion. Smirking at her own cleverness, she turned around to see how badly her assiliant was faring.

And yelped as a massive, brown toad smelling of peanuts leapt up after her.

Were it not for her quick reflexes, the blueberry babe would have been crushed under the resulting belly-flop. As it was, she managed to slither out of the way as the Peanut Butter slapped damply onto the rooftop, but the malignant mass was just as quick to recover it's footing. And on the instant it managed that, it began quickly crawling after her, snapping with it's cavernous mouth as if she were a fly in it's haste to engulf her.

"Woah, chill, dude!" Lisa moved fast, hopping pogo-stick fashion to keep out of her pursuer's reach. Actual panic was getting into her head now - this thing was learning far more quickly than she thought it would! There was no way to fight it, obviously, as she would only risk bringing herself in contact with it, and that was the last thing she wanted. And she knew she couldn't keep the chase up forever - as long as she could run without needing a recharge, it was more than likely capable of running much longer. Wacko, he may be, but Vortex obviously must have thought of that.

What other alternatives where there? Even as Lisa back-flipped away from a particularly nasty chomp, her mind was racking every processor she had to bear. Every one of the nanobots lent their computing power to try and solve the puzzle, on-the-fly calculations rattling along at light speed one after another. Hundreds of possibilities and solutions presented themselves to her, but not all of them seemed particularly attractive to the somewhat nervous goo girl.

And then her eyes caught the telegraph wire strung bout between two buildings. They also caught the shop window, the alleyway on the opposite side of that street, the drain leading to the sewers...

Perfect.

With a quick as lightning motion, Lisa somersaulted backwards off the rooftop, seeming to dissapear to the street below. The Peanut Butter quickly leaped after her, but was too late to catch her, falling just short of the target. Quick as a whip, it righted itself and clambered over the side of the roof to find...

...an empty street.

The Peanut Butter blinked. It blinked again, and even stretched it's neck out a little, looking left and right to get a better view of the street beneath it. But the only thing it saw was the human commuters going about their daily business, the occasional car passing by and the odd pigeon perched on an overhang or two. No sign of the blue-coloured target anywhere. And yet it distinctly saw it jump down here...

The toad stretched out some more, this time deliberately. It's body extended outwards, scores of tiny legs growing out beneath it, as it stepped delicately onto the telegraph wires that ran over the street like threads from a spider's web. Millipede-like, it scuttled along the wire and over the road, head darting this way and that as it scanned the whole length of tarmac as far as it could see, trying to track the target. Feelers extended from the brownish body, trying to sense the air for electrical impulses that would detect the runaway Jam - a tricky proposition, since the humming of signals beneath it would need to be filtered out...

And then, quite suddenly, it caught sight of a blue, feminine figure. There was the target, posing in a demure fashion in the shop window and winking in a "come hither" fashion. Hesitating for only a moment, the millipede twisted round, body bunching up cat-fashion as it prepare to pounce upon the taunting Jam, pin it down and disarm it for good. Legs merged together into longer, stronger appendages, tensing for the leap. Sickle-like jaws sprang out from the domed head, snapping in anticipation.

"Yoo-hoooo~" trilled the figure. "Over here, big boy!" And it blew a kiss, just to drive the point home.

The Peanut Butter sprang.

And splatted against the window, bits of it going everywhere. It was a miracle that it didn't shatter the glass.

It was also a miracle that Lisa managed to stifle her laughter as she slid around the corner into the alleyway and out of sight. This was going better than she thought! All she had to do now was stay out of sight and, with any luck, the disoriented blob would lose track of her altogether! In the end, Vortex would no doubt get fed up and call the whole thing off, and she could get back to planning her big show! It would be a lot easier than trying to fight it, anyway!

And that's where the drain came in.

One quick GLORP later, and she was within the sewer - still absurdly spacious, for reasons best known to Major Failure. Thankfully, the CHUD's had all moved out for their winter break, and the aquaducts were all empty at this time of year. Even better, the sewer was dark, rank with lots of foul smells and sounds echoes everywhere from the walls. Even if the Peanut Butter did get in here, somehow, it would barely be able to track her down in the confusingly maze-like halls.

As far as Lisa was concerned, she was a safe as houses.

"Lisa," she chuckled to herself, slithering a little way down the tunnel, "you're a G-N-E-US - a genius! Sometimes, I wonder-"

And then the Peanut Butter dropped from above and engulfed her completely.

-------

Pain.

That was all she felt. The pain of being ripped apart at the seams, as hard as she struggled to fee herself. From every conceivable direction, the enemy was invading, latching onto the very things that made her and pulling them away, depriving them of energy and purpose. Little by little, she was being diminished, her very brain taken away from her by this marauding invader, and all of her energy was being stripped away as well, leaving her practically helpless. The mass twisted this way and that, brown with streaks of blue, yet the prison was unyielding and relentless.

One by one, the enemy nanobots clamped onto her own, drawing them away from herself. For every tiny bot that inhabited her being, there seemed to be one from the invader, and it wasn't long before every one of her molecules was attached to one within the Peanut Butter, held in place by millions of tiny pincers. Each one was working to deprive their captive of power and communication, data streams cut short and information feeds blocked off by the rubbery mass she was enveloped within.

The parts that were Lisa, the memories and the personality... it was all going. Layers upon layers of memory and data, stripped away like skins of an onion, as the jam mixed with the peanut butter. She could feel herself fading, feel herself becoming a part of the invading swarm, feel herself-

...wait.

There was a tiny part left. A tiny part, somewhere, that hadn't yet succumbed to the suffocating effects of the peanut butter that wrapped around her. A part of the great consciousness that was still Lisa. And that part of her had sensed something about the peanut butter, something familiar and much like herself as she used to be, before she got changed. Didn't Vortex say something about how this thing was basically just a modified version of-?

...oh, this was just peachy.


It may have been the tiny part of Lisa left that said "Gotcha, bitch!" But it was every single nanite she was made up of that received the overriding signal to turn around, clamp onto their captors and copy every last bit of data they had within them into the invaders.

All five million terabytes of it.

-------

"What's taking that dratted thing so long?" demanded Doctor Vortex to nobody in particular.

Of course he'd been able to follow the battle! He was the brilliant Doctor Vortex, who could think of anything and everything! That's why he thought of creating a device to track the Peanut Butter as it chased his rebellious Jam around the promenade, allowing him to keep tabs on it no matter where he went! So when it craftily slid down a manhole to the sewer, intending to take the target by surprise, the bad doctor had quickly disengaged from the Robo-Squid and zoomed over to take a look-see at what was to happen next.

Two minutes had passed. Then five. And now ten. And it was starting to annoy the scientist. Surely it couldn't take that long to disable the enemy and bring it back to him! He tried pushing the various buttons on his console, sending signals to the Peanut Butter to try and summon it back to him, and it only doubled his frustrations when nothing happened in particular. Surely nothing had gone wrong down there? Then again, what if some unknown bug had caused a glitch? No, all of that stuff had been ironed out in Version 2.0, hadn't it?

"Project Beta!" he roared down the open manhole, rapidly losing patience. "Cease current operations and-"

"Yo, Doc!"

The voice was deep, and had an odd smoothness to it that made the madman hesitate slightly. What on earth could be down there that could make a voice like that? Probably just audio echoes from the sewer tunnel, he tried to reassure himself. But in that case, had some sewer worker stumbled across the battle scene and...? No, that was patently ridiculous.

"What do you want?" he barked, trying not to sound unnerved.

A bass chuckle. "How d'ya like your peanut butter?"


Vortex blinked. "What-?"

CRASH went the manhole cover as it was bashed aside by a massive brown mass.

SLAM went the giant fist against the doctor's hover-chair, knocking it backwards.

"AAAARGH!" went the mad scientist as he crashed into a wall, his transport splintering into scrap metal, and collapsed in a pile on the floor.

He was just in time, as he pulled himself painfully from the resulting wreckage, to watch as the Peanut Butter changed shape with an audible SLURP-ing noise.

"I like mine... chunky!"

Doctor Vortex tried, he really did. He opened his mouth several times, and gestured frantically with both hands. But all that came out was a series of terrified, disbelieving squeaks.

"And that," added Lisa as she emerged from the manhole behind the newcomer, "is why you are bad at science."

-------

An hour or so later, Seismic Sam was once again bundling a stammering nervous wreck into the back of a van. The change of location was nice, he had to admit - the bustling city was a much better place to do heroics than some deserted island in the middle of the ocean. At least there were people to watch and congratulate you on a job well done, instead of just seagulls pooping on you. And the Robo-Squid was getting towed away - another sign of normalcy amidst a world of superheroes and general craziness.

But Seismic Sam was one of those single-minded people who didn't pick up on details very well. So when the limo drove past with it's window down, he did not notice or recognize the blue-colored person in the back seat, yakking into a phone. Which was odd, considering that her face (and some other parts as well) were plastered on literally every other billboard in the city, but oh well.

"Yeah, sorry to ask you this, but... Okay, sure. Byyeee~"

Lisa clicked off the phone and turned, grinning to the person sitting next to her.

"We booked ya another room," she chirped. "Just so ya don't have ta be stuck wanderin' about all the time. And whilst I'm talking, how does 'Lars' sound for a name?"

The figure next to her shifted with a somewhat squidgy noise. Teeth glinted back in the sunlight as a muscled arm lifted to display the classic thumbs-up sign.

"Fuckin' sweet," said Lars, the Peanut Butter.

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Lars is probably not gonna appear in RP. Like, unless people really want him to. And even then only as a minor character. Sorry to disappoint.)