Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: MUSIC (04/02/20)
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TITLE: The Music Monster | Previous Challenge Entry
By Art Westefeld
04/08/20 -
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Late one Wednesday night, Diamond and Coldfire, the names Rex and Jenny used when fighting crime, were just completing their sweep of the area when the stillness of the night was split by the shrill sound of a bank alarm going off, and police sirens blaring as they raced to the scene.
The police and Light Force duo looked on in amazement as they saw the criminal. He had unfashionably long red hair, wore grungy clothing, looked under-nourished, and carried a boombox that looked like it came from a garage sale. Out of the speakers ghostly apparitions flew into the vault and dumped cash, along with valuables from the safe deposit boxes into the sack the guy was carrying.
The lead officer turned and spoke to the heroes. “This looks like a job better suited for you folks. We’ll provide backup until the rest of your friends show up.”
Rex waved the last part away with a flip of his hand. “We don’t need any help from the rest of the team.” Turning to his partner he asked, “Can you make those things freeze solid enough for me to punch ‘em?”
Coldfire didn’t answer, but pointed her hands at the fog-like creatures, and Diamond felt an extreme blast of cold rush past him. Other than making him wish he’d made a costume with long sleeves, her cold blast had no effect.
Her face screwed into a frown beneath her mask, and she quietly expressed her frustration that those things wouldn’t freeze. She switched tactics and blasted them with extreme heat, also to no avail.
“Sorry, Diamond,” she ground out the words, “but my powers don’t seem to have any effect on them.”
An instant later, the musician turned and faced the pair and shouted, ”So you want to try to stop my fund-raising for my concert!” He grinned maniacally and twisted a knob on his boombox, which caused more of the creatures to emit from the speakers. Just as with the ones he conjured to empty the vault, these had solid hands, which they used to attack the superheroes.
He continued ranting at the top of his lungs. “You are welcome to attend my concert. Hope you enjoy Rap. No one ever wanted to listen to my music, because I’m mostly deaf, but I could feel the music. But noooooooo! That wasn’t enough. So I turned to dark magic to enchant this boombox to serve my needs. Now I've got a cover band straight from Hades itself.
Coldfire rose upon shaky legs and challenged him. “Why do you let yourself be defined by your disability? You aren’t the only person with a disability in the world to face rejection.” She keenly recalled her own blindness and feelings of doubt that she first had when the chance to get powers was offered to her.
He shrieked at her, “Like you’d know, miss superhero!”
Rex took advantage of their heated conversation and the attention Coldfire was drawing from this wannabe rapper to quietly get up on his own and float behind the guy. A minute later, his diamond-hard fist slammed down on the boombox. His other fist, still flesh and blood, slammed onto the top of the guys head to daze him. Rex smiled and told the assembled officers, “He’s all yours, guys. I guess you can read him his rights when he wakes up.”
The senior officer looked at the pile of broken electronics and said ruefully, “Sure, but thanks to you we don't have any evidence.”
The duo started to back away sheepishly, and as they were ready to fly off Coldfire asked, “Isn’t there any security tapes of his robbery?”
The officers nodded at her suggestion. "Should have thought of that..."
The next morning, Larissa Natator, the reporter that always seemed to have the scoop on the Light Force's heroics, had a front page story about the capture of the man she dubbed ‘the Music Monster'. The headline read "The Music Monster Faces the Music'."
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