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The giant, neon-pink bunny-frog-thingy glared at Johnny, its six eyes doing a valid, but futile attempt at shooting laser beams. The mad scientist of the week had figured it was an absolutely great idea to put a bunch of random animal and insect DNA, steroids and some food coloring in an egg and leave it alone for a few days. What could possibly go wrong?
A lot of things, thought Johnny as he cast an apologetic look on the half-eaten office building covered in purple hybrid-goo which was also leaking from the thingy's mouth and eyes and what which to some degree looked like a nose and every other possible body opening. It trickled down its body like syrup but was still flung (in Johnny’s eyes) at near light speed through the air with surprising accuracy.
Ben punched it in the face, which turned out to be pretty effective. It fell like a thick, magenta tree and landed with a loud smock! like when your grandma gives you an especially loud kiss. It was not the end of the story, though. Shock or pain or instinct or murderous revenge plots or some combination thereof had the science experiment puking. Purple slime rained down in tsunamis upon the street, miraculously missing Ben, but not Johnny, who was covered head-to-toe in 0.62 seconds flat. He reacted instinctively when suddenly covered in vomit, and lit on fire.
This turned out to be a Bad IdeaTM, as the goo promptly solidified into a smooth, hard, plastic-like substance.
Johnny groaned. Ben snickered.
“Sure. Just laugh, you big pile of rocks,” Johnny huffed sarcastically, attempting and failing to get the slime-turned-solid off. “Can this get any worse?”
Really, it was Johnny’s own fault what happened next. Who tempts fate like that?
*CLICK*
A skinny, teenaged photographer who looked like his natural habitat was the library was holding an old-looking camera aimed at the mess that was Johnny. Before horror struck him, the guy managed to get a few more clicks in before bolting.
“Hey.” Realization dawned on Johnny’s face. Ben was bawling in laughter. “Hey, wait. Wait! Where are you going!?”
He chased after the dorky photographer but, damn, that kid was fast. And sneaky. Not even ten seconds into the hunt and he’d already lost sight of him.
And, Johnny was slowed down a lot from the solidified puke. He could barely move his arms, his only method of transport being fire-shooting from odd places on his body like the soles of his feet, random dots on his back, half his right leg, his palms, face, and behind his left ear.
So, he could move.
But not much.
Barely anything at all, really.
Johnny landed in a heap on the sidewalk and sighed in defeat.
It wasn’t the first time some paparazzi had caught him at an embarrassing point, and it wouldn’t be the last. But he would still like to keep his reputation somewhat presentable, thank you very much. The papers were still not over last time when his kitten rescue attempt led to hospitalization from infected claw-inflicted wounds, and they’d just calmed down from his first attempt at alcohol (which had involved a lot more drunk-yelling, flashy fire-breathing and tree-makeout-ing than Johnny found comfortable).
He had also revealed sensitive (read: embarrassing) information about his teammates, who had decided to get revenge.
By releasing his baby pictures.
For three months straight, everybody fucking cooed at him. Everybody! Even Doom programmed it into his bots, that evil, overdramatic, kinky iron man wannabe.
So there he laid, soaking in self-loath and monster vomit, when, once again, that lanky brat snaps his camera at his pathetic form, chuckling like a duck. Johnny jumped up – as much as he could – and pointed an accusing finger at the other teen.
“Give me that!” he yelled, trying and failing at wobbling across the street to where that picture plague was snickering.
“What are you gonna do, Tinky Winky?” he teased, snapping another picture. “Intimidate me with your ballerina skills?”
In another attempt to move, Johnny flopped backwards, the only thing keeping him on his feet and his face off the ground a lucky burst of flame from his right butt cheek. The photographer burst into laughter.
“What do you call that move, ass-emblé?” he snorted out.
Johnny groaned in annoyance and frustration. One really didn’t appreciate one’s benefits until they were taken away. You don’t thank your nose for not being clogged, you don’t applaud your mom for cleaning your mess before she makes you do it yourself. You’re not truly grateful for movability until there is a headache-inducing gremlin in front of you who you cannot strangle with your own damn hands.
“I know, that one was dry.” He tapped his chin as if pondering the best way to make ballerina/fart puns. Which he definitely was.
“Give me the camera!” Johnny made himself look as threatening as possible, but it was hard when he could barely move enough to roll his eyes.
“Make me,” he smirked. Johnny growled, trying to take another step, but fell face forward towards the ground.
A big, hard hand caught him before he nose-dived into the cement. He stared gratefully at Ben as he smashed the bigger, less-likely-to-crush-Johnny-in-the-attempt-too parts.
“Thanks, Ben,” he sighed. “Now help me get this kid!”
“None of my business,” the living rock smirked and sat down on the sidewalk to watch the spectacle.
Johnny, who could now move, though still restricted and shakily, lunged at the teen. Or, where the teen had been standing a few milliseconds ago. The air provided no support in his re-decent to the familiar, pebble-spread grayness.
This time it was the fucking kid who kept his nose unbroken. Though he almost strangled him.
Dragging Johnny by the back of his collar, the photographer brought him back on his own two feet, cackling like a crow.
Johnny was not amused.
“Give me the camera!” His arm reached for it, but never connected. He tumbled to the ground for the 4th time in as many minutes, but before his face could marry the dirt, he caught himself with purple-stained arms. Getting up proved a challenge, but not impossible.
That idiot was still laughing, and now Ben had joined the dark side. Permanently.
“You are dead to me,” Johnny hissed. Ben only guffawed harder, tipping over backwards.
“As fun as this is, I have to go,” the teen said, hands on his hips like he was talking to toddlers. “Jameson wants these before 5 P.M. for edit and print.”
He turned to leave.
“Oh, come on, man!” Johnny groaned. “What do I have to do to make you delete those pictures?”
“Well…” He turned slowly and tapped a finger to his head, thinking overdramatically. “You could pay me.”
“How much?”
“Weeeeell,” he dragged out. “Jameson generally offers me $50 per picture and I have,” He paused to check his camera. “183. But if they’re good, anything between 100 and 500 will do. And if I’m gonna risk losing credibility, I want a profit.”
“He doesn’t buy every picture, though!”
“How am I to know he won’t?” His arms were spread out as if saying not my problem. “These are really his kind of pictures. Maybe other papers would pay more? Who am I to know?”
Johnny half screamed – half groaned and face dived to the ground.
“I can give you, uh,” How much money did he have? That he could just give away. “$3 500. How about it?”
“Nah,”
“What else do you want?!” Johnny mock-wailed. “I can’t give you more money than that! How about a new camera?”
A shake.
“An interview?”
“Not my area,”
“A kiss?”
Another shake.
“A tour of the Baxter building?”
Shake.
“Supervillain stuff?”
He stared confused at him.
“What?”
“We confiscate a lot of their stuff. Just have it laying in the basement, along with other stuff that just breaks but we can’t throw away in normal trash cans. We never use them for anything. Want to take your pick?”
He hesitated, looking at his camera, then at Johnny and then back at his camera. A determined expression covered his face. “Show me first.”
The basement lived up to the hype. There were shelves upon shelves of stuff, everything from moll-eaten capes to nuclear-powered chainsaws. Most of it was broken or missing their power source, but that wouldn’t stop Peter.
“And I can take anything, right?” he asked.
“Knock yourself out, anything too lethal is on another level.” Johnny shrugged. Peter briefly questioned the Fantastic Four’s definition of ‘lethal’ as he glanced at a remote-controlled ball covered on spikes.
“And if you go full-villain with this, we’ll stop you,” Johnny added. “But please don’t. If the others find out, I’m dead. It took three hours to convince Ben!”
“That won’t be a problem,” Peter said while eyeing some broken Iron Man gauntlets from different marks and a pouch that looked eerily similar to Deadpool’s bottomless fanny pack. Oooh, this will be fun.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, hothead. The pictures stay out of public eye,” Peter said, grabbing the fanny and shoving a random object into it to test the theory. As expected, the gemstone-induced chainmail was completely swallowed. Peter grinned.
He followed Johnny’s advice and almost knocked himself out in his search for useful pieces of broken super person items.
Johnny sighed into the couch. Crisis averted.
“Hey, Johnny,” Sue snickered as she entered the room. “You have to see this. You too, Reed,” she added when she saw her husband eating a sandwich. She put up a video on the tablet in her hands.
A video of Johnny.
A purple Johnny.
He should have known Peter was up to something when he specified the word ‘pictures’ in their deal.
The pictures were out of public eye.
The youtube-video, however.
In the distance, he could hear Ben howling his amusement.