Work Text:
The field trip to Lexington, Nebraska
to see the site of the Plum Creek Massacre
went pretty well until Antimatter
kidnapped Stalwart Stan's girlfriend.
Antimatter tossed Angelica
over his skinny shoulder
as if she weighed nothing,
and trotted away into the brush.
Stalwart Stan tried to run after them
but the air around him thickened until
it was like trying to swim through molasses.
By the time the effect faded, both
supervillain and girlfriend were out of sight.
Stalwart Stan refused to give up
on Angelica, searching for her
high and low, near and far.
He looked in the ditches
and up the flagpoles,
all around the cemetery
and the surrounding fields,
shooing away the girls eyeing him.
Finally Stalwart Stan found
Angelica tied up (perfectly unharmed)
high in a tree, with Antimatter
standing beside her on the branch,
grinning down at him.
"Look at me!" Antimatter said
as he waved at Stalwart Stan.
He looked a bit ridiculous
in his white costume and black lab coat,
his silver hair fluttering around his shoulders.
Stalwart Stan reminded himself
firmly of Thumper's Rule
and kept his mouth shut about that.
"This is more fun than those capture-the-flag
games that my cousins never wanted
to let me play," the supervillain said.
"Let her go," Stalwart Stan said
as he started climbing the tall tree.
"Come and get her," Antimatter said,
bouncing lightly on the branch.
Stalwart Stan really, really
wanted to punch him in the face.
Antimatter waited until he was
almost within reach before
trapping him like a fly in amber.
"Look at me," he said intensely.
Stalwart Stan could still
close his eyes, so he did.
Antimatter huffed at him,
"Well, you're no fun at all."
Then he scampered away,
leaving Stalwart Stan
to untie Angelica and lower her
carefully back to the ground.
"I saw you with those other girls," she said.
"I only have eyes for you," he assured her.
The ride home was uneventful, but
something about the incident niggled at him,
and Stalwart Stan could not pin it down.
