Mr. Music Please

"Are you suggesting a raid on Eternia?" asked an incredulous Martin.

"Yes," I answered.

"Aw, cool!"

"It's not going to be all fun and games, Martin. It's going to be difficult just to beat He-Man, and I'm sure his friends will help him fight. We'll be up against incredible odds. I'd rather we talk him into giving himself up, but we have to prepare for the worst."

Newton spoke up for the first time that evening. "Might I suggest that we find someone who can take care of He-Man by him or herself, while the rest of us run interference?"

"Great idea! Any suggestions as to who we can get?"

"How about Captain Super Duper Magnificent Man?" offered Martin.

"Good. Anyone know how to get in touch with him?"

No one did.

"How about D'rundarr, from the Hammer team?" suggested Squasha. "I've gotten to know them pretty well, since Nick bought the Plexiglass Onion."

Bill Nefarious, one of the ClownWatch penguins raised a flipper-wing, "Ken Mustache told me that Hammer had to leave in a hurry for a mission in the Sudan. They don't expect to be back until next Tuesday."

"Yow! That's too long to wait. There are a lot of shows booked between now and then."

"Hey!" exclaimed Cat suddenly, "We can get Hulk Hogan!"

"You know how to contact him?"

"Yeah, Tony the Tiger is trying to help me break into the wrestling biz. I've got his personal phone number."

"Groovy!" I exclaimed, handing Cat the Batphone™. "Call him, man!"

When Cat got off the phone, he looked hopeful. "Tony says that we can use his boy tomorrow morning, as long as we give him a vitamin-packed breakfast!"

"Okay, let's whip up a plan..."

Squasha had no problem getting the two of us to Eternia. After all, it's only a mile or two south of Antioch, and her limit, she told me, is just over 500 miles (though it does tax her to 'port near that limit).

Our first stop was Castle Numbskull. We had to incapacitate the Sorceress so she couldn't warn He-Man of our coming.

Squasha knocked on the front door.

A slender, attractive lady opened the door. She was covered in feathers. "Welcome to Castle Numbskull, good people. Come in and rest. I am the Sorceress."

"Nice to meet you," I said, trying not to feel guilty. She was showing kindness and hospitality, and we were about to screw her over. "I'm Animal, this is Squasha and behind you is Günter."

She turned to look. "There is no one behind me."

While her back was turned, Squasha and I each poured two boxes of salt on her butt.

"Hey!"

"See you around, chick," I said as we left her cursing our names behind us.

We didn't leave her totally defenseless, though. We planted booby-traps (which Squasha designed) to keep Skeletor out. I've heard he has plans of turning this place into a 70's style Disco.

Our next stop was the unnamed castle where Prince Adam lives. For some reason, He-Man thinks he has a secret identity. The only thing secret about He-Man is the location of his sword when he's not using it. Anyhow, we went to the castle and stood outside. We didn't want to be forced to fight indoors.

"Yo! He-Man!" I yelled. There was no answer. "Hel-llo-ooooo! Heeee-Maaaaaaan!"

He peeked out of an open window. He'd had his hair dyed black, and it was slicked back in a kind of a Ronald Reagan/Big Boyish style. "He-Man's not here."

What a jerk. Aside from the fact that he has a darker tan and different clothes, 'He-Man' looks no different than 'Prince Adam'. "Oh, sorry He-Man, I thought you were. Well since you're not in, can we have a word with you?"

He looked confused. "If you want to talk to He-Man, I can call him for you."

"No, no," I said quickly, "we can do our business with you."

"This," whispered Squasha, "might be easier than we thought."

He-Man, I mean Prince Adam, ducked back inside. "BY THE POWER OF NUMBSKULL," we heard him yell, "I HAVE THE POWER!"

"No such luck," I whispered.

"Dammit!" whispered Squasha fiercely. "I'm not sure I can go through with this. I don't like violence."

"Same here, Hon. Hopefully, it won't come to that."

"I hope yer right."

"Me too. But if it does, no one will blame you if you teleport away."

She sighed. "No. I won't abandon my friends to that muscle-head."

As if summoned by Squasha's words, He-Man walked outside. "What can I do for you?" he asked in a high-pitched voice. He cleared his throat. "What can I do for you?"

"You can come along quietly and save everyone a lot of hassle," suggested Squasha, helpfully.

"What?"

I resisted the urge to repeat Squasha word for word. Instead I said, "We have reason to believe that you are responsible for some unspeakable things up at Elliston."

"So come with us, please," said Squasha. "We need to ask you some questions. Please."

"Never!" shouted He-Man in a voice like thunder. Squeaky thunder, anyway. He cleared his throat again. "Never! You want to take me to Skeletor! I won't let you! I'll fight before I come with you!"

"Dammit. I was afraid you'd say that," I said. I took off my hat and dumped out the large group of penguins I'd been carrying in there. Next came Eddie, Newton and Cat. Lastly: Hulk Hogan.

The Hulkster glared at He-Man. He-Man gulped.

"TO ARMS!!!" he yelled, and from out of the castle came all of He-Man's allies, led by Man-At-Arms, Teela and Ram-Man. Everyone started moving into battle positions.

Battle Cat jumped out, and Squasha threw the catnip bomb she'd made (she was quite resourceful). He leapt on it and it exploded, covering him with catnip. His eyes glazed over, his tongue lolled out and he lay down for a nap. That took care of Battle Cat for at least an hour.

I put my top hat back on and hoped for good results.

"Far out!" I said, as I realized what my hat had done for me. I now had... what can I call it? All-around sight, I guess. It wasn't 'sight' per se, but I was aware of everything that was going on around me simultaneously. Not only could I not be taken by surprise, but I could 'watch' the whole battle while I was fighting.

Hulk and He-Man battled it out, while the penguins attacked the others with their skateboards. Newton made short work of anyone who came within claw's reach, as Cat shot weapons out of our opponents' hands with his Dukes of Hazzard laser pistol. And Eddie used his screams to good effect. Everything was going as planned.

Squasha teleported behind people and clouted them on the heads with a stale loaf of bread. They were dropping like flies. Meanwhile, I flew around messing up the airborne vehicles that many of the guards were using.

While I caused a sky-cycle to land on Ram-Man (thus taking two out at once), Cat destroyed the weapons of Man-At-Arms, making him totally defenseless (or would that be 'offenseless'?), allowing Martin to take him out with his board.

Newton shredded Mekaneck's bionic neck (he has a goddam bionic neck, for fuck's sake!), causing his head to slump to one side, and Mekaneck ran inside as fast as he could. And Eddie screamed at Roboto, slamming him into the castle wall, while Squasha knocked Man-E-Faces out with three strong hits from her bread.

I steered some more flying vehicles into the ground, once in awhile shouting "Behind you, (insert name here)!" to warn my comrades of any sneak attacks.

At one point, Orco floated up behind me and attempted to blast me with a lightning bolt spell. He waved his hands and muttered a few arcane words, and a mighty bolt of lightning arced from his fingertips. Fortunately for me, my hat is more than a match for most magical spells. Not all of them, mind you. There are sorcerers powerful enough to get through my hat's defenses, I'm sure. Orco, however, was not one of them. The bolt of lightning came within inches of striking me, making my hair stand on end, but at the last possible moment it looped around back towards the spell-caster. He dropped like a rock, or more accurately, like a little tiny wizard who'd just been blasted with lightning. He was pretty well done, but I was sure he'd be okay if someone rubbed a little Bactine™ on him.

Teela managed to make her way over to Squasha, and she looked mad! Teela feinted with the vibro-blade she was wielding and did a one-eighty as she saw the telltale smoke of Squasha's teleport. I worried for one moment that Teela had second-guessed Squasha and my new friend would be finished. But Squasha did not materialize where Teela expected her to.

CRACK!

That was the sound of Squasha's bread breaking over Teela's head.

"Squasha," I yelled, "you're beautiful!" Clever minx; she'd teleported backward about an inch!

While all of this was happening, the Hulkster was having a rough time with his opponent.

"You can never beat me!" yelled He-Man. "I'm the most powerful man in the Universe!"

"Well, I'm the Hulkster brother, and all the little Hulkamaniacs out there can tell you brother, the prayers and the steroids, I mean vitamins, and the 24-inch pythons will win out in the end brother!"

The battling behemoths raged on all the while that they fought. He-Man swung his sword at Hulk, but the Hulkster moved to the side and hammered his fist down on He-Man's head.

"Ahhh!" he yelled as he fell to the ground.

Hulk pinned him to the dirt, but he was too strong and soon He-Man was on his feet again. I wanted to send one of the flyers to land on He-Man, but I feared for Mr. Hogan's safety.

The Hulkster managed to get his opponent's sword-arm locked in a vice-like grip. They struggled and pounded on each other for quite some time.

It looked as if the Hulk was getting the upper hand. He'd managed to disarm He-Man, and was forcing him to his knees. But then he started to go pale. He began to falter. Then he turned green. I knew he shouldn't have eaten all of those Frosted Flakes just before this fight!

He-Man slammed the Hulkster to the ground, and started bashing his face in. Oh it looked hopeless, and no one was close enough to help! Just when I thought all was lost, I got an idea. It was a gamble but I had to hope that He-Man would fall for it.

"He-Man!" I yelled, trying my best to imitate Man-At-Arms. "Use your sword to finish him off, and then come and help me!"

He stopped beating on the Hulkster long enough to grab up his sword. It was working so far. Hulk got a chance to rest for a couple of seconds. Here was where the gambling started.

"Don't forget to turn into He-Man!" I yelled in a better than average Man-At-Arms voice.

He-Man blinked. He looked confused. He blinked again and raised his sword. He lowered it and blinked again. Then he raised his sword and lowered it five or six more times, blinking like a string of Christmas lights.

It looked as if he was going to fall for it. He opened his mouth to speak. "BY THE POWER OF --" He stopped. Oh no! He was catching on! "Wait just a minute here. I already am He-Man!" He started advancing on Hulk Hogan. I was worried; I couldn't possibly get to him in time to do anything, even if I wasn't busy favoring Stratos with a Kung-Fu kick to the head ("Keeeeeya!" I said). Squasha could, but even if her weapon wasn't broken, I doubt that a loaf of bread would do much good against He-Man.

But all was not lost! The Hulkster started to rise! He stood up and made a kind of fishy-face. At first I thought he was still in great pain, but he started wagging his finger at He-Man, in a sort of an "It's not nice to kill the Hulkster with a sword, little boy!" kind of way. I had bought him enough time to get his second wind! Mr. Hogan wasted not a moment. He let out an ear-splitting battle cry (almost as loud as one of Eddie's screams) and leapt at the advancing swordsman!

With fists flying, Hulk Hogan again disarmed He-Man and started bodyslamming the self-proclaimed Master of the Universe. He-Man was taken totally by surprise by the Hulkster's relentless assault, and there was naught he could do. When Hulk did his patented flying leg drop (patent pending), He-Man could not even struggle. He submitted and agreed to go along with us willingly.

Upon seeing the defeated He-Man, his comrades, their morale severely damaged, retreated into the castle.

Everyone boarded my hat and we went back to Castle Numbskull to make sure The Sorceress was again salt free (she made no attempt to attack us when we informed her that we had He-Man captive) and dismantle Squasha's booby-traps. Then we left Eternia.

"Still he denies everything!" I said, frustrated. We were interrogating He-Man at the Plexiglass Onion. The penguins had all gone home, Newton went back to the Emporium and Cat gave Hulk Hogan a ride to Badtits Hospital for some bandaging. "It's as if he doesn't know a thing!"

"Maybe he doesn't," suggested Squasha. "I doubt that even He-Man could stand up to D'rundarr's interrogation." D'rundarr (the very scantily dressed, very large, and very fortunately on our side Neanderthal, who worked as chief of security for the Plexiglass Onion, and who looked awfully familiar to me for some reason) was indeed handling the ugly business of questioning the prisoner (the Hammer team having gotten back from the Sudan days early). "If he knew anything, he'd have told us by now."

"Hmmm," I hmmmed, for the fourth time this adventure, "Perhaps we're missing something." I went back inside and asked D'rundarr if I could take over. He nodded dumbly and left.

Tears were streaming down He-Man's cheeks as I approached him. "I'll tell you anything you want to know! Just don't let that barbarian tickle me anymore!!!"

I felt pity for the poor clod, but I couldn't let it show. "Answer my questions truthfully, or D'rundarr will show no mercy when I let him back in here."

"Okay, okay!"

"Did you have anything to do with the musical calamities at any of the clubs in the last few weeks?"

"NO! No, I swear it!"

"Do you know who did?"

"No!"

He was a broken man. He couldn't be lying. Heck, he'd even revealed his "secret" identity under D'rundarr's urging! All my instincts about human nature told me that he was telling the truth. But the evidence... "What were you doing at the shows, and why did you leave just before the disaster every time?!"

"Just like I told the guy with the axe... I was showing off my new haircuts. I only want people to like me. I thought that if I got a super cool hairstyle, that they would. When they didn't like my hair, I couldn't take it, so I left. That first time, at the Plexiglass Onion, I had also forgotten to wear pants, so I had to run away! I swear by Castle Numbskull that I don't know about the bad music!" He started sobbing.

I was sure that He-Man was guilty, but we couldn't do anything about it unless we had something solid that would hold up in court. And that meant a confession.

Then I remembered something Eddie had said on the phone. I compared the memory to what He-Man had just confessed, and something clicked.

"I have just one more question for you, He-Man."

"Yes?"

"Who does your hair?"

We stood outside the door of a small hair salon called Super Cool Hairstyles.

"Why are we here?" asked Squasha.

"Because, Dear Lady, He-Man is innocent; a pawn. The guilty party is in there."

"How do you know?"

"Eddie told me on my Batphone™, that He-Man had a new haircut for every show he was at. He-Man confirmed this. And this is where He-Man gets his hair done."

"Ah!" she said. "What do we do?"

"We go in and get a confession. Turn on the tape recorder, Squasha." We stepped in.

"Welcome, good people. I see you are in need of a Super Cool Hairstyle. My name is Vital Sassoon, and I will personally see to it that you get a haircut that will make you popular with everyone. If it doesn't, just come back and I'll give you another one, free of charge. Because you see, if you don't look cool, I look like an ass." He paused. "Ramón," he called in to the next room, "remind me to fire my advertising agency!"

"Is that the same deal you gave He-Man?" I asked.

"Oh, He-Man sent you, did he? He is one of my best customers."

"Yeah, he sent us. He sent us to put you out of business, man!"

"Why, what ever do you mean, sir?"

"He-Man told us everything."

"What?"

"He told us how you forced him to cause musical disaster at every show he went to."

"Impossible! He couldn't have remembered. Oops."

"A-ha!" Squasha yelled. It made Vital jump. "So you admit that you were the cause of the bad music!"

"I admitted no such thing."

A handsome man with olive-skin came in from the back room to see what the fuss was about. I assumed this was the one Vital had called Ramón.

"You might as well 'fess up," I said.

"Okay, yes I did it! I did it! And do you want to know why? Well, I'll tell you why! I never wanted to be a hairdresser, but my father wouldn't let me be what I wanted to be, I wanted to be a musical director, or Dictator of the World, but father said I couldn't and that hairdressing was good enough for him and his father, and his father's father, and his father's father's father, and his father's father's father's father, and his father's father's father's father's mother, and it should be good enough for me, so I went on to become a hairdresser, and I was the best in the business, and I got rich off of my hair-care products, but I was still discontent, I still wanted to become a musical director, or Dictator of the World, then one day, while I was having dinner at Empress Chili, and talking to Frank about how to lure Santa Claus into the Plexiglass Onion, so that he could be killed by a Nuclear Wastoid, I thought up a plan that would not only help Frank kill Santa Claus for money, but help me obtain my own goals!" He took a long, deep breath. "He-Man walked in complaining that no one liked his page-boy haircut, so I fixed it for him, but I also used him to put my plan into action, I planted a musical time bomb on him and had it set for thirty-seven seconds, he would go to shows, activate the bomb, and then leave, and the bomb would go off, and (except for the first bomb, which would lure people from the four corners of the Universe, and everywhere else, thus bringing Santa in to accept his package with the Nuclear Wastoid in it) evil music would cause untold destruction, hahahaha, and when it looked as if the world would collapse, I would offer to stop the evil in exchange for total rule over every nation in the world, and then I, and only I, could decide what music could be heard in any venue!"

We waited for him to take another breath. It looked as if he might hyperventilate from confessing too rapidly. "Well it won't work now, because He-Man isn't coming back for anymore haircuts!" I informed him.

"That makes no difference. I have other agents as well!"

"It doesn't matter," said Squasha, "because we're taking you to jail with this full confession on tape."

"Hahaha!" he laughed. It occurred to me that villains tended to be jolly folk. "Do you think I would have told you anything if I thought you could get away with the information? Well, no I wouldn't! So there! Ramón!" he paused dramatically. "Kill them!"

Ramón looked at Vital, then at us, then back at Vital. "What?"

"Kill them!"

"Are you kidding me?"

"No, I'm not kidding! Do I look like I'm kidding?!" He didn't look like he was kidding. "Kill them, NOW!"

"And if I don't kill them?"

"If you do not kill them, I will fire you!"

"Well, I guess I have no choice," he said, "than to look for another job."

"I guess that's it then, Vital," I said. "Why don't you come along peacefully?"

"I'm not through yet!" he yelled, and grabbed a pair of hypno-glasses (the same kind that Frank used on that girl named after a sports car who floated of into space, never to be seen again) from a countertop. I now understood why He-Man didn't know what was going on. "You are under my power," he said, staring into my eyes. "You will destroy the tape, and start coming to me every day for a new hairstyle."