Pun-Pun's Big Adventure
The Brockton Bay Protectorate was not having a good day.
Emily Piggot had her back turned as the heroes filed into the room, assembling around an oval conference table. She was seated at the head of the table on a swiveling office chair, documents on the table behind her, while she rested her elbows on her thighs and massaged her temples.
The world’s gone mad.
She’d been saying it to herself ever since that day, years ago - the day Jamie Rinke turned a town of 5,000 people into a town of flesh-warped horrors. That day was the reason she needed dialysis every night; the reason she was so useless and fat; the reason she spent every day in an office instead of the field.
Today was reminding her a lot of that day. The world hadn't just gone mad – it had completely lost it.
Piggot swiveled her chair to face the assembled heroes. Everyone was here, save Armsmaster and Vista. A good thing, too – if this got any worse, they’d be looking at calling in the Triumvirate.
She sighed from her nose. “We have an active situation,” Piggot began. “A new… creature has emerged in Brockton Bay, and has proven itself to be a serious threat.”
“Hold up – he’s a kobold, not a creature,” Clockblocker interjected, the rest of the room looking at him with a mix of exasperation and seriousness. He raised his arms in a placating gesture. “What? I just wanna make sure our classifications check out.”
“The kobold,” Piggot resumed through clenched teeth, “has caused significant property damage and general chaos over the past two hours. 911 calls describe a ‘three-foot tall lizard thing’ headbutting skyscrapers, bench-pressing cargo ships, and supposedly punching himself with enough force to register on the Richter scale.”
“Not supposedly,” Dragon’s voice piped up from a monitor on the wall. “He’s ranging between a three and a four, trending upwards.”
“Time-out – he’s punching himself?” Assault asked, leaning forward and making a “T” with his hands.
“Yes. If you’d allow me to continue?” Piggot replied in an annoyed tone.
Assault settled back into his seat, motioning for Piggot to continue as she cleared her throat. “If the maniacal screeching is anything to go off of, he calls himself Pun-Pun. He shrugs off blows from Aegis, is unfazed by Miss Milita’s anti-tank rounds, and walks through containment foam like he’s a ghost.”
“A Siberian effect?” Bumble asked with a tilted head. The Wards’ leader shifted somewhat uncomfortably in her chair, which didn’t accommodate her wings.
“Almost,” Dragon said. “The Siberian acts like she’s immune to physics. Pun-Pun seems to just… brute force his way through everything. And if he runs into anything he can’t brute force, he has a breaker state similar to Shadow Stalker’s.”
“Is the breaker state Manton-limited?”
“Assume no.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sorcerer muttered next to Bumble. Bags under his eyes betrayed a lack of sleep lately – Piggot made a mental note to grill him about it, once a certain coked-up lizard was dealt with.
Again, Piggot cleared her throat from her place at the conference table’s head. “I’m not done. We’re also looking at regeneration on Crawler’s level, and if the PRT think tank is to be believed, quote, ‘a self-injury strength feedback loop that makes Lung look like a quadriplegic kitten.’”
The sleep-deprived magician raised a brow. “Just to be clear, we’re talking about the Lung that can solo an Endbringer?”
“The very same.”
Clockblocker shook his head in exasperation. “In summary, we’re dealing with an unstoppable, unkillable, and infinitely scaling pea-brained lizard on speed. Would it be naïve to ask if he has weaknesses?”
“Five,” Dragon said. “The first: Pun-Pun is visible through walls.” Around the room, expressions of confusion dawned on the heroes’ faces. “Don’t ask me how it works, but he somehow manages to have a negative Stranger rating. The second: he’s extremely simpleminded. Don’t anticipate intricate strategy beyond punching really, really hard.
“Third, he isn’t immune to environmental effects and indirect uses of powers. Vista’s been spearheading our containment efforts for the past hour.”
“And the other ones?” Clockblocker asked.
“…He constantly complains about a ‘very big tummy ache’ and ‘being bruised all over.’ The first can likely be attributed to the several gallons of ice cream he’s eaten and expulsed; the second can likely be attributed to the self-punching,” Dragon explained, in a voice that sounded like she was describing an unruly child rather than a supervillain. “There are likely more than those five. Thinkers in New York are still working on him.”
Toymaker, from inside her tinkertech mech, let out a digitized grumble. “So, what’s the plan here? You’re talking about something that can’t be hurt, can’t be contained, and could kill almost all of us with a single punch.”
“…I’m sorry, but I’m out on this one,” Kid Win said, standing from his seat. “If worst comes to worst, I can’t do this to my mom.”
“You’re dismissed,” Piggot told him, and he took his leave. “The option remains open for the rest of you as well. Pending authorization from Chief Director Costa-Brown, we’ll be treating Pun-Pun as an S-Class threat, including a kill order.”
“Like we could kill him,” Endstopper grumbled. The man was dressed in a suit and tie, with a domino mask concealing his identity. He dropped his forehead into the edge of the table with a thunk. Like others, he was thoroughly sick of this shit already, and the briefing had only been going for a few minutes.
“Hey! Not helping!” Bumble protested, a pout on her face.
“…What if we didn’t have to kill him?”
Piggot frowned as she turned to face Dragon’s monitor. “Excuse me?”
“Armsmaster’s algorithms just finished the last round of simulations,” Dragon explained, “and we may have found a solution to our problem, almost no strings attached.”
The Director’s frown deepened. “Almost?”
Dragon sighed. “I need to run a phone call by you.”
“…Are you serious?”
Kara was balanced along the top of a radio tower, one arm grappling the metal structure while the other held her burner phone to her ear. The only people who could’ve known her number were her people underground. Clearly, one of her contacts wasn’t as discrete as she thought – otherwise, she wouldn’t be talking to the Director of the PRT ENE.
“Let’s cut the bullshit,” the Director said over the flip-phone’s tinny speaker. “The Protectorate is already taking a significant PR hit with this Pun-Pun mess. Relying on a vigilante with a warrant is even worse, and is not something I take lightly. You should believe me when I say that I’m serious, and that I wouldn’t be making this call unless I had better options.”
Kara considered the Director’s words. “How do I know you’re not fucking me over?”
“Optics. If we broke our agreement, unaffiliated and villainous capes would never trust us if we found ourselves in a situation like this ever again. Endbringer and S-Class truces would be meaningless.”
She frowned. Sure, Kara’s methods were… unorthodox. They were the reason she had earned the ire of the PRT in the first place. But being lumped in with villainous capes? That irked her.
“You realize there’s no way I’m joining your Wards, right?”
A sigh came through the phone. “You’re new to this, Omnigirl. You probably think you’re doing bad things for good reasons – am I right?” Kara opened her mouth to speak, but wasn’t given the chance. “Let me give you some advice. The systems and rules you’re so fond of bending are there for a reason. You think you’re always on the side of right, acting for the greater good. And one of these days, you’re going to get it wrong, and people are going to get seriously hurt.”
“That’s not—”
“Every time you bend a rule, the easier it is to justify bending the next one, and the more you escalate. Where do you draw the line, Omnigirl?”
Kara was growing annoyed. Irritated, she tapped one foot against the metal beam she stood on, a low dong, dong, dong sound emanating from the structure. “Are you calling me to ask me for help, or are you calling me to lecture me?”
“I’m being upfront. Because you’re new, we’re willing to extend you amnesty in the hopes that you can genuinely change. That amnesty won’t mean a damn thing if you go right back to what you’re doing as soon as this is over.”
THOOM. From her position on the radio tower, she could see a shockwave extending outwards from a tiny dot on the Boardwalk, rippling waves in the water and raising dust in the city.
Ever since she got her powers, nothing had been able to hurt Kara. At all. Bullets to the face? Nope. Superpowered punches to the gut? Didn’t even tickle. Yet for some reason, when she looked at this hyperactive lizard on crack, she felt a sinking feeling in her gut, as if something on an instinctual level was telling her to stay away.
She tapped her foot. Dong, dong, dong.
“…Run me through it one more time.”
Pun-Pun was having the best. Day. EVER.
See, it had all started back on fay-run. Or was it fay-roon? Anyway, Pun-Pun was in the middle of ascending to divinity, as many typically try on fay-roon. But where most failed, Pun-Pun would succeed! All he needed was a pet viper, then he’d turn into this big snake thing, then he’d make the viper REALLY big… Okay, it was really complicated stuff, but it would work.
So he stood next to his viper and started his magic big snake ritual, when all of a sudden this glowing lady with white hair and really fancy robes showed up. Pun-Pun thought maybe someone was here to cheer him on, but she was SUPER mad. “Are you fucking serious with this shit? I’ve seen idiot wizards try a lot over the years, but THIS? No, you know what, fuck this.”
Pun-Pun tried to speak, but he couldn’t even move – this lady was crazy powerful, maybe almost as powerful as he was about to be! Then a big glowie swirling thing showed up beneath him, and he was suspended in the air. “Give Lady Mystra’s regards to whichever poor bastards have to put up with you on the other side.”
Then he was falling, falling, falling…
That was a few hours ago. And now, Pun-Pun was having the time of his life! This new world rocked! There were these huge towers everywhere that were super fun to headbutt and watch crumble, big metal boats that he could juggle – and the ice cream, the ice cream! They never had that on fay-roon! So tasty!
Some people tried to stop Pun-Pun. Why? He was having so much fun! They used these sticks that shot tiny metal pellets at him, but they just sort of tickled. The people in black stopped shooting him when he started laughing and swatting the metal out of the air like cat toys. Boring!
He also puked a few times. He puked a lot of times, actually. And every time he moved anywhere, it felt like he had boo-boos all over his body. Oh, well! He’d figure it out later when he wasn’t having so much fun.
As for what he was doing now? He got bored of trying to escape the funky space-warping girl, so he started punching himself. See, Pun-Pun had this REALLY cool thing going on where every time he punched himself, he could punch things even harder. So, he punched himself. Then he punched himself again! And he kept doing it, over and over, and it was so much fun to watch the way the air moved when he punched himself like that.
“Pun-Pun!”
That wasn’t the funky space-warping girl. That was someone new, flying in the sky like strong wizards do. She was wearing some black and red thing that clung to her skin, with a big wizard cape on her back. On her face, she had some kind of mask with red eyes. Spooky!
“Flying wizard!” Pun-Pun shouted excitedly. “Are you here to have fun with Pun-Pun?”
“Uh, yeah!” The girl called back. Wait, was she a girl? She sounded like a balor! Why was her voice like that? “I found this hidden place with a lot of ice cream that I thought—”
“ICE CREAAAAAAAM!” Pun-Pun shouted, pumping his fists in the air. “Where, where, where?”
“Up,” she said, pointing to the sky.
“Up?” Pun-Pun asked, tilting his head. “Only the sky is up!”
“That’s, uh, what I thought too, but it turns out there’s this really cool…” She turned away, pressing a finger to her ear. “Ice cream factory? Yep, ice cream factory. It’s where they make all the ice cream.”
“Pun-Pun wants to see!” The kobold clapped his hands excitedly, the impacts sounding like gunshots. “Pun-Pun wants ALL the ice cream!”
The flying girl nodded and smiled a little awkwardly. “Right, so, we just need to go high up. Like, really, really high. Then we’ll find the secret ice cream factory.” She pointed a thumb to her chest. “Lucky for you, I can fly us there. Wanna go?”
“Yes! Yes, yes!” Pun-Pun reached out to the flying wizard girl with grabby arms. “Uppies!”
“Alright, here we go!” She swooped down and scooped the lizard into her arms, and then the two of them started shooting up, up, up!
“WHEEEEE!” The kobold screeched as the pair flew at speeds in the hundreds of kilometers per hour. This was so much fun! And soon he’d have enough ice cream to—oh, wait, he was about to puke again. “Wizard, Pun-Pun’s gonna spew!”
He couldn’t see the girl’s face behind her mask, but she slowed down and looked at him in her arms, held like a baby. “Um, do it down there if you can, okay?”
“Okay!”
Pun-Pun did exactly that.
“Good to go!” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
She nodded, and they started going up again. Pun-Pun was so excited! The world below them was getting smaller now, and it looked so pretty from up here. So many clouds! So much water! So much green!
They were so high up now, Pun-Pun could see how the planet curved below him. That was confusing - Pun-Pun was sure it was flat. Not only that, but the air was thin up here, and it was getting colder, too.
“Alright, we’re almost to the ice cream factory now,” the flying wizard announced.
“Pun-Pun doesn’t see a factory! Just more sky!” He made a grumpy face. “You’d better not be fibbing, or else Pun-Pun is gonna be so mad!”
“No no, it’s here, I promise! It’s just… invisible, that’s it. You can’t see it until you get really close, but it’s over there.” She pointed somewhere distant, and Pun-Pun saw nothing.
“Invisible ice cream? Does eating it make Pun-Pun invisible? Pun-Pun wants to try! Take Pun-Pun there now!”
“Well, if you wanna get there faster…” The low voice in the wizard’s mask said.
“Yes! Yes, one million bajillion times yes!” The kobold beamed.
“Alright, get ready,” the flying girl told him, and she grabbed him in her hands so that he was held over her head like she was a soccer player making a throw-in. “I’m gonna send you to the ice cream factory.”
“Pun-Pun can’t wait! Do it!”
“Here goes!” The flying girl shouted, and with a grunt of exertion, she launched Pun-Pun into space with all her might.
“WAAHHHHHHH!” Pun-Pun squealed in delight as he rocketed through the sky, flailing his arms and legs. He was going so fast! Higher and higher he soared, farther and farther away from the planet – and closer and closer to his ice cream!
“I’M COMING, ICE CREEEAM!” He yelled gleefully, as the blue of the sky gave way to the black of outer space. Stars twinkled all around him – so pretty!
Higher and higher he went, waiting for the ice cream factory to appear. Any second now. Aaaany second.
…Huh. Space was really, really big. Bigger than Pun-Pun thought. And he still couldn’t see the ice cream factory. Down below, he couldn’t even see the flying wizard girl anymore – not even a speck.
“Helloooo? Ice cream factory? Invisible ice cream?” He yelled into the void. It was getting hard to breathe, now.
“…Olly olly oxen free?”
No response came.