StarFall Comics
A Division of Pullemouttayerhat Productions
A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of StarFall Innovations
Proudly Presents:
Swamp Patrol
#3: Firearms
cover: Arsenal falling through a skylight, a bunch of skinheads below him, the rest of the Swampers above him.
"NO!" Arsenal yelled as he jumped through the skylight, drawing his pistol. Almost immediately, he realized how stupid that was. He landed hard on his ankle, twisting it. He managed to shoot the gun out of the skinhead's hand before collapsing to the floor in pain.
"Well," Brill said as he jumped through the skylight, "we can't let an entrance like that go to waste." He drew back on his bow, and fired off a few arrows in the general direction of the skinheads. "Deerfoot, get Arsenal out of here."
"You got it, Spear." Jan raced by the skinheads, smashing her leg into one of their guts for good measure.
"That's for the lousy hair cut, jerk.' she muttered as she half carriered half dragged Arsenal away from the area of combat.
Brilliance Fontaine, wise-guy extrordinaire, pulled no punches as he stuck a sticky-pad note on one the skinheads' bald spot, reading "Gotcha Sucka!"
Doppelgänger shifted into a panther as she leapt into the combat zone, scaring about half of the remaining skinheads into fleeing. As she chased them down a hall, they were snared in a net set up earlier by Pete and Frank. They went down in a tangled mass of limbs and netting as Inpector Caruthers appeared.
"You have the right to remain silent...." he began.
"Forget our rights!" one skinhead yelled. "Just keep that beast away from us!"
"I'll be back," Donna growled, returning to the main event.
As a prominent radio talk show host once said, fear is a great motivator. Pete and Frank had joined Brilliance, and Arsenal was keeping the skins at bay from a distance. Jan was wreaking havok on them, while, up on a rafter, Shelly got the whole spectacle on video.
One of the punks took a well aimed shot at Jan, smashing his fist into her gut. Siezing the opprotunity, the three remaining skinheads broke and ran.
"No ya don't" Pete said as he knocked one to the floor with a bola. Frank and Brill caught hold of another's arms, as Arsenal shot him with a stun bolt from his cap gun. The last was nowhere to be found.
"It worked," Arsenal muttered. "I wasn't sure if I could pull that off."
"Looks like there's more to your powers than we expected," Brill told him. "Stick with me, and I'll make you one of the best."
"'Ganger, find that leather bearing trashbag!" Frank ordered.
"So what's wrong with leather?" Brill demanded, taking an experimental sniff at his lapels.
Donna shifted to her bloodhound form and sniffed the air, searching for a scent. She careened out the door, headed for the outside. She came to a stop beside the Lehigh River, shifting back into her "natural" state.
"I lost the scent," she told the others over her radio. "He dove into the Lehigh. There's no way to track him."
"Can't you turn into a barracuda or somethin'?" Brill asked her. "They're supposed to have a *great* sense of smell."
"I can't do fish," she told him. "There's too much that's different between us and them."
"Well," Frank told her, "head on back to the Jeep. We'll get him later. Scum like that won't stay hidden for very long."
Half an hour later, in the police station:
"How'd you do it, Inspector?" one of the lower-ranking officers asked Caruthers. "How did you find your family and get all but one of the skinheads who did it?"
"Let's just say," Caruthers stated, gazing out the window, "I had the help of a couple of ghosts."
"You're wierd, Joe," the officer said, shaking his head and walking away.
"I'll let you get away with it this time," Joe Caruthers muttered to himself. "But you'd better hope those 'ghosts' never cross the line."
"We did good," Pete stated, slipping off his ski mask. "Those skinheads never knew what hit them."
"Still, we found nothing to tie the skins to the Mayor," Shelly commented. "Only the leader would know, and *he's* the one that got away."
"He'll be back," Frank Stolid muttered, mosty to himself. "And the Mayor will try again. Only by remaining outside the law, can we do any good."
"Why do you say this, Frank?" Donna asked. "I thought you were studying Law at Moravian."
"I am. But sometimes the Law isn't enough. The Swamp Patrol must remain outside the Law. Outside - but not above - the Law."
"'Swamp Patrol'," Ted muttered, standing with the aid of a crutch. "I like the sound of that."
Prologue:
It was a relatively quiet night at Lehigh University. Students were returning to their rooms for all-night cramming sessions for upcoming exams. Professors and staff drove off in their cars, awaiting the upcoming weekend. Security was light, as the campus rent-a-cops drove along in their patrol cars. All seemed normal.
Except around the Computing Center. Up in a tree, a lone female figure took aim at a security camera with a pistol crossbow. One shot, and the camera was out of commission. She leapt to the ground, landing softly, hidden behind bushes. Slowly, she opened a window, and slipped inside.
Inside, she entered an office. After a minute, she picked up a set of disks from inside a desk drawer. She was gone before the rent-a-cops arrived, coffee and donuts in hand.