"It's the reverse World Crime League," Phoenix Talon suggested. "They're making everyone love us. And somehow this is more unnerving, 'cause I'm not sure what it's leading up to."
    "Either that or Holly Shapiro's henchmen sold out to 1-800 first," Scott replied cryptically.
    The anchor went on, "And as we further look into the situation, it turns out that damage was in the hundreds of dollars and there were tens of wounded....."
    We all blinked.
    "It seems as if the Revolution was more clever than we ever suspected. For all intents and purposes, the army units and airplanes that were fighting against Godzilla earlier were the mental creations of this man," they showed Albert's photo, "using his mesmeric abilities against the giant monster. Way to go, Revolution."
    "I didn't know Frog could do that—"
    "This is an outrage for which someone will pay," said Frog pronounced coldly.
    "Well, it's nice that they leaped to that conclusion," I shrugged.
    "So you didn't do that?" Talon asked.
    "Of course not."
    "All right guys, I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but I'm pretty sure that this was the Toy Man again."
    "Y'think?" I sighed.
    We're at a loss as far as his motives now. Phoenix Talon has his pet theory about AMP generating positive publicity for the new comic line, which Scott tends to deride as illogical. I suspect Toy Man is simply setting us up for a later, more impressive take-down. No matter what he ultimately wants, we can't let him keep running around making Godzilla whenever he feels like it. Unfortunately, he's going to be very hard to find. The nature of his power is such that he can hide quite easily; we can hardly go around questioning everyone in the city who happens to own a toy movie monster.

July 21, 1987
We found the power station the Toy Man broke into, which suggests that a) the guy has a sense of humor, and b) he can draw upon external energy sources to enhance his abilities. Godzilla, the boat, the airplanes, and the army unit all together took a huge amount of power. We found a Matchbox car at the scene, which he'd been too drained to make use of after the battle, instead stealing a car by more conventional methods to make his getaway.
    The battle footage went national. It was a real shame that we had to disabuse the media of their notion that any of us deserved the credit . I wonder how Toy Man will react to that. What can he be after? First the fight with Phoenix Talon and the edited ending, now this staged display. Sometimes I almost think that Phoenix's idea makes sense. Or maybe the guy's just nuts.
    Or maybe we're being distracted, after all. I'm going to have to go back through the rest of the news from that day, and make sure we didn't miss anything that might have been happening at the same time, however innocuous.
    On another front, Sleipnir is in custody, inert, but Odin was not in the cab when they finally got the truck out of the ground. I want to look the thing over and see if it has any kind of physical memory we can access, so we can try to figure out who they got the gene manipulator for. Outside of the World Crime League, the only person we can think of who might have a use for it is Doc Twilight, and as far as I know he's always been a freshwater sort. Yet another thing to ask Trent about next time we chat, I suppose.
    And let's not forget our 1-800 friends, of course. Heck, it's been days since we had a new supervillain with a stupid name crop up around here.

[Aside: Elsewhere]

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