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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Golden Bee" data-source="post: 9412813" data-attributes="member: 7041055">Glazius points out: You say "cat burglar raised by apes" I just imagine a Tarzan yell but very, very quiet.---Terror of the Z-bomb! By Paul Wiggidy-Wade Williams“Was I a cute toddler?”Kabir thought for a moment. “And do you want me to be nice, Devika?”“That feels like an answer.”She swerved around a tourist, Benny Goodman blasting from the radio.“You were effective. You used the tools available to you.”“So, a brat.”“The worst!” In the 30s, Christmas started only a few weeks before the holidays. D Velyapur, W Callahan, JP Diamond, and adventuring bureaucrat Kabir Rupert were trying to find the presents.  Three adult men in boring suits, and a millionaire teenage girl… The recipe for a perfect Macy’s trip!Devi was trying to get Callahan to wear something that couldn’t be described as "musty". Detective Josiah was arguing the cost of parrot feed. Kabir was checking out silk ties.The Nazi jet troopers were breaking out the third floor windows and holding everyone hostage. Kabir shoved a mannequin in front of him to approach, then used a judo choke to take out one of the guards. Callahan took the man’s jet pack, using his literally minutes of prior experience to blast into a pack of Raketentruppen. Detective Diamond hustled to the athletic department, returning with a Louisville slugger. The ratzis got a homerun welcome. Devi, mystic extraordinaire, noticed how many mirrors and display cases had been destroyed. She yelled a phrase that she was sure to teach all her friends in Hindi: [CLOSE YOUR EYES!] The invaders didn’t know Hindi, and were stunned by the whammy coming at them from dozens of pieces of reflected glass.There was a brief interrogation, but it was barely necessary. Floating above midtown was a Grand Zeppelin, broadcasting a message:(*See SKY PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN!)The Duesenberg was fueled and ready. Devi slid behind the wheel, already calibrated with the extra long pedals. It was a good thing she put on the tire chains: New Yorkers had responded to the crisis by abandoning their cars in the middle of the street! Well, the sidewalk was there too.In the backseat, JP and Winston struggled to put together a radio jammer from things in their shopping bags. Eventually, they managed to turn off the bombs' signals… while JP leaned out the window, catching the contraptions with a pink butterfly net.Situation diffused, the group split up. JP noticed Callahan's rival, professor Nochebuena, being dragged into an alley by fifth columnists. With nothing else at hand, he used a wooden stick-with-a-net to score more runs. 5 to 0 for the home team. Now, to get a cab to Lord Simon's during an air attack…Kabir, the bureaucrat, had a brilliant idea. There wouldn’t be a better opportunity to raid the German consulate. The office workers claimed they had no idea this was going to happen. (Maybe they were correct: if this were a real ‘all hands on deck’ situation, they would’ve been evacuated.) Still, Rupert wouldn’t relent. They had broken laws from improper firearm use to airspace violations. The only proper thing was to let he and Devi look over the files, while JP, back at the group’s home base, instructed them via telephone.It was a brilliant strategy. Official cables had ordered surveillance of numerous former professors, physicists who had fled the increasing hatred of German law. (Devi, master of tact, didn’t tell Professor Callahan that he wasn’t on the Nazi’s list of noted mad scientists...but his rival was.)The twisted tale of German deceit led the group up to Queens, and then to the famous Folies-Bergeres nightclub in Paris. Unfortunately, the burlesque house had a strict 18+ age limit, so Devi spent the evening on the curb, despite repeated threats to purchase the venue and fire the doorman.Inside, the trio of gents drank champagne and made eyes at the nearly nude dames. They were questioning one of the chanteuses in her dressing room when they heard screaming from the club kitchen. The SS had turned up like a bad centime!The brown shirts were thwarted when Callahan made a liquor bomb from the chardonnay. Those who survived the initial attack had Diamond’s knuckles to contend with. Au revoir.(As a sidenote, JP Diamond might be the best investigator in any game of anything. He consistently gets maximum rolls and has it as his top skill. The guy gets more leads than a pet store.)Some digging by the Big-Easy Bloodhound unearthed the truth. The Nazis needed physicists for an implosion device they called the Z-bomb. Far deadlier than anything else in Earth’s arsenal, it was a super weapon strong enough to blackmail the world. And their command hub was a castle in Bremen. Just infiltrate a heavily guarded Nazi castle, when the group’s sneakiest member was a half-trained tween… easy.Kabir Rupert was the first man to earn the Order of the British Empire in bureaucracy. Which meant he could do things with paperwork the average person would find impossible. With only a few well-placed phone calls, he had not only secured the group legitimate travel papers, but had ordered them three German uniforms, a Hitler youth outfit, and a motorcar.A few miles from the castle was an airfield. Callahan had a hunch… the flight logs could tell them just as much as anything in the fortress. A few gestures and some well-made forgeries later, he found out Schmutzig left earlier that day… for Antarctica.Well, at least it was summer in the southern hemisphere! Some more bureaucratic malfeasance and the group was off to the ice.The final base required a lot of luck. The group had prepped one series of German excuses: "You idiots, we’re safety inspectors!".And it >worked.< Not forever, but long enough for the group to be escorted to the big boss’s office. And that meant it was time for sabotage. Devi, amateur burglar, was able to secure the hostage- scientists and sneak them to the base’s airfield. Kabir’s expert judo stealthily dealt with any too-curious guards. Trusting Callahan to destroy a scientific wonder might’ve been a mistake though... It took some extremely stern words from JP to make sure the device was set to self destruct.The ruse couldn’t hold forever. None of the four heroes were much good at gunplay, so it was a flat-out sprint to the escape vehicle. Also a problem: two lazy soldaten sleeping on the plane! After all that chaos, the plane had barely left the tarmac when the Z-bomb detonated.A thrilling adventure, but a question remained.Was it too late to order all the presents from a catalog?</blockquote>

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