Chapter 1
Perpetuating
Chapter Description: Perpetuating
"Just calm down, Doctor Menken," Superman told the near hysterical scientist in the ruins of his laboratory. "Can you tell us what happened?"
Superman's Justice League colleagues gathered more closely around as the scientist tried to collect himself.
"Oh, it was terrible!" He gasped. "A whole gang of costumed hooligans broke into my lab!" He shivered at the memory. "I think they were led by your nemesis, the bald renegade scientist Luthor!"
"Yes," Batman nodded. "He broke out of prison a few days ago."
"And... And there was another man as well," Doctor Menken went on. "He was dressed in a queer burlap costume trimmed with straw and wore a horrible mask! The very sight of him terrified me!"
"That would be your old foe The Scarecrow," Superman said to Batman. "The so-called 'Master of Fright.'"
"And... And... There was a man in a parka carrying a sort of ray gun! He froze Doctor Hennessy in a solid block of ice! Oh, I hope he'll be all right!"
"We're tending to him now sir," Aquaman comforted the scientist. "He's being flown to the nearest hospital. But that sounds like The Flash's antagonist Captain Cold!"
"And there was a bearded man wearing green leotards and a conical wizard hatI swear, he just seemed to be carrying a baton but he pointed it at the wall and the wall just dissolved!"
"Great Scott! Matter Master too?" The Flash's eyes widened. "He's one of Hawkman's foes! That strange wand of his can transmute anything!"
"Then there was a man with a little mustache!" Doctor Menken continued. "He wore a garish business suit and sunglasses and he held me at gunpoint! It looked like an ordinary gun but I was too frightened to look that carefully!"
"Holy Hannah!" Ace archer The Green Arrow exclaimed. "Could that be Wonder Woman's arch-rival The Angle Man?"
"But the most outlandish of all was the man in a white mask with a green costume and a yellow cape! He seemed to be timing the robbery!"
"That has to be Chronos, the Time Thief!" Green Lantern nodded. "He's one of The Atom's rogues!"
"And they all escaped in this strange, futuristic black airship!" The scientist concluded. "It looked like some sort of enormous ray-fish! And the pilot wore a black rubber suit with a bizarre diving helmet!"
Aquaman's face grew grim. "That can only be my old enemy Black Manta!"
"Was that all of them, sir?" Hawkman asked.
The scientist nodded. "Our security guard shot at them but they got away!"
"Did they manage to take anything?"
"Yes," Doctor Menken almost sobbed. "They escaped with all our notes and an experimental formula we recreated from now lost texts found in the library of the famous sorcerer The Count of Saint-Germain!"
"The Count of Saint-Germain?" Hawkman pondered. "The allegedly immortal alchemist? I wonder if it could be...."
#
"The Elixir of Youth!" The Matter Master's eyes shone madly gazing at the beaker of shimmering gold fluid in Black Manta's airship. "The secret formula sought for centuries! And now it's ours!"
"Perhaps," Luthor growled, still in his prison greys. "But I don't put much stock in this 'alchemy' business." He dipped a syringe into the beaker, carefully replacing the cork on top afterward. "You won't mind if I give it a quick test, I trust...."
He crossed the hull of the ship over to the shelf where a laboratory rat squeaked in its cage. With one deft move, he seized the rat and forced a couple droplets of the formula down its throat.
There was a pause. The rat struggled in Luthor's grip as he returned it to its cage. Then with a sudden convulsion, the rat dwindled, shrinking quickly back into a hairless, squirming newborn before the villains' astonished eyes.
"Incredible!" The Scarecrow exclaimed, the outline of his glasses visible under his mask. "The very key to immortality itself!"
"And it'll cost the institute a pretty penny to get it back!" Captain Cold snarled, the file folder they'd taken clutched in his gloved hand.
"After we make a private supply for our own personal use, of course!" The Angle Man laughed. "Just think of it! We'll never have to fear old age or death again!"
"Finally!" Chronos cackled. "We'll have all the time in the world!"
"Or maybe we won't!" Black Manta's voice echoed inside his helmet. "One of that guard's shots must have punctured our fuel tank! We're losing fuel!"
A quick look out the portholes confirmed they were losing altitude. The ship dropped lower and lower and the engines started to sputter.
"Blast!" Captain Cold cursed. "And knowing The Justice League, they've already detected the trail! They'll track it straight to us!"
"The tank's nearly empty" Black Manta read his gauges. "Anyone have any brilliant ideas to get us out of this?"
"I always have an angle!" The Angle Man looked out the windshield at the surrounding countryside. "Set down in that barn over by that lake! Perhaps we can patch the leak before they show up!"
#
Inside the barn, Matter Master hefted the aluminum statue which had moments before been the farmer who'd confronted them, tossing it into a nearby haystack.
"It's no use!" Black Manta exclaimed, examining the damaged ship. "The hole's too big! We'll never make it to our secret lair!"
"And even if we did, the trail of leaked fuel would lead the heroes straight to us!" Luthor cursed, then turned his attention to Matter Master. "Can't you do something with that wand of yours?"
"I can fix the leak," the uncanny alchemist asserted. "But I don't know the necessary chemical formula to create more fuel! So even if we got airborne again, we wouldn't get very far!"
"Blast!" Captain Cold hissed. "The perfect crime, foiled by a bit of dumb luck!"
"According to this data," The Scarecrow announced, flipping through the file. "The Youth Elixir would completely eliminate any hero's powers! Even the ones born with special abilities like Superman and Aquaman! They'd be helpless against us! But first we'd have to turn the Elixir into a gas or something we could use against them! And we haven't the time to do so!" The frightful felon whined. "What are we going to do?"
Chronos peered up in the sky through a set of binoculars. "Well, whatever we do, we'd better do it fast! The League is headed straight for us!" He consulted his watch. "They'll be on top of us in minutes!"
Luthor cursed again, then turned to the Angle Man, who stood deep in thought contemplating the nearby lake. "Well? You say you always have an angle! Any ideas?"
The Angle Man grinned. "As a matter of fact, I do! We'll head for the lake!"
"The lake?" Matter Master glared at him. "What's the point of that? They're sure to capture us!"
"Not if we disguise ourselves," The Angle Man's grin widened.
"Disguise ourselves?" The Scarecrow's straw rustled. "How could we possibly disguise ourselves well enough to fool The Justice League?"
"Oh, don't worry," The Angle Man held up The Elixir. "We'll be the very picture of innocence!"
#
"This is Black Manta's Manta-Ray ship," Aquaman examined the enormous vessel. "And here's the leaking fuel tank!"
"But where are the villains?" Green Lantern scanned the barn with his power ring. "They seem to have vanished!"
"With the stolen formula!" Green Arrow emerged from the open hatch of the steel ship. "There's no sign of them in there!"
Superman scanned the surroundings with his telescopic vision. "The trail just seems to evaporate!"
Batman inspected the ground outside. "Their footprints lead out the barn toward the woods, and then disappear!"
Hawkman carried the aluminum farmer inside. "Clearly they were here! And they did this to this poor man! Let's hope it's only temporary!"
A red blur sped across the grass, slowing to a stop and transforming into the Flash. "There's no sign of them! The only people around are some kids skinny-dipping!"
The heroes gathered just outside the barn, watching as seven stark naked little boys swam in the nearby lake.
"Hmmmm...." Batman pondered. "Those children look awfully familiar...."
#
Meanwhile, just across the field, seven wide-eyed, dimpled young prepubescent boys splashed and squealed and sported in the crystal clear lake naked as the day they were born, all the while keeping a surreptitious eye on the heroes nearby.
"This is preposterous!" A scrawny lad with a shock of messy jet black hair hissed, struggling to keep his oversized wire-frame glasses, his only garment, perched on his pointed little nose. His pink nipples stood out against his pale skin and his chubby little knob of a bare bottom twitched in annoyance. "I have never felt more ridiculous in all my life!"
"What's the matter, Scarecrow?" A jug-eared, red-haired, freckle-faced boy laughed, grabbing the other boy's bony shoulders and ducking him under the water; the scrawny boy emerged, sputtering, and fished about for his glasses. "You never went skinny-dipping as a kid?" The red-head laughed, his prepubescent wiener bobbing, his ruddy little rump thrust out behind him.
"Certainly not!" huffed the thin boy, replacing and adjusting his glasses with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances. "Unlike you, Matter Master, I was a well-behaved and proper child!"
"Well, you're not one now!" snapped a strawberry blond little scamp, his pudgy lily white bare behind poking out of the water. "They've spotted us! Quick! Act like you're an innocent little kid just cooling off on a hot day!"
"This had better work, Luthor!" A little black child cringed, his brown bubble butt gleaming in the sun as he forced a smile and danced about. "This is humiliating!"
"Oh, lighten up, Black Manta!" chided a thin-faced, sandy haired, mischievous looking rascal, waggling his skinny, pasty white backside in the heroes' direction. "I've always wanted to moon those jerks!"
"Very funny, Captain Cold!" A rotund little boy with a prominent tummy and an almost flat little rear end pouted. "How long is this Youth Potion supposed to keep us this size anyway?"
"Oh, not too long!" Little Luthor answered. "Only a couple days!"
"DAYS?"
"Oh, stop whining, Chronos!" A pretty little lad with neatly trimmed, pomaded hair and a puny little pee-pee that looked stuck to him like a refrigerator magnet snapped. "It's working, isn't it? After they're gone, we can retrieve our clothes and figure out some way to our secret lair!"
"You'd better be right, Angle Man!" snarled Luthor with all the ferocity his treble voice could manage.
"All right," The Angle Lad admitted, his crack tilting at a slight angle. "Maybe our dignity is slightly compromised! But it's the perfect subterfuge! They'll never suspect us!"
#
"It's them, all right!" Superman tapped his ear. "They forgot about my super-hearing! I've heard every word they've said!"
The seven Justice Leaguers stood by the barn watching with amazed amusement the seven shrunken skinny-dipping super-crooks. They were far enough away that the villains couldn't hear them but near enough to have an excellent view.
"I can't believe it!" Green Lantern stifled a laugh. "Look at them! They've all turned themselves into little kids! And they're all buck naked!"
"They must have used some of that Elixir on themselves," observed Batman. "And discarded their costumes hoping we wouldn't recognize them!"
"Well," Aquaman laughed. "We don't often see them like this!"
"Aren't they adorable?" snickered Green Arrow. "They look like The Little Rascals with prison pallor!"
"Yeah!" Guffawed the Flash. "On both ends!"
A loud flap of enormous wings heralded the arrival of Hawkman, swooping down to land just inside the barn.
"I found the formula!" he announced, holding up the now partially empty vial. The file folder was tightly gripped in his other hand. "It was hidden in a hollow log, along with their costumes and weapons!" He held the bundle under his arm. From their vantage point, the villains couldn't see him in the shadows.
"Great!" The Flash nodded. "Now let's round up those fugitives from a bearskin rug and give them the sound spankings they richly deserve!"
"Wait!" Superman held up his hand. "First, let's teach them a lesson! After all," he grinned, "how often do we get a chance like this?"
The high-pitched shrieks and squeals of the rejuvenated rogues echoed across the way.
"What do you have in mind?" Green Lantern smiled. "Tie knots in their clothes while they're in swimming or...?"
"Oh, they've got an even better surprise coming," Hawkman told the others. "While I was searching, I noticed someone in the woods coming this way...."
#
"Oh, when will those heroes leave?" Kiddie Cold whimpered, shivering. "This water is freezing!"
"They can't be too much longer," The Angle Lad insisted, more out of optimism than anything. Goose bumps were already running down his bony spine.
"What is taking them so long?" The Stripling Scarecrow adjusted his glasses again as he glanced around. "Why don't they... EEP!"
The child Scarecrow blanched, his glasses tumbling off his face into the water. He quickly retrieved them and put them back on. There was an expression of sick horror pasted across his pasty face.
"Oh, now what are you....?" The annoyed Angle Lad looked over his shoulder to where the other boy was staring. Instantly, he turned pale too. "OMIGOSH!"
One by one, the other five boys saw too, their eyes growing wide, their bare bodies freezing in shock.
"EEK!"
"GACK!"
"YIPE!"
"Oh NO!"
"GULP!"
The Girl Scouts stood in the clearing, all about the same physical age as the boys or maybe a bit older. There were at least twenty of them, all neatly dressed in their regulation uniforms with their green skirts and berets. They had just emerged from the woods after following the noise and their initial shock was quickly turning to amusement.
"Hi, boys!" One of the bolder girls shouted. "Nice tans!"
The boys' hairless chests heaved and their mouths opened and closed. They stood like statues on full display, too startled to even move.
Some of the girls had initially covered their eyes but were now starting to peek at the spectacle before them. The boys' faces changed from pale to a deep scarlet and they fled into deeper water.
"H-HEY!" Baby Black Manta shouted, his voice cracking. "GO AWAY! WE GOT NO CLOTHES ON!"
"Yeah," a girl giggled. "We noticed!"
"BLAST IT!" A red-faced Little Luthor shrieked, trying not to blubber. "YOU GIRLS GET OUT OF HERE!"
"Nah," one girl answered. "The view's too good here!" More giggles. "Nice dimples, guys!"
Searching for an escape, the embarrassed pint-sized villains noticed the Justice Leaguers had all quietly disappeared.
"Great," Kid Chronos muttered. "NOW they leave!"
The bare-naked boys crouched in the water, bumping into one another as they shifted about, searching for some sort of cover.
"Oh, MAN..."
"What are we gonna do?" Kid Scarecrow was on the verge of tears. "What are we gonna DO?"
The miniature Matter Master clenched his skinny arms across his pudgy chest. "YOU GIRLS BETTER GET OUT OF HERE OR... OR YOU'LL BE SORRY!"
"Actually," the Girl Scout who seemed to be in charge responded, "this looks like the perfect place for our picnic! Wouldn't you agree, ladies?"
The girls produced a couple of baskets and thermoses and started setting up.
"Yeah! Cool and sunny..."
"And plenty of great scenery!"
The girls giggled. The blushing boys fumed, sinking down to their chins in the water.
#
Unbeknownst to the age-regressed rogues, the Justice League hadn't left. They'd scattered across the area to monitor the situation from different perspectives. And all were all thoroughly enjoying their shrunken arch-enemies' predicament.
Aquaman had quietly slipped into the lake and was now underwater smiling at the decidedly undignified picture the little villains presented him from that vantage point. They were in a cluster, crouched down to conceal themselves from the girls, the cheeks of their chubby little boy behinds slightly parted, seven shivering underwater full moons.
"Poor wee things," he thought to himself as he regarded the little row of exposed backsides."Talk about compromised dignity!" Then he set to work using his Aquatic Telepathy to communicate with the local fish. "Let's see if we can compromise it even more!"
Moments later, the fish went to work.
"WHOO!" Suddenly, Little Black Manta popped up in the water, his eyes bulging, clutching his exposed rump. "HEY!" He shouted at his colleagues. "HANDS OFF, MAN!".
Little Matter Master stared over at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about!" The bare bottomed buccaneer raged. "Someone just goosed me!"
"Goosed you?" The chubby little Chronos gasped, his skin bunched up beneath his armpits. "Where?"
"YOU KNOW WHERE!" He glared murderously.
"Well, it sure wasn't me!" Matter Mite snapped back. "I... WHOOP!" He bounded up too, also clutching his rear. "OKAY, WHO'S THE WISE GUY?"
"Oh, shut up, you two!" Little Luthor scolded. "We've got enough... WHOOP!"
One by one, each boy popped up, squealing and indignant.
"WHOOP!"
"WHOOP!"
"YELP!"
"HEY!"
One of the girls on shore giggled. "Sounds like a calliope!"
"OKAY, WHAT'S GOING ON?" A red-faced Baby Luthor demanded.
"I don't know!" The Angle Lad looked around. "It can't be any of us!"
"Well, who else could it be, the fish?"
Unseen by them, the fish swam around their legs, looking for more opportunities. They soon got them as the mortified boys continued to argue.
"I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS! THIS IS JUST SO... WHOOP!"
"THIS ISN'T FUNNY! YOU'D BETTER... HEY!"
"SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET A PUNCH IN THE... YEEP!"
"WHOOP!"
"WHOOP!"
"WHOOP!"
"WHOOP!"
"WHOOP!"
"WHOOP!"
"HEY!"
"Good job, my friends!" Aquaman congratulated his finned subjects. He watched the boys' backsides wiggle frantically under the water as the startled little villains' faces contorted in shock and mortification.
Meanwhile, the Girl Scouts continued their picnic, munching cold fried chicken and potato chips and sipping Cokes while they watched the boys squirm.
"Hey guys!" One lass called over to them. "Having a ticklish situation?"
"NEVER YOU MIND!" Little Scarecrow shouted back, blushing all the way to his toes. "WHOOP!"
#
A little over two hours later, the Girl Scouts were finishing up their dessert. The seven shrunken super-villains, meanwhile, glowered at them from the water, which was starting to feel quite chilly against their bare skin.
"Ooooooo...." Little Luthor shook like a rattle, his pink skin crawling with goosebumps. "If thuh-thuh-those guh-guh-girls knew huh-who they were duh-duh-dealing with...."
"If I wuh-were muh-muh-my right sis-sis-size, I'd give them all a guh-good spuh-spanking!" vowed the shivering Scarecrow through chattering teeth.
"Yuh-yeah," Kid Chronos moaned. "Buh-but at this size, thuh-they'd probably guh-guh-give US a guh-good spuh-spanking!"
"Wuh-wuh-we should luh-luh-let them!" A baby blue-tinted Baby Black Manta hugged his arms to his heaving little chest. "At luh-luh-least it'd wuh-warm us up at a buh-bit!"
The Girl Scouts passed around sugar cookies and regarded the miserable little drowning rats before them. The villains' faces burned with embarrassment while the rest of them froze.
"AW, CUH-CUH-CUH-COME ON, GIRLS!" Mini-Matter Master shouted. "OUR LUH-LUH-LEGS ARE CRAMPING!"
The girls regarded them, giggling.
"Maybe they want to buy some cookies," a girl suggested. She produced a few boxes from her pouch. "Hey, guys! Y'got any money?"
"DUH-DO WE LUH-LUH-LOOK LIKE WE HAVE ANY MUH-MONEY?"
"Hey guh-guh-guh-girls!" The kid-sized Captain Cold flashed his most winning smile through purple lips. "Suh-suh-see anything you luh-luh-like?" He stuck his scrawny little pink chest out proudly.
"Aw, he's so cute!" A girl answered. "If he were a couple years older, he'd really be something!"
Kid Cold instantly deflated.
High above, an amused Green Lantern observed the regressed villains' plight.
"Poor little guys," he mused, grinning. "Normally, any one of them could terrorize an entire city! But in their current circumstances, they can't even intimidate a Girl Scout troop!"
And under the lake's surface, Aquaman continued to keep an eye on the boys, or the portion he could see. He'd stopped having his fish goose them; at this point, they were too numb back there to feel it anyway.
"Whuh-whuh-what are we going to DO?" The Scarekid whined yet again.
"Whuh-whuh-whuh-well, we've guh-gotta do something," Black Minnow replied. "Before we all catch pneumonia!"
"Whuh-whuh-we're going to have tuh-to guh-guh-get tough!" The Angle Lad insisted, his little tummy rising and expanding, his outie belly button just above the water. "Wuh-we cuh-cuh-can't let them duh-do this to us! It's tuh-time to stop puh-playing guh-games!"
They all nodded, some with more enthusiasm than others.
"OKUH-KAY, YOU GUH-GIRLS!" Little Luthor shouted across the lake at the on-looking young ladies, struggling to make his quavering, high-pitched preadolescent shriek sound menacing. "ENUH-NUH-NOUGH IS ENOUGH! WE'RE CUH-COMING OUT! AND YOU'D BUH-BUH-BETTER BE GONE BY THE TIME WUH-WE GET TO SHORE! UNLUH-LUH-LESS YOU WANNA GUH-GET CUH-CUH-CLOBBERED BY SEVEN BUTT-NAKED BOYS!"
The Girl Scouts exchanged looks. None of them moved. Some of them seemed intrigued.
"I'M SUH-SUH-SERIOUS!"
The girls didn't react.
"WUH-WUH-WE'RE NUH-NUH-NOT BLUFFING!"
Still no reaction.
"YUH-YUH-YOU'RE GONNA SEE EVERYTHING!"
"Which isn't much," Aquaman thought with some amusement. "They're prepubescent boys who've been bathing in ice water. They're all sporting raisins right now!"
"All ruh-ruh-ruh-right," Little Luthor squared his pink, freckled shoulders. "Let's guh-guh-go!"
As one, the seven kid criminals dove underwater and started swimming toward the shore, their fleshy outlines visible approaching the girls.
Aquaman moved back out of sight while Green Lantern took aim with his incredible power ring.
"Seven against twenty or more!" The emerald crusader thought to himself. "I don't give them much of a chance with those odds! But I can't risk them hurting anyone!"
A beam of pulsing green energy shot down from his ring and enveloped the seven little underwater shadows, surrounding them and then diminishing with them, shrinking down into a small circle about the size of a basketball. The shadows within diminished as well.
The Girl Scouts sat up, looking around.
"Where are they? What happened to them?"
Then an amazed gasp. "There they are! Way down there!"
The girls looked down to see the seven stark naked super villain boys storming out of the water, reduced by the magic of Green Lantern's awesome power ring to only a couple inches high. The dripping, mouse sized villains rubbed their tiny arms, looking around fiercely. The Girl Scouts cleared a path for the miniature mites, kneeling on the ground so they had a better vantage point.
"Wow! I knew boys shrank in cold water but I didn't think it was all over!"
Unaware of the change, the tiny boys emerged from the lake one by one, bare as the day they were born and considerably smaller, storming defiantly into the giant girls' midst. The girls stared down at them in amused amazement; they were so large to the shrunken villains they were completely invisible to them, especially since they had water stinging their eyes and had no clue about the change in scale. All they could see were green skirts, which their tiny eyes mistook for foliage.
"See?" The lilliputian Luthor squeaked to the others in a voice almost too faint to be heard. "They're not here! I told you they'd run when they realized we were serious!"
"And good thing for them they did!" Itty bitty Black Manta snarled. "Girls or no girls, I was ready to bust some heads!"
"I don't know," Micro-Chronos looked around anxiously. "What if they're just hiding? They could be spying on us right now!"
He was more right than he knew. The enormous girls loomed above them like skyscrapers, still giggling and thoroughly enjoying the view.
"So what?" The pint-sized Captain Cold answered. "Let them look! Even at this age, I could always impress the ladies!"
"Please!" The squirt Scarecrow interjected. "Let's just go find our clothes and get dressed before anything else happens!"
They trotted off, the color returning to their cheeks as they dried in the sun. The girls watched from on high, struggling to keep from laughing out loud until they were out of earshot.
"Look at them!" One girl whispered. "They look like Kewpie dolls!"
The wee villains trotted off towards the woods, blinking as their vision began to clear.
"Odd," one tiny voice peeped. "I don't remember the grass being quite this high...."
#
Green Lantern restored them to their full child size a little later.
"They're safely away from The Girl Scouts," he mused. "And we certainly don't want the little dears getting eaten by a stray cat or something!"
Of course, he made certain to enlarge at precisely the right place at the right time.
Now the seven de-aged villains were sullenly marching through the woods, their bare bottoms glowing like hot coals, their tear-streaked faces almost as red.
"Where did those nuns come from?" Kid Chronos whined, his beet-red backside stinging.
"I don't know," whimpered Matter Mite, rubbing his sore, scarlet rump. "But they sure could hit!"
"How humiliating!" Kiddie Cold sobbed, his pudgy rear end blazing. "I haven't been grabbed by the ear like that since parochial school!" He snickered. "Then again, that was the last time I streaked a nunnery...."
"Did anyone even see that wrought iron fence? Or the convent? Or that horde of nuns? It's like they were just suddenly there!" The Angle Boy exclaimed, his little behind a deep fire engine red. "All around us! Screaming at us!"
"Yeah!" Boy Manta pouted, his bubble butt almost incandescent. "Calling us heathens and saying we had trespassed on their nature retreat!" He winced. "Right now, we're as natural as you can get!"
"It's not funny!" insisted the Scarekid, his head to toe blush almost as bright as his scrawny bum. "The indignity of it all! Us! Seven of the most dangerous super-criminals in the country! Rounded up and spanked! Like a bunch of naughty children!" He was blinking back tears behind his glasses.
Little Luthor's rage burned almost as fiercely as his twitching little hindquarters. "If ANY of you breathes a WORD about this to ANYONE..."
"Who do you think we'd want to tell?" asked Kid Cold. "Really, the less people who know about this, the better!"
"That's the only good thing about this!" snarled Matter Mister. "At least nobody will recognize us like this!"
"THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK, DIMPLES!"
Gasping, the villains all dropped into crouched, covering themselves as best they could and searching for the source of the taunting voice.
Finally, they spotted him, an impish little man in a bizarre orange outfit, a purple derby hat sitting atop his bald head.
"Well, well, well!" He cackled. "Wanted: The World's Nakedest Villains! What's the matter, little fellas? Diaper rash?"
"Mister Mxyzptlk!" Little Luthor scowled up at his crooked colleague. "What are you doing here, you Fifth Dimensional clown?"
"Why so testy, Lexie? At least you got your hair back! Well, at least on your head!" Mxyzptlk snickered, indicating the shrunken scientist's bald prepubescent pubic area. Luthor fumed and the mischievous imp waggled his finger. "Anyway, you should know better! Mustn't be lippy to one's elders! Behavior like that gets little boys bare bottom spankings...." He peered around at the shrunken villains' exposed, blazing rears. "...As you've already found out!"
Mxyzptlk brayed with laughter at the sight while the villains fumed helplessly. "Luthor, super-scientist nemesis of Superman! The Scarecrow, malevolent master of terror! Black Manta, scourge of the Seven Seas! Chronos, the time thief! Captain Cold, the human blizzard, arch-enemy of The Flash! The Angle Man, criminal mastermind who knows all the angles! And The Matter Master, evil alchemist and wielder of the mighty Mentachem Wand! All shrunk down to little kids and paddled on their little bare fannies! By a bunch of nuns! Oh, what a spectacle! What a hoot!"
"It's not funny!" shrieked the small Scarecrow, shivering with embarrassment, his glasses sliding down his nose.
"Of course it is!" The imp countered. "It's a crack up! Seven of them, in fact!"
"What's your game, Mxyzptlk?" The Angle Kid demanded. "Shouldn't you be off pestering Superman?"
"Oh, I would be," the preternatural prankster smiled. "But a certain vibration in the etheric field told me this might be worth checking out! And it definitely is!" He howled with laughter again as the child-sized super-criminals glared up at him.
"Oh, don't be such a bunch of little soreheads! Although," he snickered, "it's probably not your heads that are sore...."
"You'll PAY for this!" The Matter Master vowed. "Fifth Dimensional magic or no, when we get back to normal, we'll..."
"Oh, pipe down, you little pipsqueaks, or I'll spank you myself! In fact, I think I will!"
Mxyzptlk gestured and the seven villains suddenly felt a torrent of invisible swats upon their already tender backsides.
"H-HEY!"
"OW!"
"YOW!"
"OH!"
"OO!"
"OWWWWWWW!"
"HE-EH-EH-EY!"
Howling with pain and indignation, the reduced rogues hopped about frantically, clutching their agonized, incandescently red rear ends.
"Oh, look! A rain-dance! Performed by a bunch of little naked Redskins! I'd better go before it starts storming!"
The laughing imp vanished, leaving behind an assortment of very irate, very sore little villains.
"WE'LL GET YOU FOR THIS, YOU ROTTEN... OWWW!"
They rubbed their stinging, red bottoms, shouting invectives up at where they'd last seen the imp.
Meanwhile, Superman sat in the branches above them, concealed by the leaves of the trees all around. In his arms, he held the life-size Mister Mxyzptlk marionette he'd been using earlier.
"Using my Super-Puppeteering skills and my Super-Mimickery to duplicate his voice, it was a snap for me to convince them Mxyzptlk was taunting them!" The Man of Steel mused. "And it was pretty satisfying to give those crooks the invisible super-speed spankings they deserve!"
He listened to them rant and scream.
"My! Such filthy language! They should get their mouths washed out with soap!"
Before he could act on his impulse, however, he heard a rumble of thunder.
"Uh-oh! Sounds like a storm!"
He flew off to round up the rest of the League and get to shelter.
The bare boy bandits had heard the thunder too and ran through the woods as the rain pelted their naked bodies.
"Of all the... I'll bet Mxyzptlk created this storm!" Little Black Manta whined. "He probably wanted us to think we really did accidentally do a rain-dance!"
"Well, not quite!" thought Green Arrow, watching from under the nearby tree branches where he'd taken shelter. "I seeded the clouds with my dry ice arrows to make them think that!"
He watched the seven waterlogged boys flee, raindrops turning to steam upon contact with their fiery red bare behinds.
"But if they blame Mxyzptlk, that works too!"
#
Fortunately for the half-drowned little ratfinks, they eventually found shelter from the storm: A dilapidated old abandoned tin roof shack in a clearing. It only had one wall and most of the space inside was taken up by a broken down tractor but it got them out of the rain, which was more than enough for them right now.
That is, most of them was out of the rain. They were now all bent over, hands resting on their knees, their bare behinds stuck out from under the roof's protection, letting the raindrops cool their stinging red, tender flesh.
"This is ridiculous!" The little Scarekid griped, trying to clean his glasses with his thumb. "I'm just glad none of my former university students can see me like this!"
"Oh, stop complaining!" The Angle Kid told him. "It's working, isn't it?"
And it was. Their backsides had cooled from an incandescent red to a cheery fireplace scarlet. They were now almost the same shade as their opposite ends, which hadn't stopped blushing since the start of their naked ordeal.
"Maybe so," Kid Manta huffed, little arms crossed over his scrawny chest. "But I haven't forgotten it was your harebrained scheme that got us into this mess in the first place!" He seethed with embarrassment. "The only reason I haven't killed you yet is that I'm waiting to get back to full size so I can hit you even harder!"
"Gentlemen, please!" Kid Luthor scolded. "Let's just get through this! Then when the rain stops, we can resume looking for our clothes!"
"Yeah," Kid Chronos nodded. "I can't imagine how we haven't found them yet! We must have gone past them!"
They had indeed. During the period when they were shrunk by Green Lantern's ring, they'd walked right by the hollow log where they'd left their costumes and equipment, too tiny to recognize it. It wouldn't have mattered if they had, though; the Justice League had already taken all their things.
"We'll have to retrace our steps! Damn!" Kid Cold fumed. "We'll be lucky if we don't catch pneumonia running around like this!"
"Yeah!" Kid Matter Master shivered. "I just want to get back to my proper size! I'm sick of this Little Rascals nonsense!"
The Flash stood nearby, vibrating his molecules at super-speed so the rain passed through him like a phantom. Vibrating so quickly also made him effectively invisible to the child-sized super-crooks.
"Boy!" He chuckled to himself, looking at the row of protruding little rears. "What a target! They're almost begging for another spanking!" he thought to himself. "But the poor little guys have been spanked raw already. Any more and they could be seriously injured. And we don't want to really hurt them, just teach them a lesson!"
He couldn't help smiling at the picture , seven pint-sized full moons shining like traffic lights in the rain. Captain Cold was one of his oldest foes and he'd pretty much battled all of the others in previous adventures with his Justice League colleagues. So seeing the seven of them reduced to powerless ten year old boys, stark naked and utterly mortified, was quite amusing.
"But a set-up like that is just begging for some sort of...." He picked a leaf from a tree, vibrating it until it shook like a jackhammer. Then he looked back at the boys, his grin widening.
"Oh, when we get back to our right size, they will all PAY for this!" Little Luthor vowed, the ferocity of the threat lessened by the cherubic appearance of the boy uttering it. "We'll... Wuh-We'll... We'll.... WOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!" The midget malefactor's eyes bulged and his fanny wiggled frantically as he exploded in a torrent of laughter which ended as abruptly as it began. His face turned almost as crimson as his other end. 'OKAY, WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?"
"What on Earth....?" Chubby little Chronos stared at the outraged team leader, who was now clutching his hindquarters and glaring angrily at the others. "Luthor, what in the world was... was... WEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE!"
The villains' faces contorted and their bodies gyrated as they were helplessly convulsed with hysterics.
"Whah... Whah... What's going on? YAHAHAHA!" cried Baby Black Manta, furiously skipping in place.
"It's luh...like... It's luh...like... Like we're being TICKLED!" sobbed The Angle Lad, squirming like a hula dancer. "WHOOHOOHOOHOO!"
"All over!" Kid Cold whimpered, slapping his skin to no avail. "HUH-HEY! YEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHOO!"
That they were. The Flash raced invisibly from one boy to another, running the vibrating leaf he'd plucked from the tree up and down their tender and exposed flesh. The boys yelped and howled with indignation as they were convulsed with laughter.
"HOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!"
"YEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE!"
"YAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"YIIHEEHEEHIIHOOHOHOOHOOHOOHOOHIHEE!"
"WAAHAAHAAHAAWOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHEY!"
The startled squirts hopped and wiggled, bouncing from one foot to another, tears of laughter and embarrassment running down their red little faces. One by one, they flung themselves to the concrete floor, rolling about, legs kicking, puny fists pounding the ground, as invisible fingers assaulted their exposed flesh.
Little Luthor raged as the Flash invisibly slid his leaf up and down his sensitive little bare backside.
"Oh... HOOHOOHOOHOO! I don't... WEEHEEHEEHEEHEE! I don't know what's going on! But someone... HAHAHAHAHAHOO! Someone is going... WHAHAAHAAHAA! Someone is going to PAY for this! YAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHOOHOOHEE!"
#
Sometime later, the rain stopped and The Flash relented his tickle torture. the boys resumed their search for their clothing, their bottoms still glowing a cheery cherry red. Their faces were actually now a lot redder, partly from the exertion of all the squirming and laughing, partly from embarrassment. The villains stomped through the wet leaves, stubbing their sensitive little bare feet on stray rocks, wagging their tails behind them. The tickling was still making them squirm back there.
"I'm sure they were around here somewhere!" The Angle Lad had found an old comb in a corner of the shack and was combing his disheveled hair. "Once we get something on and we have our weapons back, we won't feel so... exposed!"
"I just want to get dressed!" The Scarechild whined, his glasses slipping down his nose. "I'm tired of everyone looking at me naked!"
"No one's looking at you, Scarecrow!" Kid Chronos snapped. "Who would even want to? There are few things I enjoy seeing less!"
"I'm sick of looking at all of you naked!" Baby Manta growled. "I just want to get some dignity back!"
"All of you shut up!" Little Luthor ordered, his little pink tummy going in and out. "Granted, this could have gone a lot more smoothly...."
"Well, there's no one smoother than us now!" Matter Mite snarled. "That's something else we all have to look at!"
"Is it just me or has it gotten colder since it stopped raining?" Child Cold shivered, crossing his arms over his scrawny, hairless chest. "We'll be lucky if we don't catch pneumonia!"
"The payout from that potion had better be worth all this!" Bare Manta fumed, hips wiggling like an underdressed hula dancer.
"It will be, it will be!" Little Matter Mister assured him. "With that ancient formula in our hands, we hold the key to immortality itself!" The evil grandeur was undercut considerably by his little pink rear swaying back and forth.
"It had better be immortality at our proper ages!" The Scaremite complained, skinny hands on scrawny hips. "I'd just as soon not spend eternity like this!"
"It already feels like we've spent an eternity like this!" Kid Cold moaned. "Does anyone have any idea how long it's been?"
"Do any of us look like we have watches?" exploded Little Chronos. "TOO long, that's how long it's been!"
"Where is that stupid log?" Baby Luthor cursed, his little behind swaying like a metronome.
Actually, even if they found the hollow log where they'd hidden their costumes and equipment, it wouldn't do them any good. The Justice League had found it first and taken everything for safekeeping. And now they were all watching from places of concealment, greatly amused by their now preadolescent nemeses' impotent rage.
Hawkman circled unnoticed high above them in the summer sky, watching them with his preternaturally keen Hawk Vision.
"I'll bet they're getting tired out," Hawkman thought to himself. "It's been a tough day for them! After all, they're used to getting their behinds whipped, but usually not so literally!"
