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And she wasn't even trying back then as she was now. She was actually playing tag and hide-and-seek with a little boy and his pet stuffed leopard.

Yes, Gazpacho of the Andes was no match for Mallet Girl. He was definitely way in over his head. There was little doubt in Alias Uno's mind.

Mallet Girl had had enough. All her demands that Gazpacho of the Andes stop and let her mallet, kick, stomp, knee, elbow, punch, scratch, and headbutt him to within a millimeter of his sad, sorry life had gone unheeded. There was just no reasoning with the guy! Reaching back, she flipped a tiny switch near the bottom of her mallet holster; a small panel slid open and out rolled a black croquet ball, gently dropping into her waiting hand.

And what a croquet ball it was!

It was slightly bigger than normal and had a white skull-and-cross-bones painted on its study-ridden surface. A six-inch-long, self-igniting rope fuse was sticking out of it.

While still maintaining a firm hold on her mallet, she pinched the tip of the fuse with thumb and index finger of her other hand. Flicking her fingers, she lit the fuse and then dropped the ball and struck it with her trusty wooden mallet upon the first bounce, all in one swift move. And thus the ball was sent arcing towards the fleeing villain.

But Gazpacho of the Andes was no slouch himself. He may be a crook, a criminal, a kidnapper, and a molester extraordinaire but he was clearly no ordinary pervert on the street. He was Gazpacho of the Andes and he was not without any skills. He skidded to a halt and whipped around, arms outstretched in front of him, hands open, one a couple of inches above the other.

“El Ceramico Blanco!” he shouted.

There was a shimmering of white-blue light. And then a giant, white porcelain bow, roughly three feet in diameter, appeared floating in the air around a yard in front of him. It was empty and tipped over, its concave surface facing towards Mallet Girl. It caught the smoking croquet ball with ease and then with a gesture from Gazpacho, it swivelled slight and deflected the ball to the left.

“What the...!?” Mallet Girl cried. “Hey! No fair!”

Gazpacho laughed triumphantly in reply. “Nya-ha-hah! I am Gazpacho of the Andes! Quiver in awe before my magnificent coif! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he gloated out loud even as the large, white bowl dropped to shatter into tiny porcelain shards against the hard concrete of the sidewalk.

The black croquet ball landed on the sidewalk at the other side of the avenue. It bounced one more time before rolling into the open basement window of a run-down apartment building. Like many buildings in the area, it was decrepit, crumbling, long ago deserted and condemned; it would have been demolished already and in its place a nine-level mega-parking facility servicing what would have been the biggest mall/amusement park of Axion Plus City had the developer not lost everything gambling in high stake stag beetle death matches.

At least, it should have been abandoned. But unbeknownst to the city government and the few remaining residents of the area, bad kitties had moved in and for months now, the building had been serving as the secret headquarters of Cat's Meow, an evil organization of dark-colored cats united in the common cause of driving everyone out of the city by any means necessary and claiming Axion Plus for their own.

Scores of bad kitties were gathered in the main corridor of the groun floor. Their leader had called for a meeting and many had come.

“Brothers!” the top cat meowed from the small, round table at the end of the corridor. “Sisters! Weeks of planning and preparation have finally come to fruition! All our efforts are about to pay off! Soon we will rid this fair city of the human blight and Catnip City will finally be ours!”

“Dark coat good,” all the cats chanted in unison, “light coat bad!”

“Victory is an hand!” the top cat declared. “Behold! The final thorn in our side!” It pulled down the faded curtains behind it with a flourish to reveal a hapless Siamese cat hanging on the wall by its shackled front paws.

“Naughty kitties!” it meowed. “You expect me to talk? Hah! I will never tell you where I hid the codes. Never!”

“No, Agent 700,” the top cat meowed back smugly, “I expect you to be declawed. We already have the codes.”

“Dark coat good,” all the cats chanted, staring at the Siamese cat with unblinking eyes, “light coat bad!”

“Hey, guys! Look what I found in the basement!” a young black cat with a green lace ribbon tied around its neck called out loud as it entered the corridor, walking awkwardly on its hind legs. In its front paws, it held the black croquet ball.

All the cats in the corridor were completely overcome with curiosity. “Ooooh!” they all purred, turning their heads to look. “What is it? What is it?”

“I don't know,” the young black cat replied. “It's a ball of some sort.”

“Brothers, sisters!” the top cat called out to them. “Now is not the time to be distracted!”

But the gathered cats were not listening. They paid him no heed.

“Ooooh, a ball!” they all meowed, crowding around the young black cat.

“I think there's something inside,” the young black cat said as she shook the ball. “It was hissing a few moments ago.”

“Ooooh!”

The explosion that followed next was a terrific one. It leveled the whole building, sending dust, fur, bad kitties with X's for eyes, and all sorts of debris flying in all directions.

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Just then, a loud banging came from the floor. It was the man staying in the apartment below.

“For crying out loud, ladies!” he cried. “Will you keep it down up there? I'm trying to watch the television here!”

“Oh, brother!” Jenna muttered and then hollered back, “You don't have a television!”

“Yeah? Well, um, I'm listening to the radio!”

“Hah! Try again, old man! You don't have a radio! You sold it last week!”

“Oh, fine!” the man exclaimed. “I'm reading my porn magazines! I'm looking at dirty naked pictures of nubile young women in compromising positions! There! I said it! I admit it to the whole world. Are you happy now? Are you satisfied?”

“Get a job, you freeloader!” Jenna retorted. “It's the middle of the day!”

“I have a condition!” the man replied.

“Jennaaaaa!” Jenna's mother called out.

“Whaaaaat!?”

“Stop teasing your uncle! Just leave him be! You know very well he's incompetent!”

“Yeah!” her uncle vigorously agreed. “I'm on dis-- Hey! What's the matter with you, woman!? I'm not incontinent! How many times do I have to tell you? It was an accident that one time! One time!”

The phone began ringing again and it was with a great sich of relief that Jenn picked up the receiver and answered, leaving her mother and her uncle to bicker. “Queen of Hearts Delivery and Bounty Hunter Agency. You have it, we break it. How may we be of service?”

She listened for a bit, nodding slowly and slightly, before saying, “Ah, wrong number. You want the bakery across the street, the Queen of Tarts Bakery and Lingerie Shop. Their tarts are heavenly and the undergarments to die for. Not that I wear any. Undergarments that is. Not the tarts. Yeah. Uh-huh. You should try out their Squid Ink Angel Hair Clam Tarts. Very authentic, I must say. Looks just like...”

“Dang it, woman!” Jenna's uncle was screaming. “Mother told you to stop calling me that! That's it! That's the last straw! I'm calling her right now and telling on you!”

Ah, yeah, just another day for the Queen of Hearts Delivery and Bounty Hunter Agency. Just business as usual.

CHAPTER THREE

Gazpacho of the Andes was on the run. The cunning bounty hunter Mallet Girl had just foiled his latest caper and he had been looking forward to the little bit of molestation fun, too. His latest victim-to-be was just so cute and adorable that he had been barely able to contain himself.

But even now, in his moment of defeat, he had found himself bursting with laughter and good humor. He was quite enjoying the moment, savoring every single bitter second of it. Like any good super villain, he was quite the incorrigible bastard and the prospect of eluding and outwitting his super hero nemesis was sending him to the very heights of ecstasy. Even now, he was already planning his nect kidnapping scheme as he sped down the sidewalk, shoving hapless pedestrians aside like rag dolls and kicking stray dogs and cats out of the way, his glorious red cape flowing and flapping magnificently behind him. There was this petting zoo in the plush environs of East Axion Plus he had been meaning to visit.

Mallet Girl was hot on his heels, doing her fair share of violence. Once she even swung her trusty wooden mallet like a golf club, sending the poor, mangy dog and the large soup bone it had been carrying in its mouth tumbling into the air and disappearing in the distance.

“Stop in the name of money!” Mallet Girl commanded. “You are under arrest, Pistachio! That bounty on your head is mine!”

“That's Gazpacho of the Andes!” Gazpacho called back.

“Whatever!” she went. “Just stop running already so I can bash you on the head and beat you senseless!”

But Gazpacho of the Andes only guffawed in response and picked up his pace even more.

“Why you...!” Mallet Girl protested. “Come back here and take your beating like a man!”

Alias Uno was on the rooftops, following and tracking them. He paused to watch them through a tiny pair of binoculars. “Heading to ol' Bricktowne, huh?” he whispered. “Well that's mighty convenient. Not very populated that place these days. We'll be able to keep casualties down to a minimum this time. At least.”

Still, Alias Uno was worried. This was Gazpacho's turf after all. Leastways, he was bound to be more familiar with the area than they were and those old tenements were like one huge rat maze. He shuddered at the thought of how Mallet Girl would react if she ever lost sight of her quarry when she was this excited.

For a moment, he considered going down and giving her a hand.

It was but a fleeting moment though. Thankfully. He quickly reconsidered and thought better of it, the memories of what happened the last time he tried to help her fight a super villain rushing in from the back of his mind like a great deluge of cold, dark water. He turned pallid white as he relived the months of spent in that horrible hospital bed, which wouldn't have been all that bad if Mallet Girl hadn't taken it upon herself to visit him everyday and nurse him back to health herself, and the painful physical therapy that followed. He'll be damned if he'll have to go through all that again.

And besides, Mallet Girl was definitely more than a match for such a third-rate villain like Gazpacho of the Andes. They were mile apart by his reckoning. After all, was it not Mallet Girl who put an end to the dastardly dealings of Bull's Run, the evil international terrorist organization bent on wold domination by genetically mutating the world's population into half-bovine, half-human slaves? And pay the electric bill, balance the agency's finances, stop a bank robbery, service a fleet of taxi cabs, and solve the city's power crisis by foiling an alien invasion to boot all in the same afternoon?