Dr. Feelgood, Or, How Warney Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (Patreon)

The DoP headquarters was mostly unchanged, you amusedly noted as you walked up the steps. Despite the multiple billions of dollars of revenue it generated, the massive technological advancements, and serving as the lynchpin in your plans, it was largely the same building it had been when you first took office as the Director. 

Reaching the zenith of the stairs and the exit you were looking for, you fiddled with the knob, twisting it and pushing the door out and stepping onto the buildings roof. Gravel shifted under your feet as you made your way to your destination.

“Warney,” You greeted cooly at the man, who was staring out into the distance, in the direction of a certain smoke plume, seated in one of those cheap folding chairs that ACME sold. “You wanted to see me?” 

The man was silent for a moment, staring at the rising smoke-stack in the distance, eyes almost glassy. “You know, they say it’ll take at least 100 years for it to stop burning,” He said, tonelessly. 

“...” You remained silent for a moment. “Good riddance,” You admitted. “The place was an eyesore.”

Warney threw his head back and laughed, an utterly humorless noise. “You blew up the pentagon, Clancy!” He yelled, and you frowned, annoyed: you were sure there were no bugs where you were, but that didn’t mean you enjoyed having it screamed to the high heavens. “‘An eyesore’, she says about the most devastating attack on american soil in history!”

“I find blitheness and dissociation is an invaluable tool when doing what needs to be done,” you admitted. “And rest assured, if there was any other way-”

“You’d do the exact goddamn thing,” Warney responded, cutting you off even as he refused to look at you. “Don’t pretend you’re doing this for altruistic reasons, Clancy: if you had an alternative way to disrupt the american war effort and national security that resulted in zero deaths, you’d have ignored it and blown up the pentagon anyways.”

You pursed your lips. “That isn’t particularly fair,” You said gruffly, before putting your hands in your pocket. “But it isn’t exactly wrong,” You admitted: there were plenty of people who would delude themselves by claiming they were acting in the name of the greater good even while committing atrocity, but at the end of the day you were too self aware to lie to yourself like that.

The DOP existed to benefit the greater good. NEXT was about revenge. 

“At least you can admit it,” Warney murmured. “God, I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that you’re a revenge obsessed mass murdering supervillain like something out of a fucked up comic book, or the fact that when you dig past the mania, bitterness, and sheer insanity, I think you might actually have a point.”

You tilted your head at that, raising an eyebrow in mild surprise. “Huh. You know Warney, I didn’t really expect a peacenik like you to approve of what I do.”

“I don’t,” The scientist said, finally turning to face you, an unreadable look on his face. “Let’s make that clear: I think at the end of the day that you are an unforgivable monster. You have killed COUNTLESS innocent people motivated by a desire for revenge: at this point I think the best ending you can hope for personally is fading into the night when the bombs eventually drop,” He stressed, before turning to stare at the city below you, streets empty except for the occasional passing tank or odd power armor patrol. 

For a moment, silence passed between you. “A riot is the language of the unheard,” He said quietly, quoting some unknown figure.

“That Ghandi?” You asked, enquiring about the origin of the phrase, causing Warney to frown, shaking his head.

“Nah. It’s…from a guy in the sixties. Martin Luther King Jr,” He explained, the name ringing no bells for you. “Preacher. Civil Rights Activist. And most relevant for this particular conversation, a socialist. He wrote about a lot, but right now, that particular sentence is what stands out for me.” 

“Hrrrm.” You said, not really understanding the significance, causing Warney to frown.

“I’ll reiterate it: I don’t approve of you. But whenever I look outside, you know what I see? I see a system which lionizes a guy who threatened to shoot me in the face just because I occasionally party,” Warney said frankly. “I see a government that stomps its boot down on the face of its people while brainwashing them into thinking its for their own good. I see police beating down the brown man, the red man, and here lately the yellow man and the news treating it as a neutral act if not praising it! I see children sent to camps and locked in cages because of the shape of their eye or because they’re a little odd, and the only disagreement about it by those in charge being the question of how tiny the cages are supposed to be! I see people put out onto the street because their job doesn’t exist any more and instead of helping them, the corporations get even more tax breaks!”

“And everywhere, EVERYWHERE I look, I see the unheard,” He continued, slipping into a rant. “In the streets, in the alleys, under every overpass, in every housewife with a black eye, in every homeless person shuffled to the shadows so we don’t have to look at them, in every person bullied into silence and conformity even as their life falls apart. All while the people who built this system sit protected by its rules and laws like a suit of power armor around them even while using those rules and laws to justify their crimes, as if legality matters more than the misery they cause.”

He made a noise of frustration, pulling something out of the lapel of his lab-coat: a joint. Reefer. Pulling out an fusion-cell powered lighter, Warney lit the end, taking a long puff before exhaling. “Fact of the matter is, I don’t fucking approve of you,” He said, before letting out a long, hacking cough. “I never will. But I think you’re necessary: the system can’t be fixed. Maybe it never could and this is just it working as intended, but there is no peaceful solution here, not when the people in charge can just ignore or crush anyone who speaks out. Neither can it be allowed to continue. It won’t listen, it won’t stop, and without something to push back at it, it’ll just continue to get worse and worse and worse until…” He took another hit, before holding the reefer out.

“Yeah,” You admitted, taking it and taking your own hit, only to immediately be hit with its effects, causing you to nearly double over violently cough, almost dropping the dopestick. Once more silence reigned, other than the cough. “I’m not gonna say you’re wrong,” You eventually said after catching your breath, having finally come up with a response, noting that it made you feel…really odd. “Honestly, I would prefer if there were better options: believe me on that or don’t, your choice. You’re correct that I would have still done it, but frankly…” You took another hit. That was the etiquette, right? Hit, hit, hand?

“Puff puff pass,” Warney said, guessing your thoughts as you handed him the reefer back, forcing yourself to ignore the urge to cough. 

“Mmm, yeah. As I was saying, the fact that I’m the better alternative doesn’t sit well with me either,” You admitted. “Everything I’ve done I’d do again in a heartbeat, sure, but at least there’d be a better option. The current A, B, and C options are pretty crappy between me, the USA, and China,” You confessed, causing Warney to snort as he puffed on the joint, the ember glowing red hot. 

“But there isn’t any other option: every year the situation gets worse and worse, and even if somehow we win this war without being nuked to kingdom fuck the best case scenario is a complete governmental collapse,” You murmured, causing Warney to let out a sigh before taking another hit, handing the reefer back. 

“...Because the alternative is the system surviving.” He finished as you took another hit, a strange sort of unfamiliar, foreign feeling uncoiling sensation passing through you vaguely recognized as relaxation. “A possibility that, at this point, is probably a worse outcome than the bombs dropping, somehow.”

“And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The worst case scenario isn’t the United States of America losing the fight for survival: it’s winning it,” You summed up, taking another hit, eyes watering briefly as you forced yourself to ignore the dying sensation in your lungs. “Any outcome where it continues past the bombs dropping in any significant manner is some flavor of horror: one way or the other, it must be destroyed.”

“...Yeah,” Warney admitted. 

“So, where does this leave us?” You enquired, causing Warney to frown and face you directly.

“I don’t know. I considered offering to join, but that doesn’t feel right,” Warney admitted, surprising you a bit for even considering it. “Because even if its necessary, NEXT is evil. Full stop, a lot of what you do is wrong,” He said succinctly. “But…”

The pair of you looked into the distance, the glowing red ember of the setting sun. “I think you might have the right idea,” He eventually admitted. “Wrong execution, wrong motivation, wrong everything else but the concept, but the right idea. I think I’m gonna borrow a few notes from your script, give em my own spin.”

“So, Agent NEXT, I got a question for you: as far as supervillain names go, how does Dr. Feelgood sound?”

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