Pangolin 2: Lady Luck

“Give up”, said the super villainess in the skin tight female croupier costume standing over a battered and defeated Pangolin and gloating, “You cannot defeat me. I am Lady Luck, master of probability. The odds are always stacked in my favour”.

And as if to demonstrate this fact she pointed to two drops of sweat that were running down the side of the exhausted superheroes face.

“A 100 to 1 on the left to win”, she said.

Just like that the droplet on the right stopped short while the one on the left continued down his cheek.

“What are you, a clairvoyant?”, asked Pangolin, stunned.

Grinning proudly, the villainess showed him something that she was holding in the palm of her hand, like a small glowing, flickering blur.

“What is that?”, he asked, trying to look directly at it but finding it impossible, like trying to look at some weird moving optical illusion.

“An infinite sided dice”, said Lady Luck, “Once upon a time, I was a nobody, a loser and social outcast bullied by all the girls in my school for being a nerd but I was smart, I went to college and got a physics degree and while working on my postgraduate thesis on parallel universes I tried to design a machine that would send an object into a parallel universe. I placed a dice in the machine, an ordinary six sided dice and sent it into the other universe but when it came back it did not have six sides anymore but infinite sides and, just holding it, I realised, gave me good luck that defied all the laws of probability”.

“Well why didn’t you just go to Vegas and play the slot machines”, asked Pangolin.

“Oh I did”, said the villainess, smirking, “And everything I bet on, blackjack, roulette, horse races, I won. I even broke the bank at Monte Carlo, can you believe it? I became rich beyond my wildest dreams but after a while I found that I wasn’t satisfied with just being rich. I wanted power too. Those girls in school had made me feel powerless; helpless so first I paid them all a visit, I sent them all into that other dimension, a place like hell, from where they’ll never come back and then I decided to become Lady Luck, what did I have to lose after all and so far I’ve wiped the floor with all the superheroes of this city; Lightning Lad; Silhouette; Captain Zap; you see even in a super battle I just can’t lose”.

“Really”, said the armoured, superhero, rubbing his chin in thought, “Hmm? Well then perhaps I should just quit”.

Then, suddenly the Super villainess saw the armour clad hero roll himself, backflipping, into an green armour plated ball before rolling off.

“Well that was even easier than I thought”, said Lady Luck, chuckling and rubbing her white gloved hands together, “And now that Armadillo man has gone away with his tail between his legs I can get on with planning total world domination”.

Just then however, the probability powered super villainess saw the armoured ball rolling back towards her and rolling fast.

“Ha!”, she scoffed, her hands on her hips and amusement on her face, not even flinching,“You think you can hit me. All I have to do is turn luck against you and you’ll miss me by a mile”.

But then, far from missing the dice wielding villainess, the ball went crashing right into her at the speed of a boulder rolling down hill, knocking her off of her high heeled shoes and the infinite sided dice out of her hand.

“Oof!”, she exclaimed as she was knocked to one side and, instantly unrolling himself, the Pangolin caught the dice in his right hand.

“I don’t understand?”, asked the villainess, not just dazed and bruised but with a perplexed look in her eyes, “How could you defeat my powers of probability?  You should have missed me”.

“I was trying to miss you”, said the Pangolin before adding in an outraged voice “And don’t ever call me an Armadillo”.

But, just then however, behind them both, the Pangolin saw something strange, like a glowing whirling vortex appearing out of thin air and then to his amazement and Lady Lucks terror they both saw three shadow like female figures emerge from the vortex each with glowing red eyes.

“Who are they?”, asked Pangolin.

“The girls, the girls who used to bully me in school, the girls I sent into the other universe”, said Lady Luck, trembling, “They must have found a way back”.

“Yes”, said the three wraith like girls rasping in unison, “You sent us to hell, the 13^th dimension, but we came back for you”.

“Don’t let them take me”, begged Lady Luck, sobbing and weeping, terrified, holding onto the Pangolin with all her strength, “Please”.

“What can I do?”, replied the superhero, stunned and bewildered.

Just then, however, he remembered the infinite sided dice in his right hand and then, shouting, “I bet you go to hell and never come back”, he hurled it at the three rasping wraith women just as they were stretching out their arms to grasp hold of him, then to his amazement, out of every one of the infinite facets of the dice came a beam of golden light so bright that both he and Lady Luck had to shade their eyes and then, when the light had faded, both the dice and the three shadowy figures were gone.

“Oh , thank you”, said Lady Luck kissing him on the cheek, “Thank you for saving me”.

A compartment in the Pangolins armour slid, electronically, open and from it he took a pair of handcuffs the same green colour as his armoured suit which he dexterously snapped around the villainess’s wrists,

“Looks like your lucks run out, lady”, the superhero replied, sternly, “You’re going to jail”.