Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1) Issue #3 – “Pride and Joy (Chapter 3)”! In the previous installment, the parents don’t suspect a thing! I mean, they suspect something but they seem to be more concerned about their kids finding anything out than actually DOING something about it IF they find anything out. If that makes even a lick of dang sense.

The group, sans Molly, meets up in the middle of the night to discuss their next course of action. After some deliberation (and a failed call to the cops), it is decided to bust into Gert Yorkes’ house to try to find the chest with the body in it.

They find something else though! Behind a secret door, there was… some sort of dinosaur… So let’s check out what that’s all about.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [September, 2003]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“Pride and Joy (Chapter 3)”

THE YORKES’ RESIDENCE – 2:49am

Geez, witness one measly murder and then you’re up all night unable to actually sleep. Kids these days.

“What the %@#*?!” Gert is heard to exclaim. I’m not sure how to pronounce “%@#*” but it sounds like it hurts your throat.

Nico knows what this is! A velociraptor! She’s seen Jurassic Park. Nobody move, they can smell movement and fear and it smells like rancid Pringles. Chase grabs a lamp, ready to prove that it’s just some CGI effects while the rest start yelling at him to stop.

KRAK

That’s the sound of a lamp hitting something that, by all appearances, is solid and able to break a lamp in half. Chase makes his best “oh fuck me” face while the now angry reptile glares hungrily.

Jump! Chase gets attacked! Rent all up into shreds of gutsy goo!… almost. Gert yells for the thing to stop, and it turns its head before it even has a chance to poke Chase in the eye or chew off his jaw! How lame is that?

“Down, girl.” Gert is on her knees TAMING THE BEAST. It works. It’s listening to her. She’s surprised.

Roll over! Fetch! Stop peeing in my slippers!

“What the hell just happened?!” Chase exclaims, not dead. Not even close. The dinosaur stays still, looking quite afraid. Nico wonders if she’s dreaming. Karolina attempts to usher the gang the fuck out of there. I’m on her side with this one.

“Quiet, we’re going to wake Gert’s psycho parents.” Alex, the de facto leader for the sole reason that the party was held at his house, tells everyone to shut it. Gert assures everyone that it’s ok; her parents sleep like babies and they’re three floors up and they’re probably too doped up on heroin to even t–

“Hello, Gertrude.”

AHHH! EEK! BRRT! SNARF! Don’t look now, but… look a second from now. Gert’s parents, still clad in their dumb supervillain garb, are standing right behind them! “Everybody run!” Alex shouts. “I’ll try to hold them – off?” Alex tries punching Gert’s dad, but his fist goes right through them. These suckas are holograms.

Tell her to aim for the ol’ nutsack.

“Hey, squirt. I’m sorry, but if you’re watching this projection we recorded… your mother and I are probably dead.”

“Hopefully, we were able to get you this secret chamber’s access code to you before we died,” her mother adds. “Don’t be absurd, Stacey. If we didn’t get her the code, how would she be watching us now? You think she accidentally stumbled into all of this?”

HRRRK! SNARF!

Anyway, they got the dinosaur from the 87th century, so Gert had better be grateful. She pets the creature, who looks like she’s purring. “She’ll protect you from whichever self-righteous do-gooder finally managed to kill us.”

Stacey Yorkes motions toward a tome through the secret wall. The Abstract. It contains all the answers to Gert’s laundry list of questions, except maybe “where’s the bathroom at down here?” The Abstract is written in that Futurama alien language. It’s ok, though, all Gert needs is the secret Little Orphan Annie decoder ring she got from the Dean family on her eighteenth birthday! Happy deciphering!

“My parents gave you a ring?” Karolina eyeballs the purple-haired girl. Hell no, not yet. She’s fifteen, dipshit. Her parents continue with their hologram blah-blah-blah-ing about seeking out other member of The Pride (“They’re your family now”) and to “steal tomorrow” from the idiots who are running the world into the ground.

Gert looks at her friends with an expression of mild apology. Nico wants to try calling the police again. Alex says they don’t have any proof of alleged 87th century time travel and sinister, murderous plotting. Chase says there’s a dang raptor in the basement, what more proof of nefariousness does one need?

Perhaps the Abstract has all sorts of encoded graphic descriptions of their plentiful crimes! Maybe there are leads on the plan to kill that one girl? “And all we have to do is decipher the thing, right? So let’s go to Karolina’s house and look for that magic decrypto ring,” suggests Nico. Karolina’s all like uh-uh girlfriend, her parents don’t even eat meat. They ain’t involved in any of this shit.

Gert points out that Hitler didn’t eat meat either. Always with the Hitler.

Sorry, I’m still hung up on you getting punched by your scrawny, 90-lb dad. Fucking wring his neck, Chase, you hoser.

Alex agrees that they should all stop by Karolina’s house next. Don’t forget that she was out of the corridor by the time the stone-cold murder was happening. She has to take their word for it. First course of action: leave the dinosaur back in the cramped, dark wall! Then vamoose.

VENTURA FREEWAY – 3:38am

“Okay, so I’ve been thinking…” says Chase, driving the car, fuzzy dice all bumpin’ around. He believes Alex now that there’s something seriously messed up going on. “If we keep snooping around our houses, we’re probably gonna end up like that chick they whacked.”

When asked if Chase has a better plan, he mentions an “abandoned place” that he hangs out at whenever his parents start throwing stuff at each other. Sounds like a heroin den. They should lay low there until everything blows over.

“It’s never gonna ‘blow over’, Chase! Our parents have probably been doing horrible stuff since before we were born, and nobody knows about it.” This is Alex talking now, the MMORPG kid. Lest we forget. He feels like he’s on a mission. A quest! If they don’t expose their parents for the awful ne’er-do-wells that they are, who will? Captain America? That guy can’t even tie his shoes.

They’re going to stop at Karolina’s, no ifs, ands, or buts. Or butts, either. Karolina assures the rest of them that her parents aren’t home. They’re probably rubbing elbows with Alex Baldwin. Literally. Just an evening of hot, sexual elbow rubbing.

Meanwhile, in the backseat, Nico is looking through the Abstract for some sort of clue on how to read any of it. She asks Gert if she’s ok, and Gert says a lot of words as a response! I love words! I like reading them and writing them! Basically, the last pet she was allowed to have was a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. She loved it, but her parents hated it. Long story short, she walked away from the backyard for a minute and it ran away before she returned. Or at least she was told that. She thinks her parents cooked at ate him! My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Oops! Look out L.A., it’s Dinosaur Time!

THE DEAN RESIDENCE – 4:14am

Snooping around is proving fruitless. Karolina insists that her parents have nothing to do with anything. They’re boring and they’re too busy sucking dicks at the studio lot. “Well, keep looking for some kind of switch or keypad thing. There’s gotta be a trapdoor here somewhere.” Alex knocks some walls for a bit. Chase found something: a last will and testament. It’s kinda like a hologram only more… uh… orthodox.

No dinosaurs in the will, unfortunately, but there is a strange picture of that medical symbol of the staff with two snakes with a big NO SMOKING SIGN over it. As in, NO MEDICINE FOR YOU.

Karolina wears a medical bracelet. Maybe the will is asking Karolina to remove it when they’re dead? But why? She’s had it sense she was four years old since she’s allergic to penicillin. Hmm… suspicious.

Peer pressure! After some goading, Karolina gets angry and rips the thing off her wrist…

…then she suddenly starts glowing. Waves of energy flow toward her like wind. Her blown-back hair shines like a radiant prism. “What’s wrong with me? What am I?”

An angel? A mutant? Alex is remembering the conversation the parents were having before they killed the girl. Something about the Deans dealing with off-world enemies.

Nah. All aliens look like ALF.

Well, whatever it is, the bracelet was obviously suppressing it. And the Deans wanted it suppressed until they died. So now what? They’re not even dead! Things are all out of order here!

“So I’m the daughter of some kind of, what… space invaders? God, first you tell me my parents are evil, and now I find out I’m… I’m not even human?”

One thing she’s complaining about having found all this out in the first place, next thing she realizes she can fly. She’s happy now. The rest look up at her in envy as she hovers near the ceiling.

PARKER CENTER, HEADQUARTERS OF THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT – 4:19am

Lieutenant Flores wants to talk to Detective Douglas about the prank called he received earlier. ‘Twas nothing. Kid complaining that his parents were supervillains. “I get a couple of those every time report cards come out.” Something about The Pride. Stupid stuff, eh Lieutenant? Heh heh. Well, goodnight!

THE WILDER RESIDENCE – 4:21am

“It’s four in the morning, Mr. Wilder. Do you know where your children are?”

“Lieutenant Flores?”

“Sorry to bother you, sire… but I think we might have a problem.”

Final Thoughts

IT’S A CONSPIRACY. PUT ON YOUR TINFOIL HATS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. IT’S A POLICE STATE. THE GOVERNMENT IS COMPLICIT. RUN FOR THE HILLS. PANIC. PANIC!