TOC Part 9 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JOURNAL ENTRY #10
LATE NOVEMBER, 1994 TO
EARLY JANUARY, 1995
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It wasn't long after that when we got our next surprise. Clark's powers were accidentally transferred to a man who looked startlingly familiar. The details of the power transfer aren't important. Things worked out, as usual. The impact it had on us was the revelation that, by some unfathomable coincidence, the man who got the powers — the man who became known to the world as "Resplendent Man" — was, in fact, Alan's long-lost twin brother.
Unfortunately, William Wallace Webster Waldecker (now there's a mouthful of a name if I ever heard one) turned out to be very different from his brother. He didn't have nearly Alan's genius, nor his morals. We passed on recruiting him, but Bobby made sure that he and his sister, Wandamae, were well taken care of. Alan himself meant to meet them, but, perhaps not surprisingly, ended up spending the time in his lab. Alan was a nice enough guy, but he was no good with people.
That Christmas, we got our next clue to Cadmus's workings. A disgruntled toymaker by the name of Winslow Schott had come up with a substance which, when inhaled, caused people to act like greedy children. Lois and Clark took care of Schott, but we looked into the substance itself. It seemed to be more than you'd expect from a man who'd spent his life working in a toy factory, especially since it was able to affect Clark. It turned out to have been developed from a pheromone spray which had been created the year before. Luthor had gotten his hands on the formula, and when Cadmus had absorbed the remnants of LexLabs, they'd inherited it, too. They'd apparently been tinkering with it, hoping to turn it to their own purposes. They'd found Schott and sold a variant to him, using him as a dupe so they could have a field test. We still weren't sure what Cadmus was planning, but we made certain to collect a sample of Schott's spray for Hamilton to analyze.
Then, shortly after New Year's, something happened which was of interest to me. A robot appeared on the scene. He was home built by two brothers, Rollie and Emmett Vale. Rollie, one of the few LexLabs scientists who hadn't gone over to Cadmus, had somehow gotten his hands on a chunk of Kryptonite, without ever knowing what it was. Superman eventually managed to disable the robot, and Rollie, though we didn't know it at the time, took the Kryptonite back. We made sure Vale was caught and sent to prison, then salvaged the body of the robot. There'd been a human brain inside the thing, but it was long dead by the time we got to it. There was nothing we could do for him, but the robotic body gave Alan and Hamilton some new ideas for me.
Not long after that, we found out what Cadmus had been up to with the modified pheromones. It took us a little while to catch on to it, but we noticed that everyone around Clark was acting pretty strangely. The men, even the reasonable and intelligent ones, started to act more aggressively. They reverted to chauvinism, too. The women, for their part, became overly defensive and sensitive. Crazy things started to happen and no one was acting like themselves. Meantime, there was some kind of ninja going around stealing things. We trusted that Superman would deal with the ninja, but we were concerned about the way everyone was acting.
To make a long story short, it turned out that Cadmus had sprayed Superman with a new pheromone variant. We're not sure when, exactly. Probably during a disaster they set up. A fire or something. It not only changed his behavior, but also that of everyone around him. Some of them even seemed to develop hallucinations. The plan, it seemed, was to ruin Superman's reputation by changing his behavior. They might have also planned to blame him for affecting the people he associated with. Fortunately, we'll never know. Hamilton, having already analyzed Schott's version, was familiar with the basic formula. He was quickly able to make up an antidote. Thanks to the secret door in Lois's Jeep, we were able to administer it to Clark without his noticing.
The ninja turned out to be a woman named Lin Chow, who, watching her father, had secretly learned some very advanced martial arts. With her skills augmented by a pair of magical bracelets, she was a formidable fighter. We were quick to talk to her. She graciously declined our offer of membership, explaining that she needed to stay with her family and look out for the people of her neighborhood. She did, however, agree to help us when needed and to train me and the kids.
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