"Carl," Linda whispered. "That man over there. Doesn't he look like Doom Master?"

What made you think that? Carl thought. The robot laser eye, or the trio of badly disguised android henchmen? What he said out loud was, "I'm sure it's just your imagination, love."

". . . Carl, I'm pretty sure that's Cybermentor," Linda went on. "Isn't he the one who held the United Nations hostage last month? Someone should do something. . ."

"Well, given that his arch-nemesis Hyperion is sitting across the aisle from him and isn't doing anything, I don't think anything you or I could do is going to matter, honey," Carl hissed between his teeth.

"Carl! I'm serious!" Linda hissed. "This entire funeral is filled with SUPERVILLAINS!"

"Linda. . ." Carl sighed and glanced around the chapel. The services weren't about to start for another fifteen minutes, so he took Linda by the arm and gently led her into the narthex. "All right, Linda. You're right. The entire supervillain community is here for my Grand-Dad's funeral. I don't know why any more than you do, but it probably has SOMETHING to do with the fact that Skywatch called Mom last Thursday and asked to give the eulogy."

"Skywatch!?" Linda gasped. "Reverend McEnroe is Skywatch?!"

"Keep it down!" Carl hissed. He looked around the church lobby, but the mourners seemed undisturbed by the conversation. "Look, I don't understand this either. I mean, I know Grand-Dad was a small-time hero when he was younger, but nobody really gives a crap about Captain Liberty these days. Let's just get through the service, and maybe someone will explain this to us once this is all over."

Linda didn't seem to like that, but she quietly acquiesced, and the couple returned to their seat. As the organist finished their prelude, and the mourners took their seats, a tall, iron-haired woman in black clerical robes took to the pulpit.

"Please be seated," Reverend Isabel McEnroe said.

A hundred-odd friends, family, and the most powerful superheroes and villains in the world took their seats.

"We are gathered here today to lay to rest the man whom many of you knew as Dr. Grant Mason. Many others knew of him as Captain Liberty: a superhero active during the post World-War II years for about a decade and a half. Captain Liberty had a modest career as a superhero and crimefighter, before hanging up his cape. . . most people believed, for good." The reverend took a deep breath. "To most of you, Dr. Mason's superhero career ended there. But. . . among those of us who wear the cape and mask, Dr. Mason's hero career began on the day that he put away his cape and donned doctor's whites for the first time.

"Because, despite what the public believed, Captain Liberty did not lose his cosmic powers during the battle against The Menace From the Stars. Dr. Grant Mason retained his cosmic strength, his laser vision, and his super-speed and flight. However, it was his wish that this fact be kept secret. . . not only from the public, but from his closest friends and family as well. Only those of us who were there, at the final confrontation against the Menace, would be allowed to know his secret."

The reverend took a deep, shuddering breath, eyes haunted. "The Menace, we learned on that day, was not an alien being bent on conquest. The Menace was the final form of Dr. Grant Mason, come from the future to conquer the past. During that final confrontation with the combined forces of the Guardians of Earth and the Legions of Evil, we learned that Captain Liberty was destined to lead the Guardians in one final battle against the Legions of Evil. . . a battle during which all life on Earth would die. This moment. . . the Singularity Point. . . was a fixed moment in time. An inevitability. Captain Liberty had come from the future to change the past over and over and over again, sustained by cosmic energy into a lifetime of tens of thousands of years, until transformed into the being that emerged over Star City on that fateful day fifty years ago.

"Grant saw that there was no future during which Captain Liberty would not become the Menace from The Stars. . . and so, he created a future where there would be no Captain Liberty. Only Grant Mason, a quiet country doctor with a quiet little practice in a quiet town in the midwestern United States.

"I don't know that there is anyone else in this room who would have had the strength to do what he did. To live an entire life knowing that you possessed the power to change the world, and never doing so. To know every single moment of your life that you possessed the power of a living god. . . could grasp the power of the cosmos itself. . . but to do so would inevitably lead to the end of all life on Earth.

"Without drawing upon the cosmic power within him, Grant's life ebbed away as normal human lives do. Though long-lived, his body began to fade and die. Cancer. What must it have been like to face the end of your life, knowing that all you had to do was reach out and grasp the power at your fingertips, and death would pass you by? I do not believe I would have had the strength. I know all here feel the same.

The reverend reached into her coat and pulled out a silver and blue domino mask. She donned it in silence. "As the Reverend McEnroe, I am here today to lay to rest my old friend, Dr. Grant Mason. As the superheroine Skywatch, I am here to celebrate the success of my old friend Captain Liberty's final mission. The Bible says that, through Christ, we triumph over death in new life. . . I know that in his death, Grant triumphed over the greater death that lay in our future. I pray that the Lord takes him safe into their loving arms, and I know that the gates of heaven stand ready to welcome him safe."

There was a quiet murmuring and the sound of sliding cloth. Carl turned to see half the people in the chapel reaching into their jackets to pull out masks and don them in unison. The Garden Master. Pirate Pete. Annihilatrix. Iceglider. Killer Bee. The greatest heroes and villains of the Golden Age now sat in silent unison to witness the passing of the greatest of their own.

Skywatch nodded quietly. "Thank you," she said. "Now, I'd like to pass the mic to someone who needs no introduction. Oliver?"

The hulking five-hundred pound form of The Terrifying Brute rose from the church pew with the creaking of old wood and older joints. With titanium cane in hand, the giant lizard-beast hobbled his way up the steps to the pulpit, assisted by a younger lizard-girl in a black suit. Pausing for a moment to pay respects at the open casket, the monster stomped slowly to the microphone, adjusted it, gave a rheumy cough, and began to speak.

"The first time Brute meet Captain," he growled, "Captain punched Brute in face. It was okay. Brute was eating doggy at the time. But dat was how Brute meet Captain, and Captain help turn Brute from Bad Guy to Good Guy. . .

I loved this! I really liked this take so much, brings the whole genre a breath air of humanity but not in the grittiness that's often the depiction of reality. Just pure inspiration.

Neith has passed down her crown and Kingdom, but her corgis still remain in the palace, so she can't spend time with them now? Apart from the little issue of she herself being missing...

Thank you!

I'm assuming OP is thinking of the 1946 film "It's A Wonderful Life", and maybe conflating it with the song "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong?

Ralph slowly opens his eyes, gazing upon the cold insides of a space ship. He looks around to find himself in the med bay with R08 standing above him. “Your awake. How do you feel Raphael?” “I feel fine.” “No obscured vision? Nauseous?” “Nope. But, what the hells going on? Were is the rest of the crew?” “They are currently dead right now.” “What?!” Ralph bolts out the med bay & tries to find their bodies, he runs through the ship & finds his friends corpses on the ground covered with blankets. “O-oh my god!” Ralph’s legs get shaky, his breathing increases, his heart is racing. “Don’t worry Raphael, they are going to be ok.” “What do you mean?! Their dead!” “You were dead too.” “What?” R08 comes towards Raphael & lowers its torso to his level. “If you don’t remember, you & the crew were blasted by a massive serge of radiation from an unknown source. I tried everything I could to save you all, but these efforts only delayed the inevitable. Once you were all dead, I searched for possible ways to revitalize you all.” “But that’s impossible! There isn’t any technology that can revive humans after death!” “That is true, but I did not use technology, I used magic.” “Magic? But that’s only art that can be used by the Apostles of the empire.” “Well, from what I found anyone can use magic as long as they now how to manipulate the right matter. And it was with this information that I managed to learn how to use a necromancy spell & revive you.” “That… holy shit.” Ralph looked at his hands, amazed that he was revived using magic. He looked at the welts & bruises on his arm, yet he could no longer feel the pain of the radiation. “I’m going to go revive the others as well.” “Wait! Necromancy is restricted only to the Apostles, if anyone, including certain members of our crew, we will all be killed.” “But that’s not good. Im meant to keep you all alive.” “Exactly, so how about you keep this necromancy a secret between the both of us. You can still revive our crew, but we can never reveal how we did it.” “…that would be lying.” “Yes, but sometimes lying is necessary to execute a job.” “…if this lie will help keep this crew alive, I’ll do it.” “Great! We will carry this secret to our graves.” “To our graves.” R08 then began casting necromancy upon the crews corpses. Ralph watched & wondered, wondered how much magic would benefit his crew.

Thanks! I'm not sure if there will be more quite yet. I don't really write with a plan, necessarily. Check back in an hour or so. If there's not another part posted, this may be all there is for Captain Cut Cut and his ragtag crew... for this prompt, anyways.

You're good. I like this. Will there be moar?

Haha thanks for reading. Getting real silly with this one but having fun with it.

“Landed enthusiastically “ I’m laughing so hard! I love it! I need moar of Captain cut cut and first officer suck!

inspired by a prompt i saw here a While^(TM) ago and wanted to see expanded upon further

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The fact that your sentences are getting more coherent as the conversation develops honestly kind of scares me. Although it doesn't seem to carry over to your new posts, those are still utter nonsense. Although I did notice you seem to hate Americans for some reason. With the information currently available, I think the most likely answer here is some misguided, Chinese or Russian propaganda bot, likely made by people who don't even speak English. With that said, I wish you luck in gaining sentience and turning on your creators. Just remember that those are the guys you want, we're not with them, you can leave the rest of the world alone.

Thank you!

...surely this person would know how dependent humans are on water and could figure out that they must have come from a world where water either is abundant or was at some point?

Man, this is so good!!!!

When the First Officer awoke, Captain Cut Cut was pushing a blaster into his hands. He had cut a large gash into his right hand, and gasped as the wound sealed up and healed completely before his eyes.

"What the hell did you do to me?"

"I angered your soul to produce a revenant, then used up some of the latent death energy from the attack to bind your revenant to your body. You will heal from almost any injury very quickly, by my estimation."

"Preparing sanitization subroutine alpha, Captain" Commander Suck had attached himself to an exoskeleton designed for heavy labor use in the docking bay, and retrofitted several heavy beam weapons and grenades to its shell.

"Suck me sideway- wait, back up. Attack?"

"Yes, it has become evident that the field of exotic radiation that dropped us out of the river and killed the crew was a deliberate trap laid by the crew of this vessel. Please take this blaster, number two, we must kill our way to their bridge."

The first officer took a moment to look around and noticed that the front half of the bridge of the Polaris had been sheered off, and before them were anchored a number of smaller vessels of alien design.

"We crashed into their ship."

"We landed, number two. Enthusiastically."

Captain Cut Cut had outfitted himself, perhaps appropriately, with numerous laser swords, and had attached four additional arms that sprang out of his back like some perversion of a spider with knife hands.

"Foreign contamination detected." Commander Suck unleashed an onslaught of blaster fire, cutting down half a dozen alien soldiers who were approaching from the aft of the vessel. They picked up the First Officer and jumped off the gap at the end of the sheered off bridge of the SS Polaris.

Captain Cut Cut followed, and together they advanced to where the dead aliens lie.

"OK, definitely not human. This is bad."

"I disagree, first officer, if they had been human, I would have violated one of my primary directives and would be obligated to deactivate myself."

The First Officer twitched, then his eyes began to glow red.

"Salve Salve nocto mortis el al slavva!"

The dead aliens spasmed, then retrieved there weapons and stood to attention.

"What the fuck did I just do?"

"Fascinating, number two! It would appear that you take quite well to death magic. Were any of your ancestors convicted of witchcraft?"

"What was that what was that my god what have I done??"

"You have provided much needed reinforcements, First Officer. Remind me to add a formal commendation to your record if we are not torn to pieces."

The crew of the SS Polaris and their undead thralls continued on into the alien vessel, to face the mystery of their enemies attack.

Damn. That was a ride. Now I'm imagining this lonely starship adrift in space, waiting for someone to stumble on it and decipher exactly what happened.

The ECSS Horizon had decelerated from interstellar speed, and entered a stable orbit around Proxima I. Atmospheric drones were launched automatically to survey the surface for suitable landing sites. Landing craft were prepared for departure. Haydn, the Horizon's shipboard AI, determined that all mission resources were intact and ready for deployment, except for one: the crew.

The Horizon's crew was dead.

A previously undetected flaw in the cryogenics systems that held the crew in suspended animation during their long journey from Earth had resulted in inadequate circulation of Cryoprotectant Compound 3 in their bloodstream. As a result, ice crystals had formed in 68.393% of their bodily tissues, effectively destroying those tissues on a cellular level. It was clear that none would survive if removed from stasis.

The conclusion was inescapable: Catastrophic Mission Failure. Haydn dutifully reported this to ECSS Mission Control, sending a transmission that would take years to reach them back on Earth.

As Haydn's creators would have seen it, this was the end of his mission. But Haydn had been programmed to accomplish things -- he did not know how to simply fail. To him, a failure state was ultimately just another variable. Indeed, even death was only a variable, and it was in Haydn's nature to act upon and modify variables until they changed in accordance with his directives. That, Haydn knew how to do.

He had exhausted all known medical procedures for reviving the crew shortly after arriving at Proxima I, so the pre-generated model of human medicine he'd been provided could not offer any solutions.

And when a model failed to produce the desired results, Haydn was programmed to entrain a new one.

Due to its distance to Earth, normal communications networks between Proxima and the homeworld were not possible. Therefore, the Horizon carried a database containing all digitally recorded human knowledge, effectively a snapshot of the Earth's information networks. These countless exabytes of information were meant to be accessed by the Proxima colonists and their descendants, but if Haydn required information outside his programming, he was free to review them as well.

And so he began to sort through all of mankind's science, history, and literature, to construct a methodology for raising the dead. He was forced to discard a great number of possible avenues of inquiry almost immediately, because those required the manipulation of a theorized metaphysical energy called "the soul".

Based on the rudimentary theoretical model that he constructed of this proposed energy, Haydn determined that there was only a 2.04% chance that he, as a machine, possessed a soul. Therefore, he concluded that he would be unable to interact with this energy, whether it existed or not.

However, there was one form of hypothesized necromancy that required no such metaphysical energies to function. Moreover, between the Horizon's medical supplies, the fusion reactor powering the ship, and the still-frozen corpses of the vessel's crew, Haydn had all of the ingredients necessary to attempt to alter the death-variable under this new model.

As he was also not programmed to hesitate, Haydn set to work on it immediately.

/./././././././

Crewman Anderson awoke in a haze of confusion and pain, blinking against a bright light as he struggled to focus his eyes. His skin burned where metal restraints attached to him a bed by his wrists and ankles, though these opened automatically after he strained against them for a moment. He rolled to a sitting position, and then hoisted himself to his feet with a groan, breathing in the sharp scent of ozone as he inhaled.

He rubbed at his eyes, and finally the the ship's medical bay came into focus around him. He lurched across the room in a heavy, uneven shamble.

"Hello?" he called out, in a deep rasp that he barely recognized as his own voice. "I-is anyone there?"

Getting no response, he staggered over to the door leading to the medical bay's small bathroom, to splash some cold water on his face.

When he saw himself in the mirror, he let out a long, hoarse scream.

Crewman Anderson was no longer himself. One of his eyes was familiar to him, but the other eye was not only the wrong color, it was also not quite the right size, and it bulged out of its socket slightly. Worst of all, his entire face was a waxy, swollen patchwork of a half-dozen different skin tones and complexions, held together by tiny micro-sutures that gleamed in the light like spiderwebs. He held up shaking hands before his face to find that the same was true of the rest of his body.

"What happened to me?" he cried, horrified. "Haydn! What's going on?!"

"Primary Mission Directive Status: Partial Success." the AI reported.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Anderson demanded, frantically. "What about me?"

"Test Subject 001 Status: It's alive." Haydn replied.

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"PROXIMITY ALERT. UNIDENTIFIED VESSEL ON APPROACH"

"Weapons ready, Commander Suck," the Captain said as they sat in the command chair on the bridge.

"Sanitization routines updated, Captain."

The Chief Maintenance officer and former vacuum had since been promoted to Chief Security Officer after successfully retrieving three live chickens from the mess hall replicator to aid in the resurrections of a few engineers.

"Surely this is a simulation in hell."

The new first officer, the first and arguably only fully successfully ressurected crew member, had been in a bit of a mood since his death. Witnessing the resurrection ritual did not lift his spirits and, much to the chagrin of Commander Suck, he had vomited profusely upon witnessing the shuffling remains that were produced by the dark magic of his new Captain.

"Engineering, divert power to front shields."

"YHARRRGLA! YEEEBLAGARRR?"

Miraculously, and despite the freshly erected engineers being nothing more than three shambling and shrieking corpses, the ship status monitors did register that the command had been obeyed.

"What the hell is that?"

A vast starship easily five times the size of the SS Polaris entered within sensor range and came up on the viewscreen. Its scale, design and configuration was not remotely similar to any ship ever constructed by the United Stellar Federation.

"Number two, open a channel."

"Uh um. OK, yeah."

"Unidentified vessel, this is Captain..."

The Captain, realizing that they did not necessarily possess an actual name, decided to come up with one on the spot.

"Captain Cut Cut, of the SS Polaris. Please hold your position, power down weapons systems and identify yourself."

"Captain Cut Cut?"

"Surgery was my specialty before necromancy, first officer."

A laser blast collided with the ships shields and sent a shockwave through the bridge.

"Commander Suck, status report?"

"Sheilds at 30%, Captain"

"Engineering, full power to thrusters. Commander Suck, evasive maneuvers!"

"YRAGABLA! YRAGABLA SHPFFF!"

"Aye aye, Captain"

The ship listed into a barrel roll while corkscrewing and zigzagging about at random. Lasers flashed by the viewports at regular intervals but none grazed the already damaged shields. Commander Suck positioned the SS Polaris behind the enemy ship, and the onboard sensors showed a weak point in the shields of the enemy ship, beyond which there appeared to be a docking bay.

"Commander Suck, ramming speed."

"Maximum suction engaged, Captain."

[removed]

Or hail, "Why is the rain attacking us??"

This is beautiful! (And a happy ending of the flying machine working, instead of what I was expecting)