Dear old dad...more or less.

What you find on the other side of the white board you push aside is another lab table like all the others in the room, save for the fact that this one is far less cluttered. In fact, there is only one thing on the table: a jar. More specifically, it is a specimen jar of the sort your father uses to preserve certain bits of DNA or body parts he finds fascinating or useful to his research. Even more specifically, it is one of those specimen jars filled with a greenish burbling liquid in which what is clearly a human brain and a pair of eyes sit suspended.

The jar has a few wires hooked up to the metal lid and those wires trail down to a heavily modified laptop that sits on the table next to the jar...and it is from the laptop that your father's voice emanates.

"Er, hallo, Dietrich. It is gut to see you. Vell, as much as I cen see you, det is.", your father's digitized voice states from the computer while the floating eyes in the jar, disturbingly enough, turn towards you.

It takes a moment for your mind to shift out of neutral and start working again as you stare at the brain in the jar that you now realize is your father. Or what's left of your father, anyway. You have to assume that is the case, anyway, given the scene in front of you and, though it would seem unbelievable to some people, you've lived long enough with your father and his unfathomable experiments to be able to accept things more easily than others...well, mostly.

"D-dad? Is that...you!? Wh-what the hell happened to you!?", you exclaim as you gape at the brain in the jar.

"Ach, vell, dere vas some trouble vith my last experiment und some interference from det schlampe, Vunderia.", he says and you grimace slightly.

Vunderia...or Wonderia rather, was your father's arch-nemesis, a super-heroine with strength, speed and durability far beyond a normal human being's. She was often the one who would foil your father's plans, one way or another, and seemed to have been doing so since the beginning of your father's career as a criminal. That, of course, puts her at somewhere close to seventy years old herself, but she sure as hell doesn't look it as, in addition to being super-strong, she was also super hot. She looked more like a woman in her late twenties than one in her mid-seventies and, with her buxom figure and supermodel looks, she was something of an idol among heroes and hero fans.

Even you, though you were ashamed to say it, had something of a thing for the super-heroine as, given her status as the constant thorn in your father's side, you had seen a lot of her over the years. If you were completely honest, she was probably your first crush. She was also the first woman you'd ever jerked off to as her spread in Superheroes Monthly's swimsuit issue when you were thirteen had been more than your hormonal teen libido could resist.

But that wasn't really what you should be thinking about at the moment when you're faced with your father's disembodied brain in a jar trying to explain how he got to this point right now.

"You've tangled with her before, Dad. What the hell happened this time that you ended up like...well, like this?", you ask, trying not to be weirded out by the fact that you're leveling the question at a floating brain in a jar.

"Dis time I vas testing a new model of my combet armor. It vas de Mark XI und hed a much higher energy oudput den de previous version.", he explained and, if a brain speaking digitally through a computer could sound abashed, he went on sounding like that, "Dis vas because I might heff used a small amound of...Wondonium."

"...you mean the highly unstable substance that was supposed to be formed from a mixture of plutonium and Wonderia's blood? The stuff that fell to Earth when you tried to blow her up with a nuclear bomb that she flew up into space and set off out of harm's way? The stuff that nearly blew up the entire eastern seaboard when you first tried to experiment with it?", you say in a deadpan voice, "That Wondonium, you mean?"

"...Er...ja."

"...That was kind of stupid, Dad. And not just the name you gave the stuff this time, by the way.", you say with a shake of your head.

"Ja, ja, I heff heard your opinion on de name before, Dietrich!", he gripes and then sighs (or at least the computer makes a sound you assume is supposed to be a sigh), "In any case, the combet armor performed fery vell...until Vunderia made her appearance und we battled for a time. It seems det de Wondonium does not react vell to prolonged stress und battling Vunderia makes for much stress."

You can already see where this is going, but you just silently shake your head as your father goes on.

"De suit began to malfunction und Vunderia took adfantage of dis by knocking me into de deepest part of de Pacific Ocean.", he stated and then sighed again, "I vas nearly all de way into de Marianas Trench vhen de suit vent critical und...exploaded."

"It exploded?"

"Ja."

"...How the hell is there anything left of you if you exploded near the ocean floor?"

"Vell, I beliefe det the Wondonium hed de effect of helping to preserve mein brain even through de explosion.", he explains, "Und Subject D-Vun vas able to retriefe mein remains before too much time pessed."

"Mako saved you? I'll have to thank her for that."

"I heff told you not to call mein soldiers by those names, Dietrich.", your father chastises but you wave off his words.

"Hard to take you seriously when you're a floating brain in a jar, Dad.", you say and then heave a heavy sigh as you look your father in his floating disembodied eyes, "So, okay, this right here with you in the jar is pretty bad, it's true, but, considering you're still conscious and coherent even as a disembodied brain, I don't really see what you need me here for, Dad."

In your mind, as bad as this is, your father is smart and skilled enough to take care of things anyway. Disembodied brain or not, your dad is a genius and has the technical know how to make the impossible possible. So you have to wonder exactly what it is he wants you to do that he can't do himself.