You Bet Your Life Follow-Up Notes

The Troll, turning back to his Sihn form, calls Aela and confirms she's okay.  He quickly tends to the badly hurt model whose wounds he's responsible for, fearing for her life and ensuring the paramedics can take care of her. 

Sammy, who had grown to pursue more quickly in the last issue, goes to normal size and replaces his Levi face with a friendly-looking visage, indicates it was previously a mask, and attempts to calm the crowd.

Observing the crowd, the major socialites/dignitaries are noted as:

>Jennie Crystal, the socialite, is by The Captain's side, chatting him up
>the "Archbishop" (he's actually a Cardinal) Delgado is consoling members of
>the congregation and providing general calm
>George Flanders, the dot-com entrepeneur, leaves quickly so as not to
>witness
>Frank Greaney, the homicide cop, is sometimes seen and not seen - he is
>watching/lurking prior to the police coming
>Clay Iacocca hangs around, he is casually talking with a small clique of
>acquaintances, trying to act nonchalant
>Lucky Tocci left with Eduardo (yes, looking back they should all be "Tocci"
>not "Tucci" but then again let's assume it's one of those "two proper
>spelling" names!)

The Captain is busy addressing a gathering crowd himself, shaking hands and accepting their thanks.  He is eventually approached by Lisa Walters, aggressive and mob-hunted investigative reporter.  

As The Captain handles the public, Sammy and the Troll take to interrogating a couple of the mobsters, after an unsuccessful attempt by Sammy to revert to Levi's face and force Sol to reveal something.  Sammy reveals to the Troll (Sihn has gone back to that guise) his real name.  Irving and Shemp reveal little, though they have purple swatches with frosted glass lenses, which they admit is an identifying gang member mark.

Then they attempt to interrogate the Game Show Host.  They take off his gag and he immediately engages the Troll and Sammy in a game of hide-and-seek.  Sammy starts to let him go so they can play, the Troll watching bemused.  Aela, who has just returned, witnesses this and is unaffected by the Game Show Host's charms and brings the Troll and Sammy to their senses.  The Game Show Host, however, seems to be seriously upset, insisting this is an important game and doesn't see why it shouldn't be played.  He becomes so irate he quickly passes out but is otherwise fine!

A final quick interrogation of the Announcer, who is horrified to watch the Troll pull out his own intestines.  confirms that he is in the employ of the Game Show Host.  He blabs, "Please don't let him hurt the Host.  I'll tell you everything we know, and that isn't worth even a consolation prize.  Our leader, the Host, was contacted by the Slayer some time back.  The Slayer apparently has some sort of tie to the Purple Hat boys and does a lot of their mutant recruitment.  Nobody knows much about the Slayer other than his obvious psychopathic problems.  But he does know a lot of mutants who need this kind of work, and he got a hold of the Host and asked him to help out in a job.  The Host agreed so long as he wasn't working directly with the Slayer - it's one thing to see mob guys wipe each other out, even their families, but the Slayer - well he's too much, no code at all there.  Anyway, that's most of what we know, the job was for pay and the idea was to come here to the church and as you can tell wipe out the Tucci crime family and Eduardo's personal family.  We didn't ask why, we just played along.  Sol over there, after the Slayer set it up, met us out in the woods near the zoo just one time, went over the whole scenario, and we agreed.  Fifteen past the hour we go in the church and ensure that the Purple Hat guys can, without interruption, wipe out the Tuccis in a dramatic and newsworthy fashion, so, as Sol said, "the world will know".  He didn't ask us to do more and he told us we didn't need to know their plans.  He was quite specific in that he didn't want us to kill any of the Tuccis unless absolutely necessary, just to ensure they couldn't get away and nobody interrupted the process.  Our Host, who's also our producer, gets hung up on this game show thing sometimes, he's got issues, you know?  So I don't think Sol counted on him really making it a game even in the Purple guys' minds, but of course he did, I knew he would.  Can't help himself.  You know, he'd be nowhere without me.  Nowhere! [shouting over to the passed-out Host] You BUM! [turning back to Sammy] Ha, well, I still love him, you know he gave me my first big break, I gotta respect that.  I'd work with others except there's no business like show business, you know?""

Lisa Walters talks up The Captain, indicating she can get him a lot of publicity for his war on crime if he'll give her an exclusive.  She asks him to take her far away from the crowd, and he does, asking, "Where to Ms. Walters", and per her response flying her to a lonely lagoon on Belle Isle.

Meanwhile, Hamlet Laughton grabs Sol and spirits him into the trunk of his car, turning him to stone there.  Afterwards he turns his attention to investigating the scene, just as the police arrives.  He spots something odd on the shoes of one of the gang members but is interrupted...