Congratulations on Surviving His Thesis Defense!

You knew you were entering an aggressively competitive academic environment when you applied for Cal Tech, and you were overjoyed for the chance to avail yourself of the challenges offered there. You’ve never felt quite as nervous and hopeful as the day you arrived.

But since then it’s been kind of a rough ride. First your roommate tried stealing your research, and then a roving rang of mathematicians tried to recruit you to fight a gang of physicists with knives. Luckily Nancy Reagan had taught you how to say no, having spent almost eight years doing little else, so you were able to resist their peer pressure.

After that you dodged three plagiarism attempts within hours of one another, fought off a dog someone had trained to steal ideas, and uncovered a murder plot centered around a camera that trapped the souls of the unwary with the assistance of an African companion.

Suffice it to say, you’ve endured a tremendously competitive academic environment and you’re all but home free. You’ve essentially completed your senior project in molecular biology and over the last three months, after you caved in a man’s skull with a brick when you caught him trying to steal one of your textbooks, people have been leaving you alone.

But, due to a Byzantine rule in the school charter regarding people with your specific last name (Robinowinski) you’ll have one last hurdle to overcome. You’ll have to survive a graduate student’s entire thesis defense this Wednesday evening!

It will seem like nothing, of course. How bad could it be? Maybe it’ll be a little boring, sure, but it won’t be dangerous. These are the thoughts that will fill your head as you file into the conference room to watch Fredrick Lasercat discuss his controversial cat-laser apparatus.

The display will, in fact, be quite entertaining and Frederick will more than live up to his survey, creating a number of felines capable of producing a wide variety of lasers. It’ll be some crazy shit, and it’ll actually have been a pretty good time until Frederick introduces his weaponized laser cats.

After they’re unleashed it’ll be less than forty five seconds before the first fatality. Professor Zimmer’s skull will be partially melted by Mitten’s energy projection. Then Snuggles and Pumpkin will team up and maim Dean Williamson, and Starfish will turn his attention on you.

It’ll be a royal clusterfuck, but you’ve been at Cal Tech long enough (five and a half years) that you know how to deal with crazy shit like that and before long you’ll have murdered Starfish with one of your shoes.

You’ll be clutching the shoe in your hand, blind in one eye, screaming at Lasercat that he’s a son of a bitch when the paramedics find you, the sole survivor of Lasercat’s thesis.

Suffice it to say, he’ll graduate with high honors and immediately be hired by the military, where he’ll begin crafting various weapons grade cats for unknown impractical purposes.

You, in the mean time, will go temporarily insane and drop out of school (against your academic advisor’s guidance) in response to the massive cover-up surrounding the faculty deaths and your disfigurement. No one will be on your side for a long time, or so it will seem, but you’re a loner. You’re used to fighting for what you believe in all by your lonesome.

It’ll be a year from now, less than a week before the anniversary of the horrible accident, when your new friends finally make contact. They’ll come dressed in black and give you an offer to fight. They won’t ask questions, won’t ask for your allegiance. Just your dedication to their cause: the cause of resistance.

You’ll barely have to think before you say yes and take Mister Mandible’s hand, stepping forever into the annals of super villainy and becoming the Steel Mantis. May your foes die helpless and your enemies quake in fear at your name.

Oh, and congratulations on surviving his thesis defense. If you weren't so quick on your feet you might not be around to appreciate this.