Mechanicsville Welcomes A.I.M

Mechanicsville, VA (BPD) -- Mechanicsville city fathers announced that the city is welcoming criminal organization A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) to its pantheon of local businesses. Representatives of the city council and chamber of commerce made the announcement on Thursday at groundbreaking ceremonies for A.I.M's new secret subterranean base. While being primarily known as criminal scientists, AI.M also has substantial guerrilla military forces with some of the most technologically advanced armored vehicles and aircraft on Earth.

"When you look at it there really isn't any other choice for us for a primary base of operations," said A.I.M's Scientist Supreme. "I mean, a blind man could appreciate the delicious irony of it all. We're laughing in those super fools faces every time we come into the office!"

The local civic and business community is upbeat about the prospects for having A.I.M in town and downplayed residents fears that the criminal enterprise will attract metahuman intervention. Representatives of the city council and chamber of commerce, who declined to be identified or comment on the record stressed the benefit to the local tax base and the potential service to unemployed A.I.M will bring.

"You've got to be crazy if you think the community is just going to let this pass," said activist Richard Thader, a local resident. "We're going to be looking for the place to stage a demonstration before the Hulk or Wolverine comes tearing the place apart, causing it to self-destruct. We know how these places operate." Thader staged a small demonstration during the ceremony, held in the town square as the location of the base is secret to all but consecrated members of A.I.M.

"Make no mistake, we mean to expose it before they go nuke on us. These places always have a nuclear reactor," said demonstrator and local housewife Peggy Smith. "My sister and her husband lived out west near a H.I.V.E base once until the Teen Titans busted in. The government told her that it would be twenty years before the whole county will be decontaminated enough for human habitation. We don't want that here in our community."

Organized following World War II by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker as an offshoot of HYDRA, A.I.M. has battled the superhero community on many occasions. Notable successes for the criminal superscientists include the creation of the original reality-bending Cosmic Cube, the power-duplicating Super-Adaptoid and the monstrous supergenius MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing). The organization has also been linked to the new Scorpion and the Livewires.

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