Vaudevillain

Superfan39526:

How so?

D.Black:

Remember our currency exchange?

I made a deal with a lot of the other factions to hand them out.

Basically became a big bank.

And remember that the machines skim a few bits off the top.

We're probably rolling in Phlebotinium. We just need to collect it all.

Which I plan to do by sending maintenance bots.

Wait wait wait.

Are you telling me that we have a ridiculous amount of Phlebotinium???

Like, a moon destroying level of it???

D.Black:

Probably, why?

Superfan39526:

Okay! So instead of assaulting the moon base with our new Skyline, we should build a gigantic moon destroying laser and fire it into the moon!

D.Black:

Is this because you're still stuck on the moon crime?

Dylan shook his head, despite his friend being unable to see. He was just too excited about the prospect. This would be the ultimate level of villainy for Dr. Zlo! The villain would literally go down in the history of the game if he could pull this off.

Superfan39526:

No. This is bigger than that. What's the one thing all the old villains want to do? Destroy the world, right? With a giant doomsday weapon. I say we make that weapon shoot the moon, blasting chunks of it off and sending them into the various cities! Then, Skyline can swoop in during the aftermath and declare themselves world leaders. We could take over the world!

A reply didn't come for some time, causing Dylan to rock back and forth on the balls of his feet in anticipation.

D.Black:

Okay. I looked up some stuff to see if what you said is possible. And holy sh*t it is! Apparently the moon is completely destructable! We could actually do this!

Superfan39526:

I know right! We gotta let the others know!

D.Black:

Yeah, hold on. Let's talk about this later. Offline. I'm starting to get a bit paranoid.

Superfan39526:

Lol

D.Black:

I'll message the group to hold a meeting later. Only the founders. I don't want this leaking.

Superfan39526:

Good idea.

D.Black:

Oh, by the way. Let me know if you need any materials. Like I said. We have a ton of Phlebotinium now.

Probably.

Superfan39526:

Send around ten grams my way I guess?

I have a few things I want to recreate.

D.Black:

You got it.

Talk to you later.

Superfan39526:

Yep, see ya.

Dylan closed the messenger and whooped.

"World domination, here we come!"

The first step of the plan would have to be restarting Skyline. Without the mobile hub, Menagerie would have trouble with world domination. The faction had to have a way to reach the moonbase. If they didn't, the fight would likely be over before it started.

The original members of Menagerie met up a few days after Dylan's conversation with Dextra to talk about Skyline. Dylan was, unfortunately, a bit late to join because of traffic, so he jumped in during the middle of a conversation.

"–needs to be spaceworthy," Jack said.

"Hey guys," Dylan said. "What'd I miss?"

"Hey, man!" Riptide said cheerfully. "Jack was explaining all the stuff we should do for upgrades."

"Like making it a rocket ship," Sweet Dream said. "Which I find totally impractical."

"This world has people with superpowers. How are rockets impractical?" Jack asked.

"Physics is still a thing," Sweet Dream explained. "And imagine the amount of fuel we'd need to escape the atmosphere."

"What if we just built it in space?" Dylan asked. "We have teleporter technology. It can't be that hard to get something set up."

"What about atmosphere and all that?" Sweet Dream asked. "I'm not trying to shoot this down, but space introduces a lot of problems into the mix."

"I bet Mad Science can do something about it," Shizuka said. "Oh! We should totally add like rope bungees for people to tie themselves to!"

"Why?" Sweet Dream asked.

"So they can fling themselves off the edge and come back! Imagine! Bungee jumping in space!"

Dylan rolled his eyes and chuckled, "Let's stick to the foundations first. Then we can add in the fun stuff. Have we decided if the city should be able to re-enter the atmosphere?"

"You'd mentioned a death ray, correct?" Thomas said in his deep voice. "The only reason I can see us entering atmosphere would be to enforce our rule after controlling the world. We wouldn't need that with the death ray."

"Before all that," Rampart said. "We need a way to stop Skyline from falling again."

"Agreed," Merla said. "I'd rather not lose another base because of it."

"We need a better vetting process," Oro said. "The referral program works until it doesn't."

"The problem is that we can't stop someone dedicated to destroying the city," Thomas said. "Not unless we have some kind of surveillance state."

"We could just reinforce everything until it's impossible to break," Jack said. "I'm sure I could make a material that could withstand anything."

"But how much of it?" Dylan asked. "In my experience, something that strong would mean using up a lot of resources."

"We do have a shit ton of Phlebotinium," Jack pointed out.

"I'm still not sure," Thomas said. "We were also hacked, if you remember."

Jack waved a hand, "That just requires a dead man's switch on all our security."

"And if they get ahold of the switch?" Thomas asked.

"Then we think of something else," Jack said exasperatingly.

Oro interjected before Thomas could reply, "Look. If someone's really that dedicated to destroying Skyline, there's nothing much we can do about it. There's always going to be some kind of chink in the armor. Plus, none of us are security professionals. I think our best shot is to improve as we go. I like the idea of making the bones of the city almost indestructible."

Thomas sighed, "You're right. I guess I'm still beating myself up about this. Dextra shouldn't have let something like this happen."

"You're only human, dude," Riptide said. "Can't be everywhere at once. And you were focusing a lot on things outside of Skyline."

"Yeah, don't beat yourself up about it," Shizuka said. "Skyline's fall makes for an awesome revenge plot. Like, who would have thought we'd go after the freakin' heroes guild of all things."

"That's true," Oro said.

"I think we should have one engine this time," Dylan said. "Or we have so many engines that it doesn't matter how many are destroyed."

"One engine," Jack said. "Because I don't want to mindlessly craft a bunch of engines."

"Not even if we made a machine to do it?" Dylan asked.

"Engines still take materials, and we'd have to account for that," Jack said. "One engine with little maintenance gives us better defenses."

"I like the idea of more engines," Sweet Dream said. "That would make it easier to expand Skyline, yeah? And we could make it detachable. That way, when something goes wrong, we just jettison the piece."

"Both ideas have merit," Thomas said.

"I think it depends on how many important structures we have," Rampart said. "The more we have, the less effective multiple engines would be. We wouldn't want to jettison something critical."

"Well, we need to have defenses," Dylan started. "So we probably need the factories that make them and the places to house them. We need a central hub for players to gather so we can hold large meetings."

"We need bungee cords," Shizuka chirped.

"We need somewhere to store communal materials," Dylan said, ignoring the player. "Not sure about anything else."

"We need a teleporter station," Oro said. "Or stations. The one we had was starting to get a bit crowded."

"Yeah, we gotta get around," Rampart said. "We also probably need courtrooms or something."

"That's not essential, though," Sweet Dream said. "We can easily rebuild those. I think of the things we listed, we really only need the factories and a place to store defenses."

"I think we should make the teleporters essential and make them the only way to enter," Thomas said. "It would give us choke points for invasions."

"Okay, so three things," Sweet Dream said.

"How would we jettison the engines?" Jack asked. "A central room with a screen? Or buttons near each engine? Honestly, I still think the one engine is better. I'm not a big fan of multiple points of failure."

"And we could still keep the jettison idea," Dylan said. "Use it as a trap. Make fake engines or engines that only activate to jettison the section. Our important areas are all left in one spot; the core of Skyline."

"I like the single engine idea as well," Thomas said. "Let's go with that assumption."

"Aw, fine," Sweet Dream said.

"Okay, so next is materials and the like," Jack said. "I know we can make something almost unbreakable…."

The conversation continued well into the night, the players going over every facet they could think of in order to keep Skyline afloat this time. Eventually, the group settled on a design.

Skyline would have a single engine acting as both propulsion and as a gravity generator. Near it would be a control console, the storage facility for all the drone defenses, and the factories for creating the defenses. The central skyscraper would build around the core, the ends of it holding the two teleporter pads. The idea would be to make invaders fight through the tower to get to the engines.

That would be the core of the city. Everything else built around it could get jettisoned at any point, sending the piece falling into the atmosphere. Rebuilding might be a pain, but it was better than losing the entire city. And as long as the skyscraper stood, Skyline would fly.

From there, the group went into designing materials and defenses. The skyscraper and any important pieces would get reinforced materials that blocked both science and magic. No bomb was going to destroy the city again.

The group also decided to surround the city with a barrier. The defense would act as both protection and a makeshift bubble for a breathable atmosphere. Of course, everyone saw the flaw in the security immediately. Therefore, they designed a second piece of protection if they ever lost the barrier but still had to breathe, a thin bubble that let everything but air through.

By the time everyone finished, it was well past midnight. Dylan yawned and stretched as he jumped off his computer and into his bed. He still had work in the morning, and he wasn't looking forward to the amount of coffee he would have to consume to stay awake. But he didn't regret staying up and helping. Menagerie needed to come back and show the world what happened when they messed with them.

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