Vaudevillain

While Dextra’s team started working on development, Dr. Zlo pulled his group together to begin planning their next scheme.

“Alright, minions! Are you ready to help me design the most evil, most diabolical, and most heinous plan?”

“Hey, hold up, I’m a hero remember?” Oro joked.

“A minor complication. I’m sure we can turn you to the dark side soon. I’ve been told there are cookies.”

Sweet Dream snorted a laugh, which caused her to blush with embarrassment.

“None of you heard that,” she said.

“All I heard was a cute laugh,” Riptide said.

“Shush.”

Dr. Zlo spun in place, “Flirt later! Right now, we have a bomb to create!”

Taking his own advice, the villain opened his power tab and started brainstorming his idea. He knew what he wanted the bomb to do, but he needed the device to give heroes a fighting chance. That meant countdowns, fuses, and other gadgets.

“We should head back to Skyline,” Oro said. “That way, we aren’t in the way of Dextra and the others.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sweet Dream said.

“Titan should be on soon. I’ll message him and have him bring a shuttle over,” Oro said.

The player opened up his friends list and messaged Titan. It took a few minutes for the hero to arrive, so in the meantime, the group brainstormed ideas for the scheme.

“I need to announce it to the world!” Dr. Zlo started.

“Meaning we’ll need some sort of megaphone system,” Sweet Dream answered.

“If we’re planning to announce it in the game,” Oro replied. “Otherwise, we can record it and play it on our channel.”

“Why not do both, dudes?” Riptide said. “Recording a speech sounds like something Zlo would do.”

“Quite right. I will use my dastardly speech to throw the heroes off my scent. We’ll make them believe I’m in one place when I’m really in another. Muahaha!” Dr. Zlo threw his head back and tossed his hands to the sky as he cackled.

“He’s going all out today,” Oro said.

“He does seem more expressive,” Sweet Dream said.

“Of course! We can finally get started on my grand vision! Why wouldn’t I be excited!” Dr. Zlo answered.

__

Everyone sat at the OOC lounge back in Skyline, Cass working behind the counter to make drinks. Mabel and Suitor sat to one side, the latter eating spoonfuls of ice cream offered by Mabel. Outside of the lounge loitered Jawbreaker and a few Jacques along with another of Riptide’s Shark minions. Jaws if Dylan remembered correctly.

He idly watched as the Jacques tried to use Jawbreaker as a human jungle gym, Jaws on the side trying to provoke the golden man into an arm-wrestling match. The sound of glass hitting the table pulled him back to his friends.

“Alright, here’s everyone’s drinks,” Oro said. “Who’s ready to start this planning session?”

Dylan stood and grabbed the whiteboard at the corner of the room. The lounge had been moved back into the skyscraper now that the foundations were laid. Mahogany wood lined the walls and floors, giving the area a polished feeling. The bar where Cass stood held a sleek, black countertop, the color of space.

“Nice place, isn’t it,” Jack said, walking into the lounge and moving over to Dylan. “I wasn’t sure how I felt about making it so cozy, but it is a coffee shop.”

“I’m more amazed at how fast this was built,” Dylan answered.

“A lot gets done when robots work twenty-four-seven,” Jack answered. She looked over to the table where the others sat waiting, “You planning to start something?”

“Going to plan out the tsunami scheme, wanna help?”

“Heck yeah, lead the way, my build-a-house friend.”

She gave Dylan a slight push forward and followed behind. He grabbed the whiteboard on his way back and used one of the markers to start writing.

“Okay, so we know the goal of the plan is to use a bomb of some kind to make a giant tsunami. At the same time, we plan to use this as recruitment for Menagerie, which means we need quests and stages and the like. I’m thinking we have the bomb hold a number of fuses located throughout the cities we want to hit. Heroes will work to disarm the fuse while villains try to stop them.”

“Dude, what if we made it so villains are the ones to plant the fuses,” Riptide said.

“Wouldn’t that make things too complicated?” Oro asked.

“Maybe,” Sweet Dream said. “I think it depends on how we do it.”

“What if you had the villains work under someone? That way, you can see who’s a good fit for Menagerie.” Jack said.

“Not a bad idea, and we can group heroes up the same way,” Oro added.

“I guess we should decide locations, then,” Dylan said. “See which cities to hit before anything else.”

“Well, how big is your bomb going to be anyway?” Jack asked.

“I wanted it to be something world-threatening,” Dylan answered.

Jack nodded and reached into her inventory. She pulled out what looked to be two sticks connected with tape. Jack motioned for everyone to clear the table and laid the device down on it.

“Grab that end,” she said to Oro. He gave her a questioning look but obeyed.

Jack grabbed the other end and pulled, unfurling a glossy map for everyone to see.

“Okay, so a world-threatening bomb isn’t easy,” the inventor started. “Mainly because World of Supers is one continent. A huge continent. I think at most we’ll be able to hit three cities.”

Jack pointed to a small island on the map, “This is Haven City, where most of you started. It’s close to this city here,” she pointed to a dot on the coast, “Thenapolis. Which is next to this city,” she pointed again, “Cartis.”

“Do we have other options?” Sweet Dream asked.

“Well,” Jack said, biting her thumb in concentration, “There’s these cities here, Toedo, Seong, and Hanang.” She pointed at another group of cities on the opposite side of the map, East of Haven City.

“These cities could work, but Hanang is much farther away. So most likely, you’d only get Toedo and Seong. There’s also Dinium, Nicia, and Belun,” Jack pointed to three cities on the North side of the map. “But Belun is surrounded by a giant bubble that protects it from the elements, so I don’t know how well that would work.”

“So to cause the most destruction, we need to attack Haven, Thenapolis, and Cartis,” Dylan stated.

“We already hit Haven, though,” Sweet Dream said.

“I mean, Dr. Zlo’s origin is Haven City,” Oro said. “It makes a bit of sense to use the city as his stepping stone to greatness.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Dylan said. “How big of a bomb do I need to make?”

“Haven is the farthest out, about two-fifty kilometers from the other two. Cartis and Thenapolis are only about a hundred kilometers away from each other, though.”

Dylan looked over at the map and pulled the whiteboard over, “So if this is a triangle, I’m looking for the center. I’d need a calculator if I want to be exact about it, but it’s close to a third of the distance between each city since Haven is two-fifty kilometers away from the other two. So at most I would need the bomb to make a tsunami around eighty-three kilometers away.”

“Why a third, dude?” Riptide asked.

“The center of an isosceles triangle is a third of its height,” Dylan answered. “Sometimes, I have to use math when drafting.”

“The question is, can your power make a bomb that does that?” Sweet Dream asked.

“Let’s see,” Dylan said.

Tsunami Bomb

This fiendish creation of Dr. Zlo’s was built to cause natural disasters on a global scale. When ignited, the Tsunami Bomb causes the waters around it to churn and create deadly tsunamis that travel up to ninety kilometers away.

Wipeout (1)

Phlebotinium (100 g)

Saltwater (10 gal)

Fuse (1)

Countdown Timer (1)

Dynamite (100 sticks)

“Well d*mn,” Dylan said.

“What?” everyone asked.

“I need one hundred grams of phlebotinium if I want to make this thing.”

“Dude, what?!” Riptide exclaimed. “We’ve gotten like ten grams at most!”

“It does sound like overkill,” Oro said.

“You know,” Sweet Dream started, “I wondered why there weren’t more world-ending threats out there. We can’t be the only ones thinking about making weapons of mass destruction.”

The candy villainess turned to Jack, “What about your power?”

Jack pulled a piece of paper from her inventory and activated her power. Words started to appear on the page, listing similar ingredients for the bomb. Jack erased the Phlebotinium requirement once it finished.

“Nothing changed; I get a piddly splash instead of a giant wave.”

She changed the explosive to TNT instead of dynamite and changed the measurement to tons.

“One hundred tons of TNT doesn’t get me anywhere either,” she said.

Jack changed the number to a million tons.

“Okay, one million tons of TNT would do it. But it would all have to go off at around the same time, and we’d need to stockpile it.”

“Dude, that would take forever!” Riptide complained.

“For real,” Oro said. “And I don’t think grinding to get one hundred grams of Phlebotinium would be any shorter.”

“If anything, it would be longer,” Sweet Dream said.

The group sat around, stumped. After about a minute, Dylan spoke up, “Maybe we can make it look like a tsunami bomb but use something else?”

“Like what?” Jack asked.

“Like a wave generator or a robot that lurks underwater and makes a big wave, but we build one for each city and have them go off at the same time?”

“That could work,” Oro said.

“Dude, we could make a submarine that causes waves, and each of us could control one and be bosses!” Riptide said excitedly.

“Dr. Zlo’s sub of doom, Sweet Dream’s sweet U-boat, and Riptide’s surfing submersible,” Sweet Dream said.

“I love it!” Riptide grabbed his girlfriend and pulled her into a hug.

“Ack! Calm down!”

“Wait, if we do it that way, couldn’t we add more cities?” Oro said.

“Technically, yeah,” Jack said. “But the more cities we have, the more we have to plan.”

“What if I made a smaller bomb, and placed a ton of fakes around the cities to throw people off. Make them spend time looking while the timer ticks down, and anyone who finds out can come and face me on my zeppelin.”

“Zeppelin?” Jack asked.

Dylan shrugged, “It seems the most thematically appropriate.”

“Ha! You inside a giant blimp, taunting heroes below. That sounds like a good time,” Oro said.

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