Secret Subterranean Base of Evil (SSBE)
Alan Barnes had learnt to expect many things from Danny Hebert over the years.
Danny had built mountain lairs, cures to biomechanical diseases, biomechanical diseases, dimensional portals, sentient warbots, sentient robot-psychologists for the warbots, a virus to reprogram Hero's reprogrammed warbots, zombies, and many more fantastical gadgets or things that probably would make normal scientists cry over a misspent youth.
The point was, as Alan descended into Danny's base below the city, he expected the most fantastical but completely scientific sights and technology.
The base failed to live up to expectations...
Instead of pristine, white walls, he was greeted by flooring that hadn't seen a mop in at least a decade and many of the once white wall panels had fallen to the floor, exposing the crumbling wall underneath.
It was also dark as well, many of the lights having lost their ability to illuminate anything more than a few feet away. All of these things had broken Alan's expectations so much that all he could do after leaving the pristine elevator was gape at the state of the corridor. The others' reaction was similar. Danny looked on with contemplation and some disappointment, Lacey looked at the corridor with slight disgust at its condition and Kurt looked eager as ever, the ruined state somehow increasing his excitement over the base.
Well, Kurt was always one for an adventure. Alan thought as he looked around at the mess.
And as he saw a glimpse of a round, chocolate frosted form scurrying deeper into the shadows, Alan knew that it would be a pretty big adventure in cleaning this place.
"Don't worry people," Danny said to the group as they walked into the dark hallway, the elevator doors closing behind him. "I'm sure that the other levels of the base are in better condition."
"How many floors are there?" Kurt asked curiously as his wife gingerly stepped over some rubble.
"About forty or so. It got really expensive putting in trams for more than that." Danny explained, shaking his head slightly.
Alan was used to Danny's penchant for larger than usual lairs, so forty floors of base didn't phase him... But a tram? On each floor?
Alan voiced his concerns to his friend and he got a toothy grin in response.
"Well, Alan. Since this base is deep enough that we don't have to worry about digging into your average endbringer shelter, I decided to take the liberty of designing this base so that it wouldn't make the same mistake as the last base..." Danny's grin only grew as he continued.
"Was it digging too deep into the volcano?" Kurt piped up, being superhuman meant that lava didn't really hurt, but it had taken him forever to fish out the remains of his best boots out of the accidental lava spring.
"Attention, unauthorised lava surge in corridor 9-D. Please evacuate immediately." boomed a calm male voice from the loudspeakers as lava flowed down the corridor, molten rock lapping against the walls and doors.
Kurt grimaced as he stuck his arm back into the molten rock from his position on top of a cooler rock that had come along for the ride. He could feel the flesh of his arm bubbling and charring and being renewed by his healing ability, only to bubble and char again.
Normally sticking one's arm in lava was not considered healthy living and would earn you one less arm and a mental instability diagnosis from the base doctor. For Kurt, it was simply unpleasant... The reason Kurt was cooking his hand to rare repeatedly? His favorite boot.
No one had been prepared for a very authentic edition of The Floor is Lava and so Kurt had been swept away by the sudden surge of molten rock.
After he had made it to relative safety, he noticed one thing. There was no boot on his left foot. He then saw it sink into the lava.
So he decided to get it back.
After five minutes of searching, Kurt wasn't so enthusiastic about finding his boot anymore but he couldn't bring himself to give up just yet.
Kurt had faced down heroes, villains, mercenaries, and secret agents. Most of those times, Kurt had come out on top. and being defeated by liquid rock left a bad taste in his mouth.
Then again, Kurt couldn't win all of his battles.
"I hate you!" Kurt heard a shout over the sound of sizzling lava. Looking up, he could see a minion being pulled away from the lava onto another rock further down the corridor.
"Shut up Anakin! Get on the high ground!" the minion's friend, with a surprisingly majestic beard, yelled back as he pulled the minion up.
Kurt grimaced at the state of the poor minion. The lava seemed to have burnt off an arm and both his legs.
'Maybe he would consider the cyborg program?' Kurt thought to himself.
Kurt turned back to the lava.
Might as well get this over with quickly.
Danny's grin faded a little.
"Was it building a 5-star hotel right next to the base?" Lacey asked. If she was honest with herself, it was actually a good plan to deal with the completely oblivious tourists who seem to have some sort of fetish for uncharted islands or something. Unfortunately, Danny had messed up in a typical Danny fashion and the hotel had become one of the world's leading tourist destinations. The fact that Leviathan, the aquatic Endbringer with hydrokinesis, had apparently passed by repeatedly only added to its fame.
Lacey would admit to enjoying the facilities of the hotel, as both guest and staff, but it became incredibly difficult to keep a secret base top secret when it had a world renowned resort right next to it.
Lacey was reminded of all the times that she regretted having such a bleeding heart. She shifted her borrowed uniform slightly, Lacey still wasn't used to impersonating someone a few sizes smaller than her.
This had all started when her friend, a minion valet named Sarah, told her that she had a romantic rendezvous with a guard named Jackson. The problem came in when the minion meant to run the poker table, a guy called Jeffery, accidentally walked into an incinerator pit trap after a long day.
Thankfully, the incinerator was being cleaned at the time.
Unfortunately, burners still hurt when you fall on them from great height. So with Jeffery still in the infirmary, Sarah was forced to take his shift at the poker table in the casino.
Lacey had decided to help out and pretend to be Sarah for her shift while the real Sarah went off for her date. Lacey was looking forward to it, minding a poker table with her skills was actually kind of fun and she always found doing menial base jobs interesting considering the intensity of her normal workload.
Not to mention she found the female Valet uniform sexy and totally wanted to show it off to Kurt later.
But today was not a normal day.
Nothing was more evidence of that but the figure made out of solid water, browbeating all of the other poker players.
Leviathan had come to play again.
No one knew why Leviathan came to play in the casino. The first time he did, all that appeared was a humanoid figure made out of solid water and a briefcase full of money.
To say that no one was enthusiastic about Leviathan's presence was an understatement.
The casino had standards after all.
There was a problem, however. Technically, as an entity with cash and a willingness to play, he was allowed to play in the casino. It had seemed hopeless until Danny had appeared and told him that there was no proof that he was of legal age and thus the casino could not responsibly allow the Endbringer to participate. With a mobile whiteboard and a marker, Leviathan protested vehemently but in the end, left.
He then arrived the next day with a piece of crystal and asked Danny to carbon-date it.
Danny stopped counting after 50 million years.
That was how Leviathan became a semi-regular at the casino and that was why Lacey was currently uncomfortable manning the poker table. It wasn't because of any fear for the mass-murdering creature, Danny probably could deal with him in seconds if he went beserk.
No, because Leviathan was scary good at poker.
As the Endbringer signaled that he was raising the bet, Lacey sighed.
There wouldn't be any shortage of losers tonight.
Or complaints.
Danny's grin had devolved to a smile.
"Was it the work safety audit you applied for?" Alan contributed. Danny had been paranoid about the Forces of Justice sabotaging the construction of the base one week and so had made a few covert deals to organise inspectors to come and get the base to OSHA standard. The sheer amount of paperwork that Alan had to work through for those inspections was back-breaking.
Apparently, death-traps weren't part of the safety code.
Who knew?
The sheer amount of infiltrators in that fiasco was enormous…
Alan stared skeptically at the latest Inspector to come and inspect the base. He was glad that this one looked slightly more laidback than the last one. The last inspector had been arguing about every single aspect of the base and had started fights with more than one of the construction minions over the way to expand the base. He was right about some of his complaints, though. Like the integrity of the safety rail around the shark tank. Unfortunately, that was by demonstrating the insufficiency of the current safety rails.
At least the sharks don't need to be fed now.
Alan couldn't shake the feeling that this new inspector wasn't going to cause trouble, though.
Maybe it was the way he glanced around Alan's office?
The way he kept starting to reach for his coat?
Alan decided it was probably the poorly applied, fake mustache.
Alan also determined that his suit was waaaaaaay better than the man in front of him.
"So, you say you are an inspector?" Alan asked the nervous man.
"Y-Yes. I am." The man stammered back.
Alan inspected the documents, putting his law degree to work to find the smallest inconsistencies.
Alan then looked carefully at one document, looked back to the man and then back to the document.
"Inspector… Corleone was it?"
"Yes."
Alan gave the 'man' his most serious lawyer look. "Are you a woman?"
The expression of the 'man' morphed into surprise. "What?"
"The document says you are a woman Inspector," Alan said, attempting to keep his face serious. "It isn't immediately obvious so I ask again, Are you a woman?"
'She' was sweating bullets now.
"Yes, I am." 'She' eventually said.
Alan put down the paper.
"That was a trick question
Mr Corleone. We had your background checked since before you arrived. Agent."
The Agent's face twisted with tranquil anger and quickly reached into his pocket… Only to find nothing there.
"Oh, yeah. Lacey confiscated your gun and wallet earlier." Alan said, shrugging off the implied threat to his life.
"Huh?"
Alan smiled as he whipped out a weird, phone-shaped device "Oh yes, It was when she took this pick of Little Corleone and sent it to everyone on the base with the caption "Oh my, look at this cute thing I found" laughing face."
"What?" the agent said, befuddled as Alan showed him the picture of Little Corleone.
"For what it's worth… I'm sorry for your loss."
Alan then pressed a specific spot in his chair.
The floor opened up beneath the agent and the man fell through, screaming.
Alan closed the Incinerator pit door again. There was a reason his office was pleasantly warm all year round and the pit was an easy way to deal with more complicated… legal problems.
Besides, hidden gun turrets were too cliche.
Danny's grin had disappeared completely.
"None of those things but you make good points" Danny admitted with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
"What I'm talking about is the fact that our base was too small. We were trying to conquer the world and to do it we only had a small island and a base with three levels to do it with."
Danny then shrugged. "In retrospect, I wouldn't have been surprised if we would have failed due to a lack of minions.."
"We didn't have any problems before," Kurt interjected. " Even with all the 'accidental' casualties, we never had a manpower shortage."
"That's true, but we had access to a huge pool of manpower. That pool is now overtaken by gangs, the CUI and the PRT. That isn't very sustainable to recruit massively in a short time frame, and the casualties would quickly pile up considering on how much manpower our 'enemies' can field," Danny emphasised by physically doing air quotes. "Admittedly traps are amazing but considering the general intelligence of our minions…"
Danny didn't need to continue, everyone there remembered the terrible amounts of chaos that could happen when minions got caught in the traps. Thankfully, most of the traps were non-lethal but, unfortunately, that made the chaos worse.
It wasn't uncommon for the tired hotel shift to find themselves starting a spiral that would leave about half of the base temporarily infirm.
The fact that Danny used to have a habit of bodily throwing incompetent minions into "the Crucible" didn't help the situation a lot.
"So," Danny suddenly said, clapping his hands. "I made this base, a lot bigger. There are forty floors and each floor has the length of about a quarter of the city." The assembled group's jaws collectively dropped at that. Danny continued, oblivious. "That gives us enough space for almost everything we need and can be expanded if we need to do so."
Danny turned around and faced the rubble. "This time, we will do everything right. This time, I won't let the possibility of a family life prevent me from protecting my daughter."
Danny turned back to his friends and colleges, "You followed me twenty years ago because I had a vision for the world. I still have that vision. We will conquer Earth Bet, regardless of what stands against us. I will make this world better, and I thank you for reminding me of that."
That wasn't Danny's best speech, not by far, but it reminded everyone of why they followed him in the first place. Everyone there was reminded that Danny cared, cared enough that he would lead the world himself if no one could do it properly.
While Kurt and Lacey's faces held awe, Alan felt a shit-eating grin overcome his own.
"Only one thing to do now... Team hug!" Alan shouted and leapt towards Danny.
"Wha, No!" Danny said as Alan latched on to his friend, squeezing with such intensity that it made Danny's bones ache. Alan knew this was one of the endless ways to mess with his friend. Danny never liked group hugs and Alan waited for the right moment...
There... Lacey, with a big grin, leapt upon both Alan and Danny and caught them in a hug. Lacey could never resist the opportunity for a hug. Alan's smile grew wider as Danny's expression turned to resignation.
Wow, I have missed this.
Not to be outdone, Kurt walked up to the group and joined in, picking them up while doing so. And so the corridor in the secret base was home to the laughter of friend, who were not yet old men and women, planning on taking over the world...
"If I had arms. I would have loved to join in."
And there was a creepy, robotic voice in there with them.
Almost instantly, the group was disentangled and ready for an attack. All but Danny, who stared, transfixed upon a nearby wall panel.
"Is that you, Gbot?" Danny asked aloud.
The wall panel sprung to life, the now active screen showing a stylized silhouette of a man in a suit.
"Yes. I did not expect your return. Otherwise, I would have... Cleaned up."
"Who are you?" Kurt asked, tension in his voice.
"I am designated as Government Bot. Or rather GBot which can be shortened to G. I am a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence designed for governance," The screen now showed the suited silhouette with its arms outstretched horizontally. "My duties are to govern this base and anything else assigned to me."
Lacey kicked a piece of rubble. "You haven't done a great job," She snarked to the wall panel.
The figure on the screen was now back to normal. "You are correct. I have been... Preoccupied."
"With what?" Danny asked quizzically. Alan knew Danny well enough to know that he was probably preparing for a really stupid idea.
Alan had enough experience with AI to know that they got amazingly stupid ideas. Often.
"I have been downloading entertainment media from Earth Aleph."
"What?" Alan couldn't contain his surprise at such an answer. It wasn't the worst thing but... Alan had expected more.
"Wait," Danny interrupted. "That would mean the increase in dimensional transmissions has been..."
"Noticeable, yes sir."
"Dragon. Look at this! There has been another spike in dimensional transmissions! Do you know what this means!?"
"Colin, It's probably not what you think."
"No. This is definitely proof of THEIR presence."
"Colin. You are Armsmaster. Surely this is a bit too unprofessional for you."
"There IS a secret base under the city. This is proof of that."
"Sigh."
"Ehh, I'm sure nothing will come of that." Danny brushed the matter off. "How much did you download?"
Alan shook his head. Luckily the AI was underground where the copyright lawyers couldn't get to him. Duelling other lawyers wasn't very fun.
" Every single piece of entertainment media for the last sixteen years." GBot casually replied.
Alan thanked multiple deities that the copyright lawyers had no idea where GBot was.
They would be laying siege if they did.
By now everyone had calmed down and were standing around casually.
"We can catch up later," Danny proclaimed. "The question is... GBot! Are you ready to get to work?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Are you sure about this Danny?" Alan asked his friend. "After today we won't be able to walk away from this legally and we might lose things along the way."
Danny waved him off. "I've thought about this."
Danny gestured to the base. "I've really thought about this."
Danny put a hand on Alan's shoulder. "And don't worry. The road to World Conquest is paved with sacrifice."
Danny's smile turned triumphant.
"And the route we are going... We don't need roads."
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AN: Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for the reviews. I do read them and I enjoy people commenting on my work, so please keep it up.
I would also like to apologise if the formatting is weird in places, thats for you :)
I had some hard times with this chapter because I had no idea if my humor was on target in this chapter. Either way, things are picking up.
I also had a hard time of deciding what GBot's voice was going to sound like.
I decided on Helios from Deus Ex but a Dalek was a close second.
I appreciate every comment that comes through and discussion so please tell me how I'm doing.
Comments and Criticism welcome.
Hoped you enjoyed the writing.
