Enjoy the Unedited Writing!
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28 January 2011. Brockton Bay, Boardwalk ( During Lunch hour please do not leave cakes and pies unattended)
I was bored and in a city like Brockton Bay, I had no idea how that happened.
But ever since I had left the hospital, going to school had been the most boring part of the day. Before my ordeal in the Locker, every class and free period was spent trying to avoid my tormentors, the three bullies that had managed to make Winslow high school into a personal hell on earth. It had all culminated in the Locker, where I had been locked in the small metal coffin with a non-significant amount of waste.
I could safely say that it was one of the worst moments of my life. The feelings of being trapped in that horrible place still haunted me, occasionally bringing me back to that moment when I entered the bus or looked at my old locker. Thankfully, I didn't remember how I had got so many cuts on my hands and arms because what I did remember still gave me the occasional nightmare. It had gotten even worse when they had told me that my cuts had been infected by a rare bacteria which had eaten a good number of the nerves in my hands and left arm. My reaction had been embarrassing. Despite the doctors practically begging me not to worry about it, I had still almost cried. The fear of never being able to use my hands again had infected my thoughts through the whole week with pained imaginings of how I could possibly even live my life without being able to even open my fingers.
My worries were all for naught however, as I had woken up that Saturday with my hands and arms fully useable and healed. I had been in complete shock when I had seen my hands that morning that the ambient sounds of gurgling and enthusiastic yelling had fallen into the background of my mind. It had seemed miraculous to me at the time but I guess it was only a matter of time until Panacea had seen to my injuries considering how serious they were. The recovery from I had to make from what my powers did to my mind had taken significantly more time but as I lazily directed a fly to do cartwheels in the air, I could say it was all worth it in retrospect.
I had powers now...
The weak and worthless Taylor was gone, replaced by a Taylor who was objectively better than her tormentors and ready to show the Trio who they were messing with.
Okay, not really. When I had finally gone back to Winslow High, I had just wanted them to leave me alone as I silently hoped that my powers came with a confidence boost.
Expecting the worst, I had not been prepared for how much my life would have changed since that stay in hospital. Emma Barnes, my former best friend and chief tormentor, was actually avoiding me. At first, I had believed that she was just preparing for her next torment, waiting for a time when I wouldn't expect it. However, the promised pranks never came. Days passed without any interaction with her at all. The most she did was a rare annoyed stare at me which was normally followed by a sheepish glance to the floor.
Sophia, the muscle of the trio of tormentors, had tried to continue the physical side of the bullying campaign but since the incident where she had actually been called out by a teacher for tripping me down the stairs, she stuck to purposefully walking into me in the halls and half-heartedly trying to trip me as I went past. Were the teachers actually doing their jobs for once? Dad had said that "they became painfully aware of how flimsy their funding is" or whatever that meant. Her dad had given her a smile when she had said that and it hadn't exactly made her comfortable. It had looked like the smile a shark would give if it could brag about its latest meal and it didn't fit the kind but barely functioning dad she had known. It was a smile that she remembered on her parents back when mom was...
Madison had somehow undergone the weirdest change between all three of them. Like Emma, she had stopped actively trying to bully me but unlike Emma, she kept giving me these long looks, quickly looking away when she noticed that I was looking. One time that I had caught her staring was when she had just sort of dozed off while looking at me, her head resting on her hand and a dreamy expression on her face.
I felt kind of creeped out...
Though it was weird, I had to admit that high school without the bullying wasn't actually that bad. I had even begun to look forward to my classes now that I could actually pay attention in them. At least until I realised that most of them were excruciatingly boring. I loved the computer classes and with that I enjoyed Science and Maths. All three of those subjects gave me control over what I was doing, they never were biased against facts and it only helped that I was surprisingly good at them. In contrast, Art was exceptionally subjective, Same with Parahuman studies but with an added tinge of boredom and While I loved English, the teacher somehow managed to get so many things wrong and be so monotone that she could successfully sucked the life out of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
With my school work in the okay, but boring, and the Trio not even trying to bully me anymore, I found myself in the most precarious position a teenager can be...
I was bored.
I had only noticed just how on edge and how busy I was trying to either avoid or repay the bullying until it had stopped. No longer did I have the comfort of hours of planning routes between classes and writing half-baked revenge schemes in my journal. I had once duelled fate by giving Greg one of my proposed methods of revenge and had been subsequently crushed when he had pointed out several, glaring faults in my plan that would have spelled my doom should I have gone a head with it.
If that last thought had seemed dramatic, then it was because there was little else to do for a teenager on the boardwalk without money to buy the overpriced and possibly infested goods there. I had originally come here to see how many people I could track in my range as a sort of test. Did you know that there are at least a dozen insects living on you at all times in the day? And that number only increased in the more populated areas?
So, with that in mind, it turns out that bug control was an extremely scary power considering that the limit to the number of people I could track stopped at All of Them. Well, all of the people in the range of about two blocks but that was still pretty terrifying to someone who had thought about the sheer flexibility of such a power. It was scary how close I was to actually considering my power completely useless, If the bullying hadn't stopped and let me think about what I could do then I just knew that I would be moping about how "weak" my power was.
Bug Control was significantly different from being Alexandria after all. While she could only attack one villain at a time, I could attack as many as I had bugs to attack them with, as ineffective as those attacks may be. Of course, in Brockton Bay it didn't stop there. What kind of weird things could my power control that were native here? Was I limited to Pie Bugs as one very surprised baker had discovered or did my power encompass all invertebrates like the dreaded cake slime? I unfortunately had my answer for that as I couldn't feel any of the traumatic abominations in my range and there were always one or two lurking around the boardwalk.
That didn't stop me from controlling pretty much every other invertebrate around however.
Masters were scary for a reason I suppose...
So, as a superpowered teenage Master, I was attempting to alleviate my boredom by playing a guessing game where I would try to figure out who a person was by just what I felt with my bugs.
Hmm. I could feel a heavy, slippery thing over a warm fabric that was slightly damp. There was a cold, hard rectangular shape between the two layers. The thing that my bugs were sitting on also felt quite large. Turning towards the feeling, my suspicions were proven correct as I saw an enforcer, one of the boardwalk security guards, wearing a black leather jacket with a black shirt, sweating in the hot sun as he stood guard near a restaurant.
It was a good attempt at being intimidating but in the end, the fact the poor man was trying to discretely wipe the sweat off his face while he glared at people made it more comical than anything.
My attention was drawn to another bunch of my bugs as I tried to guess who another person was. I could feel something light and cool which happened to be rather thin as well. Below that were what I knew to be pants whose material felt quite rough. Surprisingly the person's skin didn't feel like it was actually there, rather it felt like my insects were just barely touching it. What I could tell was that the figure had some interesting and large bu...
I could feel my face go red as I realized what I had unconsciously been feeling. A quick glance told me that my fears were right and I had been unconsciously feeling up a good-looking blonde girl who was chatting enthusiastically to a disinterested brunette. My face only increased its shade of red when I noticed that the girl did indeed have significantly more... Assets than I did.
It made me feel a bit jealous.
It was then that the brunette caught me absently staring at her friend and gave me a death glare that sent chills down muscles that I didn't even know that I had. Turning away quickly, I tried to ignore the scary brown-haired girl and her lucky blonde friend.
If the stare of unrelenting torment had sent my mind racing, then the next person that my bugs felt made my mind stop in confusion. It felt like the whole body except the head was covered by some sort of fabric with some slippery material over his legs. Above all that was a... Greatcoat?
Turning towards the oddity, I was greeted by one of the most puzzling sights that I've seen. It was a man, covered in a large, brown trenchcoat with a yellow jumpsuit being clearly seen underneath. The man had green, rubber boots and a pair of sunglasses partnered with a black fedora rested ontop of his head. By itself, it wasn't that weird by itself as Brockton Bay was the cape capital of the US. It wasn't hard to imagine that he could have been a new cape in costume.
No, the weird thing was that there were two more, identically dressed men walking next to him and no one seemed to notice. It was all I could do to stare as three, obviously suspicious men moved through the crowd. Was I really the only one who could see them? My question was soon answred as a small boy who was running with what appeared to be his sister, ran into one of the men's legs and toppled him.
"Sorry Mister!" the boy yelled as he continued on, oblivious to the prone, groaning man on the floor.
So it wasn't some sort of invisibility and everyone but me found them simply ordinary?
My increduility was such that I barely reacted as the fallen man's fellow picked him up and said something that got my brain turning.
"Come on, We are going to be late." he said as he brushed his partner off and moved on.
They were going to be late?
I wresteled with indecision for a moment. Was it really my business to interfere with what they were doing? What if they hurt someone? Could my inaction be justified then?
As I thought back to my childhood, the awe I would feel when I saw heroes like Armsmaster and Alexandria and the desire to help people like they did.
A desire that never truly went away.
Filling with resolve, I started following them. With my power, I could keep an eye on them without standing out like half of those "spy" people on the TV. If they were just suspicious bystanders, then no one would be any the wiser to my spying but if they were up to no good...
Well, I always wanted to be a hero...
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Surprisingly dark section of a Boardwalk allyway.
Robbie could describe himself as slightly annoyed as he stood in an isolated . One could say that it was something very specific causing that annoyance.
Three specific things
"Are you, a real minion?" He asked the three trainee minions in front of him. Robbie, having been one of the few returning minions to the newly awakened Evil Orginisation, had been given the job of training some of the new minions.
It was an exercise in frustration.
The new minions knew nothing about actually being a part of an Evil Organisation. Being a minion meant hard work, dedication and occasionally creativity or innovation. Many of the new hires had believed that they would do nothing all day and occasionally get yelled at by their boss like most, substandard villain organisations.
Robbie could see a reason why this had happened. Robbie had become a minion when there were no gangs and organisations like The Brokers were the standard to how a villain run his business. Even Lustrum's group, who had been closer to an angry protest, had their annual bake sale.
Now it was all chaos and confusion when it came to Villains. He had heard that Lung was trying to push the ABB to the Yakuza model of business but he was by far the minority .Funnily enough, that was why he liked the three new minions who were standing in front of him. They were his... Dream team so to speak. Their work ethic was amazing.
Their knowledge and experience? Abyssmal.
"Technically, nah." Bobby honestly replied, validating Robbie's respect for the trio. Robbie could actually see the answer in the extremely suspicious trenchcoats that the minions had thrown over their jumpsuits to disguise themselves through the boardwalk crowds. They were just lucky that the crowd was too busy being entertained by the Boardwalk itself in order to notice the obvious Evil doers in their midst. Robbie, in contrast, had simply stuck an easily removable logo of the Medhall company to his jumpsuit to avoid suspicion.
Corporate Evil was more socially acceptable than World Domination Evil after all.
"Okay. Have you ever fought a real superhero?"
His answer was a chorus of shaking heads.
"Have you ever used a proper disguise?" Robbie asked the suspiciously dressed trio hesitantly.
He appreciated the unanimous negative even when the answer was painfully obvious.
"Alright! It's clear to me that I will need to teach you how to be... Minions!" Robbie loudly proclaimed as he reached towards his back pocket which contained his POCKET (Personal Obtuse Collection and Keepsake Electronic Translocator) which contained a Saxophone that Robbie had put in there for motivational purposes. As he was about to begin the motivational song that he had practised, Bobby raised his hand.
"Sigh. Yes?" Robbie said as he lowered the saxophone.
"Umm, how will you go about doing that?"
Robbie felt slight disappointment at the question.
"Didn't you guys get the email?"
"Email?" Floppy asked and Robbie sighed at the looks of confusion that the three trainees gave each other.
"You never gave your contact details to G-Bot, didn't you?"
"Gee Bo-?"
"Never mind! Today there are three heroes that do their morning exercises around the Boardwalk. We are going to try to catch them and you will learn how to be a proper minion as we do it. Now come along!"
Robbie proclaimed and started to walk away.
"Um, what about that song you were about to play?"
Robbie looked at the saxophone in his hand. After a second of contemplation, Robbie put the saxophone back into his POCKET.
"No. The Setup for it is long gone. Now listen closely!"
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Less Dark section of the alleyway.
When I had found the suspicious men's destination, I had asked myself why they were meeting with what seemed to be an ordinary Medhall worker. However, as I listened to them with my bugs, a skill I had picked up while I was bored, I quickly realised that it was only an ingenious disguise and that he was actually their boss and that they were all "minions" or whatever that meant.
That was unimportant compared to what they were planning.
They were planning to actually capture heroes. People who risked their lives to protect the city.
I couldn't let that happen but I couldn't let them know it was me. My critical lack of a costume was extremely bad if they noticed a stick thin teenage girl following them.
Regardless, I felt a smile form on my face as I called on nearby insects. With my power and some creativity, they never needed to know that I was there.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Brightly lit allyway.
"So, Boss. What's all this?" A trainee asked Robbie, gesturing to the vaguely coil like machine that sat in the middle of the space. Robbie had been so focused on some last minute wiring that he hadn't taken note of who had actually spoken.
"This, dear Trainee, is a Temporal Elongator because our first target is none other than the extremely quick Velocity!"
Bobby rubbed the top of his head in confusion, having ditched the trenchcoat outfit and glasses after the boss had given him and the other two trainees easily removable logos.
"I'm confused. Doesn't Velocity go faster than, like, a bullet?"
Robbie stared at Bobby as though he decided to throw non-combustible lemons at houses.
"Yes but to do so he compresses his own space-time. That is why the Temporal Elongator is pointing towards the street," Robbie gestured to the busy street just past the entrance of the allyway. "The Elongator will uncompress Velocity's time and leave him moving slower than a snail! Which is perfect for the specially disguised cage to trap the powerless hero!" Robbie proclaimed as he pointed to a suspiciously large file cabinet that was hanging over the street.
"Now be careful, any tampering with the coils could trigger the trap early with disasterous results as we dont have enough time to hang the cage up again. Im going to look out for our hapless hero haha!" Robbie let out a devious laugh walked into the street.
"Oh yes. Please grab all these loose cables. They could probably trip someone." Robbie gestured to the piles of cables by the almost eldritch device.
With a small groan, the trio of trainees started cleaning up as the full minion watched out for their helpless, superpowered prey.
Xxxxxxxxx
I had to admit, if the weird machine worked then their plan was amazingly clever. I was glad that I had been following them with my bugs because it seemed the "senior minion" had given the other three ingenious disguises which let them blend into the crowd effortlessly. Through my bugs, I had also heard my plan but my bugs couldn't stop the pang of jealousy that cut into my chest when I realised that it wss actually a good plan that even Greg would probably not find fault with.
Thankfully for Velocity, after watching the minions assemble the machine, I saw a glaring fault...
The machine used a lot of coils and wires, meaning that it used a lot of electro magnets.
And thankfully, there was enough appropriate scrap around me to make my own...
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Having almost finished cleaning up his pile of loose wires and cables, Richard "Floppy" Buchard looked up at the rapid clicks against the pavement and then against something metal. It almost sounded like... Scuttling?
Looking up, Floppy saw one of the weirdest sights in his life. It was a crab that was standing ontop of the Boss' machine and it held something that literally looked like pieces of scrap wrapped around each other into the shape of a horseshoe magnet. With a crablike screech, the crab stabbed the scrap magnet into one of the coils.
Floppy was then blinded by a flash of light even as he heard a yelp from the entrance to the alleyway.
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Velocity, or rather Robin to his friends, had come across an interesting sight on his morning run. Many co-workers lamented that he would be just as fast without his morning exercises but he figured they didnt know the benefits of healthy living.
Besides, if he didn't exercise then he wouldn't have seen the excellent art that someone had built in one of the alleyways...
It was a wax art exhibit depicting a more chaotic time in Brockton Bay. Three figures in yellow jumpsuits stood over a weird sculpture of a tinkertech device. While he wasn't into art, he appreciated how lifelike they looked even if there were... inconsistancies.
Velocity had no idea why the jumpsuits had the Medhall logo on them or what the significance of the strangely victorious Crab was.
Either way, he didn't want to interfere with an exhibit someone had obviously put a lot of work into so he continued his morning run, moving too quickly to hear the muffled curses coming from the suspiciously large file cabinet.
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Captain's Hill Park, Unremarkable stretch of Park footpath.
"Alright! That didn't exactly go to plan but we still have two more heroes to try to catch. Yes, I will explain the plan now." Robbie quickly said, cutting off Bobby as he lifted his hand to ask a question.
Robbie gestured to the park around them.
"As you are aware, This specific park is the only park in Brockton Bay. What you probably didn't know is that this specific foot path is used by one person at a specific time, everyday."
"Oh! Oh! Me!"
"Yes, Richard?" Robbie directed "floppy" to speak.
"Is it... Director Piggot?"
The question left the group giving Richard a blank stare.
"What? She needs it..."
"Actually she is in pretty good shape." Robbie corrected.
Missy considered herself fit. She exercised every morning, ran patrols and ate healthily, even if she wasn't as much of a health nut that Dennis sometimes was. All of that, combined with her young age and unconcious use of her power, meant that she was one of the fastest in the Wards.
Thus when Dennis had dared her to join the PRT officers in their morning run with him, she accepted without hesitation at the chance to show Dennis that stopping time shenanigans was no replacement for good exercise. It also helped that Gallant also worked out with the PRT.
It was there that she realised that there was one big difference between the PRT and the Wards.
The PRT had way more endurance...
That was why she was almost hyperventilating as she dripped with sweat on the benches in the PRT gym. She had gone into this morning thinking that there were only going to be two laps around the gym...
She had to stop at four laps around the expansive room.
Gallant had to stop on his sixth lap.
Clockblocker, he stopped on his third.
The PRT Officers had yet to stop.
They were tired, visibly sweating and obviously pushing themselves on their thirteenth lap.
All except one...
Running ahead of all of the PRT, with nary a drop of sweat on her head, was Director Emily Piggot.
The Heavyset woman had abandoned her usual office suit for a large set of athletics clothes that seemed to fit her perfectly and was jogging around the gym as though she was several times thinner than she was. In fact, she ran better than that because the second best runner in the PRT building, ironically the Director's secretary, was lagging considerably behind the Director and her sweat soaken, brown ponytail was in sheer contrast to the Director's immaculate pixie cut.
"Come on people! Only three more laps to go before we move to squats!" Emily shouted to the officers behind her and they collectively responded with an exhausted groan.
Missy was so enraptured with watching the Olympic Director and her own struggle to breathe that she almost didn't notice a gasping Dennis take a seat next to her.
It took him a moment but he managed to struggle to say one word...
"Bull-*gasp*-shit."
"Fair enough." Richard admitted.
"The answer was actually Armsmaster," Robbie informed the trio. "And I have it on good authority that he uses leg weights in order to have, the most efficient exercise possible. That is where this comes in!" Robbie gestured to the box-like device hidden behind a bush.
"This device, with the help of small and inconspicuous beacons, will make a specific section of the footpath act like quicksand. And as Armsmaster struggles to free himself from the trap, we can capture the helpless hero!"
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Once again, I was amazed by the strength of Ants as I directed the local hives to move the beacons to new positions. To the Minion's credit, the device beacons were virtually invisible to the human eye. Luckily for me, said beacons were glaringly obvious to insects. As I subverted their latest capture attempt, I couldn't help but feel dissappointed. I was doing something no one else could do, I was directing my insects to bring ruin to my enemies in secret! To anyone else, It would have been scary and awesome...
But for me? I picked up a thing and moved it somewhere else.
The effort in foiling the latest plan was practically trivial and that left me unsatisfied. Even though it was challenging, I had surprisingly enjoyed making the impromptu magnet and my success had been dependant on how well I had made it and not if I could control crabs.
Something told me that I would have enjoyed building some sort of miniture RC car to move the beacons...
Either way, hopefully this was going to work, as unsatisfying as it was.
Xxxxxxcxx
"Why are we following these people?" Brian asked with a sigh.
That reminded Lisa once again that Brian couldn't see what she saw.
To him, he only saw four Medhall employees messing around in the park and to her shame, without her power, she would have believed that as well.
Wants to help conquer the world.
That was what her power had told her when she had focused on one of the suspicious employees and without that first step, she wouldn't have found out about machines that destroyed the laws of physics but weren't Tinkertech, about the revival of an organisation that had been missing for over a decade, the plan to catch heroes while they exercise and the bug controller that had hidden herself in a tree, filling out a crossword as her exoskeletal minions foiled the latest plot.
It was something that threatened to give her a Thinker headache if she tried to imagine the series of events that would have got everything to this point.
And it was glorious entertainment.
"Come on, sourface. Where's your sense of adventure?" Lisa grinned at her reluctant companion.
Brian rolled his eyes.
"At least promise me that this isnt going to take too long."
Lisa turned back to the scene without responding, this was too entertaining to ignore and this was one of the few things that her power couldn't give her the answer to like why people were stupid or why kids liked the taste of that Earth Aleph cereal, Cinnimon Toast Crunch.
She simply wanted to see how this played out and Brian let out a sigh as he deduced her intention.
Besides, Bug girl was interesting but she needed to see more before she was sure.
Xxxxxxxxxx
As Colin ran down the park path, he kept his attention on the path ahead of him.
He didn't stop to ask what the blond haired girl was laughing at.
He didn't look at the brown-haired girl that seemed to be struggling with a crossword.
He didn't examine the poorly hidden Tinker device.
And he didn't stop to stare at the four Medhall employees in yellow jumpsuits that were trying to climb out of liquid ground.
Because that was exactly what the AI that ran the world wanted.
If he had a choice in the matter, he would resist the AI's conspiracy to prevent his daily morning exercise, which was clearly a Smiurgh plot, at all had been tons of evidence such as his digital alarms waking him up later than when he had set them (Only the digital ones) and how meetings would be mysteriously scheduled in the time for his morning exercise.
He wished he could share the Truth with Dragon but there was a fear that she had been comprimised by the AI.
"Don't you think you should take a break from such an intense workout occasionally?" She had asked him. "I have this interesting efficency problem that we could solve together..."
As tempting as that was, it would be playing into the AI's Plan and Colin feared for Dragon's saftey if she learned the truth.
So Colin ran on, in defiance of logic and circuits.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"No. I don't want to hear it." Robbie interrupted the trainee trio as he emptied his boot of liquified grass.
He then took out a device from his POCKET. Something that looked like a hi-tech Landmine.
"Let's try something else..."
Xxxxxxxxxxx
Mouse Protector had always enjoyed watching people's faces as she jogged in her costume. Some people enjoyed the anonymity that they felt out of costume or only saw their cape personas as a job or duty that they had to fulfill, thus leaving their costumes at home when they were on duty. Mouse felt diferently, however, because as the years went past the times when she had been in costume felt like the real her while mild mannered Jessamine Calhoun had progressively felt like the fake persona.
That was why the first time she had been forced to exercise in her costume, because of a freak explosion at her favorite laundromat, she had instantly loved it.
So when the time had come to buy more exercise clothes, she had bought spare costumes instead.
Ironically, jogging around as Mouse Protector had been surprisingly lonely. None of her close hero friends had shared her feelings about their cape personalities and those who jogged in the morning had decided to keep to exercise shorts and casual wear rather than costumes.
That obviously meant that Mouse Protector had no one to run with in the mornings and unfortunately being an independant cape meant that there were very few people who were comfortable with sharing their Identity with her. The problem had only gotten worse when she had roamed into Brockton Bay, Armsmaster having "engaged in aggressive negotiations" to get her promise to not harass his team or the Wards into joining her on any "antics" she may start.
Me? Start Antics? Mouse Protector thought to herself. There was no way that she started antics…
Well… She was involved in plenty of them but none of them were her fault, honest.
Stupid Armsmaster with his stupid thousand uses halberd.
That was why she was ecstatic to find that Miss Militia, her old friend, had also taken to jogging in her costume and wasn't against her joining her for a morning run.
...It might have been because it had taken exactly seventy two times of asking her in order for her to answer yes, but that probably wasn't important.
"So that's why you don't train with the PRT anymore?" Mouse asked Militia as they passed an entrance to Captain's Hill Park.
"You have no idea how punishing the director's workout is…" Miss Militia shook her head as she said that, the tail of her trademark scarf flapping against the back of her custom exercise costume. Mouse Protector felt smug at the fact that her costume had built in cooling and she didn't need a lighter version to exercise in. It also kept the sun out of her eyes which was nice.
Mouse Protector leaped onto a nearby stone bench, foot placed onto the back rest of the bemch as she adopted a heroic pose.
"Why, I would be glad to take the challenge! I, Mouse Protector, will defeat the dreaded Director at her own game! I will outrun, outjog and outlap the esteemed Director and free my fellow heroes from her stamina predations." Mouse Protector loudly proclaimed, drawing quite a few stares and one or two photos.
"Mouse, really? You're making a scene and we need to complete our run." Miss Militia had gone into full lecture mode. Mouse protector smiled under her mask at the familiar combination of a serious tone but amusement in her olive-skinned brow that told Mouse that Miss Militia was smiling under her mask.
I'm glad I managed to do that. You haven't been smiling enough these days, Hannah.
Mouse hopped off the bench, landing in a heroic manner.
"Then lead on, fellow Hero!" She yelled. With only a shake of her head, Miss Militia started jogging again, followed closely by Mouse Protector.
"So why are you here in Brockton Bay?" Miss Militia asked after a few seconds. "I thought you were living in New York."
"I was, but it was getting to boring there. All of the villains were so serious there. None of them had a sense of humor and the number of them who actually tried to not kill people was less than the fingers on my hand." Mouse sighed wistfully. It wasn't that hard to see why they would do that considering who led the New York Protectorate but it meant that all the fights were serious and the fun and spectacle was at an all time low. "I used to get all my fun out of irritating Ravager but even she stopped reacting to my heroic antics. So, with an agreement from Chevalier to check on you guys, I came to Brockton Bay to seek heroic adventure and Chevalier shot Ravager into the Hudson with his cannon."
It took Militia a moment to think of what to say.
"Isn't Chevalier in Philadelphia?"
"Normally yes, but he was in town to visit his niece and he offered to help."
"That's good. I was worried that Myrradin was going to have to lose his Friendly Game Night considering it was Chevalier who always made the arrangements,"
If by Friendly, you meant fleacing everyone who was ignorant about the 'games' then you are right. Mouse though to herself.
"Well-"
CLICK
CRAAAAACK
With no warning, a bolt of blue lighting had erupted where Mouse Protector had been standing and when it had dissapated, she was no where to be seen.
It was all Miss Militia could do to stare dumbfounded at the spot her friend had been as four Medhall workers ran down the street, chanting 'We are Number One' as they did so,.
Well, Brockton Bay isn't going to be boring for a while…
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
SSBE Armoury room 133342
It took Mouse Protector a second to realise that she wasn't where she had been before and had, infact, been teleported. Even though t seemed that momentum had been conserved, she totally didn't crash into the transparent wall of the cell in her moment of confusion. No, the pain on her face was completely unrelated.
After massaging the back of her neck that totally wasn't bent on impact with the cell wall, she took a moment to look around.
And she almost let out a squee.
The Cell itself was not that special, being simple glass walls held together by grey steel with a barred door, but her attention was on what was beyond. The room beyond had a stark white tiled floor with blue wall paneling. Across from her was another cell, empty this time, but at the edge of the room, she could see someone in a yellow jumpsuit and white hardhat working at some sort of holographic computer.
All around him was racks for weapons of all kinds, from small pistols to military grade rifles to some sort of tinkertech weaponry.
Her attention, however, was dominated by the large logo that had been painted onto the wall above the computer.
It was a golden, stylized globe on a black background.
It was the Logo of the Evil Organisation.
That realisation had shocked, surprised and brought out the inner fangirl inside Jessamine.
As a Ward, she had heard of everything that the Evil Organisation had gotten up to. In a world of Super villains, it was Ironic that the one organisation that hadn't been led by a Parahuman had acted like that they actually were from a comic book. It had enamoured her younger self so much that she had happily spent her hard earned pocket money and extreme effort on their merchandise from several fan sites where she would use them to play mock battles with her own action figure.
In a world of seriousness and in contrast to the villains that her old team used to face, the Evil Organisation had seemed almost fun to fight and many a daydream involving her, death rays, heroic puns and just general "cops and robbers" antics that she wished that most of the villains tried to play at.
She tried compensating for her villains seriousness, but it often wasn't enjoyable and the Protectorate attempting to force her to match their temperament for the sake of PR had caused her to go Independent.
When the Evil Organisation had retired, she had resigned herself to a career of super serious villains and Jessamine having to 'ham it up' at every opportunity to keep herself from going crazy.
Now the Organisation was back, she had been 'kidnapped' by them, and they were likely to get up to nefarious plans.
Oh no… She was too excited, there was no way she was going to be able to play Mouse Protector, the cool and collected Hero of Justice when she was fangirling out as Jessamine.
"This is going to be so much fun! Sorry…"
She silently apologised as she used her power to teleport back to her friend, Hannah. She needed time to prepare for such a possibly amazing confronatation.
Jerrod Williams, to his credit, looked around for where the voice had come from but when he couldn't find the speaker, he went back to watching the cameras.
And his ongoing game of minesweeper in the corner of the screen.
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Miss Militia was surprised when her friend Jessamine suddenly appeared next to her and leapt onto her, trapping her in a tight hug and pressing her Mouse Protector mask into her shoulder.
"Wha!"
"IMSOGLADTHATICAMEHEREITSGOINGTOBESOMUCHFUNANDIMFINALLYGOINGTOBETHEHEROIALWAYSWANTEDTOBEIMSOHAPPYRIGHTNOW!"
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I just couldn't believe that they managed to get one.
The moment that I was confident and decided to relax for a moment, the minions bring out some sort of simple to use teleportation mine and actually manage to capture Mouse Protector of all people.
Not even my excitement of seeing her in the bay and reappear almost immediately after being 'caught' was enough to quell my sense of self-disappointment. I had gotten careless and if it had been Miss Militia who had stood on that mine then they would've had a captive hero that they could use in all sorts of nefarious plots.
There were dozens that she could think of and that was only the tip of the iceberg.
I ran a hand through my black curly hair, one of the only things that i had pride in for my appearance, and thought about what I could have done to prevent this.
It frustrated me that the answer was actually "nothing".
If I had been in a worse place, I would have blamed myself for somehow only being one person but realistically, I couldn't do much. If more people had been with me, we probably would have been able to immediately spot the new invention that was pulled out of literally nowhere and maybe stop it.
A single teenager doing a crossword as she waited for the construction of the next elaborate device couldn't catch that.
My self-disappointment turned to determination as I looked for solutions. It was obvious that whatever organisation these people worked for was dangerous if they could try to capture heroes with a variety of Tinkertech devices and I knew that I couldn't stand to leave them alone to pull off any nefarious schemes.
Unfortunately, that meant that I'd need people, People other than Greg of course, that could help with legwork and the workload of foiling these schemes.
As much as I hated the term, I'd need minions of my own to counter these minions.
My mental deliberation on how to recruit reliable people was interrupted as a tall blond girl came into my vision and held her hand out to me.
"Hello! My name is Lisa and I would like to volunteer my team to become your new min… Henchmen. Definitely henchmen."
"What Are you doing Lisa!" An a good looking African american teen asked Lisa as he rushed behind her.
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What am I doing? Lisa asked herself as she watched the scariest girl she had ever seen shake her hand with a befuddled expression on her face.
Her power had told her what this skinny teenage girl could do as evidenced from the thinker headache that she was hiding behind her smile. Her instincts were screaming at her to leave Brockton Bay before this skinny girl tore it apart in her conflict with the Evil Organisation and any other evil she would see.
"I'm… Taylor. And do you really mean it?"
But 'Taylor' was powerful and power came with opportunities.
"Yes, I am. Not sure about my teammate here but you've got me!" She said to the scariest person she had ever known.
And who knows, maybe she was enough to help her with her problems.
Maybe she is enough to help me get free...
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SSBE Plotting Room. (Base now suitable for all Scheming. Keep Plotting to dedicated rooms please.)
"So as you can see, with Kaiser being preoccupied with his annual Stormfront Bake sale, Lung has taken the opportunity to spread his influence by loosening the restrictions on his casinos with another couple's night. Specifically in these casinos where it will be easy to attract customers" Kurt expalined as he pointed to a map of Brockton Bay, pointing at three ABB casinos which were close to the suburbs, Winslow High School and the local Noodle shop.
"Hmm, The E88 working to maintain good PR and the ABB is becoming a community based Crime organisation," Lacy, who was sitting on a chair across the table from her husband, commented with a thoughtful expression. "Well, I did Nazi that coming."
The silence was deafening as Alan, Kurt, GBot through a camera, and Danny stared at her.
"It wasn't that bad was it?"
Danny shook his head looking back at the world map he was brooding at, is caped suit looking like something that Cobra Commander would wear from that old kids show.
In Lacy's opinion, it was rather appropriate..
"It's better than you making dentistry jokes when you were around the teeth." Danny replied
Lacy brightened up.
"Not by much though."
Lacy deflated.
Danny turned to Alan who was sitting neatly in his custom armchair,
"How's the recruitment campaign coming?" He asked the seated Lawyer.
Alan sighed.
"It's stalled. While the Online Videos were a good idea and have brought several new recruits, our views have stagnated and our subscriptions have been steady at five hundred for six days now."
Danny leaned against the table.
"How is it that someone like Void Cowboy can get thousands of subscriptions for playing such an old game like Space Opera and we don't?" Lacy asked, confusion evident on her face.
"Despite it's age, Space Opera is extremely popular with fans of the RPG genre and is still massively played today." GBot explained, using the room's speakers.
"It's because they don't believe we are actually back…" Danny said quietly.
"Dan?" Kurt piped up, looking at his friend past his trademark shades.
"It's true. After we retired, the idea of an Evil Genius became a legend, a story and an internet meme. We need to do a lot more to let the world know that we are back." Danny said, gesturing to the World map on the wall.
"What to do suppose, Sir?" GBot asked politely.
"We need an entrance that will distinguish us from the rest of the Villain organisations, something to show that we are the real deal. Attacking the forces of Justice would make us seem like a normal villain group, attacking big villains would do the same. All of it has been done countless times before."
"So what can we do to show them that we are actually going to conquer the world?" Kurt asked. "While amusing, being treated like an organised Empire 88 would get old quickly."
Danny turned dramatically towards the room, and sized up the room from behind his glasses which reflected the light in the room, giving him an even more sinister appearance.
"We are going to do something that even the triumvirate couldn't do. We are going to prove to the world that we are the biggest threat that they have ever faced." Danny proclaimed, voice getting more dramatic with every sentence.
Gentlemen, Lacy, We are going to defeat an existential threat to mankind. We are going to defeat Leviathan!"
The room was silent.
"Well, I hope you have a plan Dan." Lacy said after a while."
"As a matter of fact, I do." answered the Evil Genius. Danny removed a notebook from his pocket and threw it on the table between the Betrothed Duo. "Kurt, Lacy, You two are in charge of getting what I need for the plan."
Kurt picked up the book and started reading.
"Diamond, Laser transmitter... Canary… Okay, this is doable."
"Of course, you have the Organisation at your disposal." Danny turned to Alan. "Alan, prepare Evil Corp for activation. The sooner that we have a 'public' presence the better. This includes the Copyright law loopholes."
Alan let out a groan at the prospect of sifting through tons copyright laws.
"GBot! Prepare the Media campaign. I want everyone to see our victory!"
"What will you be doing, If I may ask sir?"
Danny stopped as he dramatically stopped as he left the room.
"Of course GBot. The plan requires Experimentation to work correctly and there IS tons of SCIENCE to do!" Danny proclaimed.
"Now, Let's prepare to defeat a Fish Monster!"
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