System Supervillain, Book 9 Prologue (Patreon)

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Capes & Cowls Forum, General Chat)

Message of the Day: Remember, Capes & Cowls is ‘neutral ground’. Keep it civil, and if you try to track someone through our site, it will not end well for you.

Speedy, AngelEyes, Victory, HotStuff, Jester, Freedom, Aegis, Stars, Emerald, Snowflake, MagicGurl, RedHot, Scholar, CantSeeMe, Turbo, DontYouWantMeBaby, KoolAidMan, SliceNDice, Destroyer, Inquisitor, Narrator, Chummer, TheWhiteHat, TripleThreat, LuckyDice, GrimDark, RazzleDazzle, DarkAngel, Chiller, Sparky, MultiMe, Stepford, Dollmaker, Mindtaker, MrRoboto, ItsyBitsySpider, Valkyrie, TitaniumTits, Lolth, InfoGirl, ScoopGirl, HolyBlessing, and DonJuan are in the chat.

InfoGirl: Yeah, so that’s why you don’t use a Gamma Realigner on an Asmantine-Lined Ohm Splitter. On the plus side, the test rabbit looks to be in perfect health, and is the cutest shade of pink.

Emerald: But it is thirty feet tall, has horns like a moose, teeth like a cougar, and the temperament of a hippopotamus!

InfoGirl: But CUTE!

Destroyer: Heh. The two main reasons most female inventors fall to supervillainy are either to prove something to the men who doubted them, or because they started playing goddess and making crazy things that they thought were ‘cute’, but the local heroes decided was a clear and present danger to the community.

Jester: To be fair, that’s the same for most male inventors who go supervillain, too. Not getting the respect they think they deserve, or people rejecting their inventions for one reason or another. Doesn’t take much to send someone over the line from ‘genius’ to ‘nutjob’.

DonJuan: It is called ‘mad science’ for a reason.

InfoGirl: Oh, come on! It isn’t that bad!

DarkAngel: There, there, InfoGirl. Why don’t you forget about the rabbit, for now. Perhaps you can work on finding out where the ‘quarantined’ reality warpers and such are.

Turbo: You really think they’re still out there?

DarkAngel: Their accounts are still ‘Open’ on the forums, which means they’re considered alive until the Guild has proof otherwise. If there was some confirmation that they were dead, the accounts would be ‘Archived’, until or unless they were returned to life, in which case they’d be ‘Open’ again.

Freedom: But resurrection abilities were rare enough before the Initialization. Now, they’re probably even rarer, and with more strings attached.

ItsyBitsySpider: If you’re talking about full-on resurrection, then yeah, but there are more ways of bringing someone back from the grave than just that. You’ve got your undead, your consciousness uploads, cyborg reanimations, and all sorts of other stuff.

Aegis: That does make sense. And having one account for each person allows friend lists to be updated accordingly. Which is why Titan’s old handle, ‘Mechguy’ is now ‘Mechagurl’, now that he was turned into a she by Iceblade and his team.

ScoopGirl: Speaking of Iceblade, I’ve been watching the Denver area, since he and a bunch of mind controllers were going to Stepford’s birthday party. Things are getting weird.

Freedom: Weird, how?

ScoopGirl: Well, just about forty minutes ago, a plane landed at the Denver airport. Charter flight from Rome, stopping briefly in Atlanta before continuing to Denver.

Aegis: Stepford has that ski lodge near Denver, everyone knows that, but there’s never been evidence for a warrant. So, international group coming to stop the party?

ScoopGirl: Well, this is where it gets weird. The Sword of the Faith flew from Jerusalem to Rome, just before the plane took off. And Patriot and Inviolate were spotted meeting the plane in Atlanta.

Stars: I notice that our mind control crowd are being very quiet right now.

InfoGirl: Hmm. My sources are saying that the Denver Heralds put out an alert for possible super-powered combat.

TheWhiteHat: The plane is registered to the Order of St. Iacopo. Most likely, a full force of their knights are on board, along with the other heroes they picked up along the way. This looks like a full-scale assault and capture/kill mission on the mind controllers.

ADMIN: Account ‘MusicMan’ has been terminated.

Aegis: MusicMan? That’s Maestro’s handle, right? Does this mean he’s dead?

DarkAngel: No, if he was just dead, then it would be ‘Archived’, not ‘Terminated’. The Guild only terminates accounts when someone has done something that makes them ineligible for Guild membership. Permanently ineligible. If it is just a temporary thing, then the account is ‘Suspended’.

Lolth: MusicMan made poor life choices.

ScoopGirl: This just in! Massive explosion at Stepford’s ski lodge! In the megaton range!

DonJuan: Did someone trip a failsafe? Villains love to have self-destruct options on their bases, after all.

ScoopGirl: Additional reports coming in. Major blast also reported in the town of Casperia in Italy, where the fortress monastery of the Order of St. Iacopo is. Also, megaton range. More explosions in Israel, smaller yields. Only kiloton range.

Chiller: Hmm. That was unexpected. Stepford, how is your insurance?

Stepford: No worries. The lodge is insured, and since the Heralds and others attacked without warrants, they’ll be paying out for the damages.

DarkAngel: Dare I ask what happened?

Stepford: My party was not a Guild event, but held under Guild ‘mask on’ rules. Maestro disregarded those rules, informing the Knights of the Order and the Sword of the Faith about the location and time of the party, as well as giving them a signal to announce everyone was in attendance.

Mindtaker: If it had been successful, it would likely have been a clean sweep, or at the very least, would have caused major damage to us.

Chiller: Fortunately, we were able to relocate. The heroes are on film attacking the lodge without provocation, and interrogations on our end proved Maestro was the guilty party. So, we informed the Guild of that, after Maestro gave his final performance.

MagicGurl: You mean all those explosions?

Stepford: The Knights, Sword, and others like them got their powers from genetics bound to a magical power site. Or something like that. Anyways, we used Maestro to desecrate the power site, breaking the enchantments on it. Apparently, this had explosive results in those who were empowered by it.

MagicGurl: Ah, the magical energies of the blood were released all at once. The larger explosions were where groups of individuals were, creating larger blasts as they built off each other.

CantSeeMe: So, you ended up dropping magical bombs all over the place by accident?

Chiller: The intent was to strip the Sword and the Order of their powers. The fact that it proved to be an explosive release instead of something more subtle was unexpected.

Mindtaker: Thankfully, Hypnodomme had the sense to send her pet outside before we conducted the ritual. Even so, I was worried we’d be buried in the mountain for a moment.

MultiMe: Oof, this is going to change a bunch of things.