Vaudevillain

Chapter 29: Collecting a Crew

While Cass and Mabel were out performing evil deeds, Dylan had logged out to eat and get a bit of exercise in. He didn't feel up for cooking anything so he pulled out one of the many frozen pizzas he had stored in the freezer. The pizza was one of the bargain cardboard crust types, but Dylan had grown accustomed to the taste after years of eating it. Plus he could buy in bulk.

While the pizza prepped, Dylan opened up the forums on his phone and scrolled through some news about World of Supers. Most of the articles were focused on the new alien invasion expansion. Apparently Vert was planning to release another patch before the release. Dylan switched over to his Netchat and messaged John.

Superfan39526:

I read Vert is coming out with another patch soon

He watched a vid about World of Supers while he waited for a response. Someone had asked for reality-warping powers and had used them to create an impossible theme park in one of the many open areas around the cities. There were teleporting roller coasters with impossible loops that twisted inside of themselves and other insane feats. He was watching a player go through the impractical funhouse when John got back to him.

xXxDemonslayerxXx:

Yeah Vert's doing a lot of quick patches the first few months

They wanna get things fairly balanced

After that they'll make changes every six months or so

At least that's what they said.

Superfan39526:

Neat

xXxDemonslayerxXx:

Oh and I made the new character

In Bunker right now

Huge underground city under an irradiated desert

Super cool

Superfan39526:

Oh dang

Are there like mutants out there?

xXxDemonslayerxXx:

Dunno

Been doing a bunch of small crimes to raise reputation

I just keep stealing a bunch of purses and wallets

I get rep for each crime

SO broken

But Vert's patching that

Least that's what was leaked

So I gotta reach C before it happens

Superfan39526:

That seems like something Vert should have noticed

xXxDemonslayerxXx:

Nah

Remember that one MOBA we played for like two seconds?

With that item that dealt constant damage around you?

The devs didn't think people would build more than one

But when people learned the item stacked they built as many as they could

Just ran around and stood next to people as they burned to death

Superfan39526:

Ha!

All I remember from that is you yelling at me for picking the healer as a carry

xXxDemonslayerxXx:

Yeah yeah

Anyways I'm gonna hit C rank tonight and make my way to you

No clue how long travel will take for villains

But when I went to the moon base it was a teleporter pad

Superfan39526:

That's sick

I should build a teleporter pad

xXxDemonslayerxXx:

Ha good luck

You'll need like a ton of phlebotinium

Anyways I'm going to get back to grinding

Se you soon

You're gonna flip when you see my character

Superfan39526:

Cool I'll be waiting

Chat finished, Dylan finished up dinner and did some light exercise before getting back into the game. It'd been about half an hour but it seemed Cass and Mabel weren't done stealing everything yet. To pass the time Dylan decided to think up a few more inventions but saw he had a message. Surfsup seemed to be online

Surfsup26:

Dude stealing an alien mothership sounds sick!!

I'm totally down for that!

Told my friend about it too and he's down

And yeah my Netchat ID is Wav3runn3r3

Add me when you can

Superfan39526:

Sweet

You wanna meet up?

You me and your friend

Talk about the heist and stuff?

Surfsup26:

Yeah we're down

We're over at the harbor

Messing around in the aquarium atm

Here click this and it'll show on your map

Blue Seas Aquarium

Dylan tapped the link in question and his map opened to show the building in question. It was only a short flight away, near the beach from before.

Superfan39526:

Cool

Be there in a bit then

Surfsup26:

Oh, can you steal a truck for us or something?

Before you come

Superfan39526:

Already got one

I'll bring it

Dylan hopped into the stolen truck he'd taken from the factory district and started it up. A screen appeared in front of him.

Would you like to activate auto-drive?

Dylan didn't remember a message last time he was in the car. The feature must have been added during the patch. He was glad they added this function. His last attempt to drive this giant truck had almost ended in a crash.

Dylan activated the self-driving feature and input the address of the aquarium. The 18-wheeler started up with a roar and smoothly pulled out of the driveway. In minutes the truck had merged onto the looping highway around the city and was making its way to the aquarium. Dylan tried to see if the radio worked.

To his surprise it did. The speakers crackled to life and a classical violin flowed through. Dylan tried changing stations, "Nah not really feeling the violin." This time a swinging horn blared in syncopated staccato.

"That's more like it." Dylan snapped along to the beat.

As he did an image came to him. He stood in front of a group of defeated heroes in his signature outfit and started to snap. The team had failed to stop Dr. Zlo in his latest scheme and the villain gloated as he walked over. "You're too late heroes! In a short while, my invention will activate and chaos will reign!" A trap sprang up to hold all the villains in place and the lights went out.

In a few seconds, a spotlight illuminated a Jacques in the darkness. The minion was snapping in time and swaying on their cane. After a beat, another spotlight revealed another Jacques, then another. Soon the heroes were looking at an entire stage of Jacques snapping in time as a jazz orchestra swelled. The lights burst back on to reveal Dr. Zlo singing and dancing in his victory.

"I'm missing theme music!"

Dylan couldn't believe he had forgotten one of the quintessential pieces of a cartoonish villain. There was always some form of music. He immediately went to work brainstorming.

As the truck pulled into the aquarium Dylan had thought up several different ideas. The one he liked the most was an invention that forced everyone to burst into song. It would be Dr. Zlo's musical episode. Though Dylan decided on a backup band of minions would be the quickest solution for the moment.

Dylan put the thoughts of theme music behind him and stepped off the truck towards the aquarium. The building was another marvel of modern engineering, designed to look like the waves of the ocean while maintaining structural integrity. The aquarium looked perfectly intact and showed no signs that a villain was in the area. Dylan figured the building would be on fire or something.

Curious to know what Surfsup was doing, Dylan made his way inside. The soft blue glow of the lobby mixed with the sunlight pouring to give the impression of walking underwater. A receptionist sat in the center of a circular desk, staring out the doors with wide eyes. As Dylan moved closer he saw the woman had a gigantic smile plastered on her face and a brown smudge on her lips.

Dylan sniffed the air. "Is that chocolate?"

Now Dylan was even more curious. He opened up his chat to message Surfsup.

Superfan39526:

Yo I'm here

Surfsup26:

Heck yeah

Come to the dolphin exhibit

Dylan grabbed one of the pamphlet maps off the reception desk and made their way over to the dolphin exhibit. As he walked he noticed more people sitting with gigantic smiles. A smudge of chocolate seemed to be one's lips. As he drew closer to the exhibit he heard splashing and cries of joy.

"Do a flip!" A voice yelled as Dylan walked into the large circular room.

Inside were groups of smiling people all staring blankly at the center of the room. Surfsup and another person, a short woman, were chatting as dolphins splashed about. Surfsup was in the center of the exhibit riding a dolphin. No, not riding, surfing. He saw Dylan out of the corner of his eye as he pulled the dolphin into a hairpin turn.

"Yo Superfan you made it! Check it out!"

Surfsup jumped to another dolphin and grabbed its fin. The dolphin tried to shake him off but the blond man pulled himself onto the animal with ease. In a few seconds, Surfsup and the dolphin were in the air performing a backflip. "I can totally surf anything!"

The dolphin landed back down in the water with a splash as Surfsup slid off the animal's back. The villain seemed to skate in the air as he descended to Dylan, landing in front of the man. "Ta-da!"

Dylan nodded appreciatively. "That was pretty awesome."

"I know right! When you made me the board it got me thinking about everything I could surf. And then Dream over here asked if I could surf a shark or something. I didn't know but I just had to test it out. So we went over here, Dream used her ability to keep people from running, and I surfed a dolphin!"

The short woman from before walked over to stand with Dylan and Surfsup. She was dressed in some sort of candy fairy costume. But instead of bright twisting colors, the entire design was swirls of dark licorice and chocolate. To complete the look Sweet Dream wore a fudge crown. She spoke with a slight New York accent, "Hey, I'm Candequeen, or Sweet Dream if you wanna use my villain name."

"She's got a sick power dude. Dream show him the power!"

Sweet Dream rolled her eyes but obliged. Melted dark chocolate seeped out from under the woman's dress and pooled at her legs. The chocolate pushed Sweet Dream off the ground and into the air while more of the confection spread to cover her arms and torso. Dylan stared as the woman's head was covered in chocolate, forming a gristly visage of a deformed head. Chocolate dripped from the villain as she towered over the two.

"Wow," Dylan said.

"I know! Her power is so cool! Plus the chocolate causes people to hallucinate if they eat it."

"Seems pretty strong." Dylan looked over at the group of civilians staring in happiness. "Does it work on players?"

"Yeah but all it does is blur the screen and throw them off-balance," Sweet Dream replied.

"I was thinking she could be the muscle for the heist," Surfsup said. "You could make all the gadgets to get in, I could be the driver, she could be the muscle, and your other friend could be like the hacker or something."

"Cool. Did you tell her what we're planning to steal?"

"Yeah, one of the alien motherships, right? It sounds pretty cool if we can pull it off."

"Dude we totally got this. You got a sick power and Superfan here can make giant robots. This heist's gonna be easy."

Dylan smiled at Surfsup's blind optimism. "Are you both C rank yet? My friend says we should reach that before the invasion so we can travel between cities."

"I'm C rank yeah," Sweet Dream replied.

"Nah man I'm still at E rank. Didn't do anything besides surf for the first few weeks."

Dylan nodded. "It's cool, I'm still D rank. We can go do some quests or something. I wanted to get a few things for some inventions anyways."

"Oh h*ll yeah! I'm totally down for this. Let's go!" Surfsup made to walk out of the dolphin exhibit.

"Wait you idiot! You were going to help me steal some of the fish here for my base." Sweet Dream canceled her power and grabbed the man's shoulder.

"Oh yeah! Hey Superfan you brought the truck right?"

Dylan nodded.

"Awesome, let's go do some fishing!"

For the next few minutes, Sweet Dream and Surfsup led Dylan around the aquarium. Sweet Dream had Surfsup dump out some barrels of cleaning fluid and the three went to work filling them up with all kinds of fish. By the end fish of every color swam around the confined barrels.

"Dude Dream you should get a shark for your base!"

"No."

"Aw c'mon."

"I don't want a shark. I want these fish."

"Fine. Wait, Superfan you should get a shark! You could put a laser on it!"

Dylan laughed. "Maybe. I don't know if my character would want to use sharks."

"Oh, right you do the roleplay thing."

"He does?" Sweet Dream asked.

"Yeah! He kidnapped the Mayor's son and used a gun to turn him into a girl. It was hilarious."

"Wait that was him? Isn't he like all over the forums?"

"Yeah it's awesome!"

The three continued their easygoing conversation back to Dylan's truck where they stored the fish. From there Sweet Dream entered the coordinates for her secret base and the three switched to a discussion of what to rob next.

"I need to grab some industrial equipment at some point," Dylan said.

"I'm down for whatever," Surfsup replied.

"Same," Answered Sweet Dream.

"To the factory district!" Dylan shouted.

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