Vaudevillain

Dylan added Dextra to his list of friends when he logged out and then sent the information to Sweet Dream and Riptide. He followed up with a call, starting the room for voice chat.

"Hey," he said as the other two joined in.

"Hey."

"Long time no talk."

The three joked around for a bit until Dextra joined the room.

"Hey guys, this is Dextra."

Dylan was surprised. He hadn't expected the player behind the character to be male.

"Woah," Riptide said. "I did not expect you to have that voice."

"No kidding," Sweet Dream added.

"Not what you expected?" Thomas joked.

"Dude, I totally thought you were a girl. Instead I get this deep manly voice," said Riptide.

Thomas laughed, "Good to know my acting is good enough to fool you. Here, let me add the others."

Thomas called the other two into the room.

"'Sup peeps, this is Shizuka."

"And I'm Nikola."

Dylan and the others exchanged a few more greetings and then went around announcing their characters. Once it all finished, Thomas took charge.

"Alright, we're here to talk about forming a faction that convinces Vert to take a more hands off approach in their storyline," he paused after the sentence, waiting for any objections. When none came, Thomas continued, "As you all know, both our teams performed crimes Vert didn't plan for, and took away our spoils. Sure, we were compensated, but I had planned to be the first to control an entire city and it sucks knowing Vert didn't want that to happen."

Shizuka cut in, "For real, I was ready to be a spymaster and secretly eliminate entire resistance groups. It would've been awesome."

"Right, and we were going to use the mothership as a new base and go around the world causing mayhem," Sweet Dream said.

"Which is why I reached out. Since none of us want this to keep happening, I propose we start a petition that asks Vert to let us define the world. They can add global threats, and keep their raid boss opportunity, but scripting a storyline in a world like this will only hurt them in the long run. I plan to try and keep that from happening."

"How do you want to do this?" Dylan asked.

Thomas started to explain, "Since World of Supers doesn't have faction mechanics--"

"Yet," Sweet Dream interrupted.

"Right, yet," Thomas agreed. "I thought we could work on the portion outside the game. Nikola told me he recorded some game footage that could be used, and I know someone mentioned your side recorded your heist?"

"Yep," answered Riptide.

"I was going to edit it into a montage for our channel," Sweet Dream said.

"Keep doing that," Thomas started, "but can you make another video of Vert taking away our victory?"

"Of course."

"Great. When it's done, we can share it around to everyone we know. If it gains traction we can make a petition for Vert."

"And if it doesn't?" Dylan asked.

"Then we find something too big for people to ignore," Nikola said.

"Oh, we had an idea about that," Riptide said. He went to explain the idea of creating tsunami's to destroy the coastal cities around the world.

"We like it since it fits the crazy megalomania a supervillain would have," Sweet Dream said. "Plus, it's something entirely within Vert's rule system. So even if they ask us to stop we don't have to."

"I don't know," Shizuka said. "Wouldn't that make Vert react poorly instead?"

"It's just an idea," Dylan replied. "We did want to do a tsunami bomb at some point, and scaling it up seemed like a good way to create enough chaos for change. But we did come up with other ideas?"

"Like what?" Thomas asked.

"Well, since both of our characters are heavily into roleplaying, Dream thought we could go about business as usual and record our crimes for others to watch. I've been told my first heist got a ridiculous amount of views online. I bet the mothership heist will be similar, but the anticlimatic nature of Vert stopping the whole thing will put people on our side."

"I like it," Nikola said. "It plays to our strengths."

"And Vert can't blame us for roleplaying," Shizuka said.

"So that leaves creating our faction," Thomas finished. "Right now, creating a faction requires coordinating outside of the game with other players. Inside the game, I had to buy minions with cash."

"I can create minions with my power," Dylan said. "But I mainly need materials."

"We'd also need a safe place to store all the equipment," Sweet Dream added.

"Wait, what's your power?" asked Nikola.

"Mad science. I enter what I want into a tab and it returns a list of materials needed to build it."

"That's cool," Shizuka said. "It sounds a bit like Dextra's power."

Thomas replied before anyone could ask the question, "I have super intelligence. If I want to know something, I can enter it into a tab and I'll either get hints or outright answers."

"Dude, sweet. All I can do is surf anything," Riptide said.

"Okay, why would you pick a power like that?" Shizuka asked.

"I wanted to surf," Riptide answered matter-of-factly.

"it's actually a lot more useful than it sounds," Sweet Dream said, standing up for her friend.

"We're getting off topic," Dylan said. "We were going to figure out what to do for our faction."

"Right," Thomas said. "Dream mentioned a safe place and I agree. I'd like something mobile, that way we can perform crimes all over the world, not just in Haven City."

"I bet I could build something," Dylan said. "Like a gigantic helicarrier, or an underwater submarine."

"We should do a helicarrier," Sweet Dream said. "That makes it easier to travel around. Not all of the cities are on the coast."

"And we could disguise it as an alien ship!" Riptide said. "Dude, we could pretend we stole the mothership."

"As much fun as that would be," Thomas said. "Our flying city would need its own flair."

"Who said anything about a city?" Shizuka asked.

"Dextra doesn't do anything in half-measures. And I can't see the character sitting inside a flying helicarrier. Dextra sits in an ornate chair on the tallest skyscrapers."

"Dude, sick," Riptide said.

"I bet I could make a modular base," Dylan said. In fact, the idea of a flying city tickled his architectural side. "And if you don't mind, I could design the layouts for all the city buildings."

"You sure?" Thomas asked.

"Yeah, I already do that for work anyways. And I'd love to have some creative freedom designing stuff."

"Dude! We're going to have a flying city! Ultimate evil here we come!" Riptide cheer.

"You know, that's not a bad name," Sweet Dream said.

"I don't know, it sounds a bit tacky," Shizuka said.

"We'll keep it as a placeholder," Thomas said. "In the meantime, we should figure out what we need for the base."

"I can jump back into the game and record what we need then send it to you all," Dylan said.

"Do that," Thomas agreed. "When it's done we can split up collecting the parts."

"Dude, we can do a whole bunch of small heists for it!" Riptide said.

"We could contact those heroes from before as well," Sweet Dream said.

"What's that?" Nikola asked.

"Oh, we had a group of heroes ask to do a fight with us. It's been a few days but I bet they're still down."

"We can see if they're interested too," Dylan said. "I don't think this should be a villain only thing."

"Well I'm ready to get started," Shizuka said. "Who agrees we should get this started?"

"I should actually get off," Nikola said. "I need to finish up some homework."

"I'll get back on," Dylan said. "I don't have anything else I need to do today. I'll message you the materials when I have them."

"Awesome, see you soon then," Thomas said.

Dylan exited out of the voice chat pushed his chair over to his bed. He sprung out of the chair and grabbed the VIS, ready to get back in the game. Meeting with Dextra had sparked a new interest in World of Supers.

Dylan originally wanted to play the game for fun, but everything with John and Vert made him realize the difficulty in doing that. There would be players in the game that didn't like his brand of fun, and Vert might actively stop plans before they even finished. Dylan realized he didn't want that, Dr. Zlo was becoming something more to him than a passing flight of fancy. The over-the-top gentleman villain gave Dylan a different perspective.

John's betrayal had shown Dylan how passive he was, and it brought on a bout of introspection. For most of his life, Dylan went with the flow, allowing others to decide for him. Playing Dr. Zlo showed him a different perspective. If the villain wanted something, he would take it.

That didn't mean Dylan wanted to act the same way as Dr. Zlo. The villain was a character, not an idol. But now Dylan realized he didn't always need to back down from conflict. Instead of being passive, he could stand his ground. Sure, it might cause more issues, but it also meant a better chance of getting what he wanted.

Now inside the game, Dylan opened his power tab. At first, he tried jet engines or helicopter blades, something similar to the helicarriers he saw in stories. But both of those required some sort of mundane power source, like electricity or fuel. So Dylan branched out into science fiction, but an anti-gravity generator canceled out gravity, which wouldn't give them the control they wanted over the city. Finally, he settled on an option.

Levitation generator

This machine empowers the inorganic materials around it in a 100-foot radius to levitate at certain heights. The generator can be linked with others to enhance the effect, and all generators can connect to a console for easier control.

Alienite (25 g)

Wire (5 m)

Neodymium Magnet (1)

Tesla Coil (2)

Chain (1 m)

WiFi card (1)

Plasma Ball (1)

Accelerometer (1)

This generator made it easier to control the city, and he could add on jet engines or some other propulsion to fly it around the world. Satisfied, Dylan sent the description over to Dextra. A reply came a few seconds later.

D.Black:

I love the idea. I'll split up the materials and send you a list soon.