Vaudevillain

Dr. Zlo coughed as the cloud of dust reached his mouth. Waving a hand in front to clear the area, the villain took stock of the battlefield.

Cass and Mabel were alright, their fight being on the edge of the collapsed cave. But his marching band distraction was scattered around the cave, like spots of rain on glass. Above them hovered two heroes deadly as lightning. Though it seemed the two flying heroes were searching for someone other than Dr. Zlo. They kept yelling for someone named Psy.

The cave-in caused a lull in the fight between The Dino and the minions, the falling boulders keeping both sides from attacking. But now that the dust was settling, the lizard hero was readying to fight once more. His head moved toward Mabel like a homing missile, ready to strike at Dr. Zlo's minion. However, before he could, a puff of smoke appeared behind the NPC.

The Dino whirled at the noise, bringing a clawed hand up to gouge the person stupid enough to appear in his range. Shizuka laughed and activated her substitution, appearing behind The Dino as the hero swung. She forgot about his tail.

The strike connected with the ninja's abdomen, which sent her careening through the air straight at Dr. Zlo. Shizuka connected with the monocled villain, sending both crashing into the wall and dealing a bit of damage. The two fell in a heap on the ground, limbs tangled.

"Oops, forgot he had a tail," Shizuka said, extricating herself from the pile.

Dr. Zlo grunted, "We should be focusing on making our escape. We have what we came for."

The villain looked over at Shizuka, noticing the woman was in her default ninja garb and not the cheerleader outfit. He opened his mouth to ask why she didn't have the costume on, but the ninja jumped back into the fight before he could say anything. As he watched the attack continue, he saw the two flying heroes remove a man from under a set of rubble. At the same time, his eye caught Mabel and the rest making their way over to him.

He heard Shizuka's words as his minions arrived, "I'll take care of this lizard, okay? We'll work out some payment later."

Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Dr. Zlo left the fight to Shizuka while preparing himself for his escape. First, the villain had to look presentable. So Dylan took a few extra seconds to straighten any loose clothing and had Cass help dust him free. Now impeccably dressed, the villain worked on the next part of his escape.

Dr. Zlo clapped, attracting the attention of everyone in the area. "Bravo, heroes!" He started. "I never expected that you would break into your own secret base to stop me from enacting my grand plan, but you're too late!"

The villain threw his arms wide, "I've already taken what I need. Thus, I shall be taking my leave. Think of this as the day where you almost matched wits with the great Dr. Zlo!'

Smoke started to billow from the villain's cane, masking everyone in a grey cloud. Veiled, Dr. whispered to his minions, commanding them to head toward the wall. He met up with the group a moment later, the four shimmying their way over to the entrance. Neither of the flying heroes could make out Dr. Zlo in the thick smoke, despite both heroes' efforts.

Shizuka took the opening to try and run, only to wince as a claw raked across her back. "Nice try," The Dino rasped, "but I can see all your movements with my heat-sensitive vision."

The ninja responded by jumping back as far as possible, trying to buy time for her next action. The Dino followed through the smoke, his tongue darting out to taste the air and keep track of the woman. Shizuka reached the wall a second later. She pulled herself up straight as she landed, eyes peeled for any disturbances coming her way.

"I'm impressed," The Dino hissed. "Not many would think to limit my angles of approach."

"You should go see a doctor or something about that voice," Shizuka countered. "That rasping can't be healthy."

As she talked, Shizuka reached into her belt and removed a talisman tied to the end of a throwing knife.

The Dino chuckled, "A villain telling me to go get help. Will wonders never cease."

As the hero spoke, Shizuka dropped the throwing knife. She made a quick hand sign as it landed, and the area around her burst into flames. The Dino snarled and charged through the last of the cloud, only now realizing what she did. But the woman was nowhere to be found. As soon as the knife hit the floor, Shizuka jumped into the air, masking her travel with the fire talisman.

She landed just outside the entrance to the base, startling Cass as Shizuka flipped into a landing. Dr. Zlo rolled his eyes at the scene. "Come on, if we dally any longer, they'll reach us!"

The group made their way through the secret entrance and back into the science lab. Once they closed the secret door behind them, Shizuka looked over at Dr. Zlo.

"So, what's next?"

Psy-ops pushed another piece of cave off his body as the mound shifted one more time, revealing the faces of Fursation and Yuppie looking in. "What'd I miss?"

"Gloating, mostly," Fursation replied. "Dr. Zlo ran off with something, announcing how we were too late to stop him."

"The dude is a classic villain through and through," Yuppie said. "He even blamed us for the cave-in, saying it was a good idea to use it to stop him."

"Ha," Psy-ops said as he stepped through the hole his friends made. "Too bad I didn't get to see it, that sounded awesome."

The rest of the heroes around him were all beginning to stir, some recovering faster than others. Psy-ops caught Electri dangling from one of the helicopter blades. He shuddered, thankful again that this game didn't lean heavily into gory realism. Seeing a bisected body of a hero sliced from one of those blades would give Psy-ops nightmares for weeks.

The hero kicked off the last of the rubble from his shoes and took a look around. Heroes were gathering at the base of the rubble pile, conversing with a dinosaur in a lab coat. It sounded as if the group was talking about Dr. Zlo. Something about the villain stealing the Phlebotinium they were using for research. The pieces finally fell into place for Psy-ops as he realized the villain made his entire plan to steal the stones right from under everyone's nose.

Psy-ops eye caught a piece of rubble shifting under the pile, and he jumped off before the whole thing collapsed. But he needn't have worried. As he landed, he saw a team of beaten Jacques unearthing a battered Quartet. Despite all the fighting, the surviving minions still wore their bright red bowties.

He watched as four Jacques, one missing an arm, pulled out the man in a marching uniform and laid him on the ground nearby. The minion's cane had snapped into multiple pieces by the fall, and his bearskin hat was crumpled into pieces. A spark above the scene caught Psy-ops's eye, and the hero saw the three broken Zlobots. Electricity still arced out of the robots, signs of that villain's earlier attack. It occurred to Psy-ops that he would never have found the real Dr. Zlo if that cheater hadn't arrived. It didn't redeem the player any in the hero's eyes, but it irked him that a cheater had a better handle on the game than he did.

"Dr. Zlo is part of that guild, right? Men's Ree or whatever?" Psy-ops said to his friends.

The two burst out laughing, startling the recovering heroes and villains alike.

"I think you mean Menagerie, Psy," Yuppie said.

"…Shut up."

"Ahahahaha–Men's Ree! That's the best thing I've heard in a long time!" Fursation was practically on the ground laughing, the wings from his eagle form kicking up clouds of dust.

"Okay! So I wasn't paying attention to the name. Can you answer the question?"

"One sec one sec. You gotta give me a minute after that mistake," Yuppie wheezed.

Embarrassed, Psy-ops waited until his friends were done making fun of him, crossing his arms, and hunching a bit to shrink out of sight. Eventually, the two friends stopped.

"Yeah, Dr. Zlo's part of that new guild. Why?" Yuppie asked.

"You think they'd let us join up?"

"You wanna go up against Vert?" Fursation questioned.

"Mostly, I was thinking of joining up to keep track of Dr. Zlo. Let's face it, we've pretty much exhausted all of our current quests, and someone else already claimed the mothership. Dr. Zlo's thing was the most fun we had in a while."

"We could go to another city," Fursation said. "I heard the moonbase has some fun quests."

"Yeah, but I remember spending the day before trying to track down and learn what Dr. Zlo was up to. And some quests are like that, but a lot are one-off things. I feel like if we join up with Menagerie, we can have a lot more fun."

"Okay, I see your point. But do you really want to join up with them? You've never been the roleplaying type." Yuppie said.

"Eh, I don't have to be the roleplaying type to enjoy the story they set up," Psy-ops shrugged.

"Count me in too," Yuppie said. "I gotta be there when Psy calls it Men's Ree again."

"Shut up!" Psy-ops joked back. The three friends laughed as they left, Psy-ops closing the quest box as they went.

Isaac stood above the city of Mutatholis on an invisible platform he'd created. He pinched the bridge of his nose; ever since that video Menagerie released, players across the game were making things difficult. Where before, players would listen when Isaac explained, now they argued every step of the way. It was making his job a lot harder than it needed to be.

It wasn't like he blamed the players either. Arthur had promised them a game the team hadn't been ready to produce. All this superhero nonsense had been tacked on at the last second, and Isaac wished he could go back to the time when the game was a world simulator. But no, now his job revolved around dealing with all the random shit players came up with that utterly ruined the stability of the world, like the self-replicating robots below.

He knew someone would come up with the idea. There weren't enough checks in place to prevent players from making a grey goo scenario. Hell, there weren't enough checks in place to prevent a lot of destructive actions. Players should have a much harder time trying to take over cities, and NPC heroes should have more power when it comes to stopping city-threatening threats.

But Isaac was the lowly IT guy, and none of the corporate assholes would even listen to him. He sighed again, lowering the platform to the destroyed football field. The AI scanner had picked up a few straggling replication robots, and Isaac had to make sure they got wiped before the NPC cleanup crews arrived. Even one of the swarm surviving meant another outbreak.

The haggard IT man complained a bit more as he saw the linked ticket report. One of the players had bragged about using real-world money to purchase technology, which was against Vert's fair play policy. It would take ages to verify this player's account, something he didn't have time for. Better to leave it to the AI for the moment. He could deal with it after the other thirty-seven tickets.