Vaudevillain

Skyline had changed drastically in the couple of days Dylan spent down in Mutatholis. No longer did the flying city have a paltry three buildings. Instead, the skeleton of a towering skyscraper stood over Dylan like the bones of some giant. At the building's feet, Dylan noticed someone converted the lounge into an outdoor café. Circular tables with wide umbrellas sat around an open kitchen filled with an assortment of drinks.

Dextra sat at one of the tables, surrounded by three others. Two of them were Hans and Nikola, but Dylan hadn't seen the third person before. They were dressed in the sort of clothes made for working with cars or motorcycles, all denim and cotton. Oil stains pooled around the end of their sleeves, and splotches of grease dotted their cotton shirt. Long, unkempt hair sat atop their head in messy dreadlocks.

As he walked closer, Dylan started making out the conversation between the players. The mechanic slid into one of the chairs near Dextra, tipping it back and balancing the seat on two legs.

"The foundations for the skyscraper have been laid, but it'll be a long time before we get anywhere close to a completed building," the mechanic said. Their voice was forceful despite the player's body language.

Dylan moved around an empty table; messaging Riptide his location as he did. He looked up from his message to see the mechanic looking over at him, her face changing from impassive to open-mouthed.

She pointed a finger accusingly at Dextra, "You didn't tell me Dr. Zlo would be online!"

"It's not like I keep tabs on all the people in the guild," Dextra replied.

"Bullsh*t. You're totally playing the controlling mastermind."

"That doesn't mean I'm going to monitor everyone twenty-four-seven," Dextra countered.

"Um, what's going on?" Dylan said, sliding into a seat at the table.

"Zlo, meet–"

"Jack O'tool, professional fixer and mechanic," Jack held out a hand, which Dylan took. "Or at least, that's the name I'm using. I plan to be the go-to neutral party up here, crafting technology for anyone who's willing to buy."

Dylan noticed oil smudges on his gloves as he pulled his hand away, "Oh, cool. What power did you go with?"

"I started with your basic gadget crafting power. Not gadgeteer, I did my research."

"What's the difference?"

"I create blueprints of things I want, and the game gives me a suggested list of materials. But the kicker is that I can change those materials on the blueprint. Sometimes it results in weaker tech, but it lets me use whatever materials are on hand. It's much better than the gadgeteer power. Sure, down the line those players might get some crazy gadget, but they won't know what it is until they make it."

"Gadgeteering sounds like Mad Science," Dylan commented.

"Yeah, all the crafting powers are similar in some ways," Jack said, her voice taking the eager tone people get when sharing something they're passionate about. "Gadgeteering is like the inverse of Mad Science. You know the pieces but not the end result. Mad Science, you know the result, but not the pieces. Mine lets me know both the result and the pieces, but I lose out on the crazy power of the others. And then you have the more niche crafting powers like upgraders or enchanters, which are really the same but with tech and magic respectively, where they take a finished product and replace or reinforce the weaker pieces to make stronger crafts. Of course, a few online have started to argue that manually crafting everything is the way to go."

"Jack is also in charge of expanding our city, for the time being," Thomas said.

"Yep, that's me," Jack said proudly, switching onto the new topic like a DJ switching tracks. "Tomcat told me you did the designs, right? I love them so much. My major was in art design, but I really turned into a set designer after I graduated. Too many theater clubs. I've never seen designs like what you did, though."

"I design buildings in real life," Dylan said sheepishly. He hadn't gotten praise for a project since the beginning of his time at college.

"Woah, that's awesome. I pegged you as another theater nerd, like Tomcat."

"Can you please stop with the nickname?" Thomas asked. "I'm Dextra here."

"Sorry, Dextra," Jack said. She turned back to Dylan, "But I love the designs you had for the skyscraper, and making the city with a literal light and dark side is awesome. I can't wait for the whole yin and yang symbolism."

"Yeah, the idea came to me when I remembered Skyline doesn't have anything below it," Dylan started, happy to talk about his ideas. "See, thematically, villains always lurk around in the dark. At least in comics, they do. Their bases are located underground or in places people never go. But a lot of villains also reside in skyscrapers, like Dextra would."

"Indeed," Thomas said.

"So I thought at first to have a simple underground basement for the skyscraper. Heroes would use the upper portions while villains went below."

"And then you remembered the lack of dirt underneath," Jack realized.

"Yeah! So I thought, why not make two skyscrapers. The levitation generators removes the issue of physics from the equation, as long as no one destroys them, and we could easily make reverse gravity generators or something for the underground. Though I think it would also be cool to keep the normal gravity and make the villain lair something like a bizarre facsimile of the heroes building."

"That sounds amazing," Jack said.

"As much as I would love to hear the two of you nerd out," Thomas said, "We still need to make some decent defenses for the city."

"Oh yeah," Jack said. "Sorry, got off track."

She turned to Dylan, messy dreads swinging in the air, "We have a lot of things to do if we want this place defensible. The whole three-dimensional aspect of the city means protecting it would be hard with conventional defenses. Guns in specific places won't cut it. We need something like a field that blocks anything from coming inside."

"Nikola had an idea for that, actually," Thomas said.

The villain started from his chair at the mention of his name, "Huh? What? I wasn't paying attention."

"Your idea for to defend the city," Thomas said patiently.

"Right. What about a giant weather machine? Have it make storm clouds that mask our location, and players that aren't in shielded vehicles get electrocuted."

"Not bad," Jack said. "I could make something that protects our stuff, but I couldn't make anything on the scale of a weather machine that covers the city."

"A cloud that big still might give away our position," Dylan said.

"Nah," Nikola replied, "We'll be high enough up that the clouds will look normal sized."

"Alright. It's a good start, but one weather machine won't cut it."

"I was thinking we could populate our city with NPC robots," Thomas said. "Minions like the ones you've made, but more realistic. They would go around the city, pretending to work and shop at the various places in Skyline. But if we get invaded, someone can flip a switch that attacks anyone without a transponder or something."

"Ooh, I like it," Jack said. "I can see it now, a rival faction appears, intent on taking us down, then BLAM!" She slammed the table, startling everyone slightly, "We activate the defense protocols, and the whole place becomes terminator central."

Dylan chuckled at the new member's enthusiasm, "I like the idea of a civilian sector filled with NPCs. You could probably get my factory to start making some. Or we could make a building that solely produces minions."

The humming of an engine interrupted the conversation. Dylan looked up to see Riptide surfing down from the top of the skyscraper. He rolled his eyes as Riptide looped his way through the scaffolding, knocking a couple of the workers off their feet. He landed next to Jack, storing his board in his inventory as he touched down.

"Dude, those bot builders you made are some of the harshest NPCs I've ever seen. None of them want me surfing around the area."

"Maybe that's because you already knocked three of them off today," Jack snapped back.

"Hey, chill out," Riptide said. "We can make more."

"And each of them costs materials. We aren't made of money, you know."

"Hey, Riptide, you got a second?" Dylan said, mostly to stop the approaching argument.

"Yeah, dude. Whatcha need?"

"It's about the tsunami crime."

"Oh, dude! I am so pumped!" Riptide pumped his fist for emphasis. "Riding that wave is going to be the sweetest thing ever!"

"Yeah, I was wondering. Would you mind changing it up a bit?"

Riptide sat down next to Dylan, "Like how?"

Dylan skooched his chair back a bit to let everyone see him. With the base building conversation halted, now seemed a good a time as any to bring up the idea he'd had.

"So, I was thinking about the quests Vert issue and how Oro and the others complained about how boring some were. I was wondering if we couldn't do something about that."

"Like, how?" Riptide asked.

Dylan clapped his hands together, "Think about it. Our initial plan was to use the tsunami as a way to pressure Vert. What if we turned it into something like the alien invasion?"

"Are you saying we should make our own content?" Nikola asked.

"Why not? We're already doing some of that with the videos. I've been recording almost everything I do now and sending it to Dream and the others. I'm sure some of you are thinking of doing something similar. But most of that is simple PVP or the generic quests that Vert hands out. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

"That's true, the last few videos on our channel weren't anywhere close to our first videos. But I chalked it up to people being less interested in Rampart and his team." Thomas said.

"So, I was thinking Dr. Zlo could use the tsunami bomb as his first big world domination event. We'd announce it on our channel and taunt heroes to stop us."

"Like a giant murder mystery party," Jack said.

"I've never done one of those, but if it sounds similar, then sure," Dylan said.

"Dude, that sounds awesome! I'd get to fight heroes and surf a tsunami!" Riptide cheered.

"It does sound better than detonating the bomb as a threat to Vert," Nikola said. "This doesn't sound like something the company would ban us for."

"I'd be happy to help build things," Jack said, "but I'd rather sit out on all the fighting."

"Great. Let's work on getting some of Skyline set up, and then we can plan out our new caper."

"I gotta tell Dream about this!" Riptide said. He pulled out his board and sailed away into the sky, no doubt off to wherever Sweet Dream was.

"Oh, has anyone read the patch notes yet?" Dylan asked. "I saw Riptide's announcement."

"I haven't gotten offline to read them," Thomas said. "I decided to wait until the server went down for maintenance a couple of days from now."

"I skimmed it to see if they nerfed my power at all but didn't do anything else," Nikola said.

"I didn't even know the patch notes were out yet," Jack said. "How did I miss that? I check the forums daily."

"Hopefully, my power doesn't get nerfed," Dylan said. "If I want to pull off something like the tsunami bomb, I'm going to need all the power I can get."