Vaudevillain

“What to do… what to do…”

Dylan spun his chair in place while idly twirling a pen. Posters of superheroes flashed through his vision in poses of strength and fortitude as he idly thought. He spun past bookshelves filled with graphic novel anthologies, neatly arranged according to his preference. He stopped in front of a sleek helmet sitting next to his computer keyboard.

The Virtual Immersion System, more commonly known as the VIS, was the gateway to the virtual world. Run by Vert Inc., it and the company’s flagship game, World of Supers, had taken the world by storm on release. Dylan, along with friends he made along the way, had joined World of Supers to enact their superhero dreams.

Or, in Dylan’s case, supervillain dreams.

As an avid fan of comic books, Dylan knew most of the various types of heroes and villains. His favorite was the cartoonishly evil villain, the one who performed evil for evil’s sake. Their goal was to take over the world through some sort of cock-eyed plan that would inevitably fall apart at the end. But you didn’t see that kind of villain much anymore.

So when World of Supers appeared, Dylan wasted no time in recreating the villain of his dreams. Thus, the titular Dr. Zlo was born.

In his time acting out Dr. Zlo, Dylan had made new friends, lost others, and caused World of Supers no end of trouble. Dylan’s latest and greatest foray had him crafting the death ray to end all death rays. It was something that was never supposed to work, and Dylan had fully expected that his mad plan to destroy the moon would fail.

Instead Dylan had found himself the victor, winning against what he considered impossible odds. The moon had shattered to pieces, and a minute later the game went into emergency maintenance. An hour later the game was back online and the moon was once again intact.

Now, Vert had said the maintenance had nothing to do with Dr. Zlo’s destruction of the moon, but none of the populace were buying it. The players in Dr. Zlo’s guild Menagerie immediately took to the forums, loudly complaining to any Vert employee that would listen. Dylan’s friend Thomas, who played an evil villainess named Dextra in the game, released a signed petition asking for more say in the direction of the game.

Of course, none of that really mattered to Dylan. He was in this to have fun. So while Vert’s reversion stung, it hadn’t riled him up the way it did others.

There weren’t many that shared his sentiments, however, and Dylan had found multiple sympathizers wishing for his victory. It made Dylan laugh. It was ironic to him that people rooted for his character to win. Dr. Zlo was designed to be the villain whose plans failed.

And of course, a simple setback like a destroyed death ray wouldn’t stop Dr. Zlo. The villain would obviously react with something bigger, something better, something so diabolically evil that the world would have to acknowledge Dr. Zlo’s genius!

“But what?” Dylan mused.

Because that was the problem. What does a villain do after ransoming the moon? It was the problem with most escalation, Dylan had realized. Superheroes and supervillains were constantly having to escalate the stakes. A superhero might start with saving the everyday citizens in their neighborhood, but eventually comic artists and writers would have to introduce bigger stakes to keep things interesting. So eventually the hero would fight a villain threating a town, then a state, a nation, and eventually whole galaxies.

“Too bad World of Supers doesn’t have other planets,” Dylan said. “It would be simple enough to make that the next step.”

But no, Vert’s video game had one planet. A planet filled to the brim with every superhero trope imaginable, but a single planet nonetheless. And since Dr. Zlo had tried to conquer the planet by destroying the moon, Dylan couldn’t exactly go back to that right away.

“I could try and take over another city,” the man mused.

Of course, the issue with that was that Dr. Zlo, and by extension Dylan, already had access to the flying city of Skyline, Menagerie’s home base. It felt silly to try and conquer a city when he already had one.

“I could try and found a nation,” Dylan continued.

Though, World of Supers didn’t have much in the way of nations. Pretty much everything was an independent city-state.

Dylan went through his list of past crimes. “I’ve kidnapped a politician’s child for ransom, I attempted to steal an alien mothership, I held an entire city for ransom, and I threatened to blow up the moon. Not to mention all the other small crimes committed to get the bigger crimes off the ground.”

Dylan spun in his chair again.

“I could go back to city level crimes. Maybe do something with mind-control? But what?”

Dylan’s computer pinged. He rolled over to his monitor to see Jack messaging him on Netchat.

JackOLeen:

Waddup supernerd

Superfan39526:

Trying to think up Dr. Zlo’s next big crime.

No clue what I’m gonna do after blowing up the moon.

JackOLeen:

Egg a politician’s house

Make fake business cards for your new line of gas-powered toothbrushes

Supernerd39526:

Gas-powered toothbrushes?

JackOLeen:

Yeah, you know, for when you really got to get that deeeeeeep clean

Superfan39526:

Doesn’t seem all that evil tbh.

JackOLeen:

What! You’re polluting the environment. That’s like, the most evil thing there is.

Superfan39526:

Alright, you’re right. But it’s not fun.

JackOLeen:

Crap you right. Okay, new plan. You get on voice chat and we’ll brainstorm this thing together.

Superfan39526:

You’re just trying to rope me into a new game.

JackOLeen:

Or I just want to hear your dulcet toned voice.

Superfan39526:

I want you to know I’m rolling my eyes at you.

JackOLeen:

I’m not hearing a no?

Superfan39526:

Alright, fine. You’ve twisted my arm.

You villain.

JackOLeen:

Learned from the best.

Dylan shook his head as he fished his headset out of his desk drawer. He could use the VIS, but the helmet was a bit clunky to use outside of its intended purpose. Once everything was plugged in, Dylan jumped into a voice channel and waited.

Jack popped in a moment later. “How’s it going compadre?”

“Shouldn’t you already know?” Dylan asked with a smile.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack answered. “Trouble in terror town and all that. So, not a big fan of egging a politician’s house?”

“Seems a bit mundane,” Dylan answered.

“Not if you use some kind of genetically altered egg or something,” Jack said.

“I don’t know,” Dylan said. “Dr. Zlo is in the big leagues now. Egging a house isn’t going to cut it.”

“Alright, alright,” Jack said. “What about that Jacques machine on the moon?”

Dylan raised an eyebrow. “What about it?”

“I mean, it’s still there, right? Why not do something with that?”

“I could…” Dylan said. “But, wouldn’t it be better to keep it as a nuisance? It’s not exactly something that screams big villain energy.”

Jack laughed. “I don’t think anything Dr. Zlo does could ever not scream big villain energy. The entire character is big villain energy.”

“Okay,” Dylan chuckled, “You’re right.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re sold on the idea,” Jack said.

Dylan sighed. “I don’t know. I think a part of it is that it feels like Dr. Zlo is getting too big for me. I started the character as a goofy joke and now I’m the center of an entire arc in World of Supers. The whole thing didn’t quite hit me until after we went after the moon, but now that everything’s calmed down it’s all a lot to take in. Now I’m feeling pressure or something to perform, you know?”

“This more like jitters before speaking in public or something else?” Jack asked.

“Something else, I think,” Dylan said. “I’ve felt nervous in front of crowds before and this doesn’t feel like that.”

“Maybe you need some time away from the character,” Jack said. “I know, we could make some hero characters and do a couple simple quests. No thinking about evil schemes at all.”

“That might be nice,” Dylan said.

The voice channel pinged, indicating someone else had joined.

“Sup, dudes.”

“Hey Riptide,” Dylan said.

Two more pings came.

“You having a party without me?” Sweet Dream asked.

“Hey Dream,” Jack said. “We were just talking about making some new characters to play hero for a bit.”

“Oh you could join up with my hero,” Oro said as he arrived.

“Dipping away from Dr. Zlo for a bit?” Sweet Dream asked.

“Maybe,” Dylan said. “Was talking to Jack about how I couldn’t come up with my next scheme and she said maybe I should take a break.”

“Well I don’t mind making a hero group,” Riptide said. “I got no clue what I would play though.”

“I got it,” Oro said. “We all make a character based on the same theme.”

“Whatcha mean?” Jack asked.

“Say we have a word, like cheese. Then we all have to make a hero that relates to that word,” Oro explained.

“What, like make the Gouda Guardian or something?” Sweet Dream asked.

Dylan snorted. “And the Cheddar Champion.”

Jack giggled. “The Brie Basher.”

“Dude, I love it,” Riptide said.

“I like the idea too,” Dylan said. “But not cheese.”

Oro laughed. “Oh, definitely not.”

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