Vaudevillain

Tanner steepled his fingers in anticipation, his knee bouncing with enough force to power a small refrigerator. A bevy of screens were arranged in front of him, windows into the world outside his headquarters. His headquarters where he sat with his special item for the event.

Soon he’d be up against his ‘alternate reality’ rival Dextra Black. The assault would no doubt be relentless; a coordinated chessmaster ready and willing to perform every trick in the book. Tanner couldn’t hide the wide smile on his face.

Coming up with Dextra’s counterpart had been simultaneously easy and hard. Easy because the villain’s alternate was pretty much Dextra Black but a good guy. Someone who saw a business world rife with dirty tactics and used it to his advantage. Instead of joining everyone under the table, he flipped it. Exposed the corruption and then picked up the pieces for pennies on the dollar.

Still ruthless, but much more heroic.

The hard part was the power. How did you spin super intelligence in an interesting way? Thomas had explained that Dextra’s power was basically a wiki search. They had the ability to find out anything with enough research. Which fit, but boy did it make it hard to find something similar but not too similar.

But eventually, he found it.

Strangely enough, the comparison to a wiki was what did it. Links embedded in articles that led to other links inside articles. Connections leading to connections. And suddenly Tanner figured out his power.

He called it Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The game just called it Super Inference, like a boring computer.

His power let him see connections and let him dive into the links, chasing the information he needed as long as he followed it. An absolutely disorienting power at first, due to the insane number of lines leading from any object at any time. He got the hang of it eventually, and then proceeded to turn his headquarters into the deadliest game of tower defense that he could muster.

Laser turrets, pitfall traps, alarms, and a bevy of other inventions now dotted the hallways, all set up in ways to ensure that one trap covered another. His team of heroes rested in rooms, either in teams or by themselves as they all waited for the incursion. The idea was to make the villains come to them.

Mr. Black, the name Tanner eventually decided on, would be less proactive than Dextra. The hero was perfectly willing to sit and wait until someone else made a mistake, at which point he would ruthlessly take advantage. It felt appropriate considering Dextra’s penchant for forcing things.

Plus, this way Tanner could actually contribute in the fight. He had no doubts about his ability to react quickly with his power.

His eyes flicked to the screens outside, watching the villains gather at the entrance of his base. Well, less a base and more a company headquarters. But Mr. Black was of the mind that places could easily be more than one thing at a time.

Right now the villains were attempting to make a plan of action. It wasn’t going well. It seemed no one had decided on a leader beforehand, which meant there was now a lot of shouting over one another.

Finally, after what felt like hours but was certainly only a minute or so, one of the villains got impatient and just started on the doors. A small pinprick of light appeared in front of the camera. The water in the air around the item instantly froze, creating a hazy mist. The doors, however, started to melt as if tossed into a furnace.

“They’re coming, be ready,” Tanner said over the intercom. “First villain is an elementalist type. Looks like they can freeze and melt things.”

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He looked at the lines of connection running from the villain. “Watch out for him working with someone in money symbol glasses or the villain with vector lines across his costume.”

There were smatterings of acknowledgment across the comms before things really got going.

Once the doors melted and the villains ran through, the first of the automated defenses activated. Simple foam sprayers, meant to get the opponent stuck and easily collected by the police. They lasted for about two seconds, which was all the time it took for one of the villains to make a gesture and redirect the foam back at the sprayers.

“Villain with vector lines on his costume has momentum-based powers,” Mr. Black stated. “Watch for projectiles suddenly coming back at you. Attempt to remove with traps or nullifiers.”

The villains split apart after entering the room, some using their powers to break down walls while others just opened one of the many office doors. Tanner called out as many abilities as he could while also using his power to find who synergised best with who. From there he directed who he could to separate the villains and made liberal use of the traps.

However, the three villains he called out earliest had found that they worked wonders together. The first villain, who Mr. Black labeled Hotspot, would create his little ball of heat. The second, tentatively named Replicator, would focus on that area and duplicate it. The duplicate would be eaten by the original, increasing the heat. The final villain, who he named Momentous, would use his powers on the ball, somehow moving it despite it’s initial static placement.

The trio now had a mobile, ever growing, ball of heat that cut through Mr. Black’s company walls like a hot knife through butter.

“Focusing my attention on the three cutting through the base,” Mr. Black told the heroes. “Dairy Dynamo, Aimbot, move to room 314 to intercept.”

“Understood,” Aimbot said.

“It’s Milking Time!” Dairy Dynamo shouted. Various heroes groaned. The dairy themed hero had been ‘workshopping’ his catchphrase the whole time they were waiting and mose were sick of it.

The two heroes made it to the room at the same time the villains entered the hallway outside. Mr. Black quickly went over his plan and readying the traps scattered around. Aimbot nodded, flipping the conference table and setting himself up while Dairy Dynamo started crafting a number of ice cream constructs that chilled the room. Mr. Black activated the hallway traps, using the laser turrets and gravity traps to disrupt the incoming villains. None of it worked. Momentous simply used his power to keep everyone moving at a sedate pace. However, Tanner did notice it took a moment for his to switch targets.

Room 314 continued to cool down as Dairy Dynamo kept summoning treat after treat. He shaped them in front of the conference table, adding another layer of protection against the incoming villains while he readied himself. Aimbot had a rifle at the ready.

“Aimbot, your goal is to take out Momentous,” Mr. Black said. “Move your weapon slightly to the right.”

The hero obeyed, and Mr. Black grinned as the rifle barrel lined up with the line of connection to Momentous.

“Prep a grenade as well,” he said. “Throw it first.”

No reason not to stack the deck as it were.

Aimbot grinned, realizing what Mr. Black wanted. He pulled a frag from his inventory and pulled the pin, holding the lever down to keep it ready.

The door melted moments later, oozing to the floor like an expressionist painting. The villains ran in after, their eyes widening in surprise at the entrenched heroes.

Aimbot acted, tossing the grenade at the group. Momentous attempted to revert the momentum, but found his power nullified. The villain’s eyes went wide in surprise, leaving him unable to act against Aimbot’s next assault. The rifle fired, and a second later Momentous fell to the ground, body vanishing to respawn somewhere else.

“Sh*t!” Hotspot shouted. He attempted to use his power over the two heroes, only to find that his new ball wouldn’t form. There wasn’t enough heat to draw from. His original ball still burned bright, but without Momentous he couldn’t control the direction. Replicator did his best, duplicating the moving ball and trying to use it as an attack, but Dairy Dynamo stood ready.

“Get Milked!” He cackled. Two chilling streams of dairy launched from the hero’s sleeves, covering the ball even as it evaporated the streams. The smell of dairy suffused the room, causing everyone but Dairy Dynamo to gag for a second. The hero seized the moment, spinning in place and launching himself at Hotspot.

“Milkshake Cyclone!” he shouted.

Hotspot found himself swept out of the room, leaving Replicator and Aimbot alone to fight it out. The villain instantly pulled a gun from his inventory and dove behind one of the many chairs, replicating it into a small barricade.

Mr. Black smiled. One major threat had been taken care of. However, a hero’s work was never done, and Mr. Black turned his sights on the other villains encroaching on him.

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