by Skyler Grant
Elevation to D-Class allows a selection of a new secondary power. Do you wish to process elevation now?
It was actually something that I needed to think about. We'd been intentionally trying to keep our ranks low in the system. An increase in rank meant increased costs, increased responsibilities, increased threats. There was a lot to be said for wanting to build as wide a power base as possible while you were still as weak as you could get away with.
Still, you couldn't hide from the systems forever. Especially before doing anything big like this, an upgrade might come in handy.
I wasn't going to win any power battles, not as a D-Class, but I'd managed to punch above my weight already as an E-Class. Hiring the right people and working as a team was something villains were notoriously poor at, but when you could do it right, it made a world of difference.
I went ahead and indicated I was ready for an upgrade.
Secondary Powers are based on deeds and on origin
Your technology origin and activities offer you a choice from the following options
Regeneration — A standard powerset that allows for the steady restoration. In your incarnation it would allow for the natural regeneration of structures without capital investment.
Technopathy — Allows for the manipulation and control of foreign technology.
Tactical Planning — You can better analyze and plan and estimate success. This can considerably improve operational success.
Buffer — You are able to improve and enhance the abilities of those you lead, both passively and at times with active selection.
They were some great options. The most financially rewarding were regeneration and tactical planning. Regeneration would be a passive power, but when a big part of your business plan involved our facilities getting attacked, the ability for them to self-repair could pay serious dividends over time.
Robberies were something we still struggled with, and the goal had always been to make crime the other half of the business. Right now we just didn't offer enough value there. Tactical Planning could help with that.
The other two abilities also had their strong points. Technopathy was seriously useful in a host of situations. Especially now, going against Patriot, which was another electronic system. The ability to control electronics was of obvious use.
As for Buffer, I'd seen again and again how valuable my team was to me. That ability would just be an extension of that, helping them to be even greater.
Whenever trying to assess the value of something, you had to judge not just what it could do for you, but if you might accomplish the same goals another way.
Regeneration was the easiest of all these abilities to replace. It didn't really let me do anything that I couldn't do now, just as human beings would heal on their own, or if you threw money at them they'd heal faster. Powered staple though it was, I could skip on it and not be robbing myself of something irreplaceable.
Technopathy was Uma's primary powerset. The manipulation of code and the control of technology was her thing. She wasn't at full power right now since Mastermind had Uma bound into a teddy-bear, and it wouldn't hurt us to have another technopath in the company. Still, it wasn't really required.
Tactical planning was a strength of Jules, probably her strongest. If I wanted to improve our crimes division, maybe I just needed to put her in charge of it.
Buffer was harder to figure out if I could duplicate it or not. The last time we'd decided to do a dedicated run to increase everyone's powers we'd been able to do it. Ambrosia for Jules, power armor for Niles, the quantum sphere for me. Still, amplifying those powers would be harder now and only get more difficult the stronger everybody became.
Of any of them, Buffer seemed the most challenging to duplicate. I hit my acceptance.
I felt a sudden rush go through my systems. New options appeared. When I focused on Niles a new prompt came up, similar yet different from his old super prompt.
Niles
Unarmored: Unpowered Armored: D-Class
Armored Powers: Temporal Manipulation, Energy Blasts, Resistance, Super Strength
You can make a one-time upgrade to this employee from the following options.
Super-human Intelligence: You can grant E-Class super-human intelligence when both armored and unarmored. This will make them an official super, with abilities able to progress from that point forward.
Suit Summoning: The suit can be stored in a temporal fold and manifested at will when not currently worn. This does not count as a super-human ability.
This really was showing immediate returns. My new power might not be doing much for me right now, however if I could do something similar for all my employees this could help us out quite a bit.
I should probably consult with Niles, but I knew which was the most useful. That suit could be destroyed, he could outgrow it, a lot of things would happen. A real super-power was something he'd always wanted. With a brief focus of will, I gave him super-human intelligence. Niles had been a genius before, now he was something more.
25
Before doing anything else I wanted to upgrade the rest of my principal employees. I cycled through each.
Jules
C-Class
Powers: Tactical Mind, Super-human Agility, Enhanced physical attributes including resistance, regeneration, and strength. Skilled Archer
You can make a one-time upgrade to this employee from the following options.
Demigod Physique: With a growing reputation as a demigod of the bloodline all physical attributes will be further increased, and continue to grow stronger beyond their normal limits.
Divine Path: Instead of the path of the Demigod this will place them on the path to true divinity. This will bring them into conflict with stronger foes, but also offer opportunities for great reward.
Both possibilities were interesting, although only one offered real rewards. That said, those rewards were both physical in nature and while Jules was undoubtedly useful in that way I thought her mind and will were Jules' most valuable attributes. Besides, divinity seemed to trump semi-divinity. I put her on the path to godhood.
Ox
D-Class
Powers: Super-human Resistance, Kinetic Manipulation. With accessories super-human strength.
You can make a one-time upgrade to this employee from the following options.
Shifter: The same dimensional shift that rendered Ox almost unable to communicate becomes something that he now has some ability to control. This allows some mitigation of damage across dimensions, and might eventually allow full dimensional travel.
Invincibility: The physical resistance already exhibited is given a considerable upgrade and becomes an invulnerability to all forms of damage. Even among powerful supers this degree of protection is a rarity.
A dimensional ability was interesting and fit well with our current issues. Full-on invincibility really was rare. He'd be able to take a pummeling even from Disaster and keep on standing. There were only a few on the planet that could say that.
For all that Ox sometimes acted as a tank, he was originally a research scientist. Shifter would fit that, but I just couldn't pass up that degree of tankiness. I selected it.
Uma
B-Class
Powers: Technopathy
You can make a one-time upgrade to this employee from the following options.
Transform: Instead of being bound into a single toy body they will now be able to shift into the form of any toy. This can considerably improve their mobility on a battlefield.
Firewall:- In addition to their already formidable offensive skills versus other software, this will grant a measure of defense as well making them a more complete combatant in cyber warfare.
This was a tough one. It was really a matter between the physical and the digital world. Mastermind had Uma bound to that body because he didn't trust her, and it seriously limited her utility because getting Uma into a system meant physical contact—not easy if the server was secured and gi
ven the fact that Uma was a large teddy-bear. Transform would help that, although Firewall would make her far more formidable as a combatant against another system once she established a connection.
I didn't think there were any superior answers here. If she ever got out of that body though, one choice would serve her and one would not. I selected Firewall.
That was it for the original employees. I wondered what it would let me do with the new ones? I tried to pull up screens for Bouncy and Gloom.
Gloom was a no-go, perhaps because technically I really worked for her at the moment, not the other way around. Bouncy was a success though.
Bouncy
C-Class
Powers: Physical Transformation (ball), Kinetic Amplification
You can make a one-time upgrade to this employee from the following options.
Splitting: Upon each impact as a ball Bouncy will split off into two balls each of which keep the same mass and power as the original. Each of these balls will further split on subsequent impacts.
Rubber: Bouncy becomes completely immune to physical damage as any force that strikes her is fully reflected back at the origin of the blow.
A defensive upgrade that wasn't nearly as good as the one I'd just given Ox, or an extremely powerful upgrade to her offensive abilities. This one was an easy choice, Bouncy would become legion.
I had far more employees, but these were the main ones. I'd later do a performance review on each of the others and assign upgrades based on their strengths.
For now, it was time to focus again on taking down Patriot.
Gloom was already making her way down through the floors beyond level twenty-seven, and we had a small army following.
These floors were always a mixed bag. They'd originally been the very height of privacy and security, and there was a wide variety of what people wanted to keep secret.
The first floor that Gloom encountered looked like it used to be some sort of auction house—probably for humans given the number of shackles. There were also withered and collared figures that had turned into some sort of moss-covered zombies. Gloom quickly put them out of their misery.
I had no desire to run a slave ring, or to house one, so I quickly produced a general black market template for the whole level. A large central auction area, lots of cameras, side rooms for private displays.
Gloom was already on to the next level. It was filled with cattle, or super-dairy cows really. It looked like the entire floor had once served as some sort of powered ice cream maker.
We'd be keeping that business and find some frost-oriented super to run it. Gloom was again moving on. Floor after floor were passing quickly, much faster than we'd have been able to penetrate and control without her.
There simply was no real comparison between an S-Class and the methods we'd used previously. In short order she'd gone through a death maze run by super-intelligent mice, thrown a witch made of algae into a pit of eternal darkness, and had a pitched battle with a swarm of fireflies that were literally able to throw fire.
"She's really getting a hang of this power of hers," I said. Jules and Niles were in the control room watching her progress.
Jules said, "We took her inhibitor off, she just didn't need it anymore. She doesn't have her father's understanding of tactics, but in raw power I think she might outdo him."
I wasn't impressed by raw power. Knowing when and how to strike made one truly strong, not raw power. If Mastermind ever had to fight his daughter, I knew whose side I'd pick.
"Her raw power was the problem," I said.
"Taking any bets on when we'll start seeing Patriot?" Niles asked.
"I'm sure it's been taking floors and working upwards. The main limiter for Patriot is energy."
"They didn't build their own reactors before. Do you think they still can't?" Jules asked.
"Before the curse they didn't need to. After the curse their systems were quickly failing until they became totally nonoperational. When we reactivated the systems, capturing the rich power supplies on the surface was a higher priority than constructing its own," I said.
Niles tapped at the keys. One monitor showed Gloom fighting her way through a group of teleporting wolves.
"Almost every floor we've encountered had an independent power supply along with the fuel to go with it. They could have rigged a geothermal reactor by now as well," Niles said.
"What about nuclear? As we've gone down, the floors just keep getting more dangerous. Would any have had a nuclear reactor? Or bombs?" Jules asked.
Well, there was a worst-case scenario. Mastermind forbade weapons that might destroy his city, but any nuclear bombs would have been here well before he took over.
"Maybe. If so, that would be a lot of power. Enough that I think Patriot would have already escaped," Niles said.
He had a point.
Gloom had moved on and was now facing off against gorillas. They had rigged some sort of slingshots that fired fruit with highly explosive properties. It took a few minutes for Gloom to fully clear that level.
The next floor was under some kind of construction, heavy equipment moving around and shoring up defenses.
Mother's curse had been biological in nature, and the defenders were universally organic. This machinery could have only one source.
"Hold back. This looks like Patriot's doing," Jules said over a comm to Gloom.
"Good reason not to hold back. I'm Gloom, avatar of darkness and the strongest super in this city. Patriot? Get your shiny mechanical ass up here and kiss the ring like all the other lame robots," Gloom said.
I'd done no such thing. Neither had Uma, to my knowledge.
There was a shimmer of energy and the construction equipment surrounding Gloom was gone. In its place were tanks, a lot of tanks, with their barrels aimed in her direction. With a roar they opened fire.
26
Gloom didn't roll, and didn't try to dodge as the tanks fired. That just wasn't her style. Instead Gloom just stood there as a dark fog swarmed around her and the shots vanished into it. Dark bolts were her retaliation, spiking out in all directions and it sent the tanks scattering.
The instant the defenders were down it registered in my system as a new acquisition. Electromagnetic pulse turrets. They would do very little against biologicals and would do a lot to disable technology.
Patriot had some biologicals, but mostly it deployed automated hardware.
I sent Uma along with a team to help back Gloom up. Uma wasn't that defensive, although her stuffed body could take more of a beating than you'd think. It was ultimately Uma we'd be depending upon to take control of Patriot and the sooner she could start infiltrating its systems the better for our assault.
A call was coming in, relayed from the main desk operator.
This was interesting, it was from Lady Justice. Lady Justice was one of the organics who Patriot worked with, and we'd last seen her trying to defend the quantum pairing network. When we'd taken it down Lady Justice had withdrawn into the city and we'd lost track of her. Her calling now meant that she was aware of what we were up to and that we'd encountered Patriot.
They were in communication.
I answered the call. The video feed looked to be some sort of office. One wall behind her held a large map of Mastermind Isle.
"I didn't expect to be hearing from you again. I take it you found a way to connect again with your boss," I said.
"Obviously. I'm calling to warn that you really don't want to do this. Patriot has decided this world we awakened one wasn't what we expected. We've been playing it nice, and you don't want that to change," Lady Justice said.
"If you are keeping an eye on the world out there, you know what is going on. We need Patriot."
"So surrender. We'll incorporate you and this island into our new empire, and then the Swarm becomes our problem. We're good at fixing our problems."
Not that good. Our last encounter had somewhat ended in a stalemate—a stalemate far more favorable
to us. They'd been forced into a hole in the ground.
"You've only gotten by so far because you didn't have an S–Class willing to dig you out. Do you like your odds?" I asked.
Gloom had advanced to another floor. Patriot was adapting quickly. Instead of tanks with conventional rounds it was now using laser weaponry. Each beam a different frequency, probing for a weakness.
Lady Justice chuckled. "I don't hate them, and Patriot isn't the sort to give in easily. I'm ready to see which of our bosses goes down first, if you are."
Gloom was not my boss, exactly. At best she was a sort of clueless interim supervisor who whined a lot.
Still, for all that I didn't like Gloom, she was good at what she did. A batch of laser tanks was down, another floor was secured with pulse cannons, and Gloom was blasting a hole through the floor to get to the next.
"If you've been in contact, why haven't you reached out? Mastermind would have worked with you. We would have worked with you," I said.
Lady Justice frowned. "Because we're not villains, not really. Oh, they called us that, but we were—well, patriots. We saw an end coming that nobody else did and we acted. We did the hard things."
I knew a lot of villains and she sounded like part of the team to me.
"Pride, then," I said.
"Caution. Just look at what has happened this week. Mastermind is taken away and the entire city is descending into chaos. This is who you are, what your people are. This is what the whole world is. We saw it falling into ruin and it will. We weren't wrong, just early."
