Vaudevillain

Chapter 34: Hanging Out, Making Plans

Surfsup was lazily looping around the garden on his board when Dylan walked out. "Dude, I'm so ready to steal that spaceship. You think I'd be able to surf it?"

Sweet Dream gave him a look. "Surf, I don't think you'd be able to tell. That things huge."

"Lame. Oh! Superfan can you make me some armor? Like a scuba suit or one of those skintight swimsuits? Oh, and Dream and I were talking about getting her a weapon that lets her shoot her chocolate out like a hose."

"Should be possible. Let me see what I would need."

Cass passed by Dylan, some Jacques following along behind. "Oh Cass hold on. We might need some more materials."

The chrome butler turned around. "Great! If you need me I'll be hiding behind the bar. I mean tending to the bar." He made his way back into the mansion and ducked down into the basement below.

"You have some odd minions dude," Surfsup said.

"Aren't they awesome? Cass is this total coward and bungles everything except making drinks. It fits the image of Dr. Zlo perfectly."

"Sure," Sweet Dream replied. "Anyways, how far out is your other friend?"

"He's in the city. I sent him the address for this place so he shouldn't be long. You guys want to see the place while we wait?"

"Heck yeah dude." Surfsup sailed in through the front door on his rocket board. Sweet Dream followed in after, admiring the gothic architecture.

Dylan showed the two around the upstairs. Sweet Dream ended up claiming the library as the new location for her fish. She deposited various tanks filled with fish on the floor. A hatbot crawled into the room and tried to mount one of the sea creatures.

"Deloris! Bad hatbot," Dylan chided. The little robot sagged and beeped morosely.

"Did you make this?" Sweet Dream asked.

"Yeah. These are my hatbots. Say hello Deloris."

"Beep," said the hatbot.

"This is by far the cutest thing you've made," Sweet Dream said. "I want ten."

"If you want you can take over the factory for them. I've only used them once and I think they're getting a bit lonely." Dylan realized he'd gotten a bit overzealous when creating his surveillance system. Both intelligent mice and hatbots were a bit much.

Sweet Dream scooped up the little hatbot. It beeped in alarm. "Shhh, it's alright." She gingerly placed a hand on the smooth top of the shaking hat and stroked the cool fabric. The little hatbot calmed down and whirred in contentment.

"Dude check this out!" Surfsup shouted from another room. He had gotten distracted while his friend tamed a hatbot and went back downstairs in search of other wonders.

Dylan and Sweet Dream made their way downstairs to see what their friend was talking about. Surfsup had somehow gotten a group of Jacques to perform the wave. The villain surfed on top of the minion's hands, riding a silver drink tray.

"He really is a surfing nut," Dylan said.

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"Yeah, he's the type to get hooked on something. The last time he was like this he did nothing but learn to play basketball until his parents forced him into studying."

Cass appeared at the top of the stairs. "Hey boss, I got those drinks ready."

"Excellent!"

"Oh sweet drinks!"

Surfsup jumped off the wave of Jacques and landed next to Cass. He swiped one of the drinks from the tray and downed it in one big gulp. Sweet Dream rolled her eyes, calmly walking over to the butler and grabbing her own glass. Cass brought the last glass straight to Dylan. "So boss. Are these the helpers you were talking about?"

"Quite right Cass. Though we are waiting on one more."

Dylan's chat flashed to show he had a message.

DemarX:

Yo Im outside

"And I believe he's here."

Dylan stepped out into the front yard to find a metallic man leaning on one of the awning pillars. Hearing Dylan's footsteps, the man turned.

"Sup," John said.

"Oh good. For a second I thought you got lost."

"If I did it was because you gave crappy directions."

"Ohh big words coming from a walking tin can. What are you supposed to be anyways?"

Surfsup and Sweet Dream took that moment to walk out front. "Dude you look sick! Are you Demar?"

John nodded. "Surfsup right?"

"Yeah man! So, what's your power?"

"I picked tech assimilation."

Surfsup nodded sagely. "Cool. So what's that do?"

"He can absorb technology dork," Sweet Dream interjected.

"Right," John said. "I figured our resident crafter could make me a bunch of different tech and I could combine it."

"Dude nice! Hey, now that we're all here we should go do our heist."

"Woah hold up," Dylan said, "we need a plan first."

"Yeah, those motherships aren't easy targets. On my way here I saw someone fly up to it and a ton of lasers cut through the guy like soft cheese." John said.

"Plus I'd like the plan to be convoluted and a bit ridiculous."

"For your character?"

"For my character! Dr. Zlo wouldn't steal something as large as a mothership the normal way. He'd want everyone to know it was him who stole it."

"Oh h*ll yeah showing off that we stole a mother would be sweet."

Sweet Dream broke into a laugh. Seconds later Dylan and John joined in.

Surfsup looked at the group. "What?"

"Mother-Mothership Surf," Sweet Dream said between breaths. "We're stealing a mothership, not a mother."

"I said mothership?"

"No," Dylan wheezed. "No, you did not."

"I for one am all for stealing the alien's mothers," John added with a laugh.

"Yeah, Earth needs moms after all."

Surfsup looked around at his friends in mock anger before breaking into a grin. "Dude, Superfan should make a fake mother that grounds the mini-boss so we can take his key."

The four continued laughing for a bit before Dylan brought them all back into the house. "Alright, let's make you guys part of the secret base and plan us a heist."

It was easy enough to add the others to Dylan's secret base. Vert had made an extra option in the base building tab to add others. Soon the four players were hard at work modifying their portions of the base. Dylan laid claim to the secret laboratory while John grabbed the basement. Surfsup and Sweet Dream split the upstairs down the middle and everyone agreed to leave the main floor as a collaborative area.

Once everyone had settled on their claims they all gathered in the kitchen to discuss tactics. "So, what can everyone do?" John started.

"I can totally surf anything," Surfsup said.

"How does that work?"

"I just take my board and focus on what I want to surf."

"So do you need a board?"

"Dunno."

"You should test that." John turned to Sweet Dream. "What about you?"

"Dude its sweet she can transform!"

"Surf, let me talk."

"Oh yeah. Sorry Dream."

"Like he said, I transform. I can cover my body in a chocolate coating. The chocolate absorbs attacks and I can use it to attack. I only have a certain amount I can use though. Oh, and the chocolate causes NPCs to hallucinate and players to get a blurry screen."

John nodded appreciatively. "That's a cool power." He turned to Dylan. "Youre up."

"I can create different gadgets with my mad science power. Each gadget requires a set of materials but from the looks of it, I can create pretty much anything. Other than that I'm a normal person."

John finished up with an explanation of his power. "So from what I can tell, I can assimilate technology into my body and use it in two ways. The first is that I can take the materials of the tech to make myself stronger. If I took some alien armor with a computer I could use the stronger materials as my skin. The other way I can use it is to recreate the purpose of the tech. So if I took an alien gun I could shoot their laser out of my hand or something."

"Dude sweet!"

"It sounds to me we have a decent mix of utility, mobility, and durability. Dream here can tank most attacks while Surf flies around and takes out specific targets. Dylan here can make sure to equip all of us with useful gadgets and I can fill in whatever other roles we need."

"The main question I have," Dylan started, "is how we use all this to steal the mothership."

"Well, at the moment we don't know much about it," Sweet Dream said.

"I can send my mice spies to scout around."

"You have mice?"

"Yeah, wanna see?"

Sweet Dream held up her hands. "No! Don't bring those near me you got that?"

"Yeah, Dream's not good with mice," Surfsup said.

"Got it. Still, I can have them scout around for info. Dream could use the hatbots as well."

"Sure."

John piped up, "The mice will take time though right? Any way we can find out stuff on our own?"

Dylan shrugged. "Probably. I didn't think too hard about it yet. Though I do have some other stuff we could do while waiting. Plus Vert has the whole base defense thing going on."

"What else did you have in mind?"

"So earlier on two guys ganked me while I was messaging one of you guys. I'm not all that upset about it but Dr. Zlo would definitely take revenge on a couple of heroes who attacked him out of nowhere."

"C'mon man don't you know better than to be out in the open like that? That's just asking for you to get taken down."

"Shaddap. Anyways, I had my mice looking for their hideout-slash-whereabouts so I could get my revenge."

"I'd rather work on getting our base up to snuff," Sweet Dream said.

John nodded. "I think we should reinforce the base as well."

"I'd rather do some PvP dudes."

Sweet Dream shook her head. "Surf, if we don't get the base trapped we'll lose it to the aliens."

"Fiiine."

John placed his hands on the kitchen table. "Cool. So first off Dylan's mice will scout the mothership and the aliens while we prep the mansion. The base building interface added a few traps and minions but I figure we can use our resident mad scientist to make better traps. Who's got ideas?"

All three of the players raised their hands.