I’m out here, in one of Sigfrid’s many planets, back at it again. I just finished cleaning up an incursion of musical pestilence. It seems the Dark Song Orchestra had switched to trying to use microorganisms to do their dirty work, but that was easy enough to counter so long as one knew how to make counter-organisms.
It “could” turn into a whole vicious cycle, and I had to be wary of the other party’s end goal a bit, so I didn't get checkmated and end up helping them since genetic arm's races were a bit like chess, in that you needed to think several moves or generations ahead.
However, thanks to being one of the overlords of this place I had a very strong home-field advantage. I could short-circuit a great number of the other side’s moves, by altering the local natural laws in such a way that hostile alien materials had to play by certain house rules, or risk unravelling. Essentially making certain movements impossible.
As for why, I didn’t just alter the natural laws to make alien materials illegal, period. That’s harder than you’d think, and there’s actually a constant influx of alien materials flowing in from all places that are rapidly adopted and accepted and transferred out, as part of a world’s natural processes.
Trying to put a stop to that could get messy real quickly, and honestly, I’d end up having to put Sigfrid under a semi-literal jar to keep it sufficiently isolated. It’d be akin to making a person completely halt their respiration, and energy production processes. Even autotrophs like plants need outside materials to keep trucking along.
Completely sealing a world off without inadvertently destroying it was extremely tricky. Especially since I’d need to set up supplemental systems to keep from crippling the universe due to the loss of needed materials. Like I said there were a lot of things that depended on this world’s connectedness with the greater cosmos. For instance, about two-thirds of all the souls born in Sigfrid could be considered alien to this world, and that’s the least of the issues that I’d need to be concerned about.
However, that’s not what matters right now. The point is, the Dark Song Orchestra was still trying to nibble at us and cause some chaos, as part of their opening act, and I’d swatted their hands down. Now that the crisis was over, I was taking some time off, to do some more hero-watching.
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“Kahahaha! You’ll never catch me, little Miss Dimbulb!... My forgetfulness-ray has stolen away all your training and experience!” laughed a robotic supervillain, who looked unquestionably like an old professor made out of metal. The Metallic Mentalist.
“Grrrr!...I don’t need my training to take care of you! Now we can either do this the easy way, or the hard way, but I will get the deactivation code for the amnesia-bomb you created!” roared Sunset. The orange costumed heroine charged forward with her body covered in a cone of flames.
Bright green flames appeared beneath the metal man’s feet. The Metallic Mentalist had activated the rocket thrusters hidden in his legs to try and leapfrog over the irate heroine. He almost managed to escape her when she used her hand to snag one of those legs. Ignoring the flames powering from the metal villain’s heel. Then Sunset thrashed the metal man around. Slamming him into the ground over and over, like he was a rag doll.
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Suddenly, a third player appeared, colliding into Sunset with a brutal shoulder tackle and palm strike. The two blows sent the heroine flying. Alas, if the intention had been to free the Metal Mentalist that objective was a total failure.
“Asteroid-Monkee, you fool!” cried the agitated Metal Mentalist, as he was sent flying while still held in Sunset’s tight grasp.
The Metal Mentalist tried shooting Sunset in the face with another blast of his forgetfulness-ray. Unfortunately, by then, her true superpower, her ability to grow past all challenges had activated. Not only allowing her to recover from her earlier state of mental incapacity, but also granting her an increased mental fortitude that could shrug off the effects of the metal man’s weapon.
As the dullness faded from her gaze, Sunset tore the Metal Mentalist limb from limb. Finishing the task by making two sharp blows into the Metal man’s limbless torso. The first strike shattered an anti-gravity unit that would have allowed the Metal Mentalist to float away, escaping despite his current lack of limbs. The second strike punctured a hypnotic display screen that the Metal Mentalist had often used to escape in times when he should have been put under custody.
With the mastermind of this crime spree disabled, Sunset could now turn her attention to his lackey. Charging towards the muscular, space-suit-clad, Ape-Man. Sunset's fists glowed like freshly formed steel sculptures as she pounded at the superpowered ape-man and beat him into submission. Then with the battle ended and the day saved, Sunset called for backup. The authorities would need to come and finalize her arrest. Also, despite her recovery, she was pretty sure she’d need a medical check-up. That kind of mental manipulation was never a small thing for the body to deal with.
Sunset frowned and looked around. She could feel “it” again. Unseen eyes, watching her from some distant place. It was an uncanny thing, and she had clue what to make of it. Sometimes the gaze was oppressive, but sometimes it was reassuring. In either case, it filled the heroine’s mind with questions.
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Elsewhere, shortly after their arrest, while Astroid-Monkee and the Mental Mentalist were being hauled in the back of a prison shuttle headed towards the nearest Detention Satellite for superpowered criminals, Asteroid-Monkee looked to his partner with an accusatory gaze.
“This is not what metal man promised, Monkee…”
“Yes...Well...I was supposed to have some back-up in both the preparation and execution stage...Unfortunately, that Damned Doctor Bleed decided to quite the masked crime game so...that’s all I can say about that…”
“Doctor Bleed quit too?!...I heard Captain Gear-funky also quit and got a job at some research institute in one of the more agricultural stellar systems…”
“Really? Even that freak Gear-Funky is cleaning up his act?! What the hell?! That’s the fifth science-based villain I’ve heard of, suddenly dropping out…”
“You don’t think the heroes are secretly killing them again, do you?” said Asteroid-Monkee. Suddenly looking a bit nervous.
The Metal Mentalist froze. He actually considered that possibility, since he’d still been around, and flesh and blood, back when an extremist-hero managed to climb to the top of Sigfrid’s most powerful Hero-Leagues, and push for a policy of permanently erasing threats to the public.
Eventually, the Metal Mentalist shook his head.
“No...No. I don’t think that’s what happened. Otherwise, we’d have heard about more than the nerdy types...Plus, that idiot with the dice still does his online streams every Thursday…”
“Huh…Well, I guess that’s one less thing to worry about then..” sighed Asteroid-Monkee.
“Mhm...Maybe,” said the Metal Mentalist. Still more than a bit concerned about the sudden death of mad scientists and science-based villains, and what that would mean for con men like him, who sustained themselves off of the scientific efforts of others.