As Fursona and I searched Fred’s house for our missing sidekick, I had to choke down a combination of fury and panic. It grew with every room full of supervillain outfits, henchman helmets, and weapons until we’d checked the entire house. The only hint was the wide-open sliding glass porch door and the smashed-in circles on the house’s cement porch.
“Did we give her comms?” I asked Fursona, already knowing the answer. We didn’t have spares for the Triad-built communicators, and neither of us had imagined that Vicegrip—no, she’d earned the name Tractor-Beam-Girl—would run off without us. She couldn’t be this stupid…could she?
Apparently, it was more common in superheroes than I’d thought. I knew I’d have done the same thing, but…
“No,” Fursona said, confirming what I already knew. “But we’ve got a lead. We know where she’s flying, thanks to her beams. They crater the ground if she gets too low or tightens the beams too much—like for take-off.”
“So, we hunt down Tractor-Beam-Girl, then?” I asked, summoning my sailboard.
“Yes. I’ll stick to the ground in case there’s evidence here, and you patrol from the air? We’ll run a reverse Eagle Eye in The Sky,” Fursona said.
I felt a familiar pang as she made her suggestion, but we were partners, dammit, and right now, she had the best idea of the two of us. Besides, she didn’t have Eagle-sona, so the reverse made the most sense. “You got it!” I said, abandoning the sailboard for a solo [Solar Wing].
It took three and a half blocks to find our first piece of evidence.
Outside an abandoned video store—I couldn’t tell why an artifact from that long ago hadn’t been repurposed—Fursona found two massive cracks in the asphalt. They rippled outward from a pair of depressions, and she called me in to check them out because they weren’t alone. Broken glass, an abandoned 3V1L helmet, and a pair of dazed-looking henchmen littered the ground.
“What happened to you two?” I asked.
The woman clammed up while the man muttered something about “My rights as a forced hench. I never asked for this.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know, I think I saw you two last year at the job fair at TU. Remember that? I don’t think you were forced.”
“Sure we were,” the first one—a woman—said. “The financials are too good to turn down. 3V1L made me an offer I couldn’t refuse—money!”
“Okay. So where’d she go?” Fursona asked, ignoring the joke.
“If we tell you, you’ll let us go?”
We didn’t have time for this. I [Quick-Time Changed] into Lucky Star and activated [Audition Notes].
[Flashy Fitting-Room! +1 Flamboyance Point]
[Audition Notes for John Deer #1: This Extra isn’t from around here. He’s part of a hench-sharing system that allows henches whose villainous bosses aren’t using them to loan them out to a select network of villains. However, after running into his second set of superheroes today, he’s starting to regret his life choices.]
[Good Thinking! +1 Cunning Point]
“Yep. We’ll let you go. We’ll turn around and count to thirty. When we turn back around, your helmets will be on the ground, and you’ll be done with henching. But only if you tell us where Vicegrip went.” It was a gamble, but I figured that, given the information in the [Audition Notes], it had a chance of working. If not, we’d probably still be able to track our prodigal sidekick down.
Sure enough, the two henches looked at each other, almost debating with each other. Then the man nodded. “Counter-offer. Let ‘Bob’ go as she is, and I’ll tell you what you need to know. Deathblood’s gonna hear about this. The union will be pissed.”
I filed that tidbit away; I’d never heard of Deathblood, a henches’ union, or hench-sharing before, and I wanted to check in on all three when this Patrol was finished. But for now, I needed to make a choice. I glanced at Fursona, who nodded slowly. Then I stuck a gloved hand out. “You have a deal, ‘Bill.’ ‘Bob,’ get out of here. Go home and stay out of Poudre for a while, okay? It’s going to be messy.”
She nodded and started jogging away while Fursona’s plastic eyes glared at her retreating back. I turned my full attention to ‘Bill,’ who’d also stood up. He grinned beneath his 3V1L mask. “Alright, what do you know?” I asked.
“Simple story, really. Your girl jumped ‘Bob’ and me out here. She must’ve followed us over from the safe house, but we didn’t see her until she’d clobbered us. Thing is, we weren’t here to sell Girl Scout cookies, you know?”
“Yeah, I figured,” Fursona said. “Get this story moving. We might be on a time crunch.”
“So, we were meeting up with some bigwig in 3V1L for a job, and after we’d surrendered, she showed up with a whole truck full of henches, whooping and hollering up a storm. Big old 3V1L flag sailing behind it and glowing lights all along its sides. ‘Bob’ and I thought they’d come to pick us up, but they parked, jumped your superhero, and started fighting. She hopped into the air on her hands and took off down Lime Street. The truck burned rubber after them.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“So they just left you here?” Fursona asked.
I sensed an opportunity. “Yeah, that doesn’t seem like something the union would like, does it, Fursona? Abandoning henches to a superhero? That’d probably get 3V1L in hot water.”
“Yeah. So, can I go now?” The hench asked.
“I’d say so. That’s plenty of intel. Don’t forget to leave the helmet,” Fursona said.
What followed was a nerve-wracking thirty seconds as the hench unbuckled his devil-horned helmet with clunking, clattering sounds, then started running. As his footsteps faded into the distance, I turned toward Fursona, sniffing the air. “Follow the diesel fumes?”
----------------------------------------
The diesel fumes led us into the industrial heart of South Poudre. The Suntech refinery vomited foul-colored smoke into the air, and a chemical stench hung heavily around us as we followed the occasional crater and more frequent tire brake tracks through the streets. The visibility dropped more and more from the smog, and I dropped out of the sky to land next to Fursona, who coughed into her modulator. “What the hell? Who makes a base in this mess?”
“I bet it fits 3V1L perfectly,” I said. It had to. No one would willingly build a base in an industrial hellscape like this, so it was the perfect camouflage.
“Yeah, I guess, but the health impacts. People live like this? Outrageous,” Fursona said. She pointed at a warehouse. “Let’s poke around a bit. I bet there’s something in there; it’s too convenient.”
Part of me wanted to argue. There was no way 3V1L was stupid enough to have a lair in an industrial warehouse; it’d check every stereotype in the book! But another part of me knew, without even looking, that it was the right place. It had to be, because it was dumb. So I walked to the door, looking for cameras the whole time, and grabbed the handle. I held up three fingers, and Fursona readied herself for a [Springtail Kick]. Two. One.
I pulled the door open. “Surprise!”
[Explosive Entrance! +1 Badass Point]
As I yelled it, Fursona flew through the open door feet-first and slammed right into—
“Hey, what the [Beep!]” Tractor-Beam-Girl said.
[Episode Finished!]
[Investigative Episode: North Poudre Patrol - PG]
[Penalties: 0x Rating Warnings - No Penalty]
[Episode Finished! +3 of each Style Point]
[Winner Winner! +1 of each Style Point]
[Role Focus: Cunning+Flamboyance - Goal Met! +5 to Focused Styles]
[Alias - Understudy] [Archetype - Magical Girl] [Community Rank - 200/523]
[HP 12/12]
[Styles and Skills]
►Archetype Skill - Transformation Sequence
►Combo Skills - Power-Weaving
►Badass (52) (Skill Roll Available)
►Cunning (20)
►Drama (6)
► Bit-Part Barrage 2
► Starlance 1
►Flamboyance (20)
►Signature Skill - Adaptive Armoire 3
►Stored Costumes: (Rainy Day, Copy Cat, Lab Assistant Panic)
►Solar Wing 1
► Quick-Time Change 3
► Spotlight Strike 1
►Grit (29)
► I-Frame Transform 3
[50 Badass Credits Used. Rolling Skill!]
[Rank-Up! Jinx-Bearer 1: Allows up to two status effects to be transferred to the user]
I rolled my skill. Fursona and Vicegrip untangled themselves as an alarm went off, filling the air with its shrill claxon. Another one started shrieking into the air, and I made a rotating motion with my arm that Fursona recognized. She hurried to her feet. “What do we have?”
I was busy looking at my new skill. Status Effect still felt like such a vague term; I’d been able to transfer acid burns, reducing my total superhero damage. What else could I take for an ally? I’d have to find out soon because it could be an incredibly powerful ability or a waste of a slot, and I didn’t have enough information to be sure yet.
“Well, while you two were staring at clothes back there, I tracked the villains to some abandoned parking lot, then chased them out here,” Tractor-Beam-Girl said. She sneered under her white helmet. “I’m not wasting time with the outliers. If we’re after leadership, let’s go find their leadership.”
I bit my tongue—literally, but not very hard—to keep a sarcastic comment down. Instead, I took a deep breath. Either she was lying, or the hench had been. Either way, we were here, in a totally empty warehouse; the only things I could see were bare shelves and a door on the far side. “So, where’d the truck go?”
“Garage. It’s under one of the buildings. Can we please hurry up?”
A new voice echoed over a speaker. “You won’t have to. We’re coming after you!”
[Casting Call]
[Episode: Power War: Beyond Good and 3V1L - PG-13]
[Role: Interloping Investigator! Do you accept the role? (Yes/No)]
[Role Focus: Cunning+Grit]
[Power War: Beyond Good and 3V1L: Act One in Progress]
“Shit,” I said.
BANG!
The doors at the building’s far side burst open, and a whole swarm of henches piled in.
Fursona kicked the first and second with a [Double Kick] while I fired a [Starlance] into the third. A moment later, the first gun went off with a bang, and Tractor-Beam-Girl screamed. I looked over, but she didn’t look hit, and a moment later, she held out her hands and started ripping weapons away from the swarming henches.
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
For a few moments, the empty warehouse was nothing but chaos—henches flying every which way as Tractor-Beam-Girl tossed them around, Fursona a whirlwind of kicks and punches and even an occasional air-shattering tail-slam, and beams whipping into the crowd as I got my rhythm going. We had this covered. Henches weren’t a problem at all!
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]
Then the door burst open again, and not one but two red-cloaked villains stalked in. I tried to get a read on which ones they were—if we had the Second or Third V, Fursona and I had a plan to handle them—but before I could, one of them hopped into the air over the battlefield and started sliding overhead on a board shockingly similar to mine, while the other began fiddling with a case she’d set on the ground.
“Who are these guys?” Tractor-Beam-Girl asked.
I burst out laughing. I shouldn’t have—if these were both Vs, it had some disturbing implications for 3V1L, because neither matched the Vs we knew about. The villainous organization was evolving, and it was happening way faster than I’d expected it to. But Tractor-Beam-Girl hadn’t been paying any attention, and she certainly hadn’t done any research on what the three of us were up against in the Poudre districts.
Then, still laughing, I pointed at the one with the case. “That’s a Genius. Stop her!”
Fursona lunged toward the villainous V, but Tractor-Beam-Girl had to deal with the rest of the henches, and I had my hands full as the surfboard-riding V descended on us. And if we failed, we were up a creek with no paddle!