[End of Act Two: Act Three in Three Minutes]

It took Fursona all of ten seconds to bend, then snap, the cell’s bars. Dr. Jackson’s eyes opened for the first time. She seemed to pop into awareness as they gave. Her arm was definitely still injured, and something like anger filled me up for a second before Lucky Star forced it back down. There’d be time for that soon. First, the job we had to do.

Dr. Jackson blinked, staring at me like she couldn’t quite recognize me. “Who? What?”

I ignored her for a moment, using [Jinx-Bearer] to pick up some of her pain. As my arm started aching—especially around my shoulder, but also where I’d gotten shot—her face cleared. I could handle her pain for a while, at least for as long as I was Lucky Star. And after I [Noncombatant Teleported] her out of here, I’d be able to switch around.

[Gritty Sacrifice! +2 Grit Points]

It was such a relief to have had something go right. My jaw and throat relaxed, even as the pain hit me. We had Dr. Jackson. With two meta-powered supers, we might actually have a chance. Now I just had to figure out how to tell Dr. Jackson everything that had happened. But how best to do it?

“Understudy and Fursona? That team? Really?” she said, shaking her head. She’d gotten to her feet while I pondered my plan, and she looked a lot better than she had just a minute ago. All of a sudden, she was giving orders. “There’s a vil in the next cell over. She’s been here less than a day, but she told me what she could from outside. See if you can break her out, Fursona.”

“Sure,” Fursona yawned and started walking away.

“Wait. Are you good to keep fighting?” I asked. She’d just been Full-Kaiju, and that always took so much out of her.

“Do I have a choice? I stole a few extra drinks from the Playpen Patrol. Guess I’m a villain now!” Fursona quipped. Then she stomped away, and a second later, the air filled with grunting and screeching steel.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“No idea,” Fursona called back. “She’s in worse shape than Dr. Jackson, though.”

“Lady Lockless,” Dr. Jackson said. “She doesn’t take a punch well—never has. Almost failed Combat Styles two years ago. Without that cane, she would have for sure.”

I cracked my neck, wanting to take the fight to any 3V1L henches or Vs still in this jail. They’d deserve it, and I still had Super Girl Spotlight Star in reserve for them. They wouldn’t know what hit them. But I couldn’t—not until we had both Dr. Jackson and Lady Lockless out of here. So instead, Dr. Jackson and I waited until Fursona stomped up, carrying a girl in leggings and a baggy T-shirt on her back.

“Alright, ladies,” Dr. Jackson said, finally stepping out of her cell. “We need a battle plan.”

“The plan’s simple,” I interrupted. “I [Noncombatant Teleport] you two to safety, then Fursona and I fight our way out. We regroup at Tottergarten.”

“No.” Lady Lockless slid off of Fursona’s back, leaning on my partner’s shoulder and breathing heavily.

“No?” I asked. She was covered in bruises and wobbly, even with the dinosaur suit’s support. If she wanted to fight, the odds of a win only went down—a lot. And Dr. Jackson wasn’t in any better shape.

“We’re not leaving, because you won’t get out of here without us,” Dr. Jackson said. She started walking toward the prison’s far side, away from where we’d come in. There, in bright neon letters, was an Exit sign. A door sat below it, with a key card reader. “Miss Callum, would you mind?”

Lady Lockless reached out and pushed a couple of random buttons, and the door beeped green. A second later, it opened, and I sat, flabbergasted, as Dr. Jackson and Lady Lockless strolled out into the hall. “Wait, you could have opened your cell any time?” I asked.

“No. They welded it shut,” Lady Lockless shot back. “They’re vils, not idiots, sadly.”

“Uh, if this prison break’s turning into something else, would you mind telling us what’s going on? Because I’m confused,” Fursona said.

“Okay, listen, past this room’s where they’ve been keeping Dr. Mays. He’s in charge of keeping this whole lair running—in theory. In practice, he’s pretty powerless without me. That’s why they put him in charge, I think.”

I stopped and put a hand on Dr. Jackson’s shoulder. “Lair? Whose lair?”

“The Agent’s.”

----------------------------------------

So, that was a shocker.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I’d thought 3V1L’s lair had been under a house in the Poudre districts, not here. But, as Dr. Jackson led us down the hall, I started to believe it. The walls gradually changed past the prison until the underground tunnel felt less like a prison and more like an office.

And if this was The Agent’s lair, he’d be on his way to defend it. Could we really turn this thing around and beat The Agent here?

Maybe. Yes. Yes, we definitely could. We just had to solve a bunch of problems.

1. How to find The Agent? He’d come here, yes, but he’d come with the best Temp Supers he could muster, and he’d come ready to finish us off. So finding him wouldn’t be a problem. Beating the Vs would be, though.

2. Could we neutralize Dr. Mays? Granted, without Jackson, his powers were pretty minimal—all he could do was stall out fights. But if we ran into him before The Agent, stalling would be enough—and any henches or Vs with him would go for Dr. Jackson to stop her from countering him.

3. Could we stop The Agent from simply teleporting away? And where did he teleport to, exactly? If he always teleported to his lair, we had him cornered. But if not? If not, we needed a plan to pin him down—otherwise, beating him would be impossible.

4. How the hell could we keep Dr. Jackson and Lady Lockless safe?

Luckily, Dr. Jackson took over before I could start voicing my concerns. She pulled us into an empty office room with a simulated view of a shoreline somewhere. “Up ahead is the loop station. He always comes in from there, and he always goes to the same place first. His ‘office.’”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I’ve been here for a while. He uses henches with guns when he wants to gloat at me about…whatever. And he likes to gloat—a lot. Listen up. Important need-to-know information. First, he’s going to show up there. We can ambush him, but it might be better to set up somewhere else—like his main lair. If we can set up a trap, things might go better for us; he’ll get off that loop ready to fight.

“Second, he’s working with the Ilneats,” Jackson finished.

“Yeah, we know he’s on their team,” Fursona said.

“No. Not like that. He’s got a deal worked out with the Network that gives him producers’ powers. That’s how he teleported away after he shot me,” Dr. Jackson said.

Well, that was a complication. It also meant this probably wasn’t where he was going when he emergency teleported. “So, we’re not beating him here?” I asked.

“I think we can,” Dr. Jackson said. Then she dropped her voice almost to a whisper as we put our heads together over the office desk. And when she got to the core part of her plan, I nodded, a smile spreading slowly across my face. It was bold, and risky, and it relied on some weird conceptual language, but we had all the pieces right here.

It just might work.

----------------------------------------

[Cell Theory: Act Three in Progress]

Fursona and I ran down the office-like hall past cubicles and computers, barreling headlong deeper into The Agent’s lair. We’d passed the loop station a while back, and the plan required us to move fast and break stuff. Fursona, for her part, was a half-step slow, and her suit had to be half-full of spent Hi-Cs and Capri Suns. But she kept trucking along.

A camera swiveled to follow us, and I took a second to make sure it saw me clearly before blasting it with a [Starlance]. The plan required that The Agent know exactly where we were; he knew my power-set, so if he saw the two of us, he’d assume I’d done what I’d wanted to do and teleported Lady Lockless and Dr. Jackson out.

[Dramatic Damage! +1 Drama Point]

Hopefully he’d assume that, at least.

We hit another door—this one wooden and formal-looking—and Fursona breathed a line of flames that chewed through it before slamming through the weakened, charred wood shoulder-first.

“About time you got here,” The Agent said smoothly.

He sat on a chair that reminded me of an office chair if you crossed it with a king’s throne, at the end of a wide, circular room. Tapestries covered every possible wall, and behind him, a pair of flags hung from their poles. It looked a little like the pictures of the president’s office from old textbooks about Pre-Launch America. And he wasn’t alone.

Flanking him were three supers. The first, to his left, was a hulking man every bit the match for McHammer, but with a mace that felt more medieval and armor that covered his whole body—except for the 3V1L helmet. One glance confirmed that The Agent’s Temp Super had to be copying Lord Destructo. On the far side, another familiar-looking villain stood ready; the tight racing suit and helmet design looked a lot like Springlock’s set-up.

But the last Temp Super was worse.

They wore a kangaroo fursuit and an orange suit with blue racing stripes that looked like it was designed for speed. Fursona’s original suit. So…that was going to get confusing.

And, as a cherry on top, The Agent wasn’t the only meta-powered super in the room. In the corner, a defeated-looking Dr. Mays sat at a much smaller desk, his polo shirt wrinkled and beard disheveled. He glanced up at us and shook his head, then lowered it. “You shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“So, I’m assuming you and Marino are here to surrender, DuPont? That’s the only reason I can see for you two walking into my lair, strolling into my office, and presenting yourselves so perfectly. So, how about it? I’ll take your familiar and your fursuit, have the First V hop you back to my prison, and wrap this whole pointless storyline up for the Network,” The Agent said.

“Or I could blast you right here,” I countered, feeling a lot braver than I should. “[Starlance]!”

“Dr. Mays here for…” Before I could finish my power, the meta-powered professor stood as a tube of something materialized in his hand. He stared at it for a second. “Professor Beavis’s Top-Tier Topical Solutions.”

The room froze. Even my power stalled mid-air, hovering there like a pink-and-blue ray of death midway across the office. Only two people could move. Dr. Mays desperately shouted out his advertisement for whatever weird alien product he was pitching as the Episode rolled into an impromptu commercial break. He looked at us with eyes wide and full of something like fear and remorse.

And The Agent stood up slowly, pulling out his briefcase—where I knew he kept his pistol. This was it. The moment we’d been waiting for and dreading. But even though The Agent could easily kill us both right here, I wasn’t worried at all. Far from it. I was thrilled.

So far, everything had gone exactly as Dr. Jackson predicted. We’d destroyed the cameras all along our path. The Agent had been right where we’d thought he’d be. And, even better, Dr. Mays was there, along with three Vs impersonating Bruisers. And, most importantly, our two aces in the hole weren’t in the room. But they would be soon. The trap was set.

It was time to spring Phase One.

The door opened, and Dr. Jackson walked in.