Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Villainy Update

I've been busy with my new device...it's coming along nicely. Even so, I might take a break tonight, go see a movie, something. I'm starting to get cabin fever.

Monday, April 28, 2008

YouTube Update

While not quite as popular as me getting a Buick to the face, my tank's footage of Quizzer on fire's getting quite popular.

Mwahaha

Sunday, April 27, 2008

There's Nothing Like a Job Well Done

This morning I had felt incompetent. Now, I feel like a million bucks. Funny what doing something right can do for your attitude.

For my raid on Brannigan R & D, I decided to take my submersible and an Incinerator tank. The Incinerator tank is a compact hovertank abosolutely covered in weapons--antipersonnel guns, flame throwers, a couple mini-missile launchers, and the main weapon, a giant plasma cannon. It also has a great red and yellow flames paint job. Look it up on CapeWiki, it's pretty sweet.

The tank is pretty much a must for raiding Brannigan. The place is a bunker built right into the island, big doors alloyed with metals not yet available to civilians, walls of thick, heat and shock resistant ceramic, gun emplacements, the works. There are rumors some big-shot superhero runs the company, but, really, given what I've heard they do, it seems just as likely a villain runs it.

Now, the obvious way in would be through thr front door. Instead of doing that suicide run, I burned a hole straight into the base of the hill the bunker is built into. The looks on their faces when the tank burst through a molten hole in the wall...people in orange jumpsuits scattered like rats, and the guards stared for a good ten seconds while all of the tank's independantly-firing weaponry went nuts. In all that chaos, I slipped out of the tank with a shopping cart and calmly rolled to a terminal, pausing only to toss and force-blast people in my way. My mask interfaced with the terminal, broke their childish security codes, and gave me a list of experiments and part storage in order of usefulness.

The thing that caught my eye immediately was "weather control device".

Leaving my tank to keep the guards busy and went to ransacking. A few plasma coils later, I blasted through the door leading to the weather control lab. The scientists were cooperative after I threatened to break every bone in their bodies, and handed me the device--a grey shaft, about as wide as my hand and as long as my torso, a series of spines on a wheel on the top and a smaller such device on bottom. About then, the tank warned me that a certain blue nerd had shown up.

When I arrived at my entrance point, I saw a somewhat-strained Quizzer projecting some kind of mental field around the room, shielding the guards from harm while he yelled at them to get to safety. Not one to miss a perfect chance, I fired a force blast at him from my bracer and knocked the surprised hero into a steel-alloy girder. A girder my tank then targeted with the plasma cannon.

Unfortunately, Quizzer's telekinesis blocked most of the attack, but his armor was scorched and, even more hilariously, his cape was on fire. He swore loudly and ripped it off, and by the time he was focused on me again, I was already back in my tank and driving as fast as I could for my submersible . I could see him mouth something like, "Where do you think you're going?" So, as I booked it through the molten tunnel, I projected a hologram I had prepared in advance just for him.

It said, "Well, Quizzer, you're a bit too late to stop me, but, tell you what. To make you feel important, I've just unleashed a half dozen missiles on various parts of this city. Now, you can either stop them or stop me...I'm afraid you don't have time for both."

Of course, I was lying. It ws actually a full dozen missiles that my submersible had fired. As I had predicted (heroes are so predictable, after all), he rushed to stop the missiles. For good measure, when I reached my submersible, I launched another dozen, just to keep him on his toes.

So, here I am, with a lovely, duplicatable weather control device...and I think I'm starting to get a plan on how to use it.

Oh, and for those of you who care, he stopped all the missiles. But from the news footage, it looked to be difficult.

Mwahahaha.

My Feelings on Presidential Candidate Jonathan Rake

So, I'm pretty sure Rake's going to win the presidential election this year. Which isn't really news, given that he's insanely popular. He's a slick man, bright too. More than once Carmichael was literally stopped mid-sentence stuttering by Jon's quick wit and common-sense ideas.

I'd be more happy with Rake if I wasn't a supervillain. As far as anyone I know can tell, Rake's squeaky clean, and that initiative he's proposing to use captured parahuman technology for the advancement of the US....I just know they're going to try to steal an Incinerator tank from me. The news is hailing him as the most anti-supervillain candidate in history. He's definitely the first politician I've heard of that's strictly anti-villain...he's been singing the praises of Osiris, the Scarlet Sorceress, even that wierdo Judgement, saying what they and other superheroes are doing is good for the nation.

I have a feeling life's going to get a whole lot harder when, not if, he wins in November. Oh well, back to this weather machine. More on my rampage once I've reverse engineered this baby.

I Love the Smell of Burning Hero in the Morning

Right now, I'm going over my spoils from my little spree this morning and watching the President Charmichael vs. Jonathan Rake debates on the news. It feels so good to have a crime go right for once. More later, after I've catalogued all this stuff.

Insomnia Strikes

I can't sleep, so I decided to browse CapeWiki for my new enemy, Quizzer. Turns out he was a small time hero in some small college town for a while, stopping muggings, fighting Mechanor's army back when it marched across the US in 2005, etc. When New Vineyard finished construction out here in Lake Michigan, he moved here. The "experts" on the wiki seem to think that his super speed, his mild super strength, his flight, and mild invulnerability are all by-products of his telekinesis. So, instead of many different powers he has one, extremely useful, power. Hmmm....I can use that.

Why he took the name "Quizzer" is unknown. Maybe it's an inside joke. Maybe he's doing it to confuse the hell out of his enemies. It works.

Where he got his armor is also a point of interest. There are some pictures of him on the Wiki in poorly-tailored spandex flying around and stopping crime (he looks even dorkier than he does now) and then, according to his sparse entry, one day he was wearing kevlar and had fancy goggles. I bet some higher-up hero's doing all his tech work for him. It would figure--I had to bust my ass repairing all of the old boss's stuff, and reworking weapons and armor built for an athletic scientist into weapons and armor built for a seven foot tall mountain. But some nerd just phones up some crappy superhero supply store and gets brand new armor delivered.

Oh well, being bitter won't get me the money I need for a new plasma coil. Maybe tomorrow I can hit Brannigan R & D and see if I can steal something decent from them. At the very least, I might be able to find enough parts to build one myself. They don't grow on trees...well, they might in that part of Asia that's still under that techno-plague, but that's beside the point.

Well, I'm rambling, so I'll just go try get some more sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.

EDIT: Apparently, the video of me getting a luxury car to the face is obscenely popular on YouTube. I hate my life.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

New Hero in Town

Alright, I'm calmed down enough to talk about what happened earlier today. I got up early to raid the junkyard, see if I could swipe some supplies from the junkyard out on the coast. It went well enough--I held the attendant at bracer-point and filled up the submersible as best I could with old construction vehicles, a jet or two, and what might have been part of one of Mechanor's 3rd mechanized infantry. Oh well, mine now.

I got back to the underwater base (best part about being the supervillain of an artificial island, in my opinion), made a reuben, and then got an Incinerator tank ready. I finished my lunch, and then suited up. Honestly, I was feeling really good about bank robbery--it was going to be my first on my own.

A little about my armor--first, I wear a skin-tight yellow suit that covers my whole body, except my face--head, hands, feet, all of that. It's mostly slash-proof, and blocks most kinds of harmful radiation and electromagnetic waves. (And it is NOT a catsuit. I swear to whatever hellpit Rakshasa crawled from, the next time someone says "Doctor Cataclysm wears a catsuit" is getting a plasma blast to the face.) Over that, I put on a featureless silvery duranium alloy mask with a pair of red lenses for eyes. This mask functions to filter my breath, letting me breath underwater, in poisonous gas, pretty much everywhere. The lenses enhance my vision, have zoom capabilities, and can see many different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. I also put on a breastplate, greaves, boots, and leggings. The center of my breastplate has a big yellow stylized C on it. Hidden in my armor are all sorts of gadgets, like a jetpack, remote controls for pretty much everything, and my emergency teleportation rig. And it's all made of duranium alloy, so it's virtually indestructable. Last but not least, of course, are the signature of the Doctor Cataclysm brand--the seismic disruption bracers.

Anyway, at the last moment, I decided to leave the tank behind. Instead, I rode the old service elevator left over from when this place was part of the engineering crew's base, back when New Vineyard was being constructed.

From the warehouses out by the docks, I used my jetpack to zoom downtown. It was a beautiful day, and I was still feeling stoked by the time I reached the First National Bank of New Vineyard--which, really, given the city's only a year or two old, isn't much of a grand claim. It's a faux brick building, designed to look like it's old Vineyard's bank--a refuge from early 20th century architecture, but it's really made of space age ceramic and reinforced with composite metal girders--or so my molecular scanners tell me.

Now, by this time, I had a pretty sizable audience. It was lunch time, so there were plenty of people in a hurry to get their banking done as fast as possible. This also meant the city streets were heavily congested, so I didn't really expect cops to show up until I was already gone with the money. Piece of cake.

The people on the street didn't start panicking until I pointed my right bracer at the wall and triggered it--it was on a low setting and pointing away from me this time.

"Funny thing about Midwest construction." I muse to no one. The wall shakes and starts to vibrate, huge cracks running down it. "Not really constructed for an earthquake."

The wall collapses in on itself, sending pedestrians scattered and a cloud of ceramic dust in the air. Most of the patrons were knocked to the ground by the force vibrational wave. A security guard was dumb enough to pull a gun, but a shockwave from my bracer sent him flying back through a plastic plant and into a fake wood paneled wall.

"Alright," I began, using my mask's voice amplification unit to make myself clearly heard over the commotion. "This is how it's going to be. You," I pointed to a teller, who jumped reflexively, probably afraid I'd use my bracer on her. "Are going to fill up as many bags as you can with bills as high as you can. If you or anyone else tries to notify the police, or plays hero, or tries to give me ones instead of hundreds, I cause this building and all the others around me to crash down into neat little piles of rubble."

The teller started to comply, and I smirked to myself inside my mask. Like taking candy from a... My train of thought was derailed when something that felt a lot like a cannonball slammed into me and knocked me out of the sky, tumbling down and through two parked cars.

"What makes you think you can threaten these people, crook?" Asked a male voice, kind of nasal and whiney. I pulled myself out of a Skylark and glared up. Floating in the air was a guy wearing what looked to be blue low-profile body armor, your standard superhero gettup, with a white Q followed by a question mark emblazoned on his chest. He was wearing a blue cowl over most of his head, and a pair of white-lensed goggles over that. He looked moderately muscular, but nothing special. However, he did seem to be flying by paranormal rather than artificial means.

"Who the fuck are you?" I replied, nothing injured but my pride.

"I am the Quizzer, and my question still stands, scoundrel." He replied, long blue cape fluttering behind him. I could tell he was trying, and failing, to make his nerdy voice sound more gruff and masculine.

"...the Quizzer. Seriously? What, are you going to start asking me trivia? Is there going to be a test after the brawl?" My jetpack flared back to life, and I started hovering again.

"The test starts now, scum. Try my essay question!" No, seriously. That was his battle cry. I think I was too stunned by how dumb he was to block his attack...that and, for all his stupidity, Quizzer was wicked fast, and fly-kicked me right in the sternum. I was knocked back a little then, but with my armor and my near-invulerability, I was still unhurt.

I fired a blast of concussive force from my bracers, but the little bugger moved too quickly, zooming around out of the way as they shattered some office building windows and back towards me with an uppercut that I was too slow to dodge. Again, I wasn't hurt, but he was starting to get very annoying.

"Does a little nerd like you really think he can beat Doctor Cataclysm?" I laughed, starting to charge in each of my bracers. I love that sound, a low humm that just builds and builds.

"What do you think, Cataclysm?" He said smugly. I hate that smug look.

I laughed again despite my annoyance. "I think it's time for a little kinetic mayhem." I fired a pair of seismic disruption waves so massive they flipped cars on the ground as they passed and tossed civilians left and right. Windows shattered on both sides of the street, sending broken glass everywhere. I figured, if they didn't hit him, I'd at least get a clean shot at him while he struggled to save people.

Instead, his smug look became serene, and all the cars, all the glass, and all the people, froze in the air. When the force blasts hit him, Quizzer grimaced and was knocked back, but some invisible force field seemed to block it.

"Nice try, Doctor, but how's about you get some of this stuff back?" The hero said, smug again. Then, the cars and the glass shot through the air, right towards me.

The glass, that was nothing. Even at high speeds, glass isn't even going to get through the yellow stuff. But catching a Buick in the face hurt, and what's worse, it cracked my mask's lenses and damaged the optics. And while I was holding my face, his telekinesis or whatever sent a Chrysler town car into my midsection. This both knocked me out of the air and temporarily knocked the air out of me.

I started to fling the town car off me, but Quizzer nailed me with a Camry, and before I throw that off, he dumped a Rubicon and some kind of SUV on me hard enough to smash me through the street and down into the sewers. Gas was leaking all over the place, and the sewer water was full of, well, what sewer water is full of. I flung all the cars off me in a rage, and, without thinking, fired up my jetpack.

The explosion knocked me out of the sewers, rolling while smoldering on the sidewalk. The fire, of course, didn't hurt me, but the explosion had knocked out my jetpack, I was covered in sewage, and to top it off, mostly blind.

"Had enough, Doctor C?" I heard that smug, infuriating voice ask.

"Don't worry, SuperGeek, I'll be back later." I think I said as I tapped a button on my bracer and activated the emergency teleport.

Now, it's worth noting that the emergency teleport I use isn't tuned for humans. If I weren't a nearly invulnerable energy absorber, all that would be left of me when I used it would be a greasy smear. As it was, it just hurt. A lot.

I peeled off my armor and put it in the Machine to be washed. Then I took a shower that didn't seem to be long enough and nursed my wounds by watching the first half of a few old Batman episodes--you know, up until the part where the villain is about to win, then change to the next one.

The first Doctor had no superpowers, yet he was toe-to-toe with American Steel, one of the strongest superheroes of his time, nearly every time they fought. Meanwhile, I get my ass handed to me my first time out by a half-pubescent nerd with a dumb name.

I think I need some ice cream. Next time, I'm definitely bringing the tank.

Sigh

I'm way too humiliated to post the results of my crime spree right now...this sort of thing would never happen to Rakshasa.

I am the Worst Supervillain Ever

Alright, so, I was coming back from Meijer with a volvo full of spackle when I decided, hey, there's a gas station with a quick stop, I want a hot dog and a slushy. So I parked, hopped out of the car, and started for the door. I'm dressed in a black t-shirt, hoodie, jeans, boots, and a black baseball cap--basically, I look like either a robber or someone famous who doesn't want to get recognized. If I'm going to get wierd looks for my sunglasses, I might as well go the whole nine yards and look completely ridiculous, after all.

Anyway, right as I walk to the door, this scrawny kid in a ski mask bolts out of the quick stop, a big bag in his arms, with the manager of the store yelling at him, and to a lesser extent, me. Without thinking, I closelined the kid, which I imagine felt a lot like running full tilt into a cement post, given how much super-ceramic laces my body.

Now, the villainous thing to do would have been to take that money, bust inside, get a hot dog and slushy, and enjoy them as the police tried, in vain, to stop my awesome juggernaut of a body.

I didn't do this. Instead, I took the money inside and gave it back to the old man behind the counter, and then insisted on paying for my dog and slush, even when he offered them free of charge. You know, like a hero would do.

I know how this looks, but think about it, seriously. If I'd have taken that money, I'd have, what, fifty bucks, maybe a hundred? Wow. That's the freaking motherload. Seriously, I'm Doctor Cataclysm, not The Mugger or The Vandal or Captain Visigoth. If I want money, I'll plow through a bank vault with an Incinerator tank, or hold the city for ransom with a death ray, or something.

Still, though, I can't help but feel a little dirty for doing a good deed. It was a good thing I wasn't suited up. I can see the headlines now: "Doctor Cataclysm Helps Old Lady Cross Street; Becomes Curch Youth Outreach Minister."

I'll make up for it tomorrow. After I ransack the industrial junkyards for some steel and titanium (or maybe duranium if I'm really luck), maybe I'll knock over a bank or two.

Friday, April 25, 2008

A Little About Me

Before things get started, a little about me...it's not like I'm going to be doing any villaining while fixing this damn hole. As you probably know, I'm the second Doctor Cataclysm. I used to work for the first good Doctor until he was blown up, along with the first Cataclysm Command Center and all of Old Vineyard, by the death throes of (annoying) Superhero American Steel. In addition to the boss's old gadgets, I have super-strength and near-invulnerability. I'm also a little bit smarter than normal--smart enough to keep these super-powered weapons in working order, but not much more than that. I can absorb electrical and thermal energy, and act like a living battery to my power armor and seismic bracers.

Unfortunately, super-speed and agility just passed me by...I'm actually pretty clumsy. And forget non-artificial flight. I actually weigh more than I used to, thanks to the procedure the boss performed on me...and to top it all off, I have glow-in-the-dark red eyes. It makes grocery runs a nightmare--going into an all-night store on Fortune late at night, over six feet tall, built like a truck, and wearing sunglasses, it's almost like I'm waving a sign that says, "I am a supervillain."

Ug, speaking of going to the store, I'm going to need some spackle for this wall.

Inauspicious Start

Just a note.

When you are equipping seismic disruption bracers, make damn sure you put them on facing forward.

It's going to take weeks to fix that hole in the Cataclysm Chamber. I'm glad I'm invulnerable.