System Supervillain, Book 2 Prologue (Patreon)

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Capes & Cowls Forum, General Chat)

Message of the Day: Remember, Capes & Cowls is ‘neutral ground’. Keep it civil, and if you try to track someone through our site, it will not end well for you.

Speedy, AngelEyes, Victory, HotStuff, Jester, Aegis, Stars, Emerald, Snowflake, MagicGurl, RedHot, Scholar, Turbo, DontYouWantMeBaby, KoolAidMan, SliceNDice, Destroyer, Inquisitor, Chummer, GrimDark, DarkAngel, Chiller, MultiMe, Stepford, Dollmaker, Mindtaker, MrRoboto, TitaniumTits, Lolth, InfoGirl, ScoopGirl, HolyBlessing, and DonJuan are in the chat.

DonJuan: Oh, man, I still can’t get over how much this System has fucked up my powers! Seriously, I can’t access half the abilities I used to!

TitaniumTits: You aren’t the only one. My mech-suit is barely functional, with the restrictions the System placed on it.

KoolAidMan: My powers are fine. Don’t know what you’re talking about.

InfoGirl: That’s because your power was just extra strength and defense, and the ability to trample people or run through walls. People with more complicated powersets got hurt, hard.

HotStuff: Not just people with the complicated powers, IG. Powerclaw managed to wound Indomitable during the Blackreach riots.

Turbo: What, really? His whole thing was being damn near impossible to hurt! I don’t think anyone ever did that, before the System kicked in.

Victory: One person did. It is part of the reason why Indomitable has a grudge against the guy.

Chiller: Well, I have nothing against him. It was simply business.

Victory: You bastard! What you did to me was simply business?

Chiller: Eh, there may have been some pleasure involved with that. But it was mostly business. And it was all business with him.

SliceNDice: Wait, you’re that Iceblade prick, right? How the fuck did you hurt Indomitable? You’re just an ice-maker!

Chiller: I’m never ‘just’ anything. And, even before the System, there was no such thing as a perfect defense. Indomitable’s body could not be hurt by any means I knew of. But there is more to a man than just his body.

HotStuff: What he means to say is that his sword can somehow attack a person’s mind.

Chiller: Well, the soul, actually. But that’s one of the things that the System changed. Actually, a whole bunch of things changed, with the System.

HotStuff: Good! You were too powerful before. Maybe now you’ll be easier to handle.

Chiller: Oh, I don’t know about that. I still have plenty of tricks up my sleeves.

Jester: Enough about that. Does anyone have any clue what caused this System to come online? And can we do something to turn it back off again?

Mindtaker: I notice that Timelord is not in here. Did the Doctor of Time go back to try and fix things?

Dollmaker: Not really his style. He’ll try and stop things if he sees them, but changing the past is taboo for him, isn’t it?

Mindtaker: Would you know if it wasn’t?

Scholar: Depends on how his version of time travel works. Whether it creates a new timeline when changes are made, or alters the current timeline. If it is a new timeline, then we would be unaffected. If it alters the current timeline, then some people might be able to remember the former timeline.

Stars: There’s some discussion in the mystic community about whether time travel is responsible for déjà vu, but it has never been proven, one way or another.

ScoopGirl: Actually, I tried reaching out to some of the time travelers, and they’re all saying that they are being blocked from going back, before the System came online. And, a few hours after it happened, an Administrator message came up, saying that restrictions were put in place to prevent reality from becoming unstable, and, if they didn’t stop, then the Administrator would punish them somehow.

MrRoboto: That Administrator is a dick! He sent me a message saying that I’d been ‘randomly selected’ for an audit on my points!

Aegis: Uh-huh. And what did you do just before that?

MrRoboto: I went phishing, to see if the admin was a real person. Mostly as a gag, you know? But if he fell for a Nigerian Prince letter, then I could be an Admin!

Aegis: Pretty sure there was nothing random about your selection, then.

ScoopGirl: Have your points changed any?

MrRoboto: Yeah, actually, which is why I’m so pissed. Took three points from an Anonymity perk I had, and two points from my Computer Programming skill, and dumped them all into the Profession Skill (Prostitute)!

HotStuff: BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

HolyBlessing: Ha! Serves you right!

AngelEyes: I have to admit, this Administrator has style.

LuckyDice has entered the chat.

LuckyDice: Hey, guys, anyone seen Warpsmith? He said he was going to check out something about the System, and he’s been out of contact ever since.

Lolth: Warpsmith? No, no one’s seen him, or any of the fifteen known reality warpers since a few hours after the Activation.

LuckyDice: Damnit! Anyone got an idea what happened to them?

InfoGirl: Actually, I was with Reality Slash when he disappeared. He just froze, and went staticky for a moment, before a blue box appeared over him, reading QUARANTINED in big letters, and then he disappeared.

MrRoboto: Quarantined? Maybe like an antivirus putting suspicious files in another folder, so they won’t cause trouble?

InfoGirl: That’s what we’re thinking, yeah. But he wasn’t doing anything at the time. In fact, he’d stopped, after about an hour of trying to change things.

ScoopGirl: Perhaps it was a manual quarantine, then? If they all disappeared about the same time, then maybe the Local Administrator took some time to get to their cases?

Lolth: Likely. A new program going live has an insane number of bug reports, and other problems. Something like the System? I can only imagine how many reports they got, in those first few hours.

GrimDark: I wonder who the Administrator is.

Chiller: No way of knowing.

Speedy: Hey, Victory! Squadron Supreme helped stop the Blackreach riots, right? Is it true that the White Knights were wiped out?

Victory: Yes. I’m conflicted about that. On the one hand, a whole team of supers getting killed in a prison break is bad. On the other hand, well, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but…

Speedy: Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch, right?

Victory: Right. They made the rest of us heroes look bad.

Chiller: I can’t imagine why they had claims of racial prejudice and discrimination brought against them, given that one of their members was named Grandwizard, and literally wore a white hood and gown. The only way they could have been more on the nose is if their team symbol was a burning cross.

Victory: Like I said, it made us look bad, but we had to act inside the law.

Snowflake: At least we have the tech-types making new containment equipment, to replace the nonfunctional ones in Blackreach, and other prisons.

Stepford: As much as I hate to say it, being a baddy and all, that’s probably a good thing.

SliceNDice: What you been smoking? How is them getting ways to keep us locked up good?

Chiller: Because it means they’ll still try and capture us, if they can, instead of going for the kill, or putting any villains they catch in medically-induced comas for the rest of their lives.

HotStuff: Those… were options we were considering with the Blackreach riots, yes. And a lot of people still died.

LuckyDice: That’s depressing, but true. And we still don’t know what caused the Activation, or whether more things might change.

Lolth: Well, police in Istanbul just found those time-ships that the Doctor of Time and Master of Paradoxes use as their homes. Both were abandoned, in the same parking garage. It took two weeks for anyone to notice the things, since they had some sort of camouflage.

HotStuff: So, are you saying that their fight caused the System to activate?

InfoGirl: Well, the Doctor used something called ‘Time Energy’, and the Master used ‘Paradox Power’, or something like that. But we’ve never seen what happens when those two things interact directly.

Scholar: If it caused some sort of extreme reaction, then the instability may have forced the System to activate.

Destroyer: So, where are they now?

InfoGirl: Probably quarantined, with the others who tried to destabilize reality.

Scholar: A likely hypothesis. But without speaking to the Administrator, we may never know.