Skyside 7: The Big Pizza in the Sky

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's "Secret" Hideout

The drone doesn't resist being dismantled, and it's fitted with quite a basic array of sensors- there's a video camera, a microphone (which had been switched off, to conserve power) and an infrared camera for detecting heat. Both cameras are switched on. The tech putting it together is advanced, but clumsy. The person who built the drone didn't really have a great idea of what they were doing or how to do it, but... it was sending and receiving a live radio feed, which was not transmitted straight to the bunker. The concrete's too thick for radiowaves to penetrate. The footage was transmitted somewhere else, into the garden, not into the bunker.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

With such basic sensors, it's hard to say what this is. But he doesn't give off as much heat as a person should. Very little at all. And he isn't solid, but that's pretty obvious from the way he moves. With the drone destroyed, he begins assimilating its components. He pops back out into the garden, assuming human configuration again, and begins a methodical sweep. That drone had to come from somewhere. He finds the pitfalls quickly enough, falling through one of them and being impaled on the spikes. It doesn't even slow him down, as he discorporates and reforms free of it.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The pitfall traps are all spiked, but also some- not many, three of about twenty scattered around- conceal the actual air vents for the bunker. There's a rotting corpse at the bottom of one, the remains of a poor chap who fell in and got spiked. A neat hole has been drilled through both sides of their skull, so it seems someone found them after they fell in and shot them. Possibly a laser, given the neatness of the holes and the slightly cooked meat around the edges. That pit isn't one of the air vents.

There's also seven burrows, looking like wild animal holes, but one has slight tyre marks near the entrance and they're all big enough for the drone to have fit down. If they're investigated, four are decoys extending just far enough to look real, with nothing technological inside- a genetically modified rat with grass for fur is sleeping in one of the decoy tunnels. One leads to a charging station for the drone, with some radio equipment down there, too, with wires leading underground. One holds another drone, like the first, resting on a charging cradle but wedged inside by a slight cave-in. The last burrow has a buried rope just inside the entrance, the other end tied to a black plastic sack concealed deeper into the burrow.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The intruder searches a few pitfalls before finding one of the vents. Aha! He turns into smoke again and slips inside easily. He's been detected though, so he's expecting a hostile response before he makes it all the way in.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

Getting in is tricky- there's a current blowing against him as the villain travels the pit, and there's a lot more laser alarms as well. As he travels through the vents, a mist is blown against him. It's blessed water; iWear has no idea what he is, but she's trying evaporated holy water. If he's a vampire, it should work. If he isn't, it... might not. If he hasn't triggered any of the lasers, she'll do it anyway- all she knows is something that isn't hot enough to be a person and made at least partly of smoke and mist is trying to get inside.

If they can fight against the air current, and the holy water, they'll find themselves in the bunker. Inside, it's a single large room, with several complex locking doors in the ceiling where the roof hatch lies. The bunker is an opulent, well-lit space, with silk curtains draping three quarters of the walls, a large bed on one side of the room, a small shelf of books (mostly trashy romance books, but there's a lot of books on superheroes and villains there, too) and thick carpet on most of the floor. A shooting range has been set up, and there's a computer system growing from one wall. A quarter of the space is obviously a tinker's workshop, with benches, tools, and raw materials lying around too. Mostly high-end stuff, plastic and wires and circuitry, with a 3D printer and a lathe. There's also three mannequins wearing different suits; one has a suit of power armour, though iWear hasn't been able to power it efficiently yet; it has a battery pack plugged in, but that battery is also recharging from the mains socket. One has a wing-suit, with flaps of material between arms and legs, and a much larger rocket on the back. Finally, a mannequin wearing an outfit similar to the one iWear currently wears, though not entirely as battered.

The villain whose hideout this is stands next to the bed, in full costume, currently plugging her gauntlets into the wall. She's still wearing her generator backpack, but after the time she's spent robbing gangs it could do with a recharge. I guess it's probably more battery than generator, then.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The wind is ineffective. The person (?) has far more structural integrity than a normal cloud of smoke, but it does disperse lingering wisps of him along the corridor. He doesn't seem very bothered by the loss of his extremities. The holy water does even less. The smoke exits the vent into the bunker and coalesces back into a humanoid figure, still clad head to toe in black armor. He raises his hand, and smoke swirls around it, forming into a long rifle with a barrel streaked with ominously glowing red lines, and aims it at iWear slowly. For all he cares, she can make the first move.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

Now she's plugged her suit into the wall, iWear levels her wrist-blasters at the intruder and fires, both at once in a pair of continuous laser beams. She's got them on full power, and if they miss they'll burn their way through the concrete wall and the hangings and other decorations of the bunker. It's two blue beams of energy, light and heat concentrated into a potent laser. She starts aiming at the intruder's head, and then direct her wrists down to bisect him vertically. He seems made of smoke and darkness, so hopefully weaponised light will be effective against him. She can only keep the beam going for four seconds; after that she has to release the trigger so the mechanism doesn't overheat. She's also tethered to the wall right now, which might put her at a disadvantage if the intruder survives the attack.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The intruder throws himself to the ground, liquifying and slithering along the floor. He fires off a blast of red energy at iWear as he reforms, his aim unsteady and unreliable in this moment. As soon as he's fired, he's slithering towards her again, trying to close the gap between the two of them, a sword forming from smoke in his free hand.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

iWear is able to dodge out of the ill-aimed blast, but can't retaliate, since her lasers are still cooling down. She squeals when he pulls out a sword, and kicks at him, triggering the jet in her boot to give her foot more power- and if she manages to hit the intruder with the back-blast of the rocket boot, all the better.

The attempt does cause iWear to lose her balance, and she's only able to avoid falling over by catching the wall into which her wrist-blasters are plugged. She can't actually do too much, right now. She wishes she had on a different costume, or had hired a guard to wear a spare suit and look after her place so she had some backup right now.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The intruder is caught in the center of the chest with the boot rocket. It doesn't do much to knock him back, or not quite. A section of him turns to slag under the heat, passes through him, and splats against the far wall. The injury heals over almost immediately, but it reveals something interesting. He doesn't have flesh under his armor, just more of the metallic black material. He swings his blade at iWear, but he's not aiming to hit her directly. He's aiming for her gear, and the weapon will splat against it and begin eating into it.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The intruder's attack works perfectly, as iWear brings her arm up to block the sword, so it connects solidly with the gauntlet. The way the sword dissolves to eat at the circuitry and mechanisms within the 3D-printed plastic shell and the reaction of the intruder's chest to her rocket-boot make the supervillain gasp. She has no idea what's happening to her wrist-blaster, but she'll point the one he's attacking at him and fire another blast at full power at near point-blank range. She's aiming for the intruder's head, and will keep the trigger pressed until it either overheats and stops working, or the goop attacking her tech disables it. If it overheats first, she hopes that might disable the goo on her wrist.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The intruder sees the attack coming, but too late. The blast burns through his head and keeps going.
His body doesn't respond to his sudden beheading, his free hand turning into a tentacular appendage and reaching out towards iWear to grasp at her throat. But the heat of the weapon does seem to neutralize the goo on it, but not until it's managed to do some damage.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The supervillain can't easily evade the tentacle that wraps about her neck, and that combined with the fact this thing isn't stopping even with no head means iWear's starting to panic a little. She presses a button on her glove that disconnects her wrist-blasters from the mains electrical supply and kicks down, pressing a button to open the hatch in the roof and then activating her rocket boots to propel herself upward. Hopefully this will cause the intruder to lose their grip on her neck, or else the force will either carry him up with her or potentially wrench off his tentacle- depending on how sturdy it is, and if he's capable of supporting his own weight from it.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The intruder's grip is pried off when iWear rockets off. Or maybe he let her get away. Now that he's alone in the bunker, he slithers over to the unworn suits and engulfs one, attempting to devour it and assimilate its technology into himself.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

Once she's left, the hatch seals shut, and so do the vent. iWear is hovering above her hideout, and pressing a sequence of buttons.

The suit can be engulfed! The most interesting part of iWear's tech is the miniaturisation to get it all wearable- except it doesn't work well for the power armour. This suit of power armour is less worn and more piloted, so falls out of iWear's speciality. She was working on it anyway, and there's some decent ideas there. iWear's wrist-blasters are integrated into it, providing it with a ranged weapon that keeps the hands free. Her main issue was that she couldn't build a battery or generator small enough to carry and powerful enough to move the limbs. In addition, it has rocket boots but isn't very manoeuvrable, as the boots are underpowered and the power armour is top heavy. Using the boosters to fly like iWear usually does would have her upside-down and headbutting the floor. Its defence relies upon the thick plates of titanium and steel covering the limbs, controlled by pistons and servos all linked to the helmet which is capable of monitoring brainwave patterns and helping any movements the wearer would make. The supervillain does not seem to have been investigating or using forcefields at all, though the intruder may be aware that she has battled against individuals using such technology.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

Unfortunately for the intruder, there's not much new for him in consuming the power armor. He could probably make some tweaks on that flight system to get it to work for him. But he does grow in mass by its size. He flows to the unworn copy of iWear's regular suit and begins to repeat the process. He's not super concerned about the sealing bunker. He can probably eat or blast his way out before anything bad happens.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Secret Hideout

The regular suit is actually mostly prototype stuff, it's older than the one she was wearing. The wrist blasters aren't as powerful, the battery on the back is smaller (not physically smaller, but it holds a smaller charge) and the rocket boots are bulkier and can store less fuel. It's good for spare parts, or use in an emergency if her usual suit is badly damaged, but it's not up-to-date or as effective as her primary suit. Something that is interesting, however, is the visor and mask. There's toggles for standard vision, plus low-light filters, thermographic capability, x-ray filters, a massive zoom, cameras built into the lenses, and more unusual stuff- there's a sound camera, so she could zoom in and activate it and hear what noises were made based on the image it displayed, a sonic imagifier that more literally lets iWear see sounds, and a small radar suite as well. There's even small cameras in the sides and back, so she could look behind her without moving her head. It's quite a thirsty set up, however, and not very energy efficient.

Now the bunker is sealed, hydrogen is entering the main chamber and the mains electrical sockets start to spark. When there's enough hydrogen, the electrical spark will ignite the air and create a large explosion, destroying the bunker and everything inside.

[bc56]

iWear's Secret Hideout

With the second suit partly dissolved, the intruder's chemical sensors are triggered. Hydrogen. She's trying to burn him out. He slithers towards the vent he came in, his particles reaching out to begin stripping apart the seal over the vent so he can try to escape. He might be nearly immune to physical injury, but sudden changes in temperature can destroy his constituent parts easily.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Defunct Hideout

The seal is metal, a solid steel portcullis that has dropped down into a groove to provide a seal without rubber or anything else that could be attacked by microbes or airborne acids. The steel can still be devoured by the intruder, it's simply a harder material than they might be expecting.

Regardless, it won't blow immediately. The hydrogen's too slow, and the self-destruct mechanism relies too much on chance to avoid being easily disabled by somebody disarming some bombs, or triggered accidentally by somebody getting it wrong whilst disarming some bombs.

[bc56]

iWear's Defunct Hideout

Stripping down a steel barrier is no problem for the intruder. It's just the thickness of the steel that will be troublesome. Luckily, he only needs a small hole to get through. His touch cuts through, creating a conical hole he can squeeze through. Being made of a swarm of tiny particles makes fitting through little gaps easy.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Defunct Hideout

The intruder eats their way out of the bunker, and might want to get into another of the pit traps soon. The one the vent enters will probably be blasted with fire when the building blows, and the concrete bunker will produce large chunks of rubble. They might survive being hit by a large lump of concrete, but why take that risk? iWear herself is aware of how the bunker's rigged to collapse when it explodes, and is flying somewhere that should be relatively safe. She wants to be sure that the intruder doesn't make it out before it blows, so she's keeping an eye on the hatch she ejected from. It doesn't occur to her, at least yet, that they could flow back out through the vents after un-sealing it.

[bc56]

iWear's Defunct Hideout

The intruder slithers away from the explosion as a serpentine blob of dark metal, leaving the premises without risking returning to humanoid shape. He got some benefit out of this... A lot of spare mass to store away and some improved sensor capabilities. If iWear knows what he is, though, she might be able to detect and follow his trail. He's constantly shedding a small amount of his particles in his wake, ones that are damaged by random chance.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Defunct Hideout

iWear doesn't have a clue what he is, not yet at least. And right now, the tech she's wearing is pretty low on juice and her main charging facilities just got destroyed. She's going to leave, and go somewhere else to restock and work on replacing what she can.

She'll come back... probably tomorrow, after sleeping and recharging the battery and replenishing the fuel for her jet boots, tweaking her goggles to try and look for clues as to what they were and if they were killed in the blast, and see if there's anything she can recover. That duffel bag, in particular.

In the meantime, however...

Cloudtops- House Argentappendens Manor

"Please, father. It's so fun. And there's less risk of familial embarrassment than partying, isn't there? I won't challenge anyone to a poorly thought out duel and shoot them if I'm not at a party, will I?" iWear, her blue wig and mask removed, revealing... well, she's young; maybe seventeen. Quite pretty, with large blue eyes and dark skin dusted with darker freckles, her head shaved. She's still wearing the rest of her costume, dusty and damaged.

The man to whom she speaks is sat at a desk in this large and opulent chamber, expensive silk rugs covering the polished marble floor and the walls inlaid with ivory and exotic wood. The desk itself is nearly unique; made of a wood harder than steel and therefore an expensive import. His skin isn't as dark as iWear's, but the resemblance is there- they have the same eyes. "You have no idea how much it cost to build that hideout you went and destroyed. Putting a suit on and beating up lowlife scum is not a thing I have a problem with. Blowing a safehouse up, after I'd spent so much building it, is another matter. I should ground you... But those boots of yours let you fly. Fine, you can keep your infantile hobby. But you're going to take a trip, away from the city for me. Once your... princess costume is ready. And you will convince the people of Harvae's Bluff to renew my contract with their copper, for a lower price this year. It ends in two months time, so you have lots of time to get it done. If you fail, you will be grounded, and forbidden from leaving the house- even if I have to shackle you to the floor. Understood?" He leans back and smiles coldly at his daughter, who sighs and nods.

[bc56]

iWear's Ruined Hideout

The intruder hasn't left too many traces. His component parts, when exposed to extreme heat, melted into slag. But he left them behind in many places, especially after iWear damaged him with her weapons. It's possible some of them survived, so if she has the relevant ability to scan for nanotech, she may find them. But clearly, there is no corpse, no wreckage, etc. Nothing obvioius remains of the mysterious entity that invaded her base. Perhaps that's what she expects.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Ruined Hideout

Back at the crater where once she lived, or at least worked on building things, iWear hovers. She's altered her costume; the wrist blasters are gone, replaced with flamethrowers made from repurposed rocket boots, and her goggle-visor is no longer as white and pristine as the rest of her. It's fitted with an experimental setting that should let her see the chemical traces left by the intruder, if there are any; she's put some of the goop she recovered from her wrecked wrist-blaster in the device to analyse and look for chemical similarities, but she's working on broken-down nanites rather than working examples, and the technology she's using is new and likely full of bugs. She's looking around to see if she can find more, ideally more dead nanites, but if she finds live ones she does have flamethrowers now, and heat seemed to work last time.

[bc56]

iWear's Ruined Hideout

It'll take some time, but iWear can detect a trail of destroyed nanites leading off into the streets and alleys of Skyside. The trail leads to an abandoned warehouse on the very edge of the island, hanging over the edge. Now it's her turn to plan a break-in. The creature may be inside, or he may be somewhere else.

[Earl of Purple]

iWear's Ruined Hideout --> The Intruder's Lair

iWear follows the trail, though there's a brief distraction when she passes a factory- the byproduct isn't an exact match, but it fools her sensor for thirty seconds.

When she arrives at the warehouse, she frowns. Not that it's visible; her mask and goggles conceal her whole head. She's not really patient enough to wait, so she'll check to see what it's made of. Probably steel and concrete, but it would be so useful if it's wooden. She's also going to fly around to the overhang; is that deliberate, with a disused system of cranes to hoist goods from the ground into the city, or has the island crumbled underneath it, leaving a building hanging precariously on the edge? Either way, is there an opening she can get in, without using the front door or any of the windows? They're probably guarded.

[bc56]

Intruder's Lair

The building is reinforced concrete and steel, hardened against most normal attacks. There's no gaps in the part hanging over the edge, in fact it looks like that section has been repaired much more recently than the rest of the building. Security cameras bristle across the structure's exterior. If iWear isn't careful, she'll be spotted.
There is a roof entrance though, a small doorway which no doubt leads to a staircase into the building proper.
There are some very large signatures like the nanites iWear is looking for within the building.

[Earl of Purple]

Intruder's Lair

iWear doesn't particularly care about being on the cameras; her costume is pretty concealing, and her civilian identity is totally concealed. Also, she's white and blue and flying, so subtlety isn't her strong point. She'll try to disable the ones she can with blunt force, before landing on the hatch into the warehouse. Hopefully her weight will break through it, since she isn't packing a cutting laser today. Really all she wants to do is burn the place down with the nanites inside, but given the warehouse's construction that's not looking too feasible right now.

[bc56]

Intruder's Lair

The cameras are easy to smash. The hatch, not so much. It's reinforced steel plate, much like the rest of the doorways. Landing on it with that much force produces a loud thump.
The hatch is also chained shut with a simple padlock. It probably won't be much trouble for iWear to break it and get in. But any element of surprise was lost when she was picked up by the cameras.