The Beauty Boyz have taken over a building outside of Perth. Informally called the “Tower of Power”, rising above the trees of the Mundaring State Forest , it has traditionally been a supervillain base. When one villain would fall, another would often take up residence there. Perth previously lacked enough of a superhero presence to dedicate a full-time watch staff to its security, and there was a mountain of evidence and gadgetry inside to make demolishing it undesirable.
Thanks to their electric motors, the motorcycles are as quiet as they are dark. The team wind their way like shadows up Topher Road, and pull over when Alycia gives the signal that they’ve arrived.
Alex has their drones, for aerial surveillance. John will be going tree to tree via his grapples. Alycia is going on foot, looking for tracks or other signs of passage.
“What about us?” Emma asks, gesturing to Nono and herself.
“Don’t step on anything, or go off the road,” Alycia warns. “Be ready to analyze anything we bring back.”
But nobody brings anything back, and Emma begins to get impatient.
“Nono, let’s do some brainstorming,” she says, and Nono nods enthusiastically.
Emma pulls out one of Alex’s spare tablets, opens a map of the area, and starts looking. “First, we don’t know who is pulling this job, right? Could be a villain, could be a hero, a secret spy organization, disgruntled postal workers, whatevs. Point is, who is doing it influences how they do it, because… why?”
Nono thinks for a moment. “Because… their training is different. What they can do.” She processes this point further. “And so if we figure out how they did it, that tells us more about who they are?”
“Right. So we got Alex and Alycia doing this spy style. John’s doing whatever the fuck John does. Where does that leave us?”
Nono understands, and pounds a fist into an open palm. “You’re a supervillain. You’ll do this villain style.”
Emma exults. “Correct-a-mundo! Villains aren’t gonna skulk around in the forest. We’re gonna scope out other options. Like how this used to be a villain’s lair.”
She turns now to Alex. “Hey, Doctor Nerdenstein. You actually doing anything on those drones or are you playing games?”
Alex doesn’t even look up from the laptop. “Playing games,” they admit without shame. “Whatcha need?”
Emma walks over. “Get online. I got an address for you.”
Nono follows, curious, and watches the pair exchange arcane information. Finally a web page comes up.
Alex explains for her benefit. “The Dark Web. Traffic goes through a series of anonymizing hosts, like playing a game of gossip where everyone is forced to tell the truth. The message gets through but nobody knows the source. This Dark Web site looks like some kinda villain message board…”
Emma enters some credentials. “Port Royal. Thing is, you have to login to use it. And it’s by invitation only, so there’s no plebes allowed. If anyone’s been nosing around this place, maybe someone in the local villain community has noticed.”
By the time John and Alycia return, the trio have done their best to scour the forums for information. Emma had to respond to a message from the system administrator, who’d noticed their activity, and gave her bona fides as a villain in good standing.
“There’s nothing out there,” Alycia says, and John nods.
“We found some potential leads, but they mean talking to some Western Australian supervillains,” Alex explains. “Where to next?”
Alycia frowns. “The accident sites. They’ve probably been gone over thoroughly by now, but it’s our best lead at the moment.”
Another thought is given voice. “It’s strange, in a way. I used to be on the other side of this chase… leaving false trails, hiding evidence, and now…” She trails off, and smiles hesitantly. “Mount up.”
The first time Nono did chemical analysis for the team, she was woefully unprepared. This time, she took Alycia’s advice to heart, and packed the proper equipment aboard Spike. With her portable chem lab at the ready, she studies the samples coming in from the rest of the team.
Alycia has snuck into the police impound, where cars on the blown-up bridge were towed. John has samples of the poison gas from the train tunnel. Emma has samples from the building that went down.
She doesn’t have Alycia Chin’s encyclopedic knowledge of explosives, but she has Alex and their access to the Internet. And when the others finally conclude their collection runs, she has some preliminary findings.
“There were definitely explosives at work. The um, the taggants? Yes, the taggants look like they were military?” She glances at Alycia, who in turn glances at her chemistry notes and nods in confirmation.
“The Australian Defence Force would have been notified, and probably begun an internal investigation and inventory,” Alex says. “So I’ve started trying to crack that nut.”
“The gas in the tunnel is also military,” Nono says. “As for the bridge incident, there’s two things at work. Explosives were used to blow up the bridge itself. The same kind as used to bring the building down. But the cars…”
“The cars blew up because of land mines,” Alycia says. “I saw the signs immediately. Someone mined the bridge beforehand.”
“That’s pretty elaborate,” John remarks. “Hey, what about the villain who led the Boyz into the tunnel to begin with? There’s no way that’s coincidence.”
“Sam the Slag, aka the Bloody Runt, or rather something that rhymes with Runt,” Alex says. “A former associate of the Boyz back when they were villains. Also one of the guys we learned about from searching on Port Royal.”
“He’s a pyrokinetic. Well, lavakinetic. It’s not clear.” Emma shrugs. “Nobody who’d tangle with the ADF. But work with someone who could? Maybe.”
“Time to go lean on Sam,” Alycia announces.
Sam the Slag isn’t too hard to run down. Honestly, he was pretty run down already.
Emma is the one who locates his lair, based on a canny study of his recent attacks. He’s built a base into the side of a hill and camouflaged the entrance with bushes and trees. The team meets outside, and stealthily approaches.
John, as the toughest member of the team, is the one who kicks in the door. The villain looks up, startled, from handling a handful of stolen jewelry. He unleashes a gout of lava - super-heated flecks of rock and dust, gathered up from the cave around him - but Nono is ready. Her chem-guns are out and she fires rounds into the stream. There’s a flash and a gout of steam, and suddenly solidified rock drops to the floor.
Alycia’s own guns are out as well. In a flash, she nails the team’s target with a stun round, and he goes down with a shocked look on his face.
“Yeah!” shouts Nono. “Chemistry, bitch!”
Suddenly self-aware, she looks around at the team. “Sorry,” she says, very quietly.
Emma claps her hard on the back. “No way! That was perfect!”
“Powers as advertised,” Alycia says with a smile. “I think we’ve found our man.”
The team really knows they’ve found their man, though, when a trio of rocket-propelled grenades come streaking from outside, through the door, and toward them and their quarry.