Chapter 167 – The Greatest Supervillain’s ‘Evil Plan’
The Faceless Minion by Icalos
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The Himalayas, present day.

 

Bob reappeared and laid Voidspeaker down. The hero was just coming to.

 

“Ouch…what the heck, bro?! What do you want with me?!”

 

“Voidspeaker…I need your help.”

 

“What the heck?! Attacking me is not a good way to ask for my help, bro!”

 

“It is if you’re a supervillain.”

 

Voidspeaker’s eyes narrowed.

 

“Then I’m not going to help you, no matter what you want, bro. Go ahead, do your worst.”

 

Bob just stepped to the side and pointed. Voidspeaker raised an eyebrow before looking in the direction Bob was pointing.

 

He gasped. His stomach started to boil at the sight he saw.

 

“Is that…Elise? Oh my gosh...don't tell me she's…”

 

“No, but she will be soon. Unless you can pull the void energy from her body that is.”

 

Voidspeaker looked once more at Bob, then grunted and ran over to the girl. He held out his hands and started to chant, then frowned and shook his head.

 

“There’s…too much. And it’s everywhere, in her body, all around her. I don’t think I can handle that much power with the precision required…”

 

“You don’t need to remove it completely. Can you concentrate it, remove it just from her head?”

 

Voidspeaker thought for a moment, then slowly nodded.

 

“I think I can do that.”

 

He glanced around, eyes resting on Nana.

 

“Ah, good, you’re here too. Emao, err, Nana, come over here. I want your help drawing these formations.”

 

Nana immediately flickered next to him.

 

“On it, just tell me what you need.”

 

Bob exhaled a sigh of relief. Ok, the final piece in place.

 

Now to put everything together.

 

As Voidspeaker drew his magic circle, Saydaa finished the final touches on the wider ritual formation. They had partially repaired Wilson’s formation, with some modifications. The original ritual had first channeled the power of the Mester Stoor Worm Fang to break down the dimensional boundary and the prison universe, and then looped it back to channel all that power into Wilson. In this case, the first half was entirely unnecessary, so they simply modified the formation to channel power from a source into a target.

 

The source was the Blazing Dragon Flower.

 

The target?

 

Kanna and Klara arrived via grav-jet, carrying a large metal cylinder. They placed it next to Elise and opened it up.

Inside was a second Elise. Or rather, a second body for Elise, formed by the same process used to produce bodies for Londyn and Arachnalich.

A body with a great deal of upgrades for her cybernetic parts, courtesy of the Vophae and an Iesnorium meteor Bob ‘conveniently’ stumbled upon.

 

They then went back onto the grav-jet and rolled out a second piece of tech.

 

A second, albeit smaller, Mental Unifier. This they rolled up behind the two Elises.

 

Bob looked at Voidspeaker. The hero checked over his formation one final time, then looked up and nodded. He started to chant, his eyes glowing dark purple.

The black aura began to recede from Elise’s head.

Bob then took up position by the two cyborg bodies. Kanna brought some wires from the Mental Unifier and plugged it into his suit.

 

Then Bob gently placed his hands on the heads of the two cyborgs, one on each.

 

The Mental Unifier started to hum and spin, resonating with the smaller version in Bob’s suit. Bob grunted as he felt its power surge through his mind.

He used the suit’s techno-organic interface to send that power into Elise, along with his thoughts.

 

The first step, Bob made contact with Elise’s organic mind. She wasn’t conscious, but still she subconsciously relaxed as he made his presence felt. She stopped resisting the power of the Mental Unifier.

 

The second step, Bob channeled power from his suit into the cybernetic part of Elise’s head, reactivating it as much as possible. He linked it to his suit’s systems, and then established a link with the new body’s hardware. They did have backups of her protocols and memories prepared to fill in the blanks but since her AI was fully bonded to her organic side he wanted as much of the original as he could transfer.

 

The third step, Bob used the Mass-Energy Manipulation array in his suit to mimic Arachnalich’s mana, activating her necromancy ritual used to move to new bodies. This established a bond between the two bodies, to prevent Elise’s consciousness from simply leaving. This step was mostly a safeguard.

Bob was not content with that ritual. He did not want to turn Elise into some sort of undead, or magical construct. He didn’t want to risk losing anything of what she was. He wanted to heal her, fully and completely.

 

And he never wanted to lose her ever again.

 

And so he activated the wider ritual.

 

The area grew bright once more as the ritual activated, light traveling along the formation's lines and curves. A surge of power exploded from the Blazing Dragon Flower. It formed a torrent of qi that flew first through Elise’s original body, and then into the second body Bob had prepared.

 

And then he activated the Mass Energy Manipulator once more.

 

“Profile Loaded: Xiong Huang.”

 

He did all he could to replicate Xiong Huang’s feat in the Battle for Earth, trying to form the flowing power into a bridge between the two bodies. He activated the Mental Unifier to the fullest, trying to connect Elise’s mind to the new body, and trying his best to help her manage the torrent of energy while she was still unconscious. He forcibly activated her new body’s improved Mass-Energy Manipulation array, using it to spread the power of the Blazing Dragon Flower throughout her body in a manner as close to a cultivation circuit as he knew how.

 

And he focused all his thoughts on the girl below him.

 

He wished with all his heart that she would be saved.

 

That he could protect her.

 

That he could tell her he loved her as much as she loved him, if not more.

 

There was a subtle flash within the glowing torrent as Bob’s intent slipped into it.

 

Eventually, after a moment that seemed an eternity, the torrent faded…

 

The Blazing Dragon Flower was gone.

 

Elise’s heartbeat finally stopped.

 

The Mental Unifier powered down, Bob’s suit no longer reading any signals from Elise’s old body, from either the organic or cybernetic halves.

 

Voidspeaker stopped chanting and the power of the void covered her head once more. Her old body crumbled away shortly afterwards, nothing left inside it to resist the void.

 

At that moment a grav-jet flew over the area. Aurora Legion leapt out before it even landed, rushing towards the center of the formation.

 

Arvid intercepted them, holding up a palm.

 

Chronolock was about to ignore him when she caught sight of Voidspeaker, unbound and unharmed. She continued to frown but the heroes paused for a moment.

 

Bob opened up his suit and leaped out of it, leaning over the metal cylinder.

 

The body’s skin was now filled with color, the heart now pumping blood.

 

He had succeeded in granting life to the tissue of the body through the powerful, life-giving qi of the Blazing Dragon Flower.

 

But was it Elise inside of it?

 

Was she truly alive?

 

He held his breath as the cybernetic core hummed to life. The robotic eye flickered and powered on. The girl slowly opened her organic eye.

 

She slowly leaned up out of the cylinder.

 

Her eyes then locked onto Bob.

 

Her mouth opened…

 

“Dad?”

 

Bob’s eyes filled with tears.

 

And he grabbed her in a hug.

 

“Thank goodness, you’re alive. I love you, Elise. Please, don’t leave me ever again.”

 

Elise paused for a moment at the sudden embrace. But then, she slowly wrapped her arms around Bob, forming a soft smile on her face.

 

“I love you too, Dad.”

 

Saydaa started to laugh as she wiped her eyes. Nana had tears streaming down her face as she fell to her knees. Kiyosuke turned away from everyone, covering his eyes as his shoulders shook. Arvid let out a hearty laugh, unashamed of the tears running down his cheeks.

 

Aurora Legion just stared with eyes wide. Voidspeaker gave them a thumbs up.

 

In that moment, they did not see the world’s greatest supervillain.

 

They did not see the assailant who kidnapped one of their own.

 

They did not see the mastermind behind everything.

 

They did not see a faceless minion.

 

They saw just a man, holding his daughter in his arms once more.

 

You better believe we’re bringing Elise back!  And buffing her!  Neither Bob nor I will ever let anything like this happen ever again!

So this arc went way shorter and faster than I expected.  Largely because the way I originally imagined it going didn’t actually make much sense when I started to actually write it and break it down, so a lot of plot lines ended up getting cut. 

First of all, I realized there is no hint of Bob in the public consciousness prior to this.  Because of that, the ‘big reveal’ comes off like a wacky conspiracy theory to the wider world and causes way less chaos than anticipated, as I determined when writing the GNN segment on the event.  Which meant no global panic, overt manhunts, or people turning on Londyn (in fact, revealing Bob only makes sense for Wilson’s plan if Londyn stays in command to go hunt him.  The ILS won’t really slow Bob down if it's in the middle of a power transition after all.).  And it’s not like Wilson was going to walk into court and start an actual trial or anything. So it ends up mostly just being Londyn and Arachnalich doing their own hunts behind the scenes and one argument with the Council.  I guess we could like have the police or the CIA or something catch up to him, but assuming I did give them a way to find Bob that Londyn doesn’t have, that just ends with Nemesis beating up a bunch of normal people.

Second, Bob is just smarter and more prepared than expected.  I was going to have him run around on foot, trying to dodge heroes and authorities while trying to escape…but why wouldn’t he just call that super-stealthy grav-jet he has before the authorities decide to act on some random conspiracy theory?  And I was going to make hunting down Wilson a multi-stage process with Bob also having to assault the CIA (fighting Tina’s Titans in the process) to determine Wilson’s identity and find clues to his plan.  But then I realized just knowing the guy has the Mester Stoor Worm Fang is already enough for Bob to start hunting for his location, and if he can find the guy’s location he doesn’t need to bother with the rest of it, and Bob being Bob would realize that and not go around openly attacking the US government for unnecessary information.  Way to ruin the fun, Bob!

I was also going to have Bob go off the deep end, doing a lot of villainous stuff in the desperate quest to save Elise, but turns out he didn’t really need to, and with the time machine had time to calm down and plan things out.  So things turned out much easier than expected all around.  Even the kidnapping Void thing is actually a favor to Londyn since Bob is technically a public supervillain at that point, so having Void help him ‘willingly’ would complicate things.  Come on Bob, do you want that villainous lead tag or not?

Third, the major players are all personally acquainted.  Londyn knows both Bob and Arachnalich personally, so they can resolve any misunderstandings fairly quickly.  Like I was going to have Bob on the run for longer, having him play hero and villain against each other several times, but turns out that method only works once since Londyn and Arachnalich can just talk things out after the first time.  And then I was going to have all the world mistake Bob’s attempt to save Elise for the original ritual, along with Londyn trying to save Voidspeaker, and so force a dramatic fight to buy time between Nemesis (powered up with ancient artifacts from the time heist) and a gauntlet of heroes and powerful beings, with some tense moments between the Nemesis and Aurora Legion/Nova Guardian members that know each other and are both trying to save their respective teammates.  But turns out that entire plot would have been based on a misunderstanding Bob can resolve with a single text to Londyn explaining the situation (and there was an entire earlier arc which was supposed to teach him to do exactly that) so it would require both of them acting out of character, stupidly, and in defiance of prior character growth to bring about.  And of course, there’s the question of why Bob wouldn’t just have Xiong Huang come and protect the ritual if someone is about to interrupt, which there is no good reason not to do now that he knows why he couldn’t contact her earlier.  So ultimately I preferred to just drop those plots entirely and maintain the characterization, so here we are.

Huh, so just talking things out like adults ahead of time stops a bunch of unnecessary (but cool) fights before they happen.  Who knew?

Soooo all in all, things went a lot quicker, a lot smoother, and with a lot less everything on fire than expected.  With a lot less dramatic but unnecessary fights.  I do have some ideas on how to adjust things if I want to reintroduce some of those plot lines but it does require so setup in prior arcs so that will have to wait for that mythical rewrite.  Besides, the arc being longer means more time with Elise in danger!  She's been gone for too long already!  Sadly Nemesis didn’t get a bunch of shiny legendary weapons stolen from the past after all.  Sorry everyone.  Looks like only Elise is getting power ups this time.

 

She is the favorite after all.

 

Anyways!

Will anyone other than Elise get power ups?  What will Bob do now that he’s saved Elise?  Can the power of cool fights overcome the power of just talking this out like adults?  Tune in next time, to find out!

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