Primate Typings

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Well, it’s Monday, again. Yay.

We’re going to have to build a new Base Omega. Base Omega would be our backup base of last resort. Unfortunately, we’re standing in our current Base Omega right now, since the rest of our bases were blown up. Not our best week.

For those keeping score, we fought State, Overclocked, Hope Titanson, Silver Spear, Goldfish, Living Goo, and Hammerstone. Those would be a handful of the many members of the Younglights, the superteam Record Holder belonged to. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume their attack was in retaliation for my murder of him a while back. No one every said that a supervillain’s life is an easy one.

Our reconstruction of events is pretty patchy. We lost too many people and too much property to do a proper after-action report. We know State and Hope caused most of our problems. His moniker is the Quantum Android. She’s a goddess/reality TV star. Instead of a wacky television show, his reality distorting powers and her ability to make miracles created a storm of power that enclosed our headquarters and fritzed out much of our equipment.

Overclocked was responsible for the destruction of our soul catchers. With security distracted by the reality storm, it wasn’t hard for the robot to rip through our facility at superspeed, knocking out sensitive equipment as he went. The soul catchers were the very first thing he hit, but I don’t think they were trying to ensure our people would stay dead if killed. That’s not really been the level of violence the Younglights practice. I think it was aimed at me. If they were running an operation to avenge Record Holder, then it would make sense to cut off all avenues for my escape. The stories about our soul catchers have been making the rounds, but I think that the Younglights didn’t realize that not only was I not connected to the soul catchers, I can never use them myself. I guess the history behind my powers isn’t as widely known as I thought.

While that damned robot trashed our stuff, Silver Spear, Goldfish, Living Goo, and Hammerstone chewed their way through the base, neutralizing our staff as they went. I finally concluded that the heroes had pulled us far enough off balance that the loss of the base was inevitable, and I called for an evacuation.

That would have worked fine, except Hope and State’s reality storm didn’t like our teleportation signals. The first wave to teleport out didn’t die, thankfully. Instead, the storm anticipated their arrival point and blew up that location. That’s how we lost our first backup base. It was a pretty big boom. Our teleportation system detected the newly created obstruction at the location and immediately routed them to the next emergency point. That’s how we lost our second backup base. The Teleportation system switched to the next and the next and the next, and then we were all out bases.

That’s excepting Base Omega. For paranoia’s sake, you cannot teleport to it. Turns out that is a handy feature for just this kind of screw up.

With our evacuation options reduced to escape by vehicles, it was clear that someone was going to have to stall the Younglights while everyone else scattered. So, I gathered up Bleach and the Elite Triad and headed out to do just that. To my surprise, Dr. Crankpot joined us. As old as he is, I wasn’t really expecting to want to mix it up with people four or five generations younger than himself. While we attended to that, I assigned D.O.C.T.O.R. to coordinate the evacuation. With everything else screwed up, his big AI brain was in the best position to maximize Technefarious’s flight.

The Younglights are good fighters. I have to give them that. None of the killing scenarios for them that I envisioned during our brawl were easy to implement. I’d get the upper hand over one of them, and one of the others would intervene. The flipside was that they couldn’t take us, either. The Elite’s capability in the fight wasn’t a surprise to me, but Dr. Crankpot’s was. The dude can scrap. Sure, he couldn’t match the Younglights in speed or power, but he had an endless stream of knick-knacks and gadgets to screw with them.

All of that was just a cover for Bleach. Hope and State’s reality storm was keeping our vehicles penned into our base, so they needed to be taken out. With their teammates occupied by us, Bleach could get close enough to them to drain their powers down enough to break to the storm.

The end of the storm meant our people could escape. It also meant that our equipment could hook back into our satellite network. D.O.C.T.O.R. analyzed the restored data stream and informed me that the reality storm had not gone unnoticed by the larger superhero community. The Establishment was dispatching the Executives to deal with the matter.

Their arrival would likely not go well for us, so we beat down the Younglights enough that we could disengage and ran. D.O.C.T.O.R. had held a drill sled for us. As we plunged into the Earth, he informed us that the Establishment had arrived. From there, it was every vehicle crew for themselves.

Only one-third of Technefarious arrived at Base Omega. I’m sure some of the missing are just lying low, and that others have decided this would be a good time to desert our organization. Worse, some died in the attack. There’s simply no way to prevent it in an assault that thorough, no matter how good the superheroes are at their job. The remainder (probably the majority) of the missing are probably sitting in jail cell or in a hospital, waiting for the local authorities to attend to them. Now we need to figure out how to rebuild and how to recover our people.

This is a setback, but the world will be ours. Have a good week, everyone.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend everyone.

The Fogurols invaded lasted week. They are aliens bent on conquering the Earth, requiring the superheroes and supervillains to band together drive them off, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, there are always a few casualties from this sort of thing. This time, the vigilante Pinnacle numbered among our dead.

“But wait,” you say, “wasn’t killing Pinnacle the focus of Project King of the Mountain? Are you trying to tell me they succeeded where our illustrious leader failed?”

First of all, “illustrious?” Suck up.

Second of all, no, I just want the rest of the world to think Pinnacle died during the latest world crisis, which was the plan all along. Considering his connections to the Board of Directors for the Establishment, it was safer for Technefarious if their attention wasn’t focused on wiping me out. I added enough trouble for us by killing Record Holder during my little safari.

So, having pissed off Pinnacle to the point where he would follow me into a trap to get at me, I then had to wait for a worldwide event to distract from our little fight. Those little dustups happen every couple of months on our Earth, so I didn’t expect to be holed up in my cave for too long.

Did I mention the trap was in a cave? Originally enchanted to hold the Thunder Beast’s Shadow long before humans tamed fire, Technefarious annexed the underground prison after the Shadow escaped in the 1960’s. We’ve augmented it over the years with psionic baffles and entropy stabilizers, creating a battleground that nullifies 99% of superpowers. It doesn’t work on me. My physical powers are expressed in my muscles and bones, and fields that cut off external power sources don’t affect those. The insights I get on how to kill anything are trickier to trace, but I’ve never found anything that can block them either.

Interestingly enough, all the power drainers we had at work were not perfectly suited to stripping Pinnacle of his powers either. Even within the cave, my special insights suggested scenarios that would require widely divergent responses on my part to finally bring him down. Frustratingly, my powers were vague on exactly what acts he could perform that wouldn’t be stopped by our fields. Superpowers are just a giant game of rock, paper, scissors sometimes.

Still, the dampening hampered him. That slick power armor he uses to enhance his strength and speed had to come off. As for his famed gadgets and utilities, the fields stripped away their battery power, turning half of them into so much junk. Sure, he still had his smoke bombs, submission sprays, and low ignition chemicals available, but it as a fair fight. After all, I had a knife.

Our battle lasted two hours and six minutes. I suffered seven broken bones, lost three teeth, and had my left ring finger cut off second knuckle. The knife I started with changed hands five times. I was glad when the fight finally finished, because by the end I really, really needed to pee.

After I patched myself up, I dressed Pinnacle in his armor, damaged it to match the injuries he had received during our fight, and then dumped his body in one of the battle sites with the Fogurols. The Establishment will find him there and assume he fell defending the planet. They’ll figure out the truth eventually, I’m sure, but by then, something else will have come along to distract most of the world’s superheroes from what I’d done.

Let’s hope that distraction is our successful enforcement of our rule over the world.

Have a good week everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway

The Killing Man

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend everyone.

After I killed his old sidekick Record Holder last week, Pinnacle finally decided to send someone to hunt me down. Something, anyway. I’m still not sure if it was a person or not.

The hero of Lowplain decided to begin by delivering a message to me by hacking into our computer network. Our firewall would have normally just blocked the attack, except it happened to come encrypted with D.O.C.T.O.R.’s personal communication codes. Naturally, the Elite Triad likes to keep an eye out for their creator, so it was held for their examination. Taking it apart, they found a longitude, a latitude, and Pinnacle’s signature.

It was a trap for me, but I’d already accepted that probability by taking the fight to him at the beginning of this project. The only question was how long I was going to wait before showing up. Should I try to take him by surprise by showing up quickly or let him stew while he waited around for me to show up? I focused on killing Pinnacle for some insights on which would be better, but my powers suggested no actions on the matter that would bring me closer to my goal. My curiosity piqued by this anomaly, I teleported to right away into the trap and nearly got my ass blown away.

The Collector Colossal, one of Pinnacle’s supervillains, likes to collect large machines. He’s particularly fond of death traps, and apparently had one that was triggered by incoming teleports. Luckily, my reflexes are well above average, and he had chosen rockets as the payload for this particular trap. I had planned on taking evasive maneuvers upon arrival anyway, so I was a good position to get out of the blast radius with nothing worse than getting bumped around when the shock wave hit me.

The Collector himself was not around. Pinnacle just borrowed one of his facilities to wear me down before our final confrontation. By “our” I mean myself and something dressed up as Pinnacle. After battling my way through a swarm of mechanical hornets, busting through a maze of mirrors filled with deadly lasers, and batting away nine innings worth of deadly baseballs (don’t ask), I faced off with my antagonist. He was built like Pinnacle, moved like the superhero, and even fought like him. However, I knew killing him would not result in Pinnacle’s death. I wondered if this was a robot or an android or a homunculus but decided it did not really matter.

Our fight was strenuous, rolling through a factory line for poisonous pies, a deadly dark ride, and ending in a bowling alley of doom. I used the OSHA unapproved super-fast ball return system to sever the doppelganger’s hand and pinned his shoe to the ground to keep him from wandering away while I explained to him what was going to happen next. I was going to leave him alive so he could pass a message along to his master. The next time, Pinnacle had better face me himself or I would switch to killing my way through his associates. I would deliver the time and place to the hero at the address he had sent his message from.

The science and propaganda department will provide this week’s special event at headquarters. Apparently their mass mesmerizing machine has entered its beta stage, and they’re ready to try it on a large audience. They promise it will provide a unique entertainment experience for the audience. I won’t be participating. I need to go prepare my own trap for Pinnacle. Try not to become lobotomized zombies while I’m gone.

Before I pack, I thought you all might like to know that the Golden Web sent their latest package in our weird exchange of junk. They sent me a light bulb certified to have been in CBGB’s bathroom in the late 70’s. I’m afraid to touch it. Lord knows what it’s carrying. I am curious how it was officially certified, though.

Have a good week everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway

The Killing Man

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend everyone.

My pursuit of the superhero Pinnacle has extended into yet another week. Our intelligence tells me that he’s been active in the city Lowplain while I’ve been here, but he still hasn’t sought me out. I’ve been pretty public in my search for Pinnacle, but you wouldn’t know that from his lack of response. It’s technically possible that he’s been dropping hints in order to lure me into a trap and I just haven’t noticed. However, he is used to dealing with far dimmer supervillains than me, and it’s not like I would avoid walking into a trap at this point even if he made it really, really obvious.

Unfortunately, I did cross a line yesterday that I think will draw a more direct response from him. Well, crossing it wasn’t actually unfortunate; I just got to it more quickly than I had planned to. Instead, I had intended to spend this week teaming up with one of Lowplain’s local supervillains and helping them out with the caper of their choice. To that end, I approached Missy Poodle, Crime’s Best Friend. She was hesitant to accept my assistance. We’d never been at odds, but her crimes tend not to require a cold-blooded killer for their execution. We were discussing the exact nature of my utility when our negotiations were interrupted.

Record Holder was Pinnacle’s kid sidekick years ago. I strongly frown upon hurting underage superheroes and avoid it when I can. Luckily Record hasn’t been a kid for years. He was also very energetic in his delivery of his objections to my visit to his city. My three broken ribs, pulverized knee, and chipped tooth suggest that he holds the records he’s named after honestly. Of course, my own name is every bit as accurate. He won’t ever add world oldest living man to his titles now.

Unless he comes back from the dead, that is. He’s a superhero, so he probably will. Still, he’ll have to die at my hand a few more times to make that a record. The current leader is Bad Penny. I’ve had to kill him five times, so far. Dude hates me.

I’m told that while I’m gone this week, I will miss our annual ice sculpture contest.  Frigid will judge, as she is ineligible to participate for obvious reasons. I want to remind everyone that Frigid has full authority to deal with any sabotage against your opponents that annoys her. Anything that doesn’t annoy her is, of course, fair game.

Have a good week everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway

The Killing Man