Primate Typings

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend, everyone.

I know the last week was a long one, but I want to thank everyone for all the hard work they did. The loss of so many of our people set all us back on our heels, but it was nice that we could all pull together to finish the memorial garden for Frigid and Extraction Team C. I was particularly touched by the turnout for the dedication ceremony. Again, thank you all.

If you haven’t seen Dr. Crankpot or D.O.C.T.O.R. since then, it is because I put them under restrictions since memorial service. Dr. Crankpot’s speech that the operation that killed our friends would have gone differently if he had been in charge was in poor taste, I thought. Doubly so considering what was the acceptable casualty rate when he founded Technefarious decades ago. Still, I felt killing him would be excessive, so instead I locked him in his suite for a few days.

D.O.C.T.O.R.’s behavior was a bit more sinister. The subliminal messages criticizing me that he piped through sound system during the dedication ceremony did not go unnoticed. I realize he is as eager as Crankpot to be put back in charge, but there’s a time and place to try to undermine me. I restricted his voice circuits to work only through the speakers in the men’s bathroom off the main lobby as his punishment.

I know “Being a Supervillain Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry” makes a great bumpersticker, but it’s no way to actually run an organization.

I’ll release them both back into general circulation later this week.

There are no immediate plans to plunge into another world-conquering project. We paid a high price for the Metalhead’s treasure horde, so we’re going to sit down and catalogue everything we acquired first. There were plenty of gold and jewels, of course, but there was also cash from fifty different countries, government bonds, and even some stocks. Our cybernetic dragon really was a creature of today. It’s going to take our financial department a while to sort it all out and laundry it.

The occult department has plenty of new magical artifacts to keep them busy. The Bucket was not the only one Metalhead was sitting on. While their working on those, the assault teams and the computer department are going over his base and securing all his traps. I don’t intend to lose anyone else to that place by accident. All of that ties up enough of our resources that there is no sense in trying to start something else right now.

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.

With previous Technefarious leaders Dr. Crankpot and D.O.C.T.O.R. hanging around the home base again, it feels like old times. Unfortunately, those old times seemed to have extended into our operations. The list of dead from Project Bucket Run is longer than I want to include here. A permanent memorial I commissioned for them will be placed in the courtyard once it is complete.

Project Bucket Run was supposed to be a simple assault, steal, and retreat operation. Ruffle some feathers, do some property damage, take what we came for, and get out. Instead, after three days, only three of us survived.

We were just trying to steal the Bucket of Pure Water, a magical object that would be useful for some of our other projects. We had received a tip that it was among the horde of the dragon Metalhead. Our intelligence indicated that he was not a natural dragon, but one cursed into the shape of dragon by his excessive greed. Driven by their favorite vice, greed dragons are not noted for their excessive intelligence. Unlike the natural fire-breathers, their monomania can be used to trick or distract them during negotiations and battle. They don’t have much use for sacrificial virgins, but gold is something they really like.

We missed the fact that Metalhead wasn’t a normal victim of such a curse. He used to be a petty criminal. After an accident, most of his body was replaced by cybernetic parts, including three-fourths of his brain. It wasn’t our handiwork; we aren’t the only practitioners of superscience in the world. With his enhancements, his inorganic brain left Metalhead capable of plotting even after his dragon-cursed organic brain was crippled with greed.

He used that awareness to build himself one of the deadliest lairs I have ever been in, and my supervillain moniker is the Killing Man. Our initial penetration of his perimeter went smoothly. About halfway to his treasure trove, everything shifted. The after-action report from Extraction Teams A and B suggests that the lair itself teleported to another location. On the inside, our team suffered a sense of disorientation and then were attacked. Of course, between Frigid, Bleach, Elite Beta, Elite Gamma, the heavily armed Extraction Team C, and myself, we destroyed the laser turrets, giant robots, and miniature helicopters that jumped us. From there, we had just enough time to patch ourselves up and determine that our communicators weren’t working before we got attacked again. This time, our attackers were lava-spitting stone centipedes, gremlin cannons, and flying swords. Immediately after we finished with those came the poison ghosts, flaming zombies, and mobile ballista.

For seventy-two hours we fought. When we ran, acid pits, storms of explosive arrows, and crushing walls sprung up around us. When we stood our ground, wave after wave monsters and robots wielding every type of weapon and enchantment came at us.

Remember a couple of months ago how easily I penetrated the SuperMaxed prison they were keeping Bleach in? Well, those weaknesses existed because of the necessities of moving things in and out of the prison. Sustained by his curse, Metalhead could cover those gaps and create a setup to hammer any intruder into paste. Interlocking fields of magic and technology stopped our unblockable communication systems and cut us of from the Soul Catchers back at our home base. We didn’t realize the latter. The full cost of the mess we were in did not catch up to us until after we had finally conquered the facility.

I want to pause here to offer a special remembrance for Frigid. We lost her on the second day. Half of the Extraction Team were dead by that point, and Elite Beta had been reduced to his memory drive. The walls of the hanger we were crossing had turned into one giant heating element, dumping a punishing amount of radiation into us. Frigid’s endothermic powers blunted its effects but took far too much of her concentration. When the energy eagles dove into the room, she wasn’t able to avoid their claws. Injured, she reached out with her powers to a dangerous degree, drawing the radiation and the eagles to her like moths to a bug zapper. My powers tipped me off to what the end result of that would be. She wouldn’t let me stop her, and her command, Bleach suckered me with his powers and dragged me from the hanger. When we had reached a safer location he restored me, but it was too late to save her. In expressing my displeasure with the sequence of events, I may have gestured at Bleach too intently with a sharp implement, causing him to dash off into the next trap. We saved him, but I’ll admit that my reaction to Frigid’s death made that more complicated than it needed to be.

By the time we finally confronted Metalhead, only Bleach, one member of Extraction Team C (Rick), and myself remained. Compared to the effort it took to reach him, it wasn’t much of a fight. I had Bleach and Rick stash themselves safely and called upon our sadistic host myself. It wasn’t the first time I’ve gone dragon slaying.

The Bucket and the rest of Metalhead’s treasure are ours. So is his lair. If you ask me, though, we paid too high a price for a mere dragon’s horde.

At times like this, I like to remember that our real goal will put us in a position where we can keep this kind of thing from happening. Our fallen will not have died in vain.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man

From the Desk of the Dictator:

I know I gave his eulogy a few days ago, but I want to spend a bit more time remembering Saber-Cat here.

When I first joined Technefarious, Saber-Cat spent six weeks trying to kill me.

At this point, I’ve been associated with our criminal enterprise long enough that people think of me more as The Killing Man: That Guy From Technefarious than anything else. Back then, I still best known for killing the Titanium Android. Not constrained by the limitations of merely biological body, the Titanium Android relentlessly patrolled the Earth, saving lives of every sort. He was so dedicated to preserving life that he declined to kill those villains he fought that the rest of the world would dispose of in a flat second.

Saber-Cat had fought the Titanium Android three times over the years. Twice, he fought the Android to a standstill and then escaped. The third time ended with a short stint in prison for Saber, which Technefarious extracted him from.

Despite his association with us, Saber-Cat was not so much of a criminal as an immortal furry man with a Sabertooth tiger’s head whose ancient sense of morality is out of step with the modern world. The illegality of jaywalking made no sense to him, and the concept of sitting through a red light when no one was else was coming struck him as insane. His willingness to fight and disdain for the finer points of modern bureaucracy made Technefarious a good fit for him, but he was certainly capable of appreciating the good that Titanium Android did for the world.

As such, he was less than appreciative of the invitation Dr. Occultomancer made to the superhero’s killer to join Technefarious’s ranks. Saber wasn’t able to talk Occult into rescinding his offer, so the big cat-man decided to address his discomfort with the situation by killing me. He was perfectly aboveboard with intentions, challenging me to a duel to the death. I declined, since I didn’t feel any particular need to kill him. He persisted, so I negotiated a different set of terms. We would fight. If he surrendered, I could stay. If I surrendered, I would have to leave. If one of us happened to die during the fight, so be it.

We met that evening in one of the Technefarious’s gyms, before an audience made up mostly of Saber’s friends on the staff. Dr. Occultomancer tried to talk us out of it, but neither Saber-Cat nor I are exactly slavish in obeying orders. After Occult retired to his seat in annoyance, Saber-Cat and I faced off. Saber was armed with that magic saber he loved so much, while I brought in a sword so I had a blade to match against his. It was just a regular sword and perfectly incapable of killing the furry idiot, which I confirmed every night for six weeks by maiming him to the point where he couldn’t actually continue the fight. He got stabbed through the heart, had his eyes ripped out, and limbs severed. My favorite evening was the one where I decapitated him and he spent fifteen minutes cursing at me until his tongue got too dry to speak clearly anymore. He still refused to surrender though. He was immortal and saw no reason the temporary inconvenience of a lack of body parts to declare the fight over.

I’m underselling Saber-Cat’s fighting skills with that last paragraph. He had millennia of combat experience under his belt and none of our fights lasted less than an hour. I just happen to be really, really dangerous myself. After it was clear that a single round wasn’t going to resolve the issue, Dr. Occultomancer declared that we could only continue our fight after the workday. For six weeks, we were the star event of Technefarious’s evenings. Saber couldn’t beat me, and I refused to walk away.

The last night, I waited patiently across our battlefield from Saber-Cat for sixty minutes. He stood the entire time with his resting on the hilt of his saber, its tip dug into the ground, watching me through slitted eyelids. At the end of that hour, he placed his blade on the ground, then walked over and knelt before me. That was the last time we crossed swords.

Well, with actual swords anyway. He never hesitated to tell me off when he thought I was wrong, even after I took over Technefarious.

Our occult department tells me they think there was some sort of magical interference with our attempt to rescue him after the failure of Operation Carved Branch. When possible, the Establishment likes to teleport its superpowered prisoners when it needs to move them from one place to another. There have been so many escapes and rescues during transit when their prisoners are moved the regular way that the expense of teleportation is worth it when the superpowers involved don’t make it too risky. The interruption of the power containment they have to use on Frigid and Bleach if they were teleported means they will have to be moved over land. Saber-Cat, with his purely physical powers, was a perfect candidate for teleporting. Technefarious has been sitting on a scheme to intercept an Establishment teleportation signal for some time now, and this seemed like a reasonable time to tip our hand on that. The worst that our attempt should have resulted in was causing enough interference to bounce him back to his original teleportation pad. Instead, our attempt to steal the signal scattered him across half the world.

When our science department reported that, I knew he was dead this time, just like I knew my sword couldn’t kill him back when I fought him. Because of his powers, we could never hook him into our soul catchers, but I had our occult department try to retrieve him anyways. They could only confirm that his soul had indeed passed to the other side.

Goodbye, Saber-Cat. You will be missed.

Your Leader,

Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend everyone.

We have some work ahead of us this week. Plotting three prison breaks from maximum security should be enough to keep all of Technefarious out of trouble. Well, relatively out of trouble. I’m just saying we’ll be too busy to secure our rule over the world.

We’re following up Operation Carved Branch with Operation Wrong Side of the Bars, since the former turned into such of fiasco. For those of you that weren’t in on the briefing for Carved Branch, it involved entering the home base of the Danger People and stealing White Staff’s white staff. Its use for years as a focus for combat magic made it the perfect channel for Project Cracked Foundation.

Despite their name, the Danger People are not most dangerous superheroes on the planet. For what should have been a simple home invasion, a small group consisting of Frigid, Bleach, Saber-Cat, and the Elite Triad’s Gamma body could handle any resistance the heroes could put up. In fact, it wouldn’t even be that hard for White Staff to replace the staff, so we weren’t even expecting too much follow-up harassment if we succeeded.

Unfortunately, our crew walked into the middle of someone else’s attack on the Danger People. The initial insertion into the base went smoothly enough, aside from an elevated amount of tension among the biological members of the team. Elite has been beating themselves up for not noticing the discrepancy from such an experienced group, but I hardly call an extra bit of nervousness at the beginning of a mission a big tipoff.

Elite reported that inside the building it was unusually quiet. Passive scans picked up background signs of life, but no recreational noise, i.e. music, television, banging around the kitchen, having sex.  By the time they had moved deep enough into the facility to wonder about the quiet, the Shudders had already cut off our people’s retreat.

Shudders are inky shadow creatures of extra-dimensional evil in the service of the Fear Carrier, a longtime enemy of the Danger People. The Fear Carrier had already attacked their base and was still in the process of rounding up all the heroes when we went in. The communications jamming the Carrier radiated went unnoticed by the Technefarious crew who were observing radio silence for the initial part of the operation. The Shudders had no orders to keep people out, so they waited until our people were far enough and then attacked them. They captured Saber-Cat in their initial attack, but Bleach’s power draining attacks stymied their attempts to bring down the other three. Unfortunately, the only line of retreat was further into the building.

Frigid gave orders that escape was the new objective of the mission, which when is when they discovered the jamming. They also discovered Stewpot of the Danger People hiding from the Shudders. They immediately arranged a temporary truce and discovered that Stewpot had managed to get a distress call out to the Establishment before the Fear Carrier cut the base off. That was certainly mixed news for our crew, but Frigid decided that prison time was preferable to hoping an understanding could be reached with the Carrier. Elite’s records reveal the flesh and blood people were showing extreme emotional disturbance at this point, probably due to the proximity of the Carrier, but I applaud Frigid arriving at a rational decision under those circumstances.

The exact record of events becomes confused at the point. Elite was captured and damaged by the Shudders. They awoke to find Frigid pleading Technefarious’s case in front of Fear Carrier itself. Saber-Cat chimed his support, much to the disgust of the members of the Danger People being held prisoner around the room. Elite noted at this point that neither Stewpot nor Bleach seemed to be part of the collection. Frigid’s offers fell upon deaf ears as the Carrier accused them of being part of the Establishment forces now besieging the base.

The Fear Carrier was preparing to kill Frigid and throw her body outside as a warning when three Shudders came into the room, dragging Stewpot behind them. Carrier was delighted to complete its collection the Danger People and took a minute to gloat over its success.

Now I know we’ve discussed this. When do we gloat? After our opponent is dead, and we’re safely back home.

While it gloated, the Carrier failed to notice two of the Shudders split off from Stewpot and begin undoing the bonds holding the Danger People. Shadow Sally and Night Ink from the Establishment’s forces had snuck through the Shudder’s line of defense to try and find the Danger People. They found Stewpot and Bleach, the latter not more than a shadow himself after draining over two dozen Shudders down to the dregs of their power. Together, they hatched a plan to get close to Fear Carrier and his prisoners by pretending to be Shudders bringing Stewpot to him. When Carrier finally noticed its prisoners being freed, Stewpot and Bleach struck, knocking the monster back on its heels. From there, the combined forces of Technefarious, the Danger People, and the Establishment disrupted the Fear Carrier’s hold on the base and drove him and his minions back to the black dimension they call home.

With the Carrier gone, our crew was left outnumbered in the room and outnumbered even more by fresh enemies outside the building, none of whom were happy to see them. The Elite Triad quietly informed that Frigid that the Establishment’s own countermeasures outside the facility were still blocking teleportation, but not the Technefarious communication lines. Frigid ordered the Triad to escape and then offered her surrender on the behalf of the rest of the group. The Elite were not happy to go, but dutifully set its body to melt into slag and downloaded themselves back to the base.

I took the Elite Triad’s report and denied its request to immediately go to the rescue. There was an extraction team ready to go, but they weren’t heavy enough to go toe to toe with an Establishment strike force that was ready for a fight. A jailbreak or three would be much easier.

Speaking of which, I’m going to go back to planning those now.

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

From the Desk of the Dictator:

Welcome back from your weekend everyone.

Frigid and I had a long talk before I wrote this post, and I ran the final draft past her before I put it up. She’s still more than a little irritated with me, but she said there’s enough rumors floating around about why things went down they way they did that an accurate explanation won’t upset her more than the rumors.

We wrapped up Project Cut Flowers last week, and it didn’t end as most of you expected. My apologies for that, but operation security required keeping this one close until I was ready to implement it.

As Suncloud personnel massed to attack our skyship, the Dimension Projector began its final countdown. The Projector is an ugly piece of business. It takes everything in its field of fire, disconnects it from its home universe, and throws it away. At the range we were at, it would take out the entire Suncloud and anything attached to it and turn them into a bit of flotsam bobbing in the reality streams between the universes.

I clapped Pipewrench on the back to get his attention as he gave orders to repulse the Suncloud’s assault. He turned on me in irritation then collapsed as the Incapacity Restraint I had slapped on him coursed through his body. It’s a useful little gadget if you don’t have to worry about your prisoner walking on their own feet or answering questions. With Pipewrench safely out of the command loop, I issued my own orders for Technefarious staff to teleport away, starting with those attending to the Projector and finishing with those holding off the Suncloud’s forces.

I stayed behind, waiting for the countdown to get closer to zero. I wasn’t really expecting anyone from the floating island to get to the command center in time to shut it down, but I also didn’t want to take that chance. We have enough enemies on this planet without squaring away an opportunity to get some of them off of it.

That’s when Pipewrench surprised me by talking. I’m still impressed by that. The Incapacity Restraint is pretty hefty piece of technology, and he had started to work around it in just minutes with no tools handy. He was curious about what I was up to. Well, curious understates his intensity. Sufficient to say, despite the effort it took him to gasp his words, he still took the time to pepper his questions with cursing. He couched his question in the form of an accusation, but I felt he deserved an answer.

I told him I had offered the Positronic Ghost a part in Project Cut Flower in exchange for money. The Ghost declined, citing Pipewrench’s involvement with the project. This struck me as curious. Certainly, Technefarious has its share of bad blood among its former employees, but it’s at rate far lower than most villainous organizations, even after factoring in the number that have personally died by my hands. It seems sometime before I joined the organization, Pipewrench had decided the personal limits of Frigid’s chosen moniker. This was unwise, as Frigid’s powers are well balanced between offense and defense. Pipewrench survived the experience, but there were rumors about it even back then. The Positronic Ghost’s vices include recreational snooping, and he happened to catch the event firsthand. When I asked about his distaste for Pipewrench, he shared this bit of history with me.

Although it was before my time, I still frown strongly on criminal activity practiced on fellow members of Technefarious. I have, in fact, slain henchmen for the inability to get along with their fellows. Nevertheless, I am not a hasty man, so I approached Frigid to discuss the matter. She was not pleased with me for bringing up her past with Pipewrench, but as my second-in-command, she has a significant say in our organization. Unaware of their history, I had agreed to set up Project Cut Flowers for him without consulting her. She saw through my soft selling and told me that if she wanted Pipewrench dead, she would have done herself. Furthermore, she then forbade me to kill Pipewrench on her behalf.

My hands tied, I proceeded with Project Cut Flowers as quickly as I could. Despite how irritating I found working with Pipewrench, he never presented an excuse to dispose of him. His use of Technefarious would even ensure he’d succeed in his efforts to send his former countrymen of the Suncloud adrift in the multiverse. Our contract, however, did not say whether or not Pipewrench would accompany them on the journey. After modifying his designs in our drive to save time, my staff had pointed out to me that if certain safeguards were removed, the Dimension Projector would end up traveling with its target, lost among the worlds. Before we had launched the attack, I had made sure those safeguards were removed.

In pain-filled grunts, Pipewrench told me he’d kill me himself. The countdown was almost complete by then, but I took a moment to answer him with some satisfaction that I certainly hope he tried as I was fairly certain Frigid would forgive me for self-defense. Then I allowed our teleportation teams to rescue me from the doomed vessel.

Satellite imagery indicates the skyship with the Dimension Projector disappeared from the Earth the same time as the Suncloud.

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 to everyone.

This week we’re doing a test run on Pipewrench’s Dimension Projector. We’ve had to modify it from his original design. The destruction of his earlier build and my desire to wrap up this project means we’ve reduced the amount of automation needed to run the machine. However, that also means we’ll need more personnel to run the equipment. Throw in the assault and extraction teams I intend to bring along, and that calls for making a few shakedown flights before our attack.

I also want to take a moment to remind everyone that although this is Pipewrench’s project, I’m the one in charge. I would also like to remind Pipewrench that while I don’t arbitrarily kill my staff, I still find myself having to execute individual Technefarious employees on a regular basis.

Its overeager creator aside, the Dimension Projector is a slick piece of work. At its core is a Galaticguard Wrist Armory wired to the cutting from the Suncloud’s floating vine and enough Travel Apples to filled a garbage can. Flowing through that unnatural heart are arteries flowing with Cosmic Kinetic Fluid and Essence of the Southern Lights. It should have quite a kick when fired. I certainly wouldn’t want to be standing in front of it when it goes off. Once we have it in the air, we’re going to fire it on its lowest charge to see what happens.

We’ll also be testing the cloaking capabilities of the invisibility mist we collected. If it works against Technefarious sensors, it should hold up against those our target deploys.

For those of you not involved in Project Cut Flower, Frigid is going around this week collecting updates on the progress of some of our other projects. When we have this wrapped up, I have to make a decision on what we’re going to concentrate on next.

This week our propaganda department has decided to inflict culture on us. There will be a performance by some opera singers in Auditorium A on Wednesday if you’re interested. I’m not sure why they’re bothering. There hasn’t been a decent opera riot in ages.

Listen, nobody tell Green Needle about the opera singers, all right? She’d probably make me wear a tux.

In any event, I thought you all might like to know that another package arrived from our enemies at the Golden Web. It was an electronic pocket calculator from the 1970’s. It is still in its original packaging. Nine-volt battery sold separately. I’m going to have to consider our response.

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