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