From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Defeating a Madman

Dr. Vahzilok was mad. Not stark raving or insanely mad... he was angry. Throughout his long life, he had dealt with many threats to his lifestyle and experiments. The Paragon Police Department? Mere toys and overworked peons. The American government? Easily bought off or intimidated. Vanguard? They had bigger fish to fry. Other vigilantes were dead or teleported away in defeat; there were too many of those unlucky souls to count.

Until now, he had not met anyone who had the guts and means to stand up to him directly. That was until he saw this vigilante... this hero... dressed in a futuristic armor suit. She stood over the last of his animated creations in this section of the Paragon sewers; a residual electric charge danced over the once-reanimated corpse.

"You will not halt my experiments," he said gravely. "I cannot be stopped. Too many lives depend upon my research!"

The female hero responded by shaking the water, blood, and formaldehyde off of her gloves and trenchcoat. Ms. Shock had heard that Dr. Vazhilok was crazy... a genius, perhaps, but still crazy. The Paragon Police Department had put a warrant out for his arrest; she was going to serve that warrant whether he liked it or not.

"Dr. Vahzilok, the PPD has a warrant out for your arrest," she replied. "They don't care what condition you're in, as long as you're alive. So I'm gonna take you in." She flexed her fingers; electricity danced between her fingers and coalesced into a pair of electric spheres. "You get to choose how. Easy, or hard."

The insane doctor stood to his full height, nearly ten feet tall. Gears and mechanical servos whirred into motion; armor plating retracted from various parts of his body to reveal concealed weaponry. Ms. Shock felt her blood chill.

"Hard," was Dr. Vahzilok's response. That one word was punctuated by the sound of a minigun spinning up. Ms. Shock loosed a bolt of lightning and dove to the left. She didn't see her attack hit; the flash of the minigun firing distracted her. Streams of bullets and tracers followed her body as she hit the ground behind a pipe juncture. Ms. Shock rolled up to her feet as bullets tore through the brick and metal.

She had to move fast. That minigun was mounted on Dr. Vahzilok's left arm; it could aim in a wide arc, but it had its limitations... that arc of fire was limited, the barrels could melt from overusage, the ammunition feed...

Ms. Shock leapt from behind her cover; her rocket boots boosted her into the air above the stench and water below. Dr. Vahzilok looked up and began to train his minigun towards her, but he was too slow to react. Lightning flashed past the minigun and hit the exposed ammunition belt. The belt fell apart, and the insane doctor's attack ended way too quickly.

Unfortunately for Ms. Shock, she caught a few bullets from that final burst. Most of them hit her chestplate only to bounce off or implant themselves inside the armor's ceramic and energy-dispersing gel layers. One of the bullets tore through an unprotected joint on her right shoulder. She screamed in pain as she twirled to the ground and landed hard.

Bollocks! Ms. Shock rose to her feet; the nanotechnology in her armor was already working to close the wound and dissolve the bullet, but it still hurt like hell. Dr. Vahzilok was moving towards her, walking heavily on the brick and mortar of the sewers.

"Insolent girl! You can not stop my rise to immortality!" Ms. Shock heard her cyborg opponent charge towards her, followed by the sound of gears and servos pulling the doctor's right leg back for a massive kick. "I will use your broken body to rebuild my army!" The massive cybernetic leg swung forward...

Ms. Shock flew straight up rapidly, avoiding the kick meant for her. As Dr. Vahzilok leaned forward she turned her rocket boots off and tilted forward; the electromagnetic repulsors in her suit let her stay airborne as she moved into position behind the insane villain. Electricity erupted along her forearms, flew into Dr. Vahzilok's back, and knocked him down.

Ms. Shock moved away for a few seconds as the doctor rose to his feet. She fired a couple more lightning bolts to slow him down further. Still, Dr. Vahzilok rose to his feet as sparks flew from his injuries.

"Forget it, girl," Dr. Vahzilok hissed. "Your efforts are all for naught. Everyone who stood against me have become Eidolons in my army. What makes you think you're any different?" Dr. Vahzilok stepped forward and ended up right back in the murky sewer water.

That's it! Ms. Shock charged up for one final blast. Gotta make this count, Christina, she told herself. Dr. Vahzilok was not impressed. "Fool! You will die alone and forgotten!" Panels of armor flew off of the cyborg's chest to reveal six grenade launchers. "Good-bye, Ms. Shock!!!"

Christina cut power to her rocket boots and dropped like a stone. At the last second, her suit stopped her fall, and raw electric power flowed from her hands and into the water. Instantly, the entire sewer compartment became a lightning rod. Electricity raged throughout the structure, burst pipes and valves, and flowed through the water right into Dr. Vahzilok's cybernetic body. The massive cyborg shuddered and sparked as his internal systems failed all at once.

When the massive storm of energy cleared, Ms. Shock was on her knees, her armor suit completely drained. Dr. Vahzilok was still standing but immobile. His still organic head twitched uncontrollably from the residual voltage coursing though his body. Ms. Shock rose to her feet and walked towards her opponent.

"What makes me different?" she asked as she approached. "Simple. I fight for the living, not the dead. You never let go of the ones you lost; that was your undoing." She pulled out a teleporter beacon and slapped it on Dr. Vahzilok's still body. With that done, she turned away and activated her police radio.

"PPD Dispatch, this is Ms. Shock, requesting immediate extraction, over."

"Ms. Shock, this is Dispatch. Authenticate yourself, over."

"Authenticate: X-Ray Charlie Four Two Kilo, clearance level One Six. Confirm, over." A few seconds passed before the radio crackled back to life.

"Clearance confirmed. You are number 25 awaiting teleportation, over."

"Roger, out." Ms. Shock turned back to Dr. Vahzilok; he seemed more coherent now, but he still couldn't move. He wasn't done talking, however.

"I know everything there is to know about you, hero," he began. Ms. Shock winced visibly in disgust at that statement. "But there is one thing that is still unrevealed to me. You speak of loss because you have experienced it yourself. Yet you choose not to mourn. Why?"

"I've mourned enough," Ms. Shock responded. "Life isn't about the past, it's about the present."

"What if I told you your brother was still alive?" the insane cyborg asked.

Ms. Shock felt herself twitch in anger. "My brother is dead. I saw his body. Not even Paragon's finest could save him," she said dismissively.

"I am Paragon's finest doctor!" Dr. Vahzilok responded. "If he were dead, I could bring him back!"

Christina shook her head. He was defeated, a broken hulk of metal. He was just trying to make her angry, and he was succeeding. "No," she spat. "You will do no such thing to anyone else... ever. You will spend the rest of your days in prison with your insane delusions of glory." Ms. Shock turned around and walked away.

"Your brother is alive, hero. Maybe you will see him again, maybe you will not. It matters not to me. But I can help you find him," he said again. Ms. Shock looked back at her defeated opponent with a piercing gaze. His speech pattern had changed. Dr. Vahzilok sounded practically sane now, completely unlike the raving lunatic he was presumed to be.

Sane or insane? It makes no difference, Ms. Shock thought. He is still a liar. By now, her suit had recharged enough to generate an electrical blast; the required electricity danced along her arms almost reflexively. "Shut up, villain," she whispered.

"You've been looking for him for how long now? Five years?" The electric charge dancing over Ms. Shock's Exo-Storm armor grew in strength. "You would do anything to see him again... you would fight your way through Hell itself. Wouldn't you?" Dr. Vahzilok smiled to himself as Ms. Shock began to light up like the proverbial Christmas tree.

Ms. Shock turned back to her quarry. "I thought I told you to shut your mouth," she told him angrily. "My brother is dead. He's not coming back. I will hear no more of your lies!"

"Humor me, for once," the insane cyborg responded. "A few members of my organization frequent the nightclub known as Pocket D. One of them, a Russian if I recall, has the information I speak of. He will give it to you willingly... but only if you ask for it."

Ms. Shock's armor color suddenly switched from blue to red. She leaped forward and flew towards the paralyzed cyborg; her visible eye revealed a bottled up anger that finally broke through to the surface like an erupting volcano. Red light pulsed from her fists as she charged forward and screamed in rage. Ms. Shock reached her target and swung one mighty fist into the cyborg---

--- and hit nothing but air.

"Woah!" A teleporter technician cried out in surprise and fell backwards, away from the angry hero. Ms. Shock found herself floating inside a teleporter enclosure, which in turn was inside the local Paragon Police Department precinct building. Dr. Vahzilok was gone, sent to his own personal high-security cell. She settled down on the teleporter pad and took a few deep breaths.

The precinct commander walked in a few seconds later. "I just heard the report. Well done, Ms. Shock! I assume that Dr. Vahzilok is alive and well, yes?"

Ms. Shock gave the police commander an angry look, even though this policeman was not the target of her anger. She took off her rebreather mask and took another breath of fresh air before speaking again. "He'll live... unlike those inhuman creations of his."

--XC-42K 11:20, 15 December 2007 (MST)