(Two years later)
You rise from bed feeling, well, not great, on the one hand it's the first time you've slept in your own bed since you and Adamant got back from the Yellowstone mess and it's a relief to put that behind you.
On the other… last night was a shit show, there was a house fire which spread across almost the entire street, a nasty car crash, and to top it all off someone prank called you, saying that Fire had been seen eating parked cars in full crocodile form at 1AM and you'd had to check that out in case it was real.
Needless to say, as you rise from your very comfortable bed and groggily look around your newspaper filled room there is a certain desire to return to your slumber.
Pushing it down you get up from your bed, take a quick shower, remind yourself to pick Preston up from the Doggy Daycare by noon in your diary for a fifth time, and make sure you look appropriately human in the mirror before dressing and wandering over your room's door to make yourself a cup of morning coffee.
With the press of a button the blast door to your room slides open as you walk down the dark hallway to the kitchen, navigating with cat-like eyes before pushing impatiently pushing open the kitchen door, only to be surprised when light pours
through the opening door.
The light hits your unprepared eyes like a needle, taking your night adapted eyes a brief moment to catch up to what your ears are telling you as they switch color.
Adamant, Frank when he's out of costume like he is right now, is sitting at the kitchen table and listening to music, half asleep, as he waits for the machine to finish two cups of coffee.
"Good morning." You mumble, making a beeline for the coffee and staring down at the timer as it slowly ticks toward completion.
"Oh, good morning to you too." He replies, rousing himself as you walk into the room. "Before you ask, things have been quiet… too quiet." You groan at the joke before being distracted as the coffee finishes with a little ding.
He chuckles as he floats over the coffee and takes a cup. "But seriously, everything has cooled off now that we're back, there's just one little thing we need to do first." he says, his tone growing more serious as he speaks.
You raise an eyebrow, "Really? What?" You ask, trying to recall anything you'd have to do aside from your more general duties and coming up short.
"Don't tell you've forgotten," he says, the smile on his face dying as you find something very interesting on the floor, your face flushed. "Oh, Chim, I'm sorry, I shouldn't joke about that." You wave him off as he apologizes. "Nevermind that, what did I forget?"
"Well…" he says, suddenly a little nervous, "I wanted you to know how much I care about you, and to thank you for all the help you've given me since we met, so, with that in mind…" as he's speaking he directs you towards the living room and opens the door to the living room with a purposefully over dramatic flourish, revealing a banner hanging over the room, the words upon it echoing his next words "Happy Birthday Chimera!"
You turn to face your mentor with a smile on your face, "When did you set all this up?"
"After you went to sleep kiddo." He replies with a smile. "Ordered the cake before we left for the Yellowstone mess."
"Cake?" You ask, your sweet tooth suddenly awakened by the mention of that most precious of deserts.
"Yes! It's lemon and-" he says, interrupted as both your phones start ringing, it's a call from 911.
Adamant answers the phone immediately, switching the phone to speaker mode as he does so.
The man on the other end of the call is quick answer. "Someone pulled all the alarms in the Kaiju Cannon and we've got an emergency call from the control center, connecting you to her now."
Instantly, every last trace of the grin that was on Adamant's face is gone, his voice is calm, serious, and to the point as he addresses the woman who made the call. "What's the situation miss?"
The panicking voice on the other side of the call is none of those three things but she still manages to get the point across. "Doctor Destruction is inside the Kaiju Cannon, they've taken hostages, and they've begun to take control of it, once they've got total control they'll be able to essentially delete parts of the city at the press of a button, well, actually more like three."
There's a short pause as the two of you process that, then come the questions, "How'd they get inside?" You ask, just as Adamant asks, "How are they taking control of it and how much time do we have?"
"Doctor Destruction built a robot specialized in hacking i think." The woman says helplessly as you both race to get your costumes on. "They're having trouble taking control through, I think they didn't expect the place to run on floppy disks and our security is top notch, you should have 30 to an hour minutes at least before they get control, I think."
"Ok," you say as you and Adamant get into uniform. "How'd they get in? Is there a bunker buster robot we need to worry about?"
Her next words surprise you greatly. "Ah, no, uh, Slip was with him, I was watching on the cameras, he walked through the door and then opened it from the inside, then Doctor Destruction walked in, thanked him, and brought in all his robots."
That gives you both pause, "Are there any other supers inside? Or just those two." You ask, annoyed that Slip wasn't mentioned at the beginning.
"No, just Slip, well, he's got his robots with him and those all had some really big guns but-" she pauses for a moment before yelling, "Oh shit-" you hear her begin running for a moment before the call is suddenly cut off.
The next minute is a flurry of motion as you both rush out of the building and make an aerial beeline for the Cannon, before landing on a nearby rock to survey the local area and come up with a plan.
The Cannon sits proudly atop a rocky hill, itself a small hill of steel reinforced concrete with a single blast door fit for a missile silo in the structure's side, by design it stands far from any cover save a few outcroppings of rocks from behind which you can hear the not-so-quiet rumbling of robotic engines, thankfully, the cannon was built well away from the city, almost eliminating any potential risk of collateral damage, although that was more about the Kaiju than it was about Supervillains.
The inside of the building should be cramped, narrow, and of course swarming with robots, with blast door after blast door in your path.
All of this goes through your mind as you open your mouth to ask your mentor, "Ok, what's the plan?"
Adamant thinks for a second, "I can definitely break down that door, it might take a bit of effort, but I can definitely take it down, the real problem are the hostages, well, that and that fact that the Doctor probably wants to hold the entire city for ransom or blow it up for the reputation."
"That reminds me." You say, "Why would Slip be helping him do this? He's got to know that this could get a lot of people killed, and that the Doctor will probably backstab him, and that this would put a target on his back the size of Texas."
That question receives a shrug, "I have no idea, maybe he's being blackmailed, maybe he's suddenly a lot more desperate for money, maybe the woman got it wrong and this is only someone with a similar power." He says, before glancing up at the side of the cannon and grinning as a thought strikes him. "And I think I have an idea of how to get one of us inside undetected."
"What is it?" You ask, not taking your eyes off the bots and their ineffectual attempts at hiding, they look better than anything he's made since he went into hiding, with rotating laser guns on each arm.
Adamant points upwards at the side of the weapon, where you can see a ladder stretching up to the barrel. "There's a hatch at the bottom of that ladder, for when they need to work on the outside of the gun, it will be shut but you should be able to get through while they're all focused on me."
You spend a short few more seconds discussing what you're going to do once you sneak inside, then you sneak into position.
Once you give the signal, Adamant flys forward. striking the blast door with an overwhelmingly powerful punch and smashing a hole inside of it as lasers pour in from both inside the base and from outside as the robots which were guarding the entrance reorient themselves to strike at this new intruder.
And as they stare at him, they miss you, camouflaged as you silently leap up the wall, find the hatch, and cut your way inside.
You smirk as you drop downwards, these idiots have no idea what's about to hit them.
O-O-O-O-O
What plan did you and Adamant agree on?
[ ] Focus on finding and freeing the hostages.
Doctor Destruction is trigger happy in the extreme and will be very willing to jump to threatening others to keep you and Adamant from tossing him in a jail cell, if you're successful you should be able to avert a standoff that could get people killed.
[ ] Stop the hacking attempt on the Kaiju Cannon.
If you can break this "Hacking Robot" then you can defuse the worst case scenario, meaning that no matter what else happens, that no part of the city will be destroyed in a ball of burning death.
[ ] Ambush Doctor Destruction from behind.
On the other hand, you could just ambush him from behind and end things right then and there, of course, if you fail then he'll still have the hostages and the cannon might be activated before you have a chance to stop.