The inside of DEI's vast infrastructure is a terrifying maze. Support beams jut at strange angles, HVAC tunnels end in yawning pits, and every, everywhere there are traps.
Mezmerella used them like she was born to it, or at the very least was adopted early. A device designed to spew acid over an intruder instead burned a hole through marketing's roof and directly to the next floor. A vent in the back of the Doofrassic Park head office that would snarl like an animal if approached instead opened wide if scratched in the right spot. There were no less than four Inators sutured into the works which transformed their targets into some sort of fragile material, leaving a trail of wood, cheese, and pigeons behind her.
And through nearly all of it, Mirage screamed.
Mezmerella, for her part, found it, hmm, she wasn't sure how she found it. On the one hand, she was quite loud, but on the other, it did set the mood quite well as they tumbled down the building's side-elevators and secret passageways.
Speaking of.
Stick the Landing
DC 60
48+20(!?)+10(Do It All The Time)=78
Easy Success
---
Mezmerella hidden traits revealed!
Never Show Your Hand: Mezmerella hides 1/4 of her true Martial score from external forces.
Do It All The Time: Mezmerella gains a +10 to all rolls involving Supervillainy. Real Supervillainy, not simply criminals who wear masks out of convenience. It can come from her, or someone else, but the capital S Supervillainy must be there.
---
Mezmerella performed a more or less unnecessary backwards somersault before touching down on the carpet. Approximately three feet away from her, Max Goof jolted in surprise as yet another odd thing threatened to consume his day.
Max looked up from his comic book. "Uh… hey."
"Anyone touch the car?" Mez asked as she rummaged around behind the lobby Christmas tree.
"What car?"
"Great."
Dragging her package out the front door, Mezmerella looked around, before her eyes landed on a 1974 AMC Gremlin sitting by the curb.
Perfect.
Whistling to herself, she pulled out a crowbar as Mirage tumbled out of the tunnel behind her, landing with a groan. Behind her, the tunnel entrance tucked itself away seamlessly into the lobby's stonework, like all good secret passageways should.
"What was-"
"Get in." Mezmerella said.
"I- what?!?" Mirage asked, hurrying out the doors to where Mesmerella was even now trying to stuff a corkboard into the front seat of a very sad looking car. Mezmerella kicked the corkboard and finally managed to force it in, breaking off the side mirror in the process.
On the corkboard, two pictures of sheep were pinned, with a series of arrows and question marks labeled 'Dream? Which one???????'. A spool of red string and a box of pins jangled as Mez wedged the board into the console.
"Mez, why have you put these-"
"Ask when we're driving, if we hurry we can still run Coyote's lookalike over."
Mirage blinked. "This isn't your car, is it." She asked, dutifully getting in anyway.
"Of course not, why would I ever buy one of these terrible whatever they're called'ses?" Mezmerella sniped back, plopping into the driver's seat and turning the key with unnecessary energy. The engine bleated in response.
Acting more on premonition than legal observance, Mirage buckled her seatbelt.
"Ok so!" Mezmerella declared, kicking the car into first and pulling more string out of her pocket. "While we're doing this, I want to talk about some other things I've found while digging through employee records."
"More moles?" Mirage asked.
Mez made a noncommittal gesture with her free hand as she fished a pin from the box. "Eh, kinda? It involves some old records from before I signed up. Gaps in the records, most of them involving the government." She paused to put up a picture of mirrored sunglasses onto the board before continuing. "There's documents that have been purged, and looking it over I'm pretty sure someone's been wiped clean from pretty much everything as far as I've been able to find."
"That's… extremely concerning."
"Mmn. There's a paper trail leading back years, whoever this person was they've been here, as in, within Doof's league of inner circles thing, since before Kronos went down. It's frustrating, because whoever went over the files was very thorough. I can trace the missing pages, but I haven't been able to find a legible page. It's all scribbles." She jotted down, in all caps, BIG LAUNDRY on the corkboard.
"Scribbles?" Mirage frowned. "You're saying it was blacked out?"
"It's almost like someone took one of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's Inators and scrambled the letters, it's illegible. I'm pretty sure I've even read some of them, but I can't process it, the fallbacks I've set up kick in and I just wake up on the floor." Mez grumbled. "Are you getting this down, by the way?"
"Of course I am." Mirage replied, shifting the corkboard slightly to reveal the tablet she was operating off of. Mez scoffed and started tying more strings together on the cork.
"I checked the camera footage from the Kronos op", Mez tapped a printed frame of footage, "But unfortunately you did too good a job there, I couldn't catch anyone from DEI on view besides Doof himself. The mentions are sporadic, but they tend towards big incidents. Hawaii, the Halloween Auction, and a lot of the 'networking' projects. The records say that Max kid did an entire spy network on his own. I asked him, and he seemed just as confused, but also thought he did it alone. Could you imagine?" Mezmerella paused to scribble something down on the corkboard.
"This… oh. Mez, I… think we may have some further data points for you."
"Yeah?" Mez pulled out another marker and handed it over to Mirage, tilting the corkboard around.
Mirage stared at it for a moment before sighing. "This person has been around since at least the Kronos gala. She marked out 'KRONOS' in neat letters. "Doofenshmirtz claims that while trapped in ice, he discovered that the memory of a person had been removed from his mind. He claims the… 'gnomes that live in his head' helped him figure it out. He's had Gomez working on the issue… somehow, and he claims that these-" she pulled a polaroid photo of a pair of sunglasses out of her pocket and tied it into the greater mass with a string. "Are related."
Mezmerella immediately ripped the marker out of Mirage's hand, noting down 'ICE' and 'Double-O O?????' on the new data.
"So we're not just looking at a single effect, this is a widespread multi-layer effect. It only reaches so far though, and I was able to figure out a constant. This person, whoever they were, was heavily involved in the Toontown area. In fact, the last mention of this person was about 9 months ago, regarding a very specific toon related investigation. The Bonkers case."
Mirage… blinked. "That can't be right. I was on that case. I lead it."
"It wasn't just you though, right? Several members of the Council of Doof were there too. Coyote and Ludivine, both of which are toons."
"Mezmerella… it was Ludivine, Coyote and myself. No one else was there."
Mez stopped, and looked at Mirage very carefully. "Why?"
Mirage paused. "What?"
"Why were you there? In your first Toontown report you complained about your struggles with working with the demographic, and how you didn't have the right experience or people to handle it yourself. You said you had to be bailed out by the Phantom Blot, who is, incidentally, here, for reasons we apparently don't know." She stuck a blacked out polaroid onto the board.
"So why were you the one who led the Bonkers investigation?"
"I-" Mirage paused yet again, eyes going ever so slightly unfocused for a brief second. "I'm the best option Doofenshmirtz had at the time."
"But why were you doing it in the first place? What was so important about Bonkers Bobcat that warranted an eight figure investigation?" Mezmerella pushed.
Mirage huffed. "You know the doctor, he get… fancies. He's always wanted to support toon rights, this was just an… unorthodox option."
" He hasn't done anything for toons besides mouthpiecing though. Other than a single declaration way back when and donating to a minor toon rights organization, he's done nothing. In fact, his notes indicate they slipped out of his attention…about 9 months ago. This was someone's personal project, and it certainly wasn't yours." Mezmerella poked Mirage in the chest accusingly.
"Probably one of the fifty toons we manage every day?" Mirage snapped.
"You're agitated. Deflecting. Do you have a headache? A pressure building between your eyes-"
"What are we even doing?!?!" Mirage yelled. "We're sitting here while our target is getting farther away by the second! How do you even expect to track him at this point?"
Any response Mezmerella had was interrupted by the sound of a revolving door being pushed open and an exhausted, panting canid trudging onto the street.
SO… MANY… STAIRS. The sign said. The imposter stared at the curb.
…WHERE DID MY CAR GO?
Mezmerella grinned and gunned the throttle into first gear. "Gotcha now, hound dog!"
The wolf in question leapt to his feet as a pair of headlights zeroed in on him like a bullseye. Leaping into the air and failing for a few seconds, he was gone the second he hit asphalt, a cloud of dust trailing behind him.
===
"You're gonna lose it."
"Nonsense!" Jumba declared, slamming his triple-size Nightstones coffee onto the table with a splash. "It is being perfektly safe, only here for minor coffee run." Jumba replied, patting the utterly unique artifact with one massive hand.
"Now Jumba." Pleakley said, single eye peering at him from over ill-fitting sunglasses. "I think your abomination has a point! Mr. Doofenshmirtz entrusted us with that, most likely worthless, little cultural artifact! Imagine if we were to lose it! A part of their primitive and backwards history might be lost forever!
"And furthermore." Pleakley continued, leaning in closer, half a dozen necklaces jangling, "There may be some flaw in our disguises. I think we might be drawing some…" Pleakley glanced back and forth "suspicion."
The entire cafe stared at the two blatantly disguised aliens as they went about their snack run. What were they? Mutated hippos? Extremely unlucky Supers? Dear god.
"You're definitely gonna lose it." Experiment 625 continued, consuming two paninis in a single bite.
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not."
"Are t… ah heck with it." 625 said, laying his head down. "I need a nap."
"Oh come on, don't give up like that!" Pleakley admonished the layabout. "You should learn to be more steadfast! Nothing is going to distract me until I've shown Jumba just how problematic his choices are, no matter wha-"
The last consonant of Pleakley's declaration was drowned out by the sound of a toon zipping wildly down the street, literally picking up the asphalt as he went before it smoothly laid back down behind him. Hot on his equally literal tail was a junker moving faster than any designer had ever designed it to go, trailing red string and paper scraps.
"COME BACK AND FIGHT MY TWO TON VEHICLE LIKE AN HONORABLE HOT-DOG-TO-BE YOU COWARD!"
"...what was I talking about?" Pleakley asked.
"What are they to be putting in this coffee…?" Jumba added, eyeing his massive mug.
Several of the other patrons, for different reasons, did the same.
Unseen to any of them, the odd object was gone, vanished from the table, leaving nothing behind but a large and pooling coffee stain.
625 cracked an eye as the jet-black arm retreated.
"Huh." He said.
===
Nineteen minutes and twelve seconds.
It was time again.
It was like stargazing for the faintest and most distant of celestial orbs. To see it, you had to not look at it. Hold it in your mind without focusing on it. See the hole without looking for what was missing. Believe that there was something there while your mind was fully certain there was not.
Child's play, really.
I came here for a reason. The Blot thought, and with that he was prepared. It would be time very, very soon.
The little trinket had been a useful find, if not particularly necessary.
Everyone needed motivation.
===
Elsewhere, the AMC Gremlin cruised down the alleyways of Danville, hunting its prey with the alacrity of a particularly malicious piglet.
"Why exactly did you bring me on this chase?" Mirage asked, trying not to dig her fingers into the paneling.
"Besides the confidential stuff slipping out of your memory as we speak? Why not, really?"
"I'm not exactly the first person you'd pick for a… 'chase sequence'."
"But technically speaking, you sign my paychecks, and when has a little field duty ever killed anyone? Build character, and all that stuff." Mez cracked.
Mirage flinched.
Mezmerella fiddled with the mirror before continuing. "You're a weirdo, you know that? I bet that psycho therapist has had a field day rooting around in your brain."
"I… think I'd prefer to see a more traditional option."
"A therapist is a therapist, it's the same no matter where you go. You let go and they pull everything out. What are you getting out of it anyways?."
"...thoughts. I suppose."
Mezmerella frowned. "You really aren't making this conversation easy, are you?"
"It is not an easy conversation." Mirage replied.
The fleeing canid held up a sign as he fled six feet in front of the car.
IMAGINE HOW I FEEL.
Mezmerella shot a hole through the sign with her gun.
He flipped the sign over.
Y*KES!
"Eavesdropping little rucksack," Mezmerella grumbled.
"The point I'm trying to make is that we're going to be working closely for the foreseeable future, right?"
Mirage blinked. "You're trying to… establish a working relationship."
"Yes, of course. What did you think I was doing?"
"Punishing me? Wanting a witness to whatever this was? Possibly just acting on pure instinct with no intent whatsoever."
"Nope. Just trying to reach out, network a little. Maybe it's because I'm an optimist, but I'm pretty sure you won't ever do something worse than a genocide."
Mirage's mouth hung open.
Mezmerella paused, as something occurred to her.
"Also, no. I want a witness to whatever this is. Chase is still ongoing." As if to prove a point, the Gremlin narrowly swerved around a stop sign, shearing off the other side mirror.
Recognizing the conclusion of the emotional conflict, the Coyote imposter redoubled his speed in an attempt to leave before the physical conflict could go the same way. His destination soon became clear to Mezmerella: the Ominous Holding Company Abandoned Warehouse (a subsidiary of ACME Company) loomed before them in all of its post-industrial glory.
WHAT? IT'S A FRANCHISE. The sign read.
Seconds later the impostor impacted the front door of the building and sheared a dog-and-sign shaped hole directly through it.
"We're going to have to get out." Mirage said, already preparing to unbuckle her seatbelt.
There was a pause.
"Mezmeralla, why aren't we slowing down?
"Why aren't we slow-
===
You awaken in the middle of what appears to be a disused warehouse. Greyish-purple light pours in through the dirt-caked skylights, illuminating an expanse of rusty machinery clanking away despite the lack of employees around to maintain it. Rusty hooks swing back and forth on the system of conveyors as they carry nothing to destinations unknown, swaying slightly in the coppery breeze drawn in by a massive industrial fan.
A massive fan that you have the honor of being suspended beneath. You attempt to reach up to push your hair out of your eyes but find that you're unable to do so. Apparently someone tied you to a chair (a very nice one, you admit) that looks to be suspended over… well, that's just poor death trap design. Your eyes trace the maze of wires and pulleys that connect pressure plates to shotguns, gnashing walls of knives less than a foot away, and no less than four cocked shotguns suspended over a gearbox that is itself meters above a pool of molten metal. The heat rising off of the crucible is unpleasant.
It looks as if the slightest upset could toss you into one of the myriad dangers, not even one of which is designed to hurl you harmlessly into the following deathtrap.
"Ahhhh." An oily voice intones from beyond your vision. "Awake at last, Doctor Doofenshmirtz. I'd ask you what you thought of my little trap, but I'm afraid you're due to be interrupted before you finish your sentence."
"Well, I don't know what you're thinking, Mr. Oily Voice I've Definitely Heard Before, but-"
Not one, not two, but three explosive bangs ring out in quick succession as what was left of an ugly hatchback slam through the nearby supporting wall, moving sideways at approximately ninety percent of its maximum speed and ten percent of its structural integrity.
"Gangway!" Mezmerella cackled wildly as the car began spinning out into the warehouse floor.
Mirage just screamed.
As the vehicle finally came to an abrupt stop slamming against a pile of wooden crates containing ACME-brand crash dummies, the figure plastered across the front went flying through the air, landing in a disgruntled heap right at the feet of-
"It is I, the Phantom Blot!" The Phantom Blot declares. "How kind of you to join us for the grand climax. And allow me to introduce you to my valuable subservient-"
The Blot reaches down and lifts up the shaggy canid like a fur coat. "Ralph Wolf!"
OH THANK GOD, THE NARRATION CAN STOP CALLING ME 'THE IMPOSTER'.
Complete silence.
"Ralph… Wolf!" The Blot declares again. "What, nothing?"
Mezmerella coughs weakly. "Ohgodwealmostdied…"
"I'm taking… the counseling… out of your paycheck…" Mirage moans.
"Do you guys know who this is? He makes it sound like we're supposed to know who this is." You say.
The Blot groans. "Oh, what a sorry state it is to have to explain my plans to such as you… but no matter! Soon, all shall be remedied."
You attempt to raise a hand but realize you can't. "I don't even know what's going on right now!"
Mezmerella glares. "So who are you anyways?"
The Blot chuckles. "An amusing attempt at annoyance, Miss Mezmerella, but-"
Mezmerella shoots him with her 9mm.
"You really are quite the incorrigible little villain." The Blot notes, body moving like liquid to dodge casually out of the way. "I would have hoped your sense of the dramatic would promote more enjoyable behavior. No matter. You are but a witness to today's true purpose."
"Yeah, can we hear about that please?" You say. "You've been monologues for aaaages and we still haven't even begun the backstory yet!"
The Blot chuckles. "Oh, very well, very well. You see, it began one springtime eve, when I awoke to realize that I had arrived in Doofania with plans of mischief, my carefully managed resources prepared for schemes with no clear purpose. I soon realized, to my shock, that something was missing-"
"The government spook? What about 'em?"
"You are being difficult on purpose."
"Yep."
"For anyone here with even the slightest appreciation for such things, I proceeded to make use of my brilliant invisible ink to examine this odd gap in my otherwise pristine mental faculties, and the causes for it."
"My current working theory," Mezmerella interjects, "Is that enough neuralizers spinning at sufficient velocity, magnified by a sufficiently large telescope can project the effect far beyond standard, resulting in a global effect."
"...Do you really believe that?" Mirage asks.
"Eh. Conspiracy is fun. All the excitement of science with none of the reason." Mezmerella shrugs as she helps her out of what's left of the car.
"What about the supervillainy?"
"A lifestyle, and a thesis."
"One I will not be grading you well on. But I doubt you care. Regardless! I have wasted enough time on enjoyable but pointless puffery. The time for my plan's completion is at hand! I have ensnared your darling Doctor in a dastardly deathtrap of my own design!"
"And it's a terrible design too." You say. "What's with all these weird shapes?"
"Ah, that would be the complex runic array I have woven into every inch of the greater mechanism."
"Oh, okay." You say. "Wait. What?"
The room around you begins to glow with a soft blue light.
"Yes, yes! You see how every aspect of the deathtrap reinforces the base design?!? You see, how the spy and the super, here to rescue you from a villainous Toon, gather together in view of the matrix?!? It was no easy task to gain myself a crash course in summoning rituals, but I do believe all the proper forms have been observed."
"Ohhh, I get it!" You say. "This is all just a big mock-up for your summony thing." You say, beginning to swing yourself back and forth on the chair. "Well, I haven't been on this side of the trap very often, but I think it's about the part of the monologue where I make a brilliant esca-
Martial Check: Avoid Bodily Harm
DC 110
CF 9- CS 100+
14+21+0 (Power Armor Removed)= 35
Extremely painful failure
Your declaration ends as a saw blade passes through your left deltoid.
"Oh. Hey, that wasn't so bad. Barely even felt it."
Mezmerella grimaces from across the room a brief moment before blood begins spurting wildly from your arm.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! OKAY I FEEL IT, I FEEL IT A LOT"
"Oh hush you wailing infant." the Blot sniffs dismissively. "There'll be plenty of time for you to witness my master plan before you pass out from blood loss, let alone before you reach the hospital. Traffic is light this time of day."
"I COULD HAVE DIED!"
"If you are about to, please tell me so that I can see myself out. I can't bear to watch someone die, I'm far too gentle hearted. Regardless, if I'd really wanted you dead I would have arranged it from across town."
"WHY DO PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY 'IT'S JUST A FLESH WOUND?!?! THIS FLESH WOUND HURTS IT HURTS SO MUCH"
"Why did you try to escape without our help!?" Mezmerella yells as she sprints towards you.
"I don't know, it usually worked fine for- just get over here!"
"Now!" The Blot declares as the runes begin to glow. "The real entertainment can begin!"
