56 - TUEAS Dogpile

[Casting Call]

[Episode: TUEAS Dogpile - PG-13]

[Role: Dog in the Fight! Do you accept the role? (Yes/No)]

[Role Focus: Badass > Flamboyance]

The tunnel curved ahead, and I slowed to read the [Casting Call]. Now that I’d thought about it, it’d be pretty stupid to run toward a fight when an Episode was going without accepting the [Casting Call]. Not accepting wouldn’t get me moving any faster, it wouldn’t help Fursona, and I wanted those Style Points.

[TUEAS Dogpile!: Act One in Progress]

From the Episode’s name, I assumed the whole Student Superhero Association had gotten the [Casting Call]. I didn’t mind. I definitely couldn’t solo a minor-league Episode. Although it was strange that the System had decided it was a minor league one.

I didn’t have much time to think about it, though.

Around the next corner, I heard the sound of fighting and saw a puff of flour. My heart leaped to my throat; was Fursona about to receive a gigantic flour fireball? And if they were, would they be able to tank it? They were tough, but they’d also been fighting solo for—

Another cloud of flour poofed out into the hall. A moment later, I skidded around the corner. “Don’t fear, Fursona. Understudy is…oh.”

Milo, the toga-clad TUSSA hero, had his arms wrapped around The Crumb’s waist. Every time the baking-themed villain struggled, the wrestler squeezed. His arms tightened around The Crumb, tighter and tighter, and I could imagine the Badass points rolling in. Fursona was, once again, battling with Flare just down the hall. They seemed evenly matched for now.

“Hey kid, Springlock’s on her way with Sara and the boys! Surrender, villain!” Milo picked The Crumb up, ignoring the flailing fists and feet. When he didn’t surrender, Milo shrugged and threw him into a wall.

I squeezed past the massive, red-tinted Greek wrestler as he closed in to finish the last Crumbs. Fursona’s suit was singed and scorched, and I could see a black long-sleeve shirtsleeve through one arm. They needed my help. [Spotlight Strike] highlighted a spot between Flare’s shoulder blades. A moment later, my fist hit that spot at full speed.

[Stylish Strike! +1 Flamboyance Point Pending]

Flare stumbled. Then he got his balance and started running.

I took off after him, but the couch I’d overheard the villains talking on flew down the hall. We both dodged the faux-leather three-seater as it slammed into a wall. Splinters and springs flew everywhere. I [Flickerformed] into [Ride the Lightning] and filled the hallway with thunder and arcing electricity. Flare got caught in the worst of it.

[Electric Lightshow! +1 Flamboyance Point Pending]

A moment later, Grapple jumped around—no, Grapple was dragged by his shoes straight into—Flare. The spark-and-fire villain tried to get up, but Punch and Springlock came around the corner, and he quickly surrendered.

Milo tossed The Crumb onto the floor a moment later. “God damn, dogpiling the little leaguers is refreshing!”

Springlock walked up to him, fingers flying. He cleared his throat. “Ikenga’s having the rest of TUSSA meet in Weber Quad. It’s just outside of the Tokyexico University Engineering and Applied Sciences building. Leave these two here. They’re not going anywhere. Right, boys?”

The two villains shook their heads. “You gonna let the cops know where we are?” The Crumb asked.

“Of course,” Milo said, still staring at Springlock, who was staring at the villains. “Stay here, or we’ll be back.”

I looked at Fursona's suit as we jogged up the ramp toward the Mister Felsic statue. It looked even worse this close than I’d thought in the tunnel. They’d been through hell. “Thanks. You gave us the win.” I gave them a quick side hug.

“Yeah, but my suit’s pretty much toast. I couldn’t stop all the big fireballs and Flare’s straight-up dangerous with The Crumb. That bastard locked me out of [Double-Kick] and my fursuit’s Grit defensive power.” Fursona stopped. I could practically see their grin. “Hey, I can swear!”

“Don’t you dare use an F-bomb!” Milo interrupted. “If you give it to Springlock, she and I both get one, since I’m just interpreting. It’s a nice way around the censor.”

“Fine, whatever.” Fursona shrugged. Then they stopped running. “I don’t think I can do this next Episode. I’m at one Superhero Damage left, and my suit and powers are in bad shape. I’ll meet you at your place, alright?”

“Alright. Take my extra key card for the elevator.” I handed the Justice-Roo a key card and waved goodbye.

◄▼►

Tokyexico University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences was one of the campus’s biggest selling points. From nanobots to heat-shielding to small-scale teleportation research, the program advertised itself as being at the forefront of ilneat/human technological integration. That sounded like a bunch of buzzwords to me, but I wasn’t on that track for my education.

What I did know was that the TUEAS Building sprawled out just north of Weber Quad. I’d passed it a few times, but most of my classes weren’t near its chrome-and-glass exterior, so I hadn’t paid much attention to it. With the TUSSA team assembling outside of it, that was about to change.

“Alright, team. Once inside, we’ve got to spread out and check every lab. Stay in earshot, but be efficient,” Ikenga was saying. “They won’t be on the first floor, but there could be surprises for us, so you need to take it slow and steady. We should have numbers on the villains, but they may have henchmen. I haven’t seen any, but my focus has been on Iron Fist and Tearjerker. Both of them are inside.”

“So, are we operating in teams?” Sara asked.

“Yes. You and the boys will check the aerospace wing. I predict no one will be there, but as I said, my focus has been elsewhere. Hephaestus and I,” Ikenga pointed at a man in a steel exoskeleton carrying a pair of forging hammers, “will go center and get the stairs secured, along with the rest of our little league heroes. Springlock and Milo will go into engineering and fabrication. They’ll have an advantage there if the machines are running.”

“We’re taking Understudy too,” Springlock signed.

“Fine. That evens out our numbers. Stay with your teams. Stay in touch with Heph and me. Be safe, and we’ll push into the basement labs after the upstairs is secure.” Ikenga nodded, then pointed at the front door. “Go.”

The door was locked. Punch found a window next to it and shattered it. The howling alarm rang out five times before Hephaestus plugged into the wall inside and turned it off. “I hate noises.”

“You run a forge,” Milo said incredulously as he ran by.

“Doesn’t mean I like noise. Get going. You’ve got a job to do,” Hephaestus replied. Milo turned, bowed sarcastically, and ran toward the building’s east side. I followed.

The labs were empty. That was…odd…for mid-day on a school day. Not only that, but they were clean. Computers and drafting tables were packed into some, while others housed shiny drills and laser-guided metal cutters. I had an [Inkling] and pushed through one of the machine shops’ doors. Sure enough, the room hummed with the sounds of running tools. It sounded…suspiciously familiar, and my throat tightened, but I couldn’t quite place it.

A small steel box sat on the floor. It was the size of a mid-sized dog, with clasps and a very secure locking mechanism. I’d never been inside a lab like this—the closest I’d been to one was a semester of woodshop at Riverside High—but a completed box like this felt like it should have been in storage somewhere, in a student’s storage locker or one of the shelves.

But it definitely shouldn’t have been in the middle of the machine shop’s floor. I grabbed it. It weighed a ton, and all I could do was drag it across the rubber-matted floor to the door. “Hey, Milo! I found something odd!”

[Good Thinking! +1 Cunning Point Pending]

“Alright, we’re on our way!” Milo shouted back. When he arrived, he was carrying another box just like the first. “You thought these were weird, too, huh?”

“Yeah. Machine shops probably need to be kept clean for the other students, right? Leaving crates the perfect size for tripping next to power tools seems…stupid.”

“Yep. Doctor Richardson wouldn’t be pleased,” Milo confirmed.

“Let’s get these back to Ikenga and wait for Sara. She’ll get them open in no time,” Springlock said. We left the engineering labs. Springlock and I carried one, which Milo hoisted his onto his shoulder.

“What do you think they are?” I asked.

“I dunno. Some kind of villain tech?” Milo said. He shrugged, the shiny crate reflecting the lights. “Let’s talk it over with the others.”

Ikenga nodded in greeting as we stacked our two crates with the one Punch, Grapple, and Sara-N-Dipity had found. Against all odds, they’d gone straight to it and come right back, and Sara was punching numbers into its control panel seemingly at random. It beeped red once, and she swore. Then, five button-pushes later, it popped open.

“Shit,” she said. “That’s a robot.”

It was, indeed, a robot. Was this Professor Panic’s work? Was he here? I knew I could beat him; I’d done it a dozen times before. But I didn’t know if I could fight him, and I certainly couldn’t use Lab Assistant Panic. There was no way. No way at all!

I stared at its gold-chrome finish and four legs, though, and my mind relaxed. Professor Panic used green lighting and steel bodies, and the weapons systems on…whatever this was…were much different than the [Hypercompression Cannons], teeth, and limbs that LABRAT and the Panic Pals relied on.

“Heph, what do you see here?” Ikenga asked. I watched as he drifted off, looking into the robot’s future or something.

“It looks like it’s got a stun Gatling cannon and a vibrating blade. Heh. If you changed out the blade, it could be a good Captain Vibration weapon,” Heph said. He winked. “Frequency is about right for a good time.”

I rolled my eyes. Captain Vibration was The In-Your-Endos’ leader—at least, as much as that team had a leader. The rest of them claimed they all followed A Cat Who Can Talk, but someone had to be making the decisions, and listening to a cat for advice? That was just crazy!

“It runs on four legs like one of those 2010s robots from the vids, and its cannon is on a rotating turret in its mid-section. To be honest, it’s not very well-designed. I’d guess whoever built it is relying on firepower and armor, not on engineering ski—“

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

= = = = =

“It runs on four legs like—“

“Get away from it, Hephaestus!” Ikenga shouted. Heph stood up, letting his exoskeleton take his weight, and backed away, not finishing his sentence.

The robot’s servos started spinning a moment later. Its legs forced their way out of the box, its vibrating blade revving on one of its legs and its cannon tracking Hephaestus. The other boxes also sprung open, revealing more of the gold-chrome bots, which stood almost three feet tall fully extended.

The stun cannons fired, and Hephaestus crashed to the ground, twitching. A metal foot—thankfully, not one with blades—slammed into the Genius’s head over and over, quickly taking him out of the fight.

Two villains ran up the stairs. Tearjerker pointed at Milo. “You! The scene in Remember the Titans in the hospital!” Milo burst into tears, knocked out of the fight.

The other villain, Iron Fist, grinned. He revved his mechanical boxing gloves. “Welcome to the TUEAS building, heroes. Sorry our dealer missed you, but my fists won’t!”

Two of TUSSA’s minor league heroes were down, and the fight hadn’t even started. I had no idea what to do.

◄▼►