(Tranquility Base, Luna)

There were some things which made little sense from a ‘real world’ point of view, if you were in a superhero universe. For instance, one would think that a military base on the moon’s surface would be mentioned somewhere in the game history, if only because of the expense of such a project, not to mention that rocket launches are hard to hide.

Real world knowledge doesn’t take into account for superpowers, unfortunately, which is why I was having to take a moment to adjust to the fact that I was standing on the fragging moon. Well, not standing. I was sitting on what was left of the lander from Apollo 11, trying not to disturb the footprints. Being able to fly was pretty cool. But I had to go. Sunlight was a pain, even out here, and ‘dawn’ was coming fast.

This was probably the coolest part of CoC, in my mind. Other Superhero MMOs were limited to a single city, with a few maps outside it, but CoC had an entire world put together. Sure, most people wouldn’t have the ability to get to the moon, much less exploring Tranquility Base or the other moon landing sites. But here they were. Looking up at the stars, Isoke had to wonder what all was out there.

A vibration in her pocket snapped her out of her reverie. Sunlight would be bathing her position in half an hour. It was time to go.

But first…

(The Archive, Tsiolkovskiy Crater, Luna)

It was a relatively quick flight. Seems that without all that air slowing me down, I could really cut loose. I mean, there’s no wind to mess up my clothes, or cause my hair to go falling in front of my face, you know? Of course, there’s also no sound, and it is really cold. Especially when you go moon walking without a space suit. Yeah, being a vampire has perks.

Still, it only took me about three hours to make the trip since I’d spent some of the points I got in the fight for Atlanta to improve my non-Vampire abilities. I clocked in at 1000 MPH now while flying, which was pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

I set down in the airlock of the Archive, which is what Web Mistress was calling her little moon base here. Yeah, the girl was holding out on us big time! She actually has a moon base that looks like it was made during the Cold War or something. She hasn’t quite bothered to hide the Soviet propaganda on the walls. Probably not something she’d care about, since she spent so much of her time in VR.

According to her, the story of this base wasn’t all that exciting, besides the whole bit of having a moonbase. The way she tells it, the Russians started building the base back during the Cold War, as an emergency bunker for the ‘best and brightest of the Party’ should it ever come to nuclear war. Or, y’know, any other world-ending disaster. But they’d only managed to get the main habitation areas built, and the teleporter access, before the Soviet Union collapsed and money ran out. The moonbase was forgotten.

Until Web Mistress found out about it, that is. She managed to find (and then more permanently lose) the files on the moonbase, used her power to sneak into the chamber underneath the Kremlin where the people would teleport to the moonbase, and then spent her time turning everything on, and disconnecting the teleporter, so no one could follow her in. Satellites provided signal bounce so she could get back to Earth with her powers.

So while I was stripping for cash and dinner, she made a few million ‘redistributing’ wealth from certain groups that did things she was not happy with (traffickers for the most part), and got herself a state of the art computer and communications suite up here, along with labs and all the other stuff one would need to have an awesome moonbase. Oh, and she even has a fragging shuttlecraft.

Yeah, anyone who says Web Mistress isn’t the coolest person on our team needs their head examined.

Finally through the airlock, I stepped into the Archive proper, to be greeted with the rest of the Misfits looking at me like I needed my head examined. “What?”

Pyramaniac sighed, “Seriously, Vamp. Atlanta’s under martial law, and you went moonwalking?”

“Hey! Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t have to get one of those bulky space suits to move around out there! Hell, since Websy replaced my phone with one of her ‘special’ models, I didn’t even need to leave my electronics at home!”

Web Mistress chuckled. “Oh, believe me, we know how well your phone is working. Care to explain what made you do this?” A wave of her hand, and a TV screen popped up, showing my in-game social media feeds. And the couple dozen selfies I took while I was at Tranquility Base. She enlarged the one with my face next to one of Armstrong’s boot prints, which were about as big as my head. I’d captioned it with ‘You know what they say about guys with big feet, right?’

I shrugged. “Just a bit of harmless fun. And I made sure not to disturb any of the prints. Anyways, you said the others wouldn’t be ready to move before tomorrow.”

I checked my phone, and grinned. “Hey, the one of me with the flag just got 100K likes! And #VampontheMoon just went viral!”

The Reptilian was not, it seemed, amused, and nudged my shoulder with her snout. “Stop with picture thing. We talk how make bad men go away from city, make nest safe. No like here. Want nest.”

I sighed, and put the phone away. “All right. How are things in the city right now?” We headed for the ‘living room’ we’d been using as a conference room since Atlanta fell two days ago.

Web Mistress activated another screen, and said, “The city is currently under martial law. There hasn’t been time for things to get organized yet, since we made them act before everything was ready. But things are getting worse. There’s already been several acts of vandalism, and one riot that was put down brutally.”

“Most of the heroes that weren’t part of Southern Pride and their ilk fled through the portals or by their own methods, and we’re coordinating with them now, so we can make a full counterattack. The national League is starting to bend to pressure, but it is clear that enough beta testers got involved there that they aren’t going to get involved in a big way.”

I sighed. That was about what I expected. “What about the military and the national guard?”

“The new Governor is keeping the real national guard away, but there are several prominent senators that are campaigning for the President to send in the military if this doesn’t end, soon. The media, meanwhile, is calling on Penny to resign, and for federal investigations of Southern Pride.”

“So, what can we do?”

Temptress smiled at me. “Well, there’s three things we really need to do, in order to stop this whole coup thing. First, we got to eliminate Wehrmacht. Second, we have to remove Southern Pride. Third, we need to get rid of Governor Penny.”

“In other words, take out all the bad guys and we win. What is the plan? I know you girls have a plan for doing this, right?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Of course, doing that isn’t going to be anything like simple. Taking out Wehrmacht will probably be the most difficult part, since we’ll have to find his ‘original’ again. Still pissed that Southern Pride got in the way before I could send him to hell, but oh well. According to the information Web Mistress dug up, he’s moving to a new place every night, not staying with the same face or location for more than 24 hours.”

“And my Sight doesn’t distinguish between the duplicates and the real deal, not at first. So we’ll need to find him the hard way.”

Temptress nodded. “Right. But we can expect them to try and trap us, and you, specifically, by hanging him out as bait, probably with a duplicate that is made up like the original. With how often you’ve embarrassed them in high profile ways, they’re definitely looking to make you pay.”

“Ugh. They keep saying that, and they haven’t done it yet. Though I will admit that Wehrmacht and Thundy aren’t as stupid as Rebel Yell was. They definitely are going to have some kind of a plan. And this time they’ll be counting on my having backup, unless we do something to draw attention away from me taking the bait.”

The Reptilian nodded. “We go attack many-man’s others. Kill and move. Big distract.”

Pyramaniac chuckled. “Ooh, I like the sound of that. Rep and I can make hit and run attacks on Wehrmacht around the city, distracting him, and probably keeping him from giving any people in the city as much trouble.”

Temptress tossed her two cents in. “Well, that would give me a chance to get one of him alone, and find out where the real one is actually hiding while he is paying attention to you guys. Might be our best chance to take the bastard out.”

Web Mistress chuckled. “And they still haven’t figured out a way to get me out of their systems. I can make it so that it looks like hundreds of fights are happening at the same time. If they can’t trust their systems, then they won’t react as quickly when it comes time for the full battle.”

I clapped my hands in excitement. “All right, it sounds like we’ve got a plan for making trouble while our allies prepare for a sustained assault. Speaking of those allies, who do we have?”

Web Mistress chuckled. “Well, Black Thunder is leading the heroes (and some villains) who escaped the city. At the moment, they’re gathering outside the city, but trying to keep their presence hidden. So far, they’ve organized into three raid groups of thirty-six. There are other heroes and villains who remained in the city, and survived, but they number only about twenty or thirty people. Everyone else that wasn’t part of Southern Pride’s plans has been hunted down and sent for reset.”

I winced at that. When the game had started, there had been over six hundred characters inside the Perimeter. Southern Pride and their cronies accounted for almost a hundred, since the racist shitstains had all decided to overwhelm Atlanta and make Georgia the capitol of their New Order. That left about five hundred people who weren’t SP or SP affiliated. And now that number was down to no more than a hundred and fifty or so. Resetting them would take time, unless they were Beta testers or paid for quick resets.

No matter what happened, Southern Pride had already changed the dynamics of City of Champions more than any of us could have imagined. And I hated that they had injected real-world politics into what most players came to as a way to escape the drama and other crap they had to deal with in their day to day lives. No one wanted to be reminded of the same struggles we dealt with in RL while we were playing a game. That’s why we were playing the damn game, after all.

I sighed. This kind of attitude was getting us nowhere. Looking up at the rest of the group, I nodded. “All right then. Let’s go spring a trap.”