Act 16: Dreams, Heroes, and Crime

--- Joshua ---

Like most nights he managed to actually dream -rather than just blacking out- he found himself in the Cartoon Cabaret, only unlike most times Avery didn’t greet him as soon as he walked into the main room.

(Huh, wonder where he is?)

Looking around a bit he found the cabaret manager, huddled by the bar next to some drawing on the wall.

“Oi, Avery what’s going on over there?”

The grey man jumped turning towards him before giving him a wide smile. “Boss! Boss you did it!”

“Uh, did what?” He blinked.

“Over here, over here!” Avery waved, before letting out a (disturbing) giggle.

“Is… everything okay?” He asked cautiously, not sure if he should get too close to the manic dream or not.

“It’s not just okay, it’s fantastic!” The cabaret manager exclaimed, before deciding he wasn’t moving fast enough and dragging him over from a distance too far for his arms to have naturally reached. “Look!”

Blinking at -(and repressing)- whatever just happened, he turned his attention to what Avery was so excited about and found himself staring at a familiar doodle. One that was notably larger than the one he’d drawn before going to bed.

The doodle gave him an awkward wave, it’s dot like eyes drifting towards Avery.

“You made another Dream!” Avery laughed maniacally.

“Uh, I, how?” He finally settled on, still having a number of other questions but finding that one to be the most important.

“I don’t know!” Avery smiled. “But this so important!”

“Why?” He frowned in confusion.

“Boss, you made a dream!” Avery told him once more. “Don’t you get it? You made a Wonderland resident!”

“L-like you?” He stuttered, not entirely sure how he was supposed to feel about apparently creating life.

“Yes!” Avery nodded enthusiastically before pausing with a frown of his own. “Well not exactly…”

“Okay, maybe… Slow down and explain this to me?”

“Uh, right, right… S-sorry Boss, got a bit, uh, excited.” Avery apologized nervously. “But um, I’m a Boss Dream while he’s a regular Dream.”

“And that means what exactly?” He prodded for more.

“Well… A Boss Dream is more… complicated than a regular dream.” Avery tried. “For instance I’m the Cabaret Manager so I can manipulate things a bit with your permission, which regular Dreams can’t.”

“So uh, if they can’t… manipulate things, what can they do?” He asked, eyes drifting to the Doodle watching him and Avery.

“That uh, that depends a bit… Usually when a dream comes into being they have a job or role they’re supposed to fulfill, or at least that’s what I remember before things started to fall apart.” Avery frowned in thought before shaking his head. “Making Dreams isn’t, it isn’t something I can do, so… I don’t know too many of the details.”

“Well, if they’re supposed to have a job…” He turned to the living Doodle. “What exactly is your job?”

The Doodle gave him a shrug.

“Maybe… Do you know when you created him, Boss?” Avery asked, crossing his arms.

“Er, not really?” He admitted, still trying to figure out how he’d apparently created a Dream. “I mean I was playing around with my powers earlier and I sort of just… drew him?”

“In the waking world?” Avery checked, before receiving a nod. “Then maybe… maybe that’s his purpose?” The Cabaret Manager offered.

“To appear whenever I draw him?” He frowned, trying to figure out how that made a fulfilling purpose.

“Well, there’s probably more to it than that.” Avery pointed out. “I mean, even if that is his purpose you’d still have to funnel Madness into him to help him do it better.”

“But why?” He had to ask, especially since he didn’t really have any way of getting Madness besides his Malice vials.

“Well, you don’t have to, but… It’s…” Avery ran a hand down his face, apparently having trouble figuring out how to explain this. “The Wonderland runs on Madness, without Madness everything in the Wonderland… Stagnates and…” Avery shivered as if remembering something.

“Right, so another mouth to feed.” He sighed, deciding not to force the timid manager to continue with a subject that was obviously bothering him.

“Yeah…” Avery grimaced, before giving him a weak smile. “I honestly wasn’t expecting to have other Dreams in the Cabaret until we were getting ready to open…”

“Yeah…” He nodded.

Scene Consequences

-Grown closer to Avery.

-Can now funnel Madness into Doodle.

---

Sitting on a city bus on his way to stakeout the gang safehouse again, he pulled out his phone and pulled up the page for the local Heroes’ Guild branch, figuring it wouldn’t take to have a rough idea of what the junior heroes could do.

(Let’s see… So, we’ve got five junior heroes in town right now.) He frowned looking at the junior line up.

(First up is an Iron Guardian knock off wearing a bulky mech suit to boost his performance.) (But even a good costume needs a proper actor.) He chuckled, before putting the hero in his ‘don’t fight’ pile, because (even with my powers I’m not quite at the ‘punching through steel’ level.) (Yet.)

(Alright, and after the team tank we have the team rogue.) Looking up a few videos of them in action he found the teen dressed in black was probably a magic user of some kind. One that used a shadow-y smoke-y power of some sort to move around and attack people with a mix of stealth and ranged attacks courtesy of a pair of M.A.D. pistols. (That mobility is going to be a problem, and that’s before we take into account the guns that they gave a kid because ‘merica.) (Hopefully this job doesn’t devolve into a show on the go.)

Shaking his head he gave the center figure of the picture a quick search, pulling up a few videos about the team’s leader, already knowing that of the five she was going to be the toughest.

(So given what I’m seeing here, she’s probably a magic user, one specializing in manipulating the water she keeps in a compressed container on her lower back.) He paused seeing what he figured was a PR video before searching it and finding that, (oh, and she teaches self-defense to kids on her weekends off!) (Lovely.)

Deciding he was better off avoiding a fight with someone that out of his league he moved onto (hopefully) the weak link of the team in a middle schooler with a fuzzy creature of some kind on her shoulder. After a moment of searching he let out a sigh. (Of course they don’t let the middle schooler fight, she’s probably just a mascot at this point. Which knowing genre savviness means there’s something terrifying about that fuzzball they don’t want to advertise.)

Was he being paranoid about a middle schooler? Possibly. Was he going to stop? (Nope.)

The last member of the team was a girl in white floating a few feet off the ground in the picture. (Mm, a Psychic, I think. One who uses telekinesis to fly and punch things really hard…)

He didn’t know a lot about psychics but based on what little he did know, he was pretty sure ‘flying brick’ was not the most ideal use of their powers. (Then again she’s flying a lot smoother than the few psychics I’ve seen do that, and I can’t say that isn’t a power I’d prioritize myself…)

The bus slid to a stop, as he realized they’d pulled up on his stop. (Either way none of them are looking that easy.)

Scene Consequences

-Gained more information about the Junior Heroes.

---

Given how he had a meeting with the Malice Doctor later, and likely would have to pick which of his targets he was going after at said meeting, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to try and see if he could find anything else out about the gang safehouse.

Which is why he spent the majority of his Sunday watching the safehouse from a building half a block over that he’d managed to climb onto the roof of. And while he didn’t get a whole lot of information, he was able to use his phone and a binocular app to determine that less than a dozen people came and went from the house over the course of the twelve or so hours he spent watching it. (Not entirely sure if this was worth it or not…)

Scene Consequences

-Gained more information about the gang safehouse.

-For spying on a target gained 1XP to Slyness.

--Currently: Lv. 2 (1/6)

A/N: Complete honesty I didn’t realize I left this option on the menu, and it was pretty much a unanimous vote for this option by the time I realized it so… yeah…

---

As he walked into the Malice Doctor’s warehouse, he was half hoping he’d arrived early enough to catch the doctor off guard (or even better before him) unfortunately the man was already there and barely gave him a glance before saying, “Good I don’t have to tell them to kidnap you for once.”

“I thought my kidnappings amused you.” He scoffed making his way to the meeting table.

“They do, but at the same time the higher ups don’t like having to waste resources on someone so… flaky.” The Malice Doctor explained, continuing to look over a file.

He tried to catch a glimpse of said file, but only managed to catch sight of two pictures one of a monster of some kind and the other of a (dissected body) (what the fuck?!)

“You really shouldn’t look into things you don’t want to know about.” The Malice Doctor warned him, closing the file with an audible sigh.

“Should I be concerned about that picture?” He asked, his eyes drifting to the guards he usually wrote off as scenery during these meetings.

“Only if you die on the job.” The Malice Doctor shrugged. “Which, fair warning, if you die we’ll be collecting your corpse and giving it a thorough study, before disposing of it in a way that the authorities can’t trace.”

“R-right.” He swallowed.

“So, with that settled, have you decided on which target you’ll be going after?” The Malice Doctor asked with the same vague apathy he always seemed to hold.

Figuring that he should try and show off that he was at least semi-competent (and more importantly not entirely expendable) he decided to go over what he knew about each of the three targets.

“Well first there’s the mall jewelry store, which of course has one of the Junior Heroes at it at almost all hours.”

“Not if you’re willing to cut school.” The Malice Doctor pointed out.

“Not if I want to keep my brother off my radar.” He pointed out back. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s something neither of us wants.”

The Malice Doctor gave him a half-nod as if saying ‘fair’ without having to admit it, which he took as a small victory for himself.

“Yeah, well going over their line-up most of them are either too mobile or too powerful for me to take in a straight fight.” He admitted, only slightly bitter about that fact. (Remember you’re just getting started, plenty of time to work your way up and become a star.)

“Unless you pick a fight with the child?” The Malice Doctor again pointed out.

“I don’t trust her fuzzball.” He answered with narrowed eyes.

“Flufflepuff.” The Malice Doctor corrected with a touch of amusement.

“I don’t care what it’s called, I don’t trust anything that cute and fluffy.” He growled, fully believing that fuzzball was a trap of some kind.

“Moving on.” The Malice Doctor told him, without losing his smirk. “What about the other two targets?”

“Well the pawnshop belongs to an M.A.D. who I’m pretty sure is a tech specialist, meaning even if I hit the place after hours or he can’t fight, the place will still be trapped out the wazoo.” He listed before chuckling as he realized, “It really is a ‘rough’ pawnshop as you put it.”

“I suppose it is.” The Malice Doctor nodded.

(I bet you do.) He thought with narrowed eyes, before letting out a sigh. “Which brings us to the gang safe house. It belongs to the Dealers, and has just under a dozen members guarding it. Apparently there was a police raid last weekend or something, and the Mask they ran into there managed to escape. Though I doubt they’re hiding at the safehouse since I haven’t seen any travelers and there’s too few guards to be protecting their cash cow.”

“Hm, a fair assessment of all of your targets.” The Malice Doctor admitted, before giving him a look. “Though it still doesn’t tell me which one you intend to target.”

“Right, well…” (No more second guessing on this.) “Taking everything into… consideration, I’m thinking it’d be best if I targeted [the gang safehouse.]

“I see… Well then, I’ll make sure our contingencies are in place until next Sunday.” The Malice Doctor told him, not revealing what he thought about the matter. “You have until then to hit your target, or else you’ll see a… restriction in our support. Understand?

“Understood.” He nodded, feeling a certain calm now that he had things a little more finalized.

“Good, then we can move onto your weekly progress report.”

“Right.”

---

-Gained 5 vials of Malice.

-Quest Updated: Opening Act: Make the final preparations for the heist and hit the target before Act 21. (If not triggered early, event will automatically begin after Act 20.)