"I told you I was your loyal servant!" Vibes yelled, letting loose another sound wave. "Now you want me to die because I failed a stupid mission?! I won't do that!"
Just as he was about send a deadly blast in the boss' direction, when he felt something prick his back. Not a second later, he fell to the floor, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to do anything. The only thing he could do was move his eyes in terror as he had no doubt what was going to happen to him now.
"That was a test, Vibes," the boss growled as he got his bearings together. "A servant, a loyal servant, never attacks their leader, even if they were sentenced to death. I now feel no regret in placing you in Dr. Genie's care. Dr. Genie, he is in yours to deal with. Please send in C4 on your way out."
Vibes couldn't even cry as his body was merely dragged out of the door by Dr. Genie, who informed C4 that it was his turn to speak with the boss. C4 gulped, wishing he had taken the flight to Europe than South America. When he had arrived there, both Ruthless and Asphalt were there waiting for him. Of course he tried to fight, then escape, but they had also brought Mistress with them, resulting in his capture and returned him back to their lair. And now he had to meet with the boss. With shaky legs, he entered the room and, against his better judgment, closed the door.
"I'm disappointed in you, C4," the boss said after a while. "You said you could handle it, that you didn't need help. You said killing an old man was too easy and I liked your confidence so much that I let you take care of the assassination yourself. Why then have I been informed that you have not succeeded in taking Shinobay's life?"
"They were ready for me when I made my move," C4 rasped.
"They were ready because you made a mistake," the boss growled. "From what One-Eye told me, you used gas to try and knock them unconscious. And that still didn't work. What assassinator uses gas to kill his targets?"
"I've done it multiple times," C4 shuddered.
"But it didn't work this time," the boss glared. "Now instead of moving forward with my plan, I have to come up with another plan to kill Shinobay, who will be heavily guarded in future attempts."
The boss paced the floor, trying to abate his anger. Usually he'd torture anyone who failed him, but they always died in the end. He promised himself he wouldn't do that again, which meant finding another way to vent out his frustration. Then again, C4 did fail him and then it took weeks to retrieve him. He should be given a reminder of what happens when villains try to pull stunts like that. He looked over at C4, whose eyes followed him fearfully. Of course he should be feared.
He was Dictator Jones.
Or, at the most, what was left of him anyways. Age had a funny way of creeping up on people and Dictator Jones was no exception. Like multiple people before him, he looked for the fountain of youth, or the mythical Elixir of Eternal Life, or see if there was a scientific breakthrough in animal biology that could make him younger again.
And he had his chance. Dr. Genie was his ticket to that breakthrough. Unfortunately, she was too hooked up on making weird experiments that always ended up eating her kidnapped lab partners. It came to a point where he had to force her to find a different method of experimenting or else his life would be next.
A crooked smile spread across his face when an idea popped in his head.
"C4, I want you to know that you're forgiven," Dictator Jones said. C4 didn't smile despite the good news. He took note of that the first day he joined the boss and his lackeys at getting world domination. "But should you ever fail me again, I'll let loose Dr. Genie's grotesque admiration of random experimenting on you and hope something better comes out of it. Understood?"
C4 nodded and shivered in fear. Even up in the boss' chambers, he could hear the faint screams of Vibes below them. If there was any greater sadistic, dominating female in the world, Dr. Genie would've had her killed. Seriously, that lady loves the sight of injecting people with random chemicals to see what creature would manifest of it. He stood up to leave before Dictator Jones could change his mind.
"C4, I want the agent's head that stopped you from killing Shinobay," Dictator Jones ordered. "And to make sure you won't bring me the wrong one, I'm going to get a good look at him."
There was no point trying to escape. Still, it was an instinct that anyone would've had and C4 ran for the door as fast as he could. His fingers barely touched the doorknob when his mind went nuclear. It was like his skull had shrunk and his brain had a growth spurt at the same time. His screams were magnifying to intense heights as he crawled and rolled across the floor. He scratched at his head in agony, but the pain, as close as it was, was unreachable. If he could rip his head open to get away from the pain, he would do in a heartbeat. It was almost unbearable; it was literally driving him up the wall.
Dictator Jones was relentless in his search. Like all the previous mental searches, C4 was trying to reject him entry, but Dictator Jones had kicked that door down immediately. The difficult part was trying to force a person's memories to replay the event in the exact order it happened. But the dictator was an expert telepath and, with a little bit of strain, found exactly what he wanted.
The memory played itself for him. Unfortunately, throughout the entire battle, C4 wasn't getting a good look at the agent that stopped him. It was becoming a real irritation to Dictator Jones as he watched C4 only target the body of the agent and not the head. At one point, the agent was a blur when he slid beneath C4. Then when C4 looked right at the pin in the agent's hand, again not the face, and had thrown the full pack of explosives. At that point, Dictator Jones was ready to turn him into his mindless puppet. Only one thing stopped him from doing so.
The agent's face.
After that short confrontation, the agent was lying in front of Commander Shinobay. He was tired and severely bruised, but still holding up a gun that he might not even be able to shoot from. But fortunately for the agent and C4 as well, C4 was just as weak as he was. C4 looked at the agent right in the face, said a meaningless threat, and then jumped out the window. Frustrated, Dictator Jones rewound the memory, going back to where they stared at each other, and paused to look at the agent's face again.
When he had the face memorized, he pulled out of C4's mind. Closing his eyes, he went through his own memories and looked for the face that matched the agent's face. A memory soon came up, one almost twenty years ago and he smiled.
It was back in the good old days when he and Solarium was still going at it. Every plan he had was being foiled in one way or another and every victory he had was spaced out and shortlived. In one plan, he had kidnapped a bunch of orphans and let Dr. Genie use them as her test subjects. Unfortunately, each of the experiments were failing right and left for various and deadly reasons. In the end, the last test subject, a boy, was injected with her twisted version of the newly introduced Rapid Recovery medicine.
Like all the others, it failed. But unlike the others, Dr. Genie administered the Rapid Recovery medicine to the child. Simultaneously, Solarium, and his growing force of heroes, busted in at that time and a battle ensued between Dr. Genie's remaining experiments and Solarium's team of heroes. Dr. Genie's experiments were subdued, he and Dr. Genie were arrested and the child was lost in the battle and the deepest parts of Dictator Jones' mind . . . until today.
"C4, bring in the other villains," Dictator Jones demanded.
C4, who was glistening with sweat, stood shakily as he went to follow the boss' orders. His legs had no strength in them, as if they were boiled noodles, and he had to lean against the wall for support. And even with the support of the wall, he still fell a few times, fortunately gaining strengthen every time he stood back up. He gathered the rest of the villains and led them back to the boss' room.
"What's the deal, Jones?" Dr. Genie asked, gruffly. "I'm working on something new with Vibes and I can't do that with you interrupting my work."
Dictator Jones frowned. He hated not being addressed by his title, but Dr. Genie was, and still is, the very first ally he's ever had. Even when others gave in, and tried to live right, she stuck by his side (she also hunted down every villain that tried to 'resign', as if they could just reintegrate back into society after the multiple criminal acts they've committed).
If it wasn't noticed by now, Dr. Genie was a mad scientist. Before, she was a young prodigy in all manners of science on Earth. It was a lifestyle she quickly grew accustomed to, winning multiple awards at several scientific events. She even got a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for creating the Rapid Recovery medicine (yes it was her), the only medicine that could heal wounds on humans (not heroes and/or villains) in seconds and bring a person from near-death to a comatose state.
However, at the Nobel Banquet, she declared what she was truly working on: making her own creature. She wasn't taken serious until her first experiment, the Void, which could shapeshift, broke free and went on a killing spree of a couple hundred deaths until it was contained and sent to be destroyed. As for Dr. Genie, she was stripped of her award and arrested, although she later escaped. Now, she was driving herself insane as she attempted to recreate something equal to the Void, all the while searching for the original, without any success.
"Whatever you're doing right now can wait," Dictator Jones replied. "Right now, I have something more interesting than you abominable monsters. In light of C4's failure to assassinate Shinobay, I have found out that the agent with him was none other than one of your own experiments, Dr. Genie."
"Impossible, all my experiments are monsters," she glared. "And I have accounts of all the monsters I've created, dead or alive."
"Not the one almost twenty years ago," Dictator Jones declared.
"Yes I do. Even if they were kids, I have records of every experiment I've done," Dr. Genie replied. Her face then took on a concentrated look as she struggled to remember something. "Actually, there was one test I never confirmed. I had wanted to create my own little minions once and decided to use a twisted version of the Rapid Recovery medicine I made. It failed, but I didn't get the chance to confirm his death since Solarium barged in with his goody-goody two shoed friends."
