Vaudevillain

As Sweet Dream Barreled into the group of aliens, John ran up the stairs to set up the guns. He quickly selected the generator and set it down in the middle of the hallway. With that done he dashed from room to room placing the basic gun turret on the ground. Before he placed the last one John looked out the window to see another wave of aliens spawn in the garden.

Sweet Dream ran forward to meet the new enemies but John spied a larger ring forming behind the new squad. Whatever was in the larger ring materialized slower than the rest of the Quli and soon a simple outline formed. The rings of light slightly masked the enemy's form but John could tell. A mech was coming.

The arrival of the mech probably meant this was the final wave of soldiers. After defeating this wave there would be a period of downtime where they could gather up the scattered materials and upgrade their defenses. Maybe, eventually, the upgrade would be enough to halt any attacks from the Quli. But for now, the issue was destroying that mech.

John looked at the description of his power again.

John looked back outside again. The mech was now fully formed and engaged in battle with Sweet Dream. It looked to be an even match until a ray gun in the mech's hand sliced off Sweet Dream's arm. The chocolate fell to the ground and the villainess reformed her arm in a second, but in that precious second, the mech had slipped past Sweet Dream. The Jacobs frantically fired their pilfered ray guns to slow the machine down and give Sweet Dream enough time to engage the mech once more.

Most likely it would take too much time to absorb the mech, and there was no way John could survive a blast from a ray gun of that size. That didn't leave him many options. Maybe he could absorb one of Dylan's minion factories. His friend would understand why it had to happen.

But… There were some gun turrets he could absorb. And if he combined as many turrets as he could he could make something just as strong as that mech's ray gun, maybe stronger. John opened up the base building tab and placed as many turrets as he could on the floor. By the end of it, four simple gun turrets sat on the floor.

John placed both hands down on two turrets and focused on activating his power. His arms glowed and after a few seconds, the two turrets were in a hot bar at the bottom of his vision. John moved his hands over to the last two turrets and pulled them into himself as well. He repeated the action until ten guns sat on the hot bar.

From the hot bar, John could drag the tech over his body or try and merge two techs into one. His testing earlier had shown it was easier to combine similar technologies so he went to work merging the gun turrets. Merging the guns didn't let him absorb more technologies but it did increase the effectiveness of the tech and it made for easier movement. John directed the stack of turrets over to a picture of his right arm.

That done, John turned back to the fight. Sweet Dream was still slowing the mech down but it was apparent she couldn't last much longer. Her chocolate form was thinning and pieces of her body sometimes poked through. Mabel was outside with the Jacobs and a group of controlled aliens, trying to direct shots into the mech without harming Sweet Dream.

Seeing the predicament, John rushed down the stairs and out into the front yard.

"Dream get clear!" he yelled.

His friend dislodged herself from the alien mech, rolling to the ground in a ball of chocolate. John ran up next to the line of Jacobs and activated his power. He watched as his fingers split open and formed ten hollow barrels. His arm straightened out into a rifle barrel and an ammunition gauge appeared under his health bar. A bracing tripod formed under his shoulder and bury itself into the ground behind him.

"Eat hot lead!" John yelled. He wasn't about to waste a perfect chance to yell out a line like that.

Bullets erupted out of John's finger barrels in a constant stream. They impacted against the armored hull of the mech with a sharp ping.

Sweet Dream yelled over the din. "Aim at the joints!"

John tried to direct his fire down to the leg joints of the mech but found the journey slow-going. The tripod brace didn't allow for quick movements so John watched as the mech turned to face him while the hail of gunfire crawled downward. But now that Sweet Dream was disengaged, nothing stopped Mabel's minions from opening fire.

A few of the Jacques had grabbed ahold of the alien ray guns and were charging at the mech with wanton abandon. But the real saviors were the Jacobs unleashing a concentrated burst of ray gun blasts at the mech's firing arm. The machine was forced to turn away from the blast and bring up its other arm to block. That gave John just enough time for his slow crawl of bullets to reach the leg joint.

The stream of bullets cut into the weaker joints of the machine and snapped the leg right off. The machine fell to the ground with a crash. John continued his stream of fire until he'd run out of bullets, aiming at the mech's arm joints to keep it from retaliating. The Jacobs joined in with concentrated bursts until the ring of light appeared to take away the destroyed mech.

With the fight over John converted the stack of turrets into armor. His gun arm faded away into his normal arm as Sweet Dream walked over.

"Eat hot lead?" She asked.

"What, like you wouldn't yell out a one-liner?"

"Not that one."

"Well then tell me miss wit what would you pick?"

"Dude, did you guys just fight an alien army without me?" John turned to see Dylan and Surfsup dropping from the sky onto the front lawn.

"Yeah, Surf. You missed all the fun."

"Aw man."

John walked over to Dylan. "Did you get your revenge yet?"

His friend shook his head. "No, I forgot to ask the mice where they were."

"Dork."

"I guess someone doesn't want me to make him tech."

"Oh, no!" John replied, exaggerating every word. "I apologize great one! I did not mean to insult you! Where I come from dork is a compliment."

Dylan shoved his friend playfully. "Shaddap."

Mabel stepped forward to talk to Dylan. John immediately stepped back. "Zlo hon, what should we do with everything the aliens left behind?"

"Go place it all in the basement. We'll sort through everything there."

The woman nodded and went to direct her minions. John stepped back towards Dylan and leaned in with a whisper. "Hey, did you make it so that NPC would hit on people?"

"Yeah? Why?"

"Look, if you're into that I'm not gonna judge but don't have her doing it to other people. That's creepy."

Dylan smirked at his friend. "Oh my god, she hit on you, didn't she?"

"Look, just don't have her do it."

Dylan laughed. "Oh come on, shameless old ladies are hilarious. Besides, she can't actually do anything like that. The game's rated 16+ remember?"

"It's still creepy."

"If I made her hot you wouldn't be complaining."

"It's not the same!"

"If you two jokers are done arguing we could use some help over here!" Sweet Dream was storing the various items from the assault into her storage. "There's a lot of items from your Jacques, did you know they drop items?"

Dylan turned, "what?"

"Yeah, dude!" Surfsup picked a face mask off the ground.

"That's never happened before."

"It's a patch note change," said Sweet Dream. "This way, heroes and villains can loot materials from those with creation powers. There's no telling what you'll get though."

"Probably the dumbest change Vert's made yet," John said.

"Why's that?" Asked Dylan.

"Well, before you lost whatever it was you used to make your minions. Now you get something back. It means you don't have to search for as many materials, which is the major limiter on your power."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh. I bet we’re going to have all sorts of mad scientist problems now."

Surfsup surfed by on his board. "Nah dude, it won't be that bad. People don't like how mad science is all one giant fetch quest. At least, that's what people complain about on the forums."

"Okay, fair. But with this change, more people will make mad science characters to try and farm rep. And if Dylan's minions are anything to go by, we're going to have hordes of cheap minions soon."

"You're overthinking it."

"Bet you five bucks I'm right."

"In-game cash or real cash?"

"Real cash, I'll phone it you."

Surfsup held out his hand. "Deal."

"Am I the only one who wants to clean all this up? Start grabbing stuff, you slackers!" Sweet Dream chucked a face mask at Surfsup. It hit the surfer square in the head, making him flinch and roll off his board.

Laughing Dylan and John helped their friend up and finished cleaning up the yard.