More Sleepy Adventures in Crescent City – Part 10 (Out of the Bubble, and into the Bolas!)
The security system registered the activation of ‘bubble trap two’ ,while The Anaesthetist was still busy with Dr. Castle. The Gadgeteer was surprised and, not a little annoyed, that another heroine had breached security, even if she was now trapped in blissful slumber. The villainess found the unpredictability of super powers quite unsettling, how was she supposed to counter all the myriad possibilities?
Brushing aside such thoughts for the moment, she decided that another ‘capture bot’ should be more than adequate to escort their most recent visitor to her holding cell.
Dexterous hands flew over the controls, and another robot left its recharging pod. It scuttled towards the ‘bubble chamber’, moving with unsettling silence. It wouldn’t require any further instruction now and The Gadgeteer was happy to watch her creation at work.
On arrival, the spiderbot extended a larger, ceramic blade from between its mandibles. With a single swipe, it sliced through the bubble. The strange material collapsed, and Ampere fell to the floor, while the remnants of her prison withdrew into the ceiling. In an instant the robot had retracted the larger blade, and extruded its hypodermic ‘stinger’. Nimbly, it leapt towards its target.
Ampere began to rouse, still hopelessly dazed and confused. Clean air was now replacing the numbing gas, and her consciousness was slowly returning. Instinctively, the heroine reached out with her powers. She could feel a significant power source that was almost directly on top of her. As soon as she touched it, the heroine reflexively began to siphon power, replenishing her own.
In the control room, warning lights flashed and alarms sounded. None of it made any sense of course, the spiderbot had been fully charged, and then, an instant later, its battery was completely dead. The Gadgeteer cursed, seeing the heroine pulling herself somewhat shakily to her feet. The villainess was certain there was no way the woman should have recovered that quickly.
Without disengaging the alarms, she took off at a sprint; if she could only get there quickly enough, she might be able to subdue the heroine before she recovered enough to become a threat.
Ampere looked at the disabled machine, and released that something about this technology seemed very familiar. She shook her head, trying to concentrate on the here and now. She couldn’t sense any other power sources close enough to re-energise herself with. But, it didn’t seem likely that her recovery had gone un-noticed. So her priority was to get away from the immediate area and then, find something from which she could recharge herself.
She was just about to begin her search for a power source, when Ampere felt a small surge of energy nearby. It took her fuzzy mind several moments to realise that an electronic door was opening. Desperately she cast around for some sort of cover. As she ran behind a bank of piping, she caught a glimpse of a slender form darting to the left.
Ampere realised she was probably out-matched in her current condition. Retreat was the only viable option, and she had felt the door open, so there was at least one exit. Keeping low, and feeling for telltale bursts of power, the heroine crept around the chamber.
The Gadgeteer knew that the heroine was still in the room. She guessed that the woman’s powers must revolve around the manipulation of energy, and so as a precaution had not activated any gadgets that might be turned against her. Of course, that decision also made it very difficult to track down her quarry.
She reasoned that her target would either try to bring the fight to her, in which case she had enough gadgets to pacify her and a dozen other heroines, or else she would try to flee. Given that there was only one exit from the ‘bubble chamber’, The Gadgeteer decided to find a position from which she could observe the door.
As Ampere approached the exit, she stepped directly into the Gadgeteer’s line of sight. The villainess, who had been aiming down a small tube, wasted no time in firing the weapon. There was a soft pop, and a miniature bolas shot out towards the heroine.
Ampere span as soon as she heard the noise, but even so she had no time to do anything else before the bolas struck. The spinning cord whipped about her chest, pinning her upper arms against her sides. On their second revolution, the two counterweights clashed together, shattering into a fine powder. The golden cloud billowed about her, clinging tenaciously to her body.
She dove to the ground, trying to see where the attack had come from. Ampere coughed and gasped, fighting not to breathe in any more of the dust. The heroine was desperate, the door was so close and her only hope was to get away. She focussed, reached out towards the simple door controls and somehow forced them to open.
The Gadgeteer waited patiently, she had struck the heroine cleanly. Perhaps if she had aimed lower, the woman would not have been able to get back under cover, but really the battle was already over. It was just that the heroine didn’t know it yet. The villainess smiled as she saw the door open, seemingly of its own accord.
Ampere braced herself and tried to sprint through the door, but it was not to be. Her muscles felt leaden, and her body was rapidly stiffening. The heroine managed one shuffling step before she pitched forwards onto the ground. The floor felt so wonderfully soft, and her body was so warm. She made one futile effort to rise, but then that didn’t seem very important either.
The Gadgeteer approached the fallen heroine. The fine powder had now all but dissipated, but obviously the girl had absorbed enough to keep her docile for some time. This one would provide an interesting challenge. Nothing electronic could be allowed near her and, annoyingly, that included the ubiquitous capture collar.
The villainess carefully bent over her opponent and placed a sleep mask over her slack mouth and nose. It was the work of moments to secure it in place, and the now paralysed heroine could do nothing about it at all, except to let herself be gently coaxed back to dreamland.