Peep on Red Weather Balloon first

Well, the biggest bimbo is also the fastest moving and the likeliest to run into trouble, so you decide you'll test out this high-tech suit functionality on her. And it doesn't have to be a waste of time, either. Your sound-controlling superpower will allow you to pause before entering each new room or length of corridor and toss out a few interesting sounds to draw out any curious heroes or villains before you move a muscle. It may not have the **** behind it of elemental powers and magic but your sound control makes you remarkably sneaky even if you're wearing a bright yellow swimsuit... just as long as you stay out of direct sight.

...

As it turns out the microcameas for Red Weather Balloon's outfit seem to have been mounted somewhere on the shiny black latex bodysuit she wears on the top half of her body... because the camera view jiggles up and down each time she lets her feet touch the floor and walks a few steps in between floating leaps.

Red doesn't have too far to go at that speed, and she manages to not blunder into any ambushes. What she does find is a large room that is half pseudo-pagan cultist shrine and half trendy rave club. Tall stone obelisks arranged in a double-crescent pattern have wi-fi speakers playing a thumping bassline mounted on them. Elaborate glyphs and symbols in some unknown language are scrawled all over the floor in eye-searingly garish neon paint in shades of pink and purple, the effect enhanced by black-light bulbs dangling everywhere from the ceiling. It seems that one end of this room has been breached by the chaotic path of destruction left in the wake of the bombs. The room-covering arrangement of concentric circles of weird runes is notably disrupted, like a cookie with a big bite taken out of it.

Before Balloon can investigate very much she is confronted with peril, sure enough. From behind the standing stones emerge lanky, shadowy creatures with elongated arms jutting forward in front of them at a near 90 degree angle, giving them a disturbing, loping way of moving on their spindly arms and legs that brought to mind the skittering of a cellar spider. Many of them have a pair of horns atop their pitch black heads, and they hiss horribly. "Intruder! Sssssubdue her!" one of them wheezes as a dozen of them lurch towards Balloon.

Yikes. You feel kind of bad for her now. Turning on your heel, you are just about to go running in that direction when she begins... rapidly rubbing her hands up and down her oversized latex-clad breasts, generating a frantic, high-pitched squeaking sound. The demonic monsters seem just as confused as you are as you stop in mid-stride. Thanks to having a feed to her helmet you can tell that Balloon is looking right down as she does so, running her fingers along the stretched surface of the chest portion of her body suit with great vigor. The sound of crackling lightning sends a noisy burst of interference over the radio channel.

Then, the entire room flashes so brightly white that you, eyes adjusted to the darkness, get flash-blinded for a moment even across video. Balloon giggles confidently. As your vision returns you can see that the monsters in front of her are... well, their pitch-black bodies were pretty withered looking before, but now they are smoking, not moving, and their sinister white eye-lights have gone out.

It seems Red Weather Balloon just murdered about a dozen demons using static electricity generated by rubbing her own tits. It seems a bit unfair that fate granted her so damn many useful superpowers on top of everything else... in fact, it suddenly occurs to you that due to her whole floating-as-light-as-air schtick, those zeppelins on her chest weren't even going to be giving her any backache. But then, honestly, it was actually pretty cool. You decide that you're allowed to like *that* without liking *her*.

Casually dusting off her hands, Balloon starts investigating the room calmly, paying the charred monster corpses no mind (good thing for her the League's no-killing policy only applies to humans and the pretty kind of aliens), but she's soon interrupted.

"Well, well, well. Looks like everything is coming up 'me' today." At first you think the screechy voice on the line is Balloon herself, but although it's just as high pitched it also has a raspy quality she lacks, and then you hear Balloon gasp in surprise and turn... to see a diminutive, fuschia-skinned man about a eighteen inches tall, with a disproportionately large head and long pointed ears, wearing a leopard-print bathrobe sized for him. The reason this weirdo was at eye level for Balloon is because he'd been sitting on her shoulder without her even noticing until he talked.

"EEEEEE!" Balloon crying out in alarm is an awful sound; even the little demon guy seems to think so, holding his ears. She raises a white-gloved hand and begins to form a miniature whirlwind in her palm.

"Whoah whoah hey wait! Hold on, babe! I'm a good guy, you rescued me from those awful creeps who'd been keepin' me cooped up in here for the past however many months! I'm here to do you a favor, this is a, a fisherman and the magic fish kind of thing! I-"

The mini cyclone grabs him and throws him around the room like a ragdoll. The little guy is soon throwing up voluminous amounts of green sludge, more than he could possibly have inside of him. "Wait - enough with the spinning already! I - I can see what you want, I can see what everyone wants! You came here to be famous and get rich, right?"

"AUGHHH!" Red Weather Balloon shrieks petulantly again. "That's what so many of the other women here have said! All of those petty, jealous haters! Every day they're looking for ways to cut me down...!"

"Yeah but," the little guy says, staggering to his feet, "I'm sayin' it without the judgement, though. It's just fact, and I say, hey, whatever floats your balloon, right? So listen babe - I'm your average, typical 8th dimensional being here visiting your humble little dimension before I got tied down here by those gangly killjoys and their bitch of a mistress, here to have a little fun and make a few movies for grins. But I'm not here to do some kind of trickster routine, nah, think of me more like a, ehhhhh... game show host. Here to address the balance, bring some justice to the multiverse. I'm practically a superhero myself, you see."

"...really?" Balloon says, a growing note of curiosity in her voice.

"Listen, unlike the others," the little fuschia man says, rubbing his hands together, "Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Mr. Mazorpazorp. You've been keepin' it clean and classy since you got to Acropolis, right babe? You're classic, you're glamorous, you're a model... and the first rule of models is 'look but don't touch'. The way it used to be, right? You look good, the advertisers in their glass towers are already taking notice of you and about to roll out posters with you, and you? You are aloof and unattainable, a goddess from humble origins. Those other girls... let's be honest..."

This '8th dimensional being' reaches into his robe, produces a small pipe and begins smoking it casually. "They're pretty much porn stars. It's sad for them, really. I mean, apologies in advance for doing a little light mind reading on ya, Red, but I totally agree with what you're thinking. Any kind of class and decorum associated with being a superheroine, they've thrown aside since long before you got shanghaied into this joke of a team. I know you're the first one Mort informed about putting this team together and I know all the research you did. And well - those other three are discarding the mystique of the superheroine as fast as they can, plummeting towards rock bottom. I mean for Yog-Sothoth's sake - ALL of them ended up going absolutely all the way, out and out, and, heh, in and out, their very first patrols in this town! Y'know what I mean, Red! Fucking! Not a little rubbing or a feel getting copped. Not coaxing info out of a hood with a little handling of his pistol. Not EVEN stopping at giving some henchman a few licks south of his belt to distract him outta guarding a deathtrap. Snowflake, Thunderbird or Nightingale or whatever she's callin' herself... even Doc Rainbow. Their first night as 'superheroines' and they skipped every intervening step and went RIGHT to gettin' it balls deep."

Balloon has been ominously silent through this tirade. 'Mr. Mazorpazorp' continues. "...and then not only do you end up getting put on a team with them but even though the theme is supposed to be about freakin' WEATHER, and you are THE. WEATHER BALLOON," he gesticulates wildly like a vaudeville showman, holding his arms up in the air reverently, "you end up with no actual authority and have to ask how high when you get told to jump by the absolute biggest, most notorious, most shameless slut to have joined the League this year, and I shouldn't gotta tell ya that is some stiff competition! The VERY FIRST THING SHE DID was make a two-on-one porno movie with a couple guys who weren't even working for any supervillian. About two days later she made ANOTHER porno movie with an orgy including her and Dr. Rainbow, in the training room of this very building no less! Stop me if I'm gettin' any of this wrong, babe."

More silence. You have stopped dead in your tracks even though Rainbow might still be in danger. Your eyebrow is twitching. "Are you fucking kidding me..." you hiss under your breath. Knowing that this Balloon person was an arrogant, self-aggrandizing attention whore is one thing. Knowing that all of her passive aggression is at least partly because she's been judging you since before you even met her inflames your very bones with ire. You almost want to thank Photobomber for nearly killing you and your whole team if only because it's helped this get out into the open.

And so the pint-sized interdimensional imp plows ahead with his spiel. "The others, well, they're not a great look for you to be associated with either, to be honest. Even Rainbow's happy-go-lucky saccharine schtick is functionally about advertising her as a target to be defiled, and sure enough, that's what happens. Maybe it'd be possible to pull one or two of 'em out of the gutter eventually, but only on their own, not when they're all clustered together to help drag each other down. There is some absolute garbage in this institution and those other three, ah heh heh, 'ladies', and I do use that term loosely... not to mention that cynical old bat Petite Mort who knows everything a mentor ought to do but is determined to do the opposite... are the latest shock troops aimed at destroying what little reputability the League's got left after the likes of Beast Beauty, Green Streak and Whole Glory have spent the last half decade running amok."

"Ouuuuuuhhhhhhh," Red Weather Balloon gives an awful whine and dips her head. "It's all true! It's exactly how you say! I've tried so hard, trained so hard, to be the kind of sexy idol a superheroine should be and now I've been put with a bunch of whores who are going to drag me down to their level!"

"YOU PUT A BIG, OBVIOUS ZIPPER DIRECTLY OVER YOUR CUNT, YOU RAGING HYPOCRITE!" you shriek - and then have to activate your powers in a split second to prevent your voice from echoing down the hallways ahead of you any more than it already has.

"Oh no, oh no!" Red Weather Balloon suddenly holds up her hands and clutches them together nervously. "I just realized, Mr. Mixyzoop, these suits have communications thingies in them! ThunderBird or Snowflake might be listening to this!"

"Nah, don't worry, don't worry." the fuschia creep says. "I've been blocking any incoming or outgoing transmission since you walked in here. He then smiles unnervingly and gives a big wink directly towards the camera... and you. But that's not all, babe! I'm gonna do you the solid of the century. All you have to do is sign a little contract here," there's a puff of sparkly smoke and a sheaf of corporate-looking legal documents appears in Red's hand, "and we'll be off to the races."

You check the communication channel for any interference. There's no sign that Mr. Mazorpazorp is blocking the transmission or indeed even trying to do so. Is he just lying to WB? This gets more and more twisted by the moment.

"Off... to the races? Ummm..." Red Airhead cocks her head to the side in confusion.

"Clearly the only one who can salvage this team is you. All the others, but especially ThunderBird, gotta go. You sign here, and I turn the first 5 months of this team's life into an elimination contest. I'll give events a nudge here and there to see to it that the egregious whores in the team get done in by the natural consequences of their own shamelessness and stupidity."

"Done in?!?!" Red Weather Balloon's voice reaches its squeakiest octave yet. "You don't mean...?"

"No, no no no no no, just the opposite. If you'll read through the documents there you'll see that I actually have to prevent anybody from gettin' outright killed to fulfill the terms of the game. Trust me, there's much simpler ways to knock somebody off of a team. Heh heh heh... 'knock'... ahem, but I'm gettin' ahead of myself. The important point is that anything that happens - the kinda scandals and screwups that can derail a cape career for a good long while, if not permanently - will have to be, more or less, a consequence of their own actions or choices.

He floats up to eye level with a little whirlwind of sparkly pixie dust, tacky bathrobe fluttering but (mercifully) not flying open. "5 months from now there will be a single remaining 'winner'. The others will no longer be active as registered heroes and will face substantial obstacles to returning. In return I will do a little bit of... massaging of the fabric of the world, let's say, to make sure that the NEW and IMPROVED Weather Watch becomes the premier, top A-ranked hero team around and stays that way for a period of at least 5 years. Of course, if I fail to eliminate at least 4 heroines without going back on my own rules then I'll be banished from this world for a period of 5 years, 5 months, 5 days and 5 hours... Oh, and although Petite Mort isn't technically a heroine on the team per se, if she happens to become collateral damage, well, there's much better mentors to be had, am I right? Helllooooo! Maiden A, anybody?"

Red Weather Balloon gives a very intrigued sounding hum as she begins leafing through the pages of the contract quickly - VERY quickly, far more quickly than she could if she were actually reading through it. She doesn't remark on it but you are pretty sure you heard Mr. Whatshisface say "at *least* 4 heroines, and he didn't specify that the "single remaining winner" would be among the team's original ranks.

Red Weather Balloon yanks off one of her gloves and puts her hand up to her mouth and makes some noisy gnawing sounds. When it re-enters the frame of the camera, her finger is bleeding and she makes some hasty letter-shaped smudges of blood on the last page of the contract. "Done!!!"

"Uhhh... wow, uh, okay," Mr. Mazorpazorp's eyes bug out a little and he makes a grimace of surprise, though he quickly recovers. "Didn't have to be in blood actually, I had a fountain pen right here... uh, nevermind that though. Congrats, babe! The great game has begun! I can't overtly help you too much but I'll pop in from time to time to give you little updates on how it's goin'. Now, as a matter of fact, you might want to sit tight and turn on some of the camera functions of your own helmet, there, because I can tell you on good authority that ThunderBird and Snowflake are about to get up to some of their usual reckless, wannabe pornstar hijinx, and Dr. Rainbow is almost certainly going to get dragged into it while shouting 'Golly gee willickers' the whole way like she always does. Ciao for now, babe!" He waves and his image distorts, flattens down to a white line and winks out of existence like the image on an old cathode ray tube television being flicked off.

It looks like you won't have the luxury of worrying about JUST the murderous supervillains now, but also deal with the fact that your supposed team-member, within literally hours of the team being formed, has signed an infernal contract with an interdimensional alien/demon/conman to bring some kind of unspecified ruin to all of you. This day is literally cursed - when most people use 'literally' in a context like that they're mangling the definition, but you're pretty sure it's actually merited, here.

You stop sneaking around quite so cautiously and begin stepping quickly, flinging open doors to side rooms and hero residences, hoping to get to Doc as quickly as possible. But just then you get a warning ping in the goggles of your heads up display that tells you another team member is 'engaged in a close quarters struggle with a possible adversary'... Snowflake, to be specific.

It's amazing, really - it now seems like Snowflake is by far the less toxic of your two newly introduced team members. You actually do need to be concerned about her well-being now so you flick over to check in on her even though you can make an educated guess that the sensors in these super-suits might be misconstruing the data...