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Tales from Silicon City: Dungeon Crawl

By Psion

All Rights Reserved

In the world of Silicon City, one quick if extremely dangerous path to riches is the exploration of abandoned supervillain lairs and bringing back the artifacts of a successful run for online retail. The most successful runs turn up even the lost treasures of a supervillain's most notorious capers, lost pieces of art or the entire contents of bank vaults. But the risks are considerable in turn; base crawlers often face lethal security devices, slumbering experiments, and other insidious defenses designed to keep intruders from foiling their plans for world domination or the crime of the centaury. This danger compounds even further if rival base crawlers compete for the same treasures...

Sterilux was a curious inhabitant of the "C-List" of Silicon City supervillains. Normally fetish villains didn't do particularly well in Silicon City, largely impractical costumes and gimmicks ensured that all but a special few were taken down by lone vigilantes and highly trained but otherwise perfectly ordinary SWAT teams. A sniper's bullet always trumped any bullshit egg guns or fashion rays in this world. But then there were a special few that managed to find the right balance between practicality and flamboyance to carve a modestly successful career in supervillainy for themselves. Sterilux was one of these rare few who didn't have a career that ended in life imprisonment or a spectacular hail of gunfire from a moralistic vigilante, a religiously shaved black sheep ewe with a fetish for tight rubber/latex outfits and a "clean/cleanliness" gimmick to her crimes and gadgets. Despite the absurdity of her appearance, she was a reasonably talented thief and proto-base crawler, using her unusual combination of skills and gadgets to leave crime scenes spotless and to sweep valuables from areas quarantined off due to radiation or disease outbreaks. While modest, her career was not without success, carting off several containers worth of unmarked diamonds, a haul believed to be worth well in the upper millions, before vanishing without a trace. No one heard from her since, the secret lair where she stashed her ill-gotten gains was never discovered... until today.

Giles Bray smiled behind his gasmask as he discreetly waddled into the cordoned area after sunset. The plump rat sauntered up to the abandoned house on the edge of suburbia and carefully squeezed his broad hips through the back door before shutting it tightly behind him. Known on the base crawler forums as Reclaimer, the effeminate British rodent was taking a break from a couple contracts in the United States to investigate a tip that a pair of kids exploring a spooky old abandoned house on a dare may have accidentally discovered Sterilux's lost lair. There wasn't much for him to go on, a few bribes slipped to a few underpaid file clerks revealed what little was known. A door in the basement that definitely wasn't part of the original floor plan was trapped with some kind of gas sprayer, hitting one kid with chemical burns from a substance that had yet to be identified and scaring the other one into running off and getting help. Nothing that pointed to any particular villain but no sense letting an opportunity go to waste, especially with so little time until the police finish locking down the area and rumors of other base crawlers operating in the same town.

Still, despite the unknowns he was hardly unprepared. Equipped with a tight black rubber hazmat suit that hugged his curves closely, a heavy-duty industrial respirator that covered his whole face, and a pair of construction yellow exoskeleton gauntlets that enhanced his arm strength and provided all sorts of useful additional gadgets, Giles was certain that he was as stylishly pragmatic as he needed to be for this job.

So far there was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary about his surroundings as the pear-shaped male slowly made his way down to the basement. The rooms were sparsely furnished if they were at all, the occasional chair covered with a dust cloth was the only thing suggesting anyone lived here at all. Heavy rubber boots thudded against the floor despite his best effort to be stealthy, making the wooden flooring audibly creak as the heavyset base crawler made his way down the stairs into the basement where an entrance was supposedly uncovered. The doorway was spotted quickly enough, the two kids had understandably not bothered to shut the false wall that slid away to reveal the portal to the hidden subbasement. Even with his gasmask on, Bray could still smell the harsh stink of industrial-cleaning detergents from the slick residue on the concrete floor... Maybe he was in the right place after all?

The reinforced steel door behind the false wall, clearly built with much more care then the rest of the fixtures in the house, bore no insignia or even a coat of paint. It could have been the door to a prepper's bunker or a panic room except that those types of constructions used more direct forms of deterrents like fire or bullets. The inhabitants would also be actively manning the controls and less likely to shoot at two children just screwing around. No this was definitely something in his line of work, something that definitely smelled like a payday.

Testing the door's bulky metal handle, he expected to find it locked and discovered as much. Knowing there had to be a switch or a keypad of some kind he checked the space hidden in the space between the inner and outer walls he reached in to find a way in, his slender gauntleted fingers finding purchase on an electronic reader designed to work with RFID tags and the magnetic strips found in ID badges. Hooking it up to the multitool built into the wrist of his gauntlet, he discovered it was still powered. Odd, the utilities company would have had to shut off the power to house since it was abandoned so where was the electricity coming from? Regardless, if it was powered then it could be hacked. Punching a few buttons on the computer display, he activated a spoofing program bought off of a hacker friend from crawler forums and quickly had access.

Pulling the metal door open and stepping inside, Reclaimer found himself in a small, sleek elevator that would have been claustrophobic for a person half his width. Used to squeezing his big butt into places where it wasn't supposed to fit, the rat smirked playfully as he bumped the down button with one of his stout cheeks. The elevator door slide shut behind him and descended with a slight lurch caused by years of disuse. One short ride later, the fat rat backed out into the lair proper. A small foyer, designed more as a chokepoint to deter intruders then anything else, opened to a series of branching hallways. One thing was clear; this underground complex was definitely much bigger then the house above it.

"Oh bugger, they're always bigger then they first appear aren't they?" Reclaimer complained to no one in particular as he picked a direction at random and started sauntering off down the hallway to the left. Whatever powered the elevator was also providing lights in the hallway so there was no need to activate his shoulder lamp. Incandescent ceiling lights cast a sterile glow on the pristine white as the rat plodded along. With the exception of the way he came in, he hadn't seen a single door in this hallway except for the hermetically sealed one all the way at the end. Waddling up, the fat rat stopped just short of the door, scanning the walls and floor for the telltale sign of a concealed panel or pressure plate. The door itself looked ordinary enough, no sign of an electronic lock or even a basic mechanical one for that matter. Just an ordinary handle made of chromed steel beckoning to him temptingly, connected to an ordinary steel door barely wide enough for his effeminate hips.

It was so normal it practically screamed "Trap!" to the seasoned base crawler yet he couldn't find anything to suggest where one may lay. No pressure plates, no wall or ceiling panels that could retract to reveal all manner of horrifically painful deathtraps, if there was anything that could kill him it was hidden to even his trained eye. Taking a deep breath, the tech-savvy base robber squished his pear-shaped figure parallel with the door and opened it ever so slowly...

The moon had only just started to rise as the plump panda woman in the black high-tech power suit slipped through the abandoned house and into the uncovered lair below. Plump, pastry-fed belly jiggled like gelatin inside her elastic "smart" clothes as she made her way into the elevator and pressed the button to descend to the not-so-secret subbasement. Sterilux, could it really be her? After all these years and all the rumors? Drone Harvest couldn't believe it but even if it weren't true, it would be foolish to let this opportunity go to waste and not explore the abandoned lair for valuables before the police cordoned off the area. The panda treasure hunter shook her head as she arrived at the small foyer and headed down the central corridor. Already she noticed the little signs of someone having arrived just before her, a professional judging by how hard they were to spot. She'd have to hurry if she wanted first choice of whatever treasures lay waiting for her yet rushing was how base crawlers ended up dead.

As she slowly walked along, the sterile white corridor continued ahead of her for nearly a dozen more feet before it opened up into a large room. Noticing the change in architecture, the suited panda stopped and awoke a spotter drone from the drone nest slung on her back. The ladybug-like robot came alive with the sudden burst of electricity and fluttered over to her open hand before flying off to scout ahead for her. While hardly the most cautious base crawler in the business, Drone Harvest's cheeks still burnt when she recalled how she was nearly captured after a late-night binge at a local snack food factory. And while her big panda bear belly still happily bore the hallmarks of that night's success, it would be a good idea to avoid similar episodes of carelessness for the immediate future...

Werksmag smiled as she trotted along into the abandoned villain's lair, long equine ears twitching as the African Wild Ass stepped into the same sterile foyer that Reclaimer and Drone Harvest had only entered moments before, their owner listening for the sound of suspicious activity. Hooves clicked against the cool tile floor as the African donkey took quick stock of her surroundings with pale hazel brown eyes. Rivals clearly working in the left and center hallways, best to not tip her hand just yet. Granted her powers made it easy for her to conjure a small infantry squad on demand but that was a method of last resort. Clad in a set of simple, loose-fitting brown coveralls, a tool belt crammed with various hand tools, and a backpack stuffed with even more tools, the skinny base crawler from Angola was still an enigma to her non-African rivals and it would behoove her to keep it that way for the time being.

Her black Mohawk gently bobbed in time with her slender stride as she slowly made her way down the hallway. Bright lights illuminated the sterile corridor in a style that would have been Sterilux's trademark before the passageway ended at a reinforced steel doorway. Stopping in front of the door and gently resting her head against the door, Werksmag listened for the sound of anything that might be a threat. Hearing nothing, she took a step back and conjured up a clone. A metabeing with duplication powers, the African Wild Ass was capable of summoning up to a dozen clones of herself, each of them just seeming to pop into existence. It was an ability that made her highly desirable back home in Angola as a slave laborer capable of creating a small work crew on demand... but that was in the past now, she escaped that life and now had more important things to focus on, like whether or not her clone would be destroyed opening this door and triggering a trap that she could not detect.

As her perfectly identical clone, save for a mane bubblegum pink hair of course, slowly opened the door, the ex-pat held her breath and waited for something to happen. But nothing did, the metal portal opened and revealed the room beyond without ceremony. Her job done, Werksmag's clone waited patiently for her to reclaim her. Too many clones sustained for too long put the equine's body under an unnatural strain, particularly when they collapsed and died from exhaustion and the biofeedback hit her like a brick. Placing the clone's hand over her navel, the duplicator smiled as her double was sucked in through her belly button. For a brief moment, an all too fleeting moment for her tastes, her stomach slightly bulged with a burst of warmness then retracted to its normal flatness. It was a sensation she enjoyed perhaps far too much, yet never lasted long enough to distract her. Time to move on and hopefully collect her payday before this opportunity closed...

Drone Harvest's robotic spotter had found the heart of Sterilux's lair, the workshop and control center she used to develop her gadgets and plan out her many capers. All this and not a trap to be found, either visually or with the drone's electronic sensors. It was almost too good to be true, which in the portly panda's mind meant it probably was. Carefully sauntering into the dusty control room and expecting a trap, the Chinese base crawler looked around before she brushed away the thick layer of dust from a computer console with a gloved hand and tested the power button. The relatively ancient console came to life as the old CRT monitor flicked on with an inviting desktop background.

Without the password protection that would be standard on later models, the drone puppetmaster was free to review the word documents stored on the old hard drive and make an unpleasant discovery. Yes, this was Sterilux's old hideout. At least it was until she made an ultimately unwise decision to ally with a fellow supervillain that Drone Harvest had never heard of before, someone called Dr. McFeedlots of all names. Whoever they were, they made repeated references to putting the sheep "on ice" before stealing her fortune and using it to remodel Sterilux's lair to their personal tastes, converting it into a more traditional "depraved mad scientist's lair" and filling the rest of the hard drive with notes the panda needed time to make sense of. The panda's heart sank as she kept reading, the greatest find of her profession in a long time and odds were good that there was barely enough left in valuables to pay next month's rent. Still, there was still the contents of the hard drive and according to a drawn map left in the desk drawer below her console, the vault wasn't too far from here. Not only that, but apparently she picked wisely by going down the center corridor. The right went to a large room simply labeled "Dungeon" while the left was something called the "Husbandry Laboratory."

Fuck BDSM villains and their sex dungeons, Reclaimer swore under his breath as he walked into a room that most definitely did not match up with Sterilux's sense of décor. The lighting immediately decreased in brightness, casting the stark metal and stone room in a slight gloom that his eyes needed a second to adjust to. Despite the newfound dimness, it was impossible to avoid seeing the collection of mechanical restraints and implements of pain that hung on the walls or were generously spaced throughout the floor. Just as it was impossible to notice a slight "farm" theme to some of the neatly hanged prods or that all the restraints appeared to be adjustable for captives of a more robust figure such as the rodent's own. Was this Rubber Maid's secret playroom or someone else's? Reclaimer didn't have much time to think about it before the mechanical restraints sensed an unauthorized presence in the room and suddenly came to life with a creak of servos and hydraulics coming being forced to work after sitting in disuse for so long.

With an uppercut mechanically assisted by his exo-gauntlets, the British ex-pat smashed the closest restraint and started slowly waddling backwards towards the door. "Sod off! You didn't even buy me dinner first!" He shouted with a snarl muffled by his respirator. Got to get out and shut the door, got to get out and shut the door, he thought frantically as his pear-shaped figure jiggled with each step taken back out of the room. Despite having one of their fellows punched with enough force to shatter concrete, the remaining x-shaped automatons continued their slow, mindless march towards the intruder. Continuing to remain undeterred until Reclaimer stepped back out the door the effeminate rat came in and slammed it behind him.

Working quickly, he activated a welding torch built into his gauntlet and started sealing the metal door shut. The welding course he took as part of his industrial mechanics classes back in England came in handy as he fused the door to its frame. Despite the ominous sound of the robots in the next room thudding furiously against the metal portal, he had successfully cut off pursuit for now. Time to see if there was something down the next hallway and if he could still salvage something from this fiasco.

Werksmag knew something was wrong the moment she stepped through the door. Opening into a metal catwalk suspended mere centimeters above a massive vat filled with some sort of translucent slime, the African duplicator's hooves clanged softly on the metal flooring as she took one cautious step then another, keeping a hand firmly on the sturdy guard rail as she peered over to try and get a better look at what the vat contained. Whatever this room was, it wasn't the vault nor was it anything that sounded like something this Sterilux master thief would have in her lair.

Down below her the vat was deeper then the bright lights would let her see, a clump of strange tentacle-like shadows stirred just out of reach of the light. Werksmag became increasingly convinced that this was the wrong way and that she should leave and try one of the other corridors. The equine scavenger had just turned on her hooves and started heading back out when quick as a blink, a bizarre snake-like creature shot out of the vat and plopped onto the catwalk with an audible splat as its slimy body impacted with the cold metal. A second, identical sound appeared behind her, Werksmag cautiously reaching for the machete kept in her backpack as she took in this possible threat with a quick glance.

The inhabitants of the vat below were strange, serpentine creatures, reminding her of the python snakes of South America she remembered reading about once. Thick and flabby to the point where the creature almost looked like a thick, twenty-five-pound coil of gelatinous rubber, the tan-scaled creature in front of her raised its beady, milky little eyes and playfully flickered its forked tongue at her. Werksmag tightened her grip on her blade as the creatures slithered closer to her and began to circle her. Was it her imagination or did both of them seem to have a smaller mouth then she'd expect to see on creatures known for having detachable jaws? The slender tech raider had just opened her mouth to take a quick breath when suddenly, the serpents struck.

Moving with a speed she did not expect from something so bloated, the first snake forced its head into her barely open mouth and pushed it the rest of the way outwards. Werksmag struggled to keep from choking as the tubular blob willingly slid down her throat before nestling down in her stomach. Her belly ballooned outward, bulging tighter as the first creature fed itself to her. And then the second one managed to find room to squeeze itself into her mouth. Dropping to her knees and nearly loosing her grip on her machete, she tried to pull on the creatures forcing themselves into her open maw to no avail, the snakes wanted to turn themselves into donkey food. As she continued to fight with her eager prey, her ears twitched in response to the sound of other food snakes crawling out of the vat and onto the catwalk behind her.

Crawling back up to her feet, the second snake still dragging along the floor as she staggered out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Gulping in exasperation as she pressed her back against the metal doorway, she accidentally finished sending the first snake into its new home. The second one completed its trip down her throat soon after, her immensely bloated abdomen groaning and jostling slightly as her meals made themselves comfortable inside her. A feeling of warm contentment soon filled her as the mysterious creatures settled down, Werksmag feeling a smile cross her lips as she ran a hand across her drum tight belly. Well, it looked like she would make out well even if she didn't make it out of here with much loot. Better see what was down one of the other corridors...

The vault was as bare as Drone Harvest had expected it to be, this Dr. McFeedslot bastard leaving little behind before their apparent disappearance. But what they did leave behind in the large circular room though... that was definitely a most unexpected prize. Apparently "on ice" was a clever way for the mysterious mad scientist to say that Sterilux had been trapped in a cryogenics pod, putting the legendary thief in cold sleep for God only knew how long. Wasn't it supposed to be twenty years ago or so when Sterilux was last heard from?

The cryo-pod stood freely in the middle of the small treasure vault, apparently drawing electricity from the same independent power source that was running the rest of this lair. Inside the thick glass tube was a well-rounded shaved sheep ewe dressed in a white elastic bodysuit made from a rubber-like fabric, a full gasmask, and dark black rubber boots and gloves. Sterilux, the thief that had made off with half a million in jewels during the Detroit Outbreak, was a fairly broad bottomed villainess with hips that barely cleared the tube she was currently slumbering peacefully in. No could say that the master thief didn't live well judging by her figure...

Taking her gaze off of the frozen fellow base crawler, Drone Harvest scanned the rest of the room with a sweeping look. Other then the cryo-pod there wasn't much to the vault. Metal shelves lined the reinforced concrete walls and the heavy vault door behind her wasn't even locked, the shelves themselves were virtually bare. All that remained was a few cloth bags that possibly contained what remained of the master thief's haul and a handful of contraptions that the suited panda immediately recognized as the frozen ewe's signature gadgets. The Microwave Pistol capable of firing a sterilizing burst of thermal energy, the Suction Cannon with the modular hose attachments, and the self-cleaning, self-moisturizing Mega Mop which allowed the OCD villain to commit her capers without leaving a single foot or finger print for the police to find. There were bound to be collectors that would pay a reasonable sum for each of these items however there was the matter of the original owner... who appeared to be waking up as the cryo-pod activated with a very audible hum.

Not one for fighting, the robotics mistress turned to leave and found herself face to face with Reclaimer and a donkey woman with a large black mohawl dressed in relatively ordinary work clothes. The short rodent male was a rival base crawler she had competed against a few times, the donkey hanging back and nursing an almost cartoonishly bloated belly was someone the panda didn't recognize offhand. But there was no time for introductions, even catty ones. Even the normally sassy Reclaimer could see that as he looked over Drone Harvest's shoulder, his eyes going wide as he recognized who was in the deactivating cryo-pod. No one lasted long in the base crawler profession by being stupid and all three of them were smart enough to realize that there was a good chance Sterilux was going to be pissed and likely to lash out at the first people she saw when she finished waking up....

By the time the sun rose on the next morning, the SCPD were able to send a SWAT team down to try and survey the lair. All they found were some easily destroyed sex robots, a computer that had the hard drives ripped out, a giant vat of nutrient slime full of weird "gummy snakes" that were also easily slain, and an empty vault with an equally empty cryo-pod...

Back in her small studio apartment that same morning, Werksmag smiled as she admired herself in the dressing mirror, fondling her flabby body as she spent the morning in her underwear. Her tools and weapons were hidden away and her coveralls were tossed casually on a dining room chair as the now not-so-skinny jenny had a chance to sleep off her forced binge. Those... whatever they were, were apparently designed to fatten and immobilize intruders, conditioned to seek out a warm, moist place inside someone's stomach and engineered to be quickly digestible by virtually any species. About fifty pounds of snake meat had somehow squeezed itself into her belly last night and it appeared that essentially all of it had gone to rounding out her curves and gently softening out her abdomen. Fingers gently squeezed her doughy middle as she turned around and gave her bouncy bubble butt a teasing shake. Mentally she wandered back to her years enslaved in Angola, grueling sixteen-hour days on little food and even less sleep. This was why she escaped to America, a country where she could make her fortune and eat as much as she wanted. And now she was finally getting the body to prove it...