Thunderfunk ran down the hall to the secret stairway. Given that the staircase was simply behind a door that was marked "Not A Secret Stairway", it wasn’t really much of a secret, but he had only been living there for a couple months, and other things had taken priority. But rest assured, he would get to it.
A quick journey down a few flights of stairs later he burst into the war room. Originally it had been a series of underground passages, storage rooms and hidden rooms that he had dug out and renovated into a thoroughly state of the art centre for his schemes. At the far end there was a lab set up for scientific experiments, and light baking. A passageway about halfway down led to a private jet hangar at the far ends of his estate grounds. It was wide enough a hall to accommodate a pair of modified golf carts side by side. The hangar itself housed four different types of aircraft: a helicopter, a completely restored Curtis JN-4 biplane, a heavily modified Stearman biplane, and a Harrier Jet. Both he and Straw Daq were proficient pilots, though Straw was the better of the two, and had made a living doing barnstorming at air shows before he met Thunder. At the near end of the war room was a series of exercise stations, giving him a place to train in hand to hand combat, as well as somewhere he could wind down by beating on some lackeys, or, if the mood so struck him, henchmen. In the dead centre of the room was a large raised platform which housed his computers on one side, a table and chairs set up for meetings and the such, and a coffee station, because he seemed to find it hard to come up with dastardly schemes without a cup or two of java inside of him. Sometimes he wondered if he was addicted to the stuff. Curse the Columbians for their fine roast.
Already seated at one of the computer terminals, Straw was regarding a screen that was scrolling through some technical information. He turned his head slightly in acknowledgement of Thunderfunk’s entrance before going back to his readouts.
Thunder climbed the stairs and leaned over Straw’s shoulder, looking at the information. "Is this what I think it is?" he clucked softly.
"Looks like it."
Rubbing the crown of his beak wearily, Thunder sighed. It would appear that a group of self-proclaimed super heroes was headed for his base, this bastion of solitude and rest that he had built for himself. "All right, what do we know about these miscreants?"
With a few taps of the keyboard a group of dossiers popped up on the screen, showing them everything they knew about this particular group. They were known as R5, which stood for Reptile-5. Each one had a reptile themed power, hence the rather unimaginative name. Their leader was Gecko, a man who could cling to walls and ceilings and looked rather reptile like. The Frog had super strong legs that allowed him to leap very high. The Chameleon could swivel his eyes in different directions. Lizard was hard to pin down because he could detach his limb and grow a new one, almost instantaneously. And Newt was really small. They had formed a few years previous and spent much of their time stopping small time hoods and crooks, until they had crossed paths with KingFisher and his minions. The heroes had prevailed, vaulting them into the top tier of super hero-dom. Now it would seem they had turned their attention towards Thunderfunk, a mistake he would make them pay for dearly.
"How long do we have?"
Straw shoved off and rolled his chair across the floor to another screen. "Well, according to this, they will probably be here in about an hour. They don’t seem to be trying to keep their plans a secret."
"Their victory over that insufferable fool Captain Fish-"
"KingFisher," corrected Straw quickly.
"-KingFisher, right, has made them arrogant. They think they now have the ability to challenge my natural superiority." He stood behind Straw, leaning on the chair and tapping his chin thoughtfully.
"What should we do?" asked Straw.
Smiling broadly, Thunder straightened up. "I have the perfect folution. Prepare fe sthe mmfff."
"Excuse me...?" Straw looked up at the giant chicken.
Wiping cookie crumbs off of his face, Thunder swallowed. "Prepare...the device."
"The device? Are you sure?" Straw looked a little concerned.
"Oh, of course, not The device, no. That is a bit excessive. No, just prepare the device."
Straw furrowed his brow slightly, and then brightened. "Right, that device. Can do!" With that he hurried away, to prepare the device.
Thunder turned back to the cookies, stuffing a few more into his craw. They really were delicious cookies. Evilly delicious.
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