LoV#1 Ch. 01 The Influence of Social Media

The Ladies of Victory #1: The Influence of Social Media

Chapter 1

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Rapid Rivers, Florida, USA. Early September.

"Good evening Rapid Rivers and welcome to WNRR channel 7. My name is Tabitha Richards and I'll be starting your night with breaking news. Just a few moments ago, Downtown found itself under assault by a new super-villain attempting to rob the International Rapid Rivers Investment Services building. We go live now with Aiyisha Douglas who is on the scene. Tish?"

"Thanks Tabitha, at 6:45pm the IRRIS was getting ready to close its main lobby for the day when a group of women dressed in revealing latex outfits and wielding non-lethal weaponry arrived and began taking staff and civilians hostage. Their leader, a young man calling himself the Dollmaker, had his demands ready to go but was unprepared for our own heroines to arrive so soon on the scene. We've received early reports from inside that Miracle Maiden and Voodoo Queen made short work of him and his minions as... Wait, here comes Miracle Maiden out now. Miracle Maiden! Over here! WNRR News! Is there any truth to the rumors that the Dollmaker was using tech similar to Technovile who terrorized the city a few years ago..."

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Across the city, hidden away in the penthouse of an old brick apartment building close to the local university, the busy hum of electronics and tapping of a keyboard are the only sounds in the command center of Chloe Masters, AKA Maven, the tech expert of Rapid Rivers' own superhero team the Ladies of Victory. Although she had a lab and communication hub at the LoV headquarters, Chloe preferred her home set-up whenever possible for both the privacy it afforded and familiarity with something she had set-up years ago when she first moved from her home on the Northside and into the city proper. While the lab featured a multitude of computer bays and consoles, screens, and gadgetry whose purpose one could only guess at, Chloe was currently relaxing in the command chair dominating the center of her lab.

The slim woman was barely into her 20s, long legs bare to combat the still-hot September air and ambient heat from the computers surrounding her, her pale skin a reflection of just how much time she spent inside despite living in southern Florida. Similarly, she wore the barest of tank-tops covering her modest chest, and although currently obscured by a helmet connected to the ceiling and the chair by a multitude of wires and cables, a few strands of neon-blue hair peek out from underneath and not quite reaching her well-defined jawline. Her left hand worked neatly away at a keyboard while her right hand was inside of a gloved mechanism, both manipulating the virtual screens that were arrayed before her helmet as well as an unseen task.

On one screen, the leader and most famous member of their little team, Miracle Maiden, was talking with the local news about the recent villain attack. On a different one, her assistant AI Minerva was currently tracking all known locations of Brandon Denvers over the past few months to isolate the location of his possible home base. On the last screen... the exaggerated curved figure of a woman is what currently draws her ire.

Chloe released a deep sigh as she stretched her neck, the bulky headset connected to her command chair might have been a technological marvel but keeping it on for too long still did a number on her. It was better than the alternative though, not wanting to install multiple implants in her head to combat the stress of working. While she didn't advertise it, Chloe was classified as a "super-genius" and one of the first lessons anyone with the genes that leads to that phenomenon learns is that while their brain may be able to process like a super-computer, it doesn't have the same liquid-nitrogen cooling it down. So rather than quite literally burn her brain out, her helmet doubled as a control and cooling device letting her work.

She didn't really know how much "smarter" she was; Chloe had never bothered to take the test devised by the hero and most notable modern super-genius, the Renaissance Man, to figure out where exactly she was on the scale of human processing power. On one hand it didn't matter to her and on the other, she spent the vast majority of her time... de-tuned, for lack of a better word, having grown up being able to see how people like her had let their super-brains ruin their lives rather than just trying to live as normal as possible. It also meant that she didn't need something like the headset 24/7, and only had to deal with its bulk for things like tonight, which luckily her evening seemed to be almost finished.

Miracle Maiden and Voodoo Queen hardly needed her help in dealing with Brandon Denvers AKA "The Dollmaker'' as he decided to call himself but she was uniquely qualified for rescuing the women who fell into his clutches. Her current object of focus featured a far lighter if similar headset to her own, the woman who it was currently attached to was wearing a pink latex suit, the belt and straps around her waist and thighs keeping a plate firmly tucked up against her crotch, the deep V revealing a generous amount of cleavage only emphasized by the gravity-defying breasts the woman had.

Considering that and the towering platform heels attached to her feet to show off her enhanced rear, she was less the ideal minion to help you rob a bank and more a teenage wet-dream brought to life... Not that it stopped them from being less efficient at disabling the guards, or brainwashing and transforming the current woman on screen who was the bank's floor manager not too long ago. The tech in the modified Dollmaker headset was quick to turn any victim into one of his bimbo henchwomen, and the knockout guns he had his slaves armed with would certainly do a number on anyone; civilian or heroine, and let him or one of the minions slip one over the head of the dazed person, adding to their ranks.

It also wasn't entirely his own design, and although she didn't know where Brandon Denvers had found a stash of Technovile gear; once this was settled she was going to find out one way or the other. Chloe's eyes narrow as she sets to work, a shimming of green numbers, 1s and 0s, overlays the image of the woman, moving faster than the eye could track as the seemingly random assortment of binary code begins to change. Although she can't see it, she knows downtown the bank manager is coming back to her senses as her clothes and body morph back into her early skirt and blouse, her brain trying to catch up to no longer being a mindless Doll obedient to her... no even that thought is wiped away as she tries to blink the pink and green lights out of her eyes, the headset dissolving into thin air as if it was never there. She finds herself among the other formerly transformed women as paramedics notice her awaken and move to help...

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Agatha's mother had warned her about taking a job in Rapid Rivers, the city only recently getting back a superhero team to protect it, but the warm hand that lands on her shoulder eases some of the discomfort as she looks up at Voodoo Queen. She doesn't really remember anything after one of the bimbos robbing the bank had slipped something over her head, but she feels fine... great even, as she waves off the heroine who probably had more important things to do than look after her.

However, her bra felt remarkably tight, as Agatha notices two significantly heavier attachments to her chest straining to break free of it, smaller than the ones she had just a second ago but significantly larger than her meager handful from before. The discomfort lasted a second as she blinked again, her shirt and bra fitting far more comfortably as green light fades and she adjusts to their increased size. Agatha's confusion only grows as the guns and remaining headsets dissolve away into nothing around her, the other transformed women finding themselves returned to normal, although one or too seemed to be finding something off as well...

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A headache began forming behind Chloe's eyes as she finished up. The tech was capable of showing the user Cyberspace, a sort of meta-reality that overlaid regular reality and translated it into digital binary code. Manipulation of that code allowed one to alter Realspace, and it was insanely dangerous to both process and alter information on that scale.

It was part of the reason why she felt out of practice, avoiding using it whenever possible; and made cleaning up Brandon Denvers' mess more difficult than it should have been. It also meant the fact that he had access to such tech was worse than his minimal ability to manipulate it, and Chloe knew she'd have to discover where he had come across it in the first place, willingly or not.

There was a reason after all these years that people in Rapid Rivers remembered the supervillain... even if they don't know Chloe's own part in his story. Keeping that under wraps was almost as important as keeping the tech or knowledge of Cyberspace out of anyone else's hands. Mood sufficiently soured, she finds her body stiff as she attempts to sit up.

Groaning in annoyance as she starts to work out the kinks in her muscles, Chloe notices the time and figures it's time to stretch and be done for the night as she begins shutdown procedures. While she avoided using it outside of specific and important circumstances, she couldn't argue that Cyberspace was a great tool for one specific task as she clicked away at a digital display. A sharp hum fills the helmet as static starts to form between her ears, releasing with a small pop she felt more than heard.

Part of her original work with Cyberspace tech was using it to create an engram of a person's motor movements for enhanced and superior prosthetics, and it wasn't that far of a step removed from her using it to create a daily record and log of herself daily. She might be a super genius but she didn't have an eidetic memory, and it had proved useful to have a copy of herself on more than one occasion just to pull the perfect version of a past event or invention off the Cyberspace server from where she stored her engrams. It wasn't any different than a daily diary entry really, just slightly... significantly more complex. With that complete though, she put in the last few codes for shutdown and took off her helmet.

Sharp nose and cheekbones no longer obscured by the helmet, her blue eyes blinking away at the virtual screens, Chloe swipes a hand to move them out of the way before stretching her arms and legs. The usual adrenaline she felt after dealing with a supervillain attack or helping the Ladies of Victory get a win is muted by her anger at Technovile still affecting her and her city from behind bars, and she planned on dealing with both feelings the usual way. A ping from the main console draws her attention as she wipes the sweat from her brow with a nearby towel, giving herself time for one last big stretch before walking over and tapping on the keyboard.

"Hey Minerva, what did you find?" After helping start up the Ladies of Victory, Chloe had gone through the process of installing an Artificial General Intelligence into the tower and connecting to her lab. It wasn't self-aware, Chloe had standards and creating a fully-artificial being just to force it into being a 24/7 assistant to a superhero team would have been cruel. Which didn't mean that Minerva wasn't powerful, "she" was capable of running several simultaneous background services in order to help the LoV be more efficient and was far more capable than "her" contemporaries at analyzing and diagnosing data to make sure the girls were in the right place at the right time.

AI was Chloe's specialty after all, and she needed someone to be there when she couldn't. Although on her best days she could outperform it, that required her to push herself to her limits and Chloe had classes which she begrudgingly attended despite having been passing college courses since she was a child. Her sister Madison having grown tired of her paranoid and overbearing big sister and forcing out a promise from Chloe that she'd do more normal things in life, not to mention needing to sleep.

"analysis of brandon denvers location data compared to the technovile database complete. no matches to possible bases where brandon denvers could discover the technology used in today's attack." The AI couldn't see Chloe's grimace, nor was it designed to understand the frustration her creator had. Minerva merely sorted through the data put in front of it, and provided the results in a cool, feminine monotone.

"Dammit... it's bad enough that he found a hideout I have zero data on, the fact that he was smart enough to mess with the mind-control tech as well? Could just be bad luck, could be something worse... Threat analysis?"

"creating brandon denvers file, codename: DOLLMAKER. dollmaker shows an exemplary talent at programming and an emotional immaturity in line with young men who frequent the same sites and social media as him. His family is moderately wealthy, and features both parents and an older sister. motivations for robbery unknown, motivations for mind-control unknown, however the victims change in appearance is in-line with images in brandon denvers browser history. note: victims proportions are a 1:1 match with supervillain file Codename: BIMBETTE."

"Huh, is there any correlation between the two? Bimbette doesn't really do team-ups and is more of a... crime of opportunity villain." Chloe's eyes closed as she took the new information and plugged it into various hypotheses, with nothing making sense except... "Do we have any recent sightings of Bimbette and can we match it against any data we have for last known locations of Dollmaker's victims?"

The hum of electronics was the only sound in the air as the main screen expanded out a map of Rapid Rivers, using both legal and some... grey area data gathering methods as points of light began to appear and disappear. "based on social media posts and cell phone location data, there is a 2.3 square mile block where all victims and sightings of bimbette and dollmaker can be traced to. there is no known correlation between this area and technovile or brandon denvers."

"No, but at least later it'll be an area to start looking for a possible lab or hideout squirreled away where he could have access to the means and the technology to make those brainwashing headsets." and if he was able to do that, Bimbette might actually be another victim. Chloe sighs, she wasn't big on dishonesty but for safety's sake...

"Make a note of it for the personal lab and don't enter it into any Ladies of Victory databases, I'll investigate later when I have time. Anything else going on for the evening or can I leave managing the rest of the night's patrols to you?"

"analysis indicates awareness of one potential threat, unknown." That didn't sound good... especially considering the extenuating circumstances which made her use some particular tech of her own to clean up Dollmaker's mess.

"Bring it up?" Chloe had hoped to be able to get a good night's rest tonight, and she was less than amused when the screen displayed the PicUp account of a local college girl called Kathryn Jacobs. She didn't have much use for social media, but she'd have to be living under a rock to not be one of the almost 3 billion users of the world's largest social media app, PicUp combining picture sharing, notifications, text posts, dating, subscription models for users... it did just about everything.

The current 'threat' was one of the local, perfectly normal bimbos who attended her school. She felt like she vaguely knew the girl, and her vast swathes of pictures and posts showing generous amounts of skin and the many, many parties Rapid Rivers U was known for, was... expected? Obviously with a bimbo villainess MIA there could be more to the story, but Chloe couldn't find anything that stood out as abnormal, a blush starting to form as she realized she had kept looking long after she needed to. "What's the threat exactly?"

"unknown. data collection revolving around dollmaker, technovile, bimbette, and future event prediction models indicate a possible threat."

"Right..." The headache from earlier was starting to come back, and she didn't even know where to start figuring out where this was going... Maybe she had too many data samples for Minerva to sort through? "Umm... tag it for future observation and add a priority alert to it if Bimbette makes an appearance anywhere. Otherwise, just help the rest of the girls keep the nightly patrol running smooth." It took her a second to find a pair of sweatpants that would work among her spare clothes in the lab, before putting on a light sweatshirt and some trainers, as well as a headband to keep her hair out of her eyes. Exiting, she shuts the hidden bookcase door to the lab, her apartment modestly and warmly furnished with miscellaneous books and plates scattered about.

Chloe groaned, she definitely needed to clean at some point, but she'd put it out of her mind as she hunts down her headphones and gym bag. She had been lucky enough to find this building, near enough to the school and its gym that she could walk there, and in a safe enough part of town she didn't mind doing so at night. Renovating it for her own purposes hadn't taken too long, and while she missed being able to keep an eye on Madison, having her own space away from her little sister was nice in its own way... though she did feel a little lonely.

Exiting her apartment, and hitting down for the elevator, her phone dings with a text from Miracle Maiden. Her friend and teammate was far more enthused about how easy dealing with Dollmaker was but she got a small smile out of Chloe as she sends a quick reply back, before putting on her headphones and starting the short jog to the nearby university gym...

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Chloe's good mood lasted about as long as the jog. RRU had more than one fitness center, and the one closest to her home was far enough off the beaten path and small enough that it saw almost no traffic after classes. Which meant she should be able to look forward to getting through the doors to an entirely empty gym... up until a clatter of weights and an annoyingly familiar grunt informed her otherwise. Grimacing, her eyes are drawn towards the weight section and the source of a non-zero amount of irritation. This definitely wasn't the first time she's caught Marcus Jackson at the gym this late, and considering the smirk that crosses his face as he sits up and spots her, it probably wasn't a coincidence either. Marcus was also a sophomore and a Rapid Rivers native like her, but their paths to RRU couldn't have been more different.

Where Chloe was easily the top of her class at one of the many exclusive private schools from the wealthy Northside whose attendance at Rapid Rivers was more out of a desire to stay home than attend a more prestigious university, Marcus was an athletic freak from the Barrows, the urban sprawl south of downtown Rapid Rivers and one of the poorest parts of the city. He was also, in comparison to Chloe's modest and sometimes enforced anonymity, a walking god to the college football crazy fans in the city. One of the best prospects to come out of Rapid Rivers in years, his decision to stay local by becoming a Rapid Rivers Raider only endeared him more to everyone who followed the team.