Roudini looked at the crowd of his people as he made his way to the asylum, his adoring public, as they were all so excited to see him. Oh, how they cheered for him, their screams filling the streets as they screamed his name. "Roudini!" They said as they ran off in a random direction, truly eager to let everyone know that Roudini was around and he was performing. So with such an adoring public, how could he deny them their due? Only the best, of course, for he did nothing less.
Roudini moved his hands in unnatural ways, causing the bones in his fingers to break and bend back as a red energy built up in his hands. Then once the energy built a critical mass of blood-red energy, he let it loose, and suddenly the streets were filled with red lions and blood elephants that kept appearing and disappearing as they went down the street. The panicking people redoubled their efforts to run as fast as their legs could take them. "Do not worry, my adoring public, this is but the opening act of my show. So come follow me to the stage I have chosen." Roudini said with gusto, taking the excitement of the screaming citizens that filled the air as applause for his trick instead of what it truly was, which was sheer terror at what he had unleashed upon them.
Roudini continued on his way towards the asylum, filled with skilled stagehands to bring his performance to even further heights, as well as being filled with cells for him to use in his next act. "Truly, my next performance will be one for the history books." Roudini said to himself as his strange, illusionary yet solid red lions and blood elephants roared and charged through the streets, batting aside anyone not quick enough to get out of their way.
Just as Roudini was crossing an intersection, his entourage of red animal horrors cleared a path for him, making sure his adoring fans didn't stop him from reaching his stage; he suddenly found his path impeded by a giant blue barrier that went around him and furry red creations in a giant blue prism. Roudini looked around for a moment, trying to figure out where the giant blue barrier had come from, and then spotted the source of it. "Ahhh, Shaper, back in the action, I see, and you decided to use me as part of your comeback tour. While I am delighted." Roudini said with a happy chuckle, seeing the prison barrier as just a dash of extra color to his performance.
"No, Roudini, there isn't going to be a comeback tour for me because I'm stopping you right here, right now, before you can do anything big." Shaper said as he struggled to not only contain Roudini in his blue barrier but also his horde of conjured lions and elephants that were slamming and clawing at his barrier with everything they had, and these were just the ones in the main prism barrier he had around Roudini and his main stampede; this wasn't including the smaller pyramids and cubes he had created to contain those red beasts that had broken off from the rest and started to wander off to side streets.
Shaper, in his classic blue leotard costume, was pushing his skill and power to their absolute limit. Shaper could feel from the pulsating in his skull he was dangerously close to busting a blood vessel from the strain he was under. "While it looks like I'm going to have to be creative! Luckily the animals aren't real, or I wouldn't hear the end of it for what I'm about to do from the animal rights activist." Shaper said in a strained whisper before he began to twist the cubes and pyramids, causing the red beast stuck inside them to be bisected in a bloody explosion of light. Now with his attention fully focused on the main prism, the strain lessened on the Shaper, and he increased the power of the prism barrier.
Roudini had been watching what Shaper had been doing in silence, enjoying what he saw as a fellow showman's performance, before he began to move himself. Roudini, in his red straight jacket covered in black chains, began to speak in a loud, deep voice. "I do apologize, Shaper, but it appears I have to be in the spotlight of your show. I hope you can forgive me." Roudini said with a sad smile before the chains limiting Roudini's movement suddenly snapped and disappeared.
As they did, giant black chains would pierce through the Shaper's blue energy prism, each one causing a huge crack to appear across the prism. Shaper tried desperately to hold his energy prison, the blue prism, together, but as giant chain after giant chain pierced through it, there wasn't enough blue barrier to hold together, and the Shaper's prism barrier collapsed in a dazzling display of falling shards of blue light. Having his barrier suddenly broken after all the effort he kept trying to keep it together sent the Shaper reeling; meanwhile, the Roudini was taking a bow. "I thank you all for coming to see such a wonderful performance and Shaper, most of all, for providing such a wonderful light show." Roudini said with a happy smile, sincerely thanking Shaper, which pissed him right off.
"I'm not your fireworks guy, jackass." Shaper said with venom before he began forming barriers once again, though this time instead of trapping anything with his 3D shapes, he instead used it far more bluntly, sending forth a blue cylinder barrier to crush the red beast with Roudini. The red beasts were unable to dodge in time and were run over, bursting in a dazzling display of red light. Now that Shaper had finally dealt with all of Roudini's red animal minions, he then turned to Roudini, who was floating in the air, and proceeded to trap him in one of his most elaborate prison barriers he had ever created.
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Shaper trapped Roudini in a cube that was layered. He kept creating layer upon layer for his cube barrier. To add to his cube barrier's security, he spun the cube as he added to it. So once he was finally done with his hundred-layered prison cube, it was spinning at twenty miles an hour. "Let's see you get out of that, you Houdini wannabe." Shaper said with venom as he maintained his ever-turning cube prison.
For a few precious moments it seemed impossible that Roudini could escape Shaper's layered prison cube and that Shaper would just have to wait for backup from his fellow Wonder Heroes to arrive and help him put away Roudini. That's when the Roudini boisterous laugh began to feel the square they were fighting in the laugh, giving Shaper the feeling he was going to be disproven very soon. Then suddenly, in a flash of bloody red light, without his straightjacket but now in a classic red magician's suit with a red top hat, stood Houdini, a good fifty feet away from where Shaper's prison cube still spun, now empty.
"Tada! I'm free once again, proving no one can hold Houdini!" Roudini shouted towards his audience, which was mostly people too stupid to run as they recorded the whole fight between Shaper and Roudini, as well as those too wounded from the red beast's earlier rampage to run. Shaper was about to try an even more elaborate barrier prison than before, but before he could follow through with that plan, he found himself bound in a Roudini straightjacket.
"Now it's my turn to help you to be the star performer." Roudini said to the now tied-up Shaper, who could now only wiggle in his binds ineffectively as Roudini created a death trap he was supposed to escape from. Roudini used the surrounding cars as material by shifting them with his blood-red magic. So Shaper quickly found himself staring down three cars turned into some type of spike trap that he was supposed to get through unharmed as part of a performance. "Now my guest appearance, the Shaper shall go through this trap completely unharmed!" Roudini said to his audience, then looked to Shaper, and upon seeing the fear at what was about to happen, whispered to him. "You got this." Roudini said, trying to unironically encourage him,
Shaper was about to tell him to shove his encouragement up his ass while Roudini was about to drop him into the supposed prop, which was a death trap in every meaning of the word, but both were stopped as Gold King and the rest of his team showed up. Gold King, on his chariot of gold, let loose a good streak of light that shot across the street and hit Roudini's death trap, turning it into a golden statue of a hand reaching for Roudini.
"While it appears the show's over. You were a great stage partner, my friend." Roudini said with a sad tone towards Shaper as he began to make his escape. Before Shaper could make his opinion clear on being a part of Roudini's act, he proceeded to throw him into the Gold King's gold hand statue, leaving him trapped in its grips as Roudini's straightjacket disappeared from him and the Gold King and his court passed him by in hot pursuit of Roudini.
Shaper would spend hours stuck in the golden hand as he told the first responders that came onto the scene to focus on those injured from Roudini's red beast. So it was a while before anyone could be spared to get him down and even longer before they could get the special equipment to get him out of the magical gold hand's grip, as it was very firm in keeping him unless Gold King told it otherwise.
So once Shaper was freed and finally out of costume, he would have to put in hours at work for the whole thing, claiming he had a family emergency. Sufficed to say, Mark was not pleased with how his first big villain fight had gone and felt he could have done better. So before he went to bed that night, he would write down a note to look up more sophisticated puzzles as examples to use for his energy prisons.
Meanwhile, a certain duo who had been watching the whole battle through their special TVs began to give their thoughts on the matter. "While that was an interesting one, I gotta admit that Roudini could be quite the crowd pleaser if he could rein in the danger factor of his act." Simon said thinking about the kind of viewer numbers a man like Roudini could pull in.
"I don't know, seems like a scandal just waiting to happen. So even if you got viewer numbers for a while, it would eventually just blow up in your face with some big scandal he caused, and then where would you be? Robert stated for once going into the whole viewership side of things with Simon.
"Fair point, but you could turn even a scandal into more viewer numbers." Simon said, pointing out the age-old tactic of using even bad press to get more eyes as people were always wanting to hear about the latest scandal. Robert countered that point with his own thoughts on the matter.
"That may very well be true, but it's also been proven that a bad scandal can ruin people's perception of what you're trying to advertise. So while it will give you a small boost short term, it will hurt your numbers long term." Robert stated feeling like he had made his point well.
Simon and Robert would go back and forth on the subject of publicity, good and bad, and the effects it had in numbers; meanwhile, in the background, the numbers for Allyssa ticked up. It would not be long before the expansions were implemented, and Allyssa, for the first time since its creation, expanded. Though how those that lived on Allyssa dealt with the new lands to be added to their world was what the true question was.
