Phase 1: deploy turnip-men, fool the Pilot Princess Soul Defenders that they're people, laugh: big whiteboard check. Not likely to work more than once.
Phase 2: sow chaos by openly deploying turnip-men as conspicuous minion army.
"I CANNOT BE STOPPED!"
The world has not known the terror of Robo Grandmaster until it has known an endless stream of tubermen with pompoms doing cheerleader routines through the streets. Hazel cackles and pokes at the touchscreen beside her, ordering Section 12 to surround City Hall in a ring of synchronised pelvic thrusting.
The Pilot Princess Soul Defenders are already at the outskirts of the mayhem, arguing about what to do. It's trivial for them to clear the tubermen, really; just raise a mech foot and stomp. The brainless critters won't last more than day anyway.
But stomping on people-shaped things is astonishingly bad optics.
Hazel cackles. "YOU ARE POWERLESS BEFORE ME!" she adds, then notices that Section Five aren't doing what they ought to be, and pokes at the touchscreen. No, they've definitely stopped, and they're not responding. You don't expect turnip-people to be durable, but whole sections dropping out at once has to be a tech problem, and that's not acceptable field performance. She's trying to pull up diagnostics when Section Six drops off, too, then Seven.
"Oh, no," she whines, then radar pings a new contact. "Oh. Shit."
Airship? Nobody uses airships, nobody mainstream. And the only other kind of person she knows with one—
Yes. There. A wind-tossed platform being winched down beneath the airship's gleaming belly; a dais with microphones, from which to scream at a bemused world. A lab coat, goggles against the wind. A feather boa.
She's reaching for her phone to hit speed dial, when the hail comes in to the mech, video call.
"FOOL!" Herr Doktor Dangerous shrieks at the top of his voice as soon as she answers, and really, yes. Anyone who subcontracts to a fellow labcoatie is asking for this kind of thing. Dangerous is relatively stable — relatively — but when he goes, he really goes. He laughs. He has a fantastic laugh: high and saw-edged and unsettling and seemingly endless and effortless. "WITNESS THE DOWNFALL OF YOUR PITIFUL PLANS!"
It's so fucking hard to keep friends.
"But it's my Thursday, Wolfgang," she wails. "I had it in the Google calendar for ages—"
He howls with laughter again, as whole sections of minions continue dropping out of her control. "WITNESS BETRAYAL!"
Oh.
"What did you do what did you do DIRTBAG! WORM! YOU BACKDOORED MY TURNIPS!"
She takes an ineffectual swipe at his dangling platform with the mech's fist. No chance he's that low, of course.
"WITNESS THE SUPERIOR SCIENCE OF THE UNPARALLELED INTELLECT!"
"YOUR AIRSHIP'S AN AFFECTATION AND YOU CAN'T PULL OFF A FEATHER BOA!" She stamps the mech's foot. "THE PILOT PRINCESSES ARE RIGHT THERE AND YOU'VE STOLEN MY THUNDER AND MY TUBERMEN AND YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME AND IT'S! MY! THURSDAY!"
"I AM DEVASTATION! I AM PERFECTION!"
Hazel grabs the Professor. "You shouldn't see this, it's ugly," she warns, and stuffs the duck into her jacket pocket. "YOU CAN'T EVEN LIFT A BULK BOX OF RAMEN BY YOURSELF, WOLFGANG!" she screams back at full volume, rummaging under the dashboard, and triumphantly rips a page out of a notebook. "SEE THIS? SEE THIS? CHECK OUT THAT METABOLIC PATHWAY!"
He squints into his end of the call. "FOOL! BIOLOGY ISN'T YOUR FIELD—" then stops, lets go of the dias to clutch at his chest, and promptly stumbles and falls on the heaving platform. "Liebchen!" he hollers from prone. "You sullied my beautiful creation with sequences from that bastard charlatan Crick—?"
"YES! AT MY COMMAND, AN ENZYME IMPLANT IN EVERY TUBERMAN WILL SET THEM TO IRREVERSIBLY METABOLISE THEMSELVES! SAY HELLO TO EXOTHERMIC DEATH, BACKSTABBER!"
"NOOOOOOO!" He flails, flat on his back, and she theatrically slams a Big Red Button, letting out a (less-impressive, damn him) laugh, toggling open the Interspace Portal, and preparing to leap.
Over the channel she'd entirely forgotten she had open to taunt the Pilot Princess Soul Defenders, Moonstone says, "Liebchen?" in a thoughtful way that makes Hazel freeze, and Herr Doktor Dangerous pops his head up off the deck, looking alarmed.
"Nein!" he says. "Ah, Sheiße — NEIN! I CALL ALL THE MEN THAT! I AM VERY CAMP AND GRANDMASTER HAS BIG MUSCLES AND A MUSTACHE!"
"Stop helping, Wolfgang!" Hazel says shrilly, and runs through the portal, leaving behind a ruined army of turnips to gently cook themselves.
