System Wars: Here Comes the Heroes!-Chapter 27: Every Good Base...

"Ow," SK groaned while lying on his back while on the ground. "Why does my everything taste like lemons and ozone?"

Ding!

Immediately after SK asked this question, a System notification window appeared before his eyes.

[Electroshock therapy will do that to the human body after being administered... sometimes.]

"I think you're lying to me, but I am also in too much pain to question that statement." SK retorted at the System's faux uncertainity.

While SK continued to lie on the ground, Platiknight and Tin Star went over to finally check on their creator.

Due to their connection to both him and the System, they knew he wasn't in any real danger of dying, so they hadn't protested about the fact that he was being electrocuted.

"Well, Sheriff, it's been fun coming to life and everything, but I think it's time for me and Platiknight to get some rest too."

"Indeed, my liege! A proper hero needs to be fully rested when fighting for justice."

"Yeah...that tracks," SK agreed while still laying on his back. "Wait, do you guys unsummon yourselves or what?"

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Ding!

[To return a Familiar to their sealed state, please say the name of the familiar followed by the word "return. After which, they can be stored within the System space itself.]

"Huh...that makes sense."

Right now would've been the part where SK stood up, got back on his feet, and commanded the superheroes to return while looking at least somewhat dignified, but that didn't happen.

Instead, SK simply raised one of his arms and said, "Platiknight and Tin Star, return."

"Until next time!"

"Onwards!"

Once the orders were given, Platiknight and Tin Star both turned into colorful particles before flying towards SK's outreached hand and reforming into a pair of funky-looking trading cards.

"Huh. They're foiled."

When SK designed Platiknight and Tin Star, he had done so with the idea of treating them as design sheets instead of full-on art pieces.

This meant that the sheets in question were all the design elements, a 360 view, color palettes, and maybe some expressions off to the side, but that was about it.

The art on these cards, though, was a lot more elaborate.

Platiknight's card depicted the precious metal paragon standing in a heroic pose while wielding his shield atop a sloped rock. Judging from the fact his dark blue cap was fluttering behind him, there must've been a warm spring wind blowing through the area he was in.

Tin Star's card, on the other hand, showed the vigilante of the Wild West in the midst of rappelling down a cliff while his pistols were aimed at the viewer. In all honesty, it reminded SK of an old Dead Hands trading card he used to own.

"Beep, boop," SK mused while summoning the System's inventory screen and placing the two Familiar cards back inside it.

At least, that was the plan.

Before he could finish storing the cards, a new alert window popped up.

[Notice: User has unlocked the Hero Training Facility feature and the Hero Dispatch feature. Both of which can be accessed from the same screen.]

""Oh yeah... I unlocked that after Platiknight saved Rachel.That makes a lot of sense, actually."

[Would the user like to navigate over to the Hero Center now?]

"Yeah, alright."

After giving his consent, the System automatically dismissed the Inventory screen and switched over to what it called the Hero Center.

"Huh."

Based on the previous screens he had handled before, SK was expecting the Hero Center screen to be yet another series of menus and possibly a spreadsheet or two. Evidently, that wasn't the case in the slightest.

"Why is it... empty?"

The Hero Center, as the System called it, turned out to be a holographic map of... nothing. Hell, the only reason he could recognize it was a map was because he saw the longitude and latitude scales on the edges of the display window.

A part of SK had assumed he was getting pranked for a hot minute, until the System piped up.

[Notice: Before User can make use of the Hero Center and its features, they must first pick a location and building style.]

"Oh?"

Ding! Ding!

Before SK's eyes, a display screen showcasing a list of buildings appeared on his immediate right, while an area select screen manifested over the holographic map.

"Ah, I get it now."

From a certain crystal fortress located in the North Pole to an underground cavern filled with bats and even a literal space station that was armed to the teeth and had teleporters connected to every part of the known and unknown universe, every good superhero and superhero team needed a base of operations.

And right now, the System was giving SK an opportunity to establish his own superhero sanctuary.

"Hey, before I-"

Ding!

[Note that while the environment will be permanent when chosen, it is purely cosmetic. The main building and campus, though, can be upgraded and changed at anytime,] a system window explained before SK could finish asking his question.

On the one hand, it was rather convenient that the System could anticipate his questions and fully address any concerns he may have had before he could actually ask them.

On the other hand, well, it was kind of invasive.

"Okay, you gotta stop reading my mind or whatever the hell it is you do exactly."

[Stop being predictable,] the System fired back with a quick display window before dismissing it so that SK could focus on the task at hand.

"Hmmm."

Flipping through the environment screen, SK could see the holographic map actively change so that it could be a perfect match to whatever environment SK was looking at the time.

"Okay, pretty standard stuff," SK mumbled while looking through the possible environments. "We got deserts, we got forests, we got mountains, we have lands made of candy, we have the endless abyss that can only exists in-between the dreams of ancient monsters...wait a minute, one of those sounded off."

Eventually though, SK settled on one that was labeled "Laputa's Remnant."

The resulting holomap depicted an island being propelled high above an endless ocean via a mysterious ring that created a zero gravity effect.

SK didn't know if the ring was a result of magic or highly advanced science, but that might've been the point. Sometimes, a mysterious object could be both.

"Alright, enough admiring the scenery," SK told himself. "Time to start building..."

Like the environmental selection done immediately before this moment, all of the possible bases SK could build looked rather...basic.

"I get that this is probably because I'm a noob and I won't get access to the better stuff until later, but come on..."

Some of the buildings he was looking through included fairly standard-looking skyscrapers, towers, academic-style buildings, mansions, pyramids, and entire underground facilities that would've turned the whole island into a secret base.

Wait...

"Huh...seems a bit iconoclastic, but...maybe this?"

SK paused as he stared at the possible construction of the "Hero Cave" style of headquarters.

It didn't look bad and it did come from with the bonus of turning the entire floating island into a floating fortress, but something about that choice felt off to SK.

"Underground bases work because they got a whole ass planet to work with as a means of defenses, maybe even a mountain at worst," SK told himself to better organize his thought. "If I use this, there's a non-zero chance the structural integrity of the whole island would just go to shit because all of the underground chambers and tunnels. I know the System said this environmental factor was purely cosmetic, but is it?"

After taking this question in mind, SK decided that the best choice wasn't to build things inside of the floating island but to simply build on top and hope that future upgrades included additional islands or ways to reinforce the island so that he could go underground if necessary.

But now that he only had to worry about what kind of building he wanted to place atop the island, this led to whole other internal debate.

"Tower, castle, mansion, or an academic hall...wait, aren't those last two technically the same?" SK asked himself as he remembered a certain superhero team of mutants that worked out of a school for mutants. "Ah, forget it...wait, is that a phonebooth? Do people still know what a phonebooth is?"

Eventually, though, after much internal debating, SK settled on a Western-style fantasy castle that mostly matched the decor of the floating sky island.

He had briefly thought of using one of the more Eastern-style palaces but thought against it since it felt kind of anachronistic having a knight and a cowboy use such a place as their base of operations.

"Maybe if I can figure out a samurai-themed, monk-themed, or daoist-themed superhero... or I get really weird about it and do some of the more interesting monsters from Asian mythos..."