Jam vs. Peanut Butter

~RMS WILL OF IRON, G.S.O HIGH-SECURITY PRISON, ATLANTIC OCEAN~

Of all the places to keep supervillains, the RMS Will of Iron had two major advantages over the others.

Firstly, it was floating in the middle of the ocean. Any supervillain worth their salt knew that a prison in the middle of the ocean wasn't worth breaking out of. Guard dogs they could handle, electric fences and shield domes were easy enough, but the fickle mistress that was the sea was more daunting than a thousand dogs or twenty miles of fencing. What was the point of trying to escape if, almost immediately afterwards, you had to deal with sharks, currents and storms that made all the fanciest robot guards look pleasant by comparison? On the whole, anyone who ended up in here preferred constant boredom to the threat of drowning.

Secondly, it had the one thing no other major supervillain prison had tried - the counseling and rehabilitation center. The Global Superhero Operation had argued that, on the off-chance a villain was truly repentant of their crimes, then they should be given the opportunity to reinstate themselves as functioning members of society. This viewpoint was met with a lot of derision from the public at first, especially considering the damage supervillains did to major cities every year, but when Emperor Malady was released into the public and ended up with a well-paid financing job, you had to admire the results.

And it had seemed to be working for the man known as Doctor Vortex, too. He had come to the Will of Iron a gibbering wreck, babbling nonsense about his destroyed base and condiments that none could make sense of. But, piece by piece, he'd slowly been transitioning back into Damien Harolds, the mild-mannered - if somewhat jumpy - mathematician and science major from Manhattan. As long as you didn't put any spreadables near him, he was an affable chap who was easy to get along with, and the wardens had high hopes for his eventual release.

The fateful day started off like any other day. Damien had got up, got showered and dressed - all in a very punctual fashion, as was his way. He had walked into the communal kitchen area, ready to prepare himself a healthy breakfast of bran flakes and orange juice. He had just turned the television on - some asinine fashion show was on, but he couldn't care less - and had just poured himself out a rather measured dose of the cereal. So far, so good.

And then he'd turned to get the milk and saw a blue-coloured face upon the screen.

"That's right, y'all! My Super Swimwear Special begins this May, showing off all the hottest and skimpiest Fornax summer fashions live from the glitz and glamour of fa-bu-lous Las Vegas! So if you wanna get an eyeful of yours truly - and I know you do~ - hit up our website and buy yourself a ticket to this once-in-a-lifetime fashion opportunity! Featuring live music by Ironheade, Patrick O'Batahan and so much more, as well as free pizza to our first 5'000 lucky guests! This is Lisa, leaving you with..."

GLORP.

"CHIMICHANGAS!"

Three hours later, and the border patrol guards got the shock of their lives as a giant robot squid suddenly punched it's way out of the complex, dived beneath the ocean and vanished. Just how long it had been built in secret, or where the materials came from, none could say or even venture to guess. And the man on security that day, a notorious slacker and donut addict, was fired for not noticing the blaring alarms or the massive hole in the cellar wall where the machine had broken out as it first roared into action.

But the point was, Doctor Vortex had relapsed. And, more pressingly, escaped.

Jam: Origins

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Midly NSFW image has been linked in this post. Original art made by Legend20x)

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~Undisclosed Island in the Pacific~

All evil villains have secret bases. This is an immutable fact of the universe, in the same way that sheep bleat and the sky is blue. Doctor Vortex was no exception - he'd paid good money for his new Fortress of Doom, and he was desperate to avoid the torrid financial difficulty his previous one suffered. He'd paid off the loan early this time, and had gone to great lengths to ensure it looked the part - radar dishes, a giant freeze ray sticking out of the top and robot guards patrolling the ground 24/7. All in all, it was a place a criminal mastermind like him could call home.

All evil villains also have secret doomsday weapons, too. The freeze ray, however, was not one of them - what with most superheroes able to deflect it's beam with a mere flick of their chin nowadays, it had spent most of it's time gathering dust. On top of this, funding for anything bigger was stymied by his diamond-smuggling operations in Kenya being repeatedly foiled by animal-themed heroes with increasingly ridiculous names and costumes. Knowing full well that it was only a matter of time before the United Nations hunted him down, Vortex had figured out that what he needed was a nuclear option, a last-ditch resort that would ensure his legacy wouldn't be trampled to dust by the judgmental feet of law-abiding society.

Three whole months of planning, graft and shouting at his employees later, and he had it. It was genius. It was a miracle of science.

And it was currently slopping it's way out of the jar onto the table of the labs in Science Department V.

Outwardly, it resembled a dark blue liquid, similar in consistency and appearance (and scent) to blueberry jam. In reality, it was a cluster of thousands of nanobots, granted a small amount of self-awareness via a shared intelligence network. It's primary directive was to consume organic matter by breaking it down into it's component molecules, then convert those molecules into more nanobots of it's type, effectively growing in size. The idea was that, should the forces of justice finally get the better of him, Vortex would release it, allowing it to consume everything on his secluded island base and destroy all traces of his operation.

The idea looked good on paper. But paper is a flimsy thing that goes see-through when you rub grease on it.

The Jam, as it was informally known, was slowly slithering it's way towards a laptop computer that had been left on the table by a careless scientist who had gotten sick of entering data. Since the action of converting molecules from one type to another consumed large amounts of energy, the nanobots were also programmed to seek out sources of electricity to recharge themselves. And right now, their sensors were telling them that there was a source of electricity right up ahead, and they needed to recharge promptly after a whole day of exhausting tests that had drained their batteries.

Sadly, whilst they were very good at finding electrical sources, they hadn't been programmed to distinguish different types of outlets very well - it had been made on a budget, after all. And thus when the Jam oozed alongside the laptop and prepared to recharge, it inserted itself not into a mains socket, as it had assumed it was doing, but rather the USB port.

This is what it thought as it found itself suddenly absorbing the entirety of the Internet into itself.

All five million terabytes of it.

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...wait, what are we on about?