Lyn tapped the pointed tips of her fingers together as she waited half a dozen feet from the teleporter, awaiting Celeste’s arrival. The small nervous habit had developed soon after her transformation when she realized she couldn’t bounce her legs in this form.
Despite Lyn’s visible stress, her little mad scientist was keeping in regular radio contact while navigating around the city; her path intentionally driving through some areas the villains of the city influenced to interrupt surveillance. Fencer or someone else would help chip in to keep the civilians there happy enough to fake some footage from their personal cameras if Amberheart came knocking while a few “random” low stakes brawls would end up “accidentally” knocking out whatever eyes the city set up or try to repair. You’d even find a few hidden tunnels and portals in those places which allowed you to move even quicker through the city assuming you had the cash for it.
Even though the group had refrained from using their ripcords, this haul wasn’t lavish enough for Lyn to feel comfortable with greasing more palms than they needed to. That would quickly shrink their profits from an “unparalleled score” to “staying in the black”. So for now, Celeste was just using some holofields built into the side of the van and a second set of plates to vanish off radar after heading into a dead zone, opting to simply drive the disguised vehicle back to one of their “safehouses” via the usual routes. It wasn’t foolproof, but it would take a lot of concerted effort to track them down which both Celeste and Lyn doubted P.H.O.T.O.N. could manage to drum up before they had a chance to scarper after hearing about it.
Despite Celeste’s insistence she was fine, having someone in the field while both Ned and the Stormdaughter of all people poked around their crime scene kept Lyn’s blood pressure up. She couldn’t help but dream up nightmare scenarios of the scientist being captured and dozens of heroes pouring in through the teleporter.
It’s why she’d ordered the other villains to remain on standby, even though Riftmaker, Sand Devil, and Turnaround had all wanted to bounce immediately after they’d arrived. Turnaround was being the brattiest about having to stick around, as expected. Unexpectedly though, Sand Devil was also throwing her own little tantrum by refusing to help unpack their haul, claiming that she would be owed more of a cut for actions outside the initial verbal contract. Well, that or this was just what she did at the end of every job and Lyn just had the misfortune of being the one running this one. Whatever... Once Celeste came back, the two roomates could easily clear everything that had piled up with her loader mechs.
This team had its quirks and, worse, lacked a theme or a name, but they’d still managed to take down three members of the Starlight Squad and rob half a warehouse in the process. That gave them some leeway in her eyes to act out when not on the job. And despite their protesting, all four of them had agreed to wait here by the teleporter in this converted meeting room. The former packaging plant that Starsilk called home had some decently cushy spots to wait in, but sadly five villains and whatever loot hadn’t made its way out into the hallway made this particular room a little cramped, especially since no one wanted to stand too close to a disc on the ground that ripped reality apart above it.
Looking beyond the petulant duo, Lyn spotted Riftmaker as he picked through a few of the crates Val had left here on her last few trips to admire his future suit components and an odd blend of emotions stirred within her. A mixture of pride, jealousy, anticipation, and a few other emotions should couldn’t quite place.
World domination certainly feels a lot… easier of a goal than I’d first thought, she mused, thinking of how they’d subjugated half the Squad. He’s better than I gave him credit for, but tech villains are very… replaceable once everything is built. Am I really going to settle for being part of another super team based on someone else’s ambitions like with the Eight? Perhaps, but maybe…
She tried to let that thought drift away from her. No need to plan betrayals just yet. Still, she couldn’t help but imagine Riftmaker replaced by a different gravitor gauntlet wearing villain on this team, causing her eyes to fixate on the man’s neck while he leaned over one of the open vats of cryoterraga. He was lightly armored there, a flaw they could fix with the next iteration of that armor.
And it would make such a nice gift…
Her traitorous thoughts were interrupted as Celeste announced her safe arrival over the comms. Riftmaker turned around, his back no longer as exposed and not nearly as tempting, allowing Lyn to join everyone else in returning her attention to the teleporter.
The short green haired woman suddenly appeared with a small pop, arms held out triumphantly.
“Mission complete!” she laughed, earning several cheers as the tension that had blanketed the room began to dissipate. Despite how casual Turnaround and Devil had been acting, they also had apparently been nervously awaiting whoever was going to step off that pad.
“Nice!” Turnaround yanked off her helmet letting her fuzzy hair fly free. “Well, Devil and I are headed out. Text us the total from Fencer!”
That was… incredibly trusting in this line of work. For as frustrating as Turnaround could be at times, the woman was the ideal teammate in so many ways. From her quick thinking to her easy camaraderie, she was a breath of fresh air from the usual band of crooks who normally didn’t trust you as far as they could throw you and were about as quick witted as a housefly in molasses.
Well, her trust wasn’t blindly placed. When the two had met, Turnaround hadn’t been quite as willing to pull a stunt like this. Lyn remembered that the little shit had basically breathed down her neck the whole way to Fencer’s the first time they’d done a job together. Sand Devil on the other hand still seemed a little uncomfortable with leaving it all up to Starsilk but didn’t appear willing to argue over it. As for Riftmaker, he was unreadable with his mask on. Considering the contract, she doubted he would worry too much. If Starsilk skimmed off the top, he’d probably still benefit.
A momentary urge prompted Lyn to tease Turnaround before she could depart, “You two have a date planned?”
The spunky villainess froze, slowly turning to face her, “What? No! We’re just-”
“We are sleeping together,” Sand Devil calmly explained. “Turnaround wishes to return us to our apartment to clean up for the night before we retire.”
Turnaround’s green eyes bulged as she began to sputter. Celeste coughed a laugh from the corner of the room while she made a beeline towards the nearest minifridge. She kept those all over the hideout.
“We’re not- Devil!” the neon gremlin’s face was turning bright red. “She’s bunking with me right now! Her place got knocked over by a fight and I offered- It’s not-”
The villainess prattled on and on, painting a picture of something fairly innocuous which Lyn knew from living in this life was the kind of thing that happened more than any villain would care to admit. While the common person could go to emergency housing, villains tended to need to find friendly arrangements.
As for the turn of phrase, while Devil, like most demons on the mortal plane, had an exceptional grasp of words when it came to legalese, Avalonian was definitely a second language and would occasionally lead to gaffes like this.1 As someone who had endured countless remarks about “roommates” over the years after Celeste and she came to the agreement that led to Starsilk, it would be hypocritical beyond belief for Lyn to insinuate anything from this, especially for the sake of a joke.
“So… roommates?” Lyn asked with a suggestive tone in her voice.
Turnaround raised a hand and the spider woman found herself abruptly facing the wall, leaving her only able to hear the frustrated cry of the other villain and the sounds of her stomping away. Lyn chuckled and rotated around in time to see Sand Devil waving her goodbye, a wry smile betraying that she might be aware of what was going on. After they departed, Lyn glanced over to Riftmaker once more. He was attempting to whisper something over to Celeste as the shrimp downed an energy drink.
“Yeah, yeah, chat later,” she dismissed him. “For now, leave your stuff in the back and I’ll shoot you a message after we’re done cleaning this up.”
It looked like he might argue for a second before his shoulders sank and he went off towards his designated changing room. They’d thrown a teleport pad there so he didn’t have to cross the lab in disguise, though apparently he’d grumbled that the pad they’d linked it to was actually a longer commute for him. Lyn suspected the actual issue was that the dumpster that concealed the connected room tended to get a little rancid. If he ever decided to ditch the secret identity around them, he was free to use the main one that Lyn and Celeste favored. Watching him trudge off, a tinge of curiosity about his hidden face plucked at her, but honestly she felt more than content to simply celebrate with her best friend in private.
As the door shut, Celeste immediately turned around to face her, “Can you believe it?”
Lyn beamed, “I know! It wasn’t perfect but this is one of the best jobs I’ve managed to pull off in years!”
Celeste shot her a confused look before shaking her head, “No, I mean Riftmaker was actually telling the truth about his gloves!”
Oh right, this.
“Yeah, I’m not surprised,” Lyn rolled her eyes as she made her way to the loaders, intent on sorting out their haul as soon as possible.
“Not surprised?! It’s miniaturized gravitor technology!” the shorter woman scrambled to keep up as they exited into the hallway.
“And?”
“Those are literally impossible! Worse, he sent me a NewVid, of all things, about this awhile back that I have to fish out of my junk folder now to see how he did it,” she grumbled.
Lyn scoffed, “It’s not impossible. Menace has a pair of those himself.”
“Agh!” Celeste threw up her arms, the whir of her robotic one squealing in equal frustration as its owner. “No! I refuse to believe someone on NewVid just posted a major break in tech advancement that all the villains in this town are suddenly all over!”
“Menace has had his gloves for years,” Lyn pointed out. “It’s not new.”
Celeste looked like she wanted to strangle her with her mind as the two finally arrived at the loaders, the compact mechs even smaller in their inactive state as they rested in the larger section of the lab, “Look, I’m now willing to believe Riftmaker has a pair of those, but you’re telling me your crush stumbled across the same thing years ago?”
Lyn bristled and felt herself turning red at Celeste’s wording, “I mean, what if Riftmaker simply copied Menace? If it is from a NewVid, then he could’ve found the same one. Or maybe it’s one of the labs around here that’s been using them and keeping it secret? Could be an insider leak?”
Celeste scoffed, taking off her lab coat and hanging it off the edge of one of the servers nearby as she prepared to climb inside the mech, “If someone like Lab Lizard had revolutionized practical particle physics, he would not be selling villain tech out of his garage.”
“Huh, I think Menace used to get his stuff from that guy. Didn’t you say he introduced Riftmaker to you? Could still be that he’s the guy if both of them are rocking the same gloves and used the same lab,” Lyn noted as she looked down at the spare loader, wondering if her Starweaver form would fit it. Celeste had built these things for her diminutive size after all.
Her roommate was scrambling into her mech when she paused.
“Oh godsdammit…” she muttered before extracting herself and grabbing her coat.
The tiny woman stomped off down the lab, scooping up a laptop that was sitting on a random table nearby as she marched. Lyn cautiously followed her, wondering what the hell was going on. The villains tailed the mad scientist all the way to her usual workbench where she sat down and immediately started typing away, windows popping up on a larger screen hovering above the bench.
An image of Riftmaker’s helmet popped up along with what looked like a program for audio mixing. Lyn remembered seeing something like that on social media when someone had thrown together a song made out of sound bites from Mr. Wonder one time. Another window appeared displaying lab recordings with Riftmaker donned in full armor chatting with Celeste as they finished up the final adjustments for the suit. Their voices had an odd echo to them.
“Our mics are garbage,” Celeste muttered and started playing with the settings on the audio mixer. “Never figured we’d need to care too much about the quality but of course here we are. Hopefully this helps.”
The sound quality sported a middling improvement when she replayed it. The two actually sounded fairly close to their actual voices.
“Want to tell me what this is about?” she prodded at the frustrated cyborg who just shushed her as she was scrolling through a series of folders on the laptop.
After almost a full minute and a half of Lyn staring over her shoulder, watching Celeste flicking through what Lyn recognized as recordings of a few of her jobs, the woman finally located what she seemed to be looking for.
“Got it!”
“You need to clear that already,” Lyn pointedly told her. “That’s way too much evidence.”
“Yeah, sure, after this though,” Celeste brought up the recording.
It was only audio, sourced from Lyn’s communicator. Celeste had a short lived stint where she tried helping on a few assignments about a year or two ago. Without video feed, since Lyn had put all eight feet down over wearing a bulky headset, Celeste couldn’t really contribute all that well. That left the scientist simply frustrated, constantly begging for descriptions and grating on Lyn’s own nerves when she could’ve been tinkering. While the two had gradually worked out a system for having her drones tag along on some jobs, the hover components tended to make too much noise in enclosed spaces and Lyn’s preferred jobs were stealthy infiltration. Eventually, the two agreed that Celeste’s assistance would only be an occasional occurrence, like this last job.
Lyn wondered how this memento of their ill-fated attempted team-up could possibly have gotten her so worked up.
Celeste scrubbed it to the section she was looking for and paused it, going back over to the first recording and clicked a few more adjustments to it. Riftmaker began speaking again and something tickled at the back of Lyn’s mind hearing that modified audio.
“Bossman had me install some pitch modifiers, so I just nixed those to see what he sounds like out of the helmet,” Celeste explained after a few moments. Then she paused that video to resume the queued audio file.
Wait… that was…
Celeste paused it after a moment as the speaker finished and they sat in silence.
“I think my new boss is the guy you have a crush on,” Celeste verbalized the same conclusion Lyn had reached hearing that. Gesturing at the lab recording, she said, “This is totally Iron Menace, right?”
“Holy shit,” Val blurted out, causing both Celeste and Lyn to jump in surprise.
---------------------------------
The trip back to his apartment had given time for some of Alex's more negative thoughts to fade, helped out by checking that preliminary estimation of their earnings from the job which Celestial had shunted to the team. She’d apparently kept busy in the van by using a scan of the manifest Val had swiped to monitor what was being teleported. By her count, the team had walked away with everything for his suit minus two small things and a bunch of very liquid assets.
Even with what he was reinvesting into Starsilk, and adjusting for a down payment on a small sized henchman operation, and his repair bills, Alex was looking at actually having real groceries again.2 That alone was doing wonders to improve his mood.
Plus he was remembering Orbit’s voice when the man realized what Alex’s gloves really were. The validation of watching the gravity hero panic was… Oh, he’d be living high off this for the next couple weeks.
He slipped through the back door and was pulling out his phone to grab the menu for the dinner he had planned when he heard Song call out to him.
“Ah, you’re back! Good, come over here!”
Alex glanced around to see if there were any hidden cameras by this entrance. Failing to spot any, he chalked it up to her weird powers as he made his way over to the alleged common room on the first floor. Like last time, he got the vibe the place was more akin to Song’s office than a shared communal space, just a touch too personal without a hint of anyone else’s influence. The woman lounged in the same chair, holographic displays that were way too expensive for an apartment building like this to afford floating around her.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Good, I didn’t need to order you in,” she remarked.
“I’d appreciate if you didn’t,” Alex shrugged nonchalantly, depositing his bag off in the corner. He’d left almost everything behind at Starsilk but a professional villain always has at least something to cause trouble on his person in Victory.
Song gave him a look, “Most people would be more afraid of my voice.”
“Mind control? Please, I’ve been hit with worse,” Alex told her as his chest ached with the truth of that sentence.
Her eyes narrowed, “You still haven’t looked me up.”
Alex just grinned, earning him a disgusted grunt as she flicked a screen his way. The day’s job played out in front of him in extremely high definition.
“How-?” he began to ask before realizing the obvious. Her trip to Fencer had obviously been more than just a museum tour.
“Congratulations on a job well done,” she clapped. “Now you… Hmm? I thought you’d be happier about all this.”
“Can you not use your magic mind reading powers right now,” Alex muttered as he was getting tired of people having a view at his emotions today.
Song’s face wrinkled into a scowl, “I’ll let that slide one last time, but from now on, stop calling my powers magic. It’s something of a sore spot for me and I can easily make it a sore spot for you.”
As the air in the room practically froze, Alex quickly held up his hands, “Sorry, wrong turn of phrase. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m shit at magic myself so I get it.”
Her glare evaporated into an incredulous look, “You possess the gift of magic? I find that hard to believe.”
Alex held up his hands, “Wouldn’t really call it a gift. However, yeah, it’s hereditary. Didn’t come with an actual place to put the magic though, so it’s kind of worthless. But lucky for me, it’s also been a complete fucking shit show these days too, misfiring all on its own.”
Her brows knit together, “Odd… you’re sure it’s magic and not something else?”
“It pings arcane detection,” Alex told her, remembering how his family had put him through every test under the sun by the time he could walk. Ugh… now his mood really was souring again. It was gonna take more than the B2 special and a six pack to correct for this topic.
“Hmm… could you be experiencing aetheric overload?”3 Song wondered aloud as she made her way over to the desk in the corner of the room and began to search the drawers.
“Doubtful. I’ve spent over thirty years without that happening once,” he explained. “With how shit my magic pool is, if I was going to hit AO from ambient energy in this town, I’d have been coughing lightning bolts every other week. Listen, I’m tapped from trying to light a cigarette and back to full in a few hours, it’s not like I’d get a month before I’d be rocking twice my tank.”
“Well… let’s test something,” she withdrew a small carved piece of wood about the width of her pinkie.
“I’ve tried playing with wands and foci,” Alex rolled his eyes. After deciding to leave school, Alex had deluded himself into thinking he could try once more to make his powers work. The dream of the cliché that his power had just taken a longer time to develop or would somehow explode with power with just the right tool ended with him knocking over a magic shop. A bag full of stolen arcane amplifiers tested and tossed later, and all he’d learned was how hard it was to fence beginner arcane implements in the same town you stole them from.
“Yes, well, this is an archmage’s wand, so if you have literally any aptitude at all, you should be able to get something from it,” Song insisted as she held the stick over to him.
Alex moved over to accept it, “Why do you have an archmage’s wand if you don’t have magic?”
Song fixed him with a tired stare, “A very good question that is easily answered by knowing who I am. It’s literally one of the more famous things I’m known for.”
“Huh… Madam Mayhem?”? he guessed, wondering if she’d taken a potion of youth. And fixed her nose. And replaced that scorpion claw with a real arm at some point.
“I will kill you.”
“Okay, wrong answer. Got it,” he took the wand from her while she was still in a joking mood about that sentence.
Song was about to explain something when scarlet sparks began to crackle off his fingertips and Alex immediately tossed the wand to the ground. His landlady looked at the arcs of red lightning between his finger tips with a look of concern.
“That should’ve come from the tip of the wand…” she muttered as she moved over and put a hand around his sparking fingers. The lighting stabbed into her flesh and dissipated, leaving a faint grey patch behind. That portion of her skin was visibly coarse like sandpaper, the edges of it seeming to shimmer as she moved away. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it as she lifted her hand up in front of her eyes and carefully examined it.
After a moment, she remarked, “Definitely arcane. Or rather… primal magic. I’d be tempted to say my theory was true if it weren’t for the fact that you’re not currently exploding after that reaction. Actually if you were overloading that wand should’ve been a fire hose of magic…”
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully while the patch on her hand started to blend back into her normal skin tone. Alex hardly noticed it, too transfixed by his own hands in a state of confusion, aware of a stream of thoughts running through his head but somehow not fully understanding any of them. No more lightning drifted between them, just an odd sensation that something had pressed against him and bounced off. His gaze drifted to the wand on the ground.
An archmage’s wand or staff was the shortcut any practicing magic user could rely on to punch up with their spellcraft. A novice could use one of those to instantly gain mastery over magic way beyond their reach or amplify their own pitiful spells to match the power of someone who had spent decades refining their casting. A tool able to raise a bumbling child up to the level of a journeyman or a man of mediocre talent to one worthy of respect.
And it misfired the moment he touched it.
Worthless… Always going to be worthless…
Alex shook away those thoughts only to realize Song was giving him a concerned look.
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
The woman studied him in silence before finally scooping up the wand and depositing it back in the drawer. Alex realized she hadn’t even locked it away as she left the desk behind. An artifact like that was probably worth more than twice what everything in the warehouse from today could sell for and she didn’t seem concerned at all about leaving it out in the common area without any protection. Or perhaps the fact that this was her common room was all the protection she needed. That idea, more than anything else she’d hinted at, actually got a part of him wondering who she could possibly be.
“So how are you celebrating your victory?” she asked him, her eyes peering deep within him once more. Alex opened his mouth to answer only for her to interrupt him, “Absolutely not.”
“You said you couldn’t read minds,” he protested.
“I can’t,” Song sneered. “But I can tell you plan to do something mundane and unbecoming of a villain planning to rule the world. There’s no ambition in there.”
...It was at least going to be international food and a domestic beer. That’s kind of on theme?
“You should crave something beyond your reach,” Song advised him. “Keep your hunger going. Focus on what makes you want to take over the world.”
She held out a hand and one of the floating screens zoomed towards her. Her fingers danced across it only to pause, the name of what Alex believed was an extremely upscale restaurant half finished in a search bar.
“You know,” she remarked. “Other than the threat of imminent death, we never really talked about why you want to take over the world.”
It was the second time he’d been asked this today, and unlike with Turnaround, he felt a little more honesty was appropriate here.
“Have you ever seen Professor End Point’s Address?” he asked. Then immediately his words began to spill out, “Or do you know about the old villain ‘Radar Recluse’ or ‘Plasma Overlord’? Oh! Or ‘Roach King’?”
Before he could explain, Song’s eyes went wide. Then she began to laugh. Alex could feel his face going red, feeling foolish.
“I get it now!” she barked. “Oh, that’s too perfect. I can’t believe it! Of course you’d like them!”
“I-” he felt a mix of shame and rage beginning to build up inside him as she continued to laugh. A dark thought about what he’d do if he had his armor crossed his mind.
“Oh, no,” she noticed his balled fists and gave him a smile that had a lot of emotions behind it that he couldn’t read, “I’m not making fun of you. This is just… You are everything I hoped you would be.”
Alex’s brain reset as he tried to parse what she had just said, only to be shaken from his thoughts by Song's hand on his shoulder. A deceptively strong grip gave him a reassuring squeeze. Before he could react, she’d yanked him into a hug.
Words failed to describe what he was feeling, but “flummoxed” seemed a good start.
“I know exactly why you want to rule the world now and I’m just as proud of you as I am of Pointy, Cluey, Pally, King, Questy, Ghost, and even Skelly,” she told him, no doubt referencing Conquestor, Ghost Noise, and Skeleton Key among the ones he’d mentioned.
Alex realized she understood the thing that bound those childhood inspirations together.
---------------------------------
Radar Recluse stood over the crumpled form of the hero and shouted at the terrified camera crew, “Fools! All of you! You doubted my power! You mocked me! Now see the dawn of a new age! My age!”
---------------------------------
Blue beams of energy flowed between the metal palms of the giant. A voice from within the massive robot boomed across the ruined city block.
“Dr. Irridium failed to see my genius and cast me aside!” the Overlord announced as the drones emerged from the robot’s shoulders to blanket the sky. “Now all of you shall know your rightful place and bend the knee before your new master, for I shall never bow before my lessers ever again!”
---------------------------------
King Roach stood atop a sea of writhing carapace which was smothering his foes as he chuckled, “Thought me a joke? A worthless idiot who could do nothing? Well think again! I shall prove you all wrong! I shall rule this world and you all shall know that you shunned what you could not comprehend!”
---------------------------------
He’d watched those videos hundreds of times, wearing out the tapes while stuck inside. Whenever he dared glance out the window, at the training hall he was no longer allowed into, he’d imagine it wreathed in the same flames that those cities were engulfed in. He saw the armies of minions listening to him as he went anywhere in the world he wanted.
Alex blinked away tears he hadn’t been aware were flowing down his cheeks and struggled to be free from Song’s grasp. She released him and he coughed as he struggled to compose himself, not daring to look at her.
“After the Second Wonder Accords,? the world had so many people with wonderful talents that the heroes cared nothing for,” Song spoke to his back as Alex frantically wiped his face in his sleeve. “The League, in its true formative days, recognized all these poor souls were being spited. Several of the council knew what it meant to live in the shadows of giants and offered a solution. In those days, it wasn’t about protection or about ordering the chaos, it was about feeding the need in those hearts. Ambition was labeled a sin in the wake of Wonder’s admittedly well-intentioned demands.”
Alex finally managed to compose himself and looked back, seeing a dark grin on her face, “This world was made to be ruled, and only the meek and the struggling know enough of the climb to be worthy of doing so without the cruelty of the Thelee’s or the misguided generosity of the heroes.”
“The League used to welcome those with ambition and helped to foster it,” her grin turned into a scowl. “Now it stagnates just as the heroes it opposed did. No one dares to exceed their reach for fear of falling. They plan and meet and make token gestures at antagonizing the heroes of this world but do not deserve their name.”
It was clear she had more to say, but Song grit her teeth and let the words fade away as she lowered her head. Her eyes drifted up once more to meet his.
“Anyways, before I got off track, I believe we were talking about celebrating your first major win,” her soft smile returned. “I believe I have the perfect place.”
She finished her typing and images of a completely different world of cuisine floated in the air between the two of them, the screens drifting towards him as they displayed images of diners in suits and dresses worth fortunes enjoying a variety of meals Alex could never have dreamed up. Well, he could recognize a steak in one of those pictures but whatever geometric anomaly was rising up from the dish next to it made him think it had to be from Junea or something. Gods, there looked like there was more silverware in front of some of those people than Alex owned.
“I, uh,” he scratched the back of his neck, “don’t know if I have anything to wear to that place.”
Song flicked a hand and all of the screens collapsed into one. The remaining holographic image zipped over to hover in front of her, allowing her fingers to begin dancing across it, “Of course, we’ll have it delivered.”
“Those places do delivery?” Alex’s eyebrows rose.
“For just anyone? Of course not,” Song waved a finger at him. “But you’re not planning to be ordinary anymore, are you? So let’s give you a taste of what it means to rule the world. We’ll eat on the patio, so go get cleaned up. We can chat about today and about the future in greater detail. Little Farrow wanted me to pass along some recommendations for ‘assistant agencies’ and I’m curious to see what you think of them.”
Huh, Fencer passed along henchman recommendations? I wonder if that information was paid for or if he did it to keep Song happy? Alex mused as he scooped up his bag and made his way to his apartment. As he stood in front of the door, fumbling with his key, the magnitude of the day caught up to him.
He took a deep breath and opened his door, a small smile on his face as it finally felt like the plan was coming together.
---------------------------------
Serena Song chuckled as she got off the phone with the flustered ma?tre d’. She hadn’t needed to use her voice, simply saying her old name had done the job.
While she waited, she brought up the video of Adams’ fight once more, enjoying that moment where she could see the ambition take hold when most others would’ve fled out of cowardice. Too few villains of this generation possessed that. The boy might be lacking in many regards, not the least of which was whatever oddness seemed to blight his magical aptitude, but that one quality she’d seen in his eyes when they’d first met still remained.
This city, for all its mediocrity, had not broken him.
That was a touch cruel. She enjoyed Victory’s charms quite a bit. The heroes here were perfect for forging ambition, lofty enough goals to cut one’s teeth on. Not to mention, poor little Cinderoak had been quite accommodating in ways that Orion’s leadership had been foolishly pigheaded on.
She dismissed the recording but left the floating screen active, pulling up Farrow’s little list. She’d already picked through it and found the usual marks of indolence that leads one to pursue a career as a lackey which plagued all in this field. Still, it occasionally produced gems like Adams here, and they were very beneficial to helping such individuals find their footing in the world as they rose in importance. These agencies might not earn her respect, but they were suitable to the task at hand.
Still, Farrow’s words still rung in her ears as she looked over these groups.
“I would encourage him to act with haste,” the mimic told her in a rare moment where he found the courage to outright speak his mind around her. “While it does not appear as though there will be a large demand for their services in the coming days, it would be… beneficial for him to make moves before it might attract attention.”
She pondered what kind of attention seeking out hired help would bring. It was not uncommon in the villain world, but Fencer’s words hinted at something else. So she would encourage Adams not to rest on his laurels even as they feasted tonight. Farrow might be a foppish fool at times, but one heeded the words of a man as connected as he was in the underworld.
She glanced out the small window of this room, noting the day bleeding into night when she spotted something flitting around in the air. Her eyes narrowed as what looked to be a bird sped past, far closer than most witless animals ever came thanks to the wards she’d set up ages ago.
A snarl crossed her face and she half considered heading out to go correct the mistake that was just made. Checking the cameras, she noticed they had simply passed by and were making no efforts to return. Fine, she could let this slide for now. Besides, it was such a lovely evening and it would be a shame to ruin it over such foolishness.
there's only a single advance chapter available at the moment (well, if you're finding out about it now. If you were particularly investigative this weekend you might've found this one up there before next week's appeared up there. *Edit* What. How?). Unless you're here to help as I "graduate" to be a full time author in the new year or you're perfectly fine with trusting me with your cash as I fill it out, give me a moment to get another few up there.
1. A large amount of demons who immigrate to the mortal realm do so via contracts and dense bureaucratic procedures, despite their reputation for chaos. This has led to an unflattering reputation for lawyers.
2. It is highly unlikely that a person in Victory City or most of the states of the Amera Union would be at risk of actual starvation these days, though it is well known that the quality of food, shelter, and other emergency necessities tends to be much lower than most commercial options.
3. Aetheric overload is a state where the body experiences prolonged periods of excess magical energy stored within it. Casting spells in this state often leads to unintended consequences, but is often considered necessary to do as quickly as one realizes they are experiencing the overload, lest the buildup damage the body or the release be catastrophic in nature.
4. Madam Mayhem is one of the few fae-mortal hybrids to walk the mortal realm, and one who often plagues wizards. Her appearances wildly vary, though she tends to only alter her form once a decade or so. The one constant tends to be favoring traits which most would consider to be unpleasant by most beauty standards with as little appeals to symmetry as possible.
5. The so-called Wonder Accords were a series of legislative actions passed throughout the world by various countries spearheaded by the actions and advice of Mr. Wonder. The first set were direct responses to the Great War which dealt with superpowered leadership and research as well as the eventual disarmament of most of the world outside of interstellar defenses. The second set directly addressed quality of living and led to several social safety nets across the globe. This inadvertently led to some social malaise that was exploited by the growing League of Domination, resulting in another great wave of villains and their supporters.
