Chương 4: There's Only One Thing To Do

Alex fat fingered the damn keypad three times before it finally let him into his building. He barely held himself back from slamming the door shut. It may have been late into the night and he'd only ever seen three people use this back entrance in his entire time here, but Alex was still wearing most of his costume. A few pieces of it were stuffed into the bag hanging off his shoulder, but even with a ratty coat on, it was clearly what a supe would wear and anyone who saw him would instantly be able to tell.

You're not a supe though, a voice drifted through his mind. That power that killed Maniacal was a fluke and you know it. If it had ever been worth damn, you wouldn't have been sent to "boarding school." His hands shook at that as that one errant thought dunked him into a full rerun of the day. About how he was used by the Broker and Maniacal. About how that fucking power continued to never listen to him and just ruined his life again. About Terrorantula jumping away with her face twisted like that.

About Ned and the corner shop clerk and the being webbed the wall and… and… At first, it had been searing, white hot anger flowing through him, pushing down against that small reminder not to draw attention to himself. That tiny scrap of self preservation didn't really stop him from slamming the door or throwing his bag into the wall. It was just a small thing, like a toothpick pretending to brace a vault door shut.

If he truly wished to howl and rage, then it would snap aside and he'd make one more bad decision tonight. Instead he rode through the emotions, his teeth gnashed together so hard that he felt like they were going to begin to crack. Until it wasn't rage anymore, it was pain. And then it was just… numbness. Not acceptance, just exhaustion and resignation, slipping into the gaps that his life had left in him like groves carved by a river. ArachNed didn't know it, but the hero had killed him tonight. This…

is worse than Orion. W orse than what happened with Tha-"Good, you're back," Ms. Song's voice drifted from a door up the hall. Alex froze. While he was fairly sure that she knew he was clearly on the wrong side of the law, he didn't really want to confirm exactly how he made his cash payments for rent to his landlady. Especially since shit was likely to hit the fan soon and the small amount of plausible deniability might just save his life.

"Y-yeah, sorry. It's been a day. I'll get you the rent-" he began as he made a beeline towards the stairwell." Come here," she called out to him, her voice different than any time he'd ever heard it. He… he wanted to go there. To do as she asked. Actually no he didn't but it felt like the right thing to do. So Alex strolled down to the open door in a trance. He only managed to cross the threshold before his legs stopped moving on autopilot.

Even as his body slipped back into his control, the sight there caused him freeze once more. Ms. Song relaxed in a plush chair to the side of a common room, nursing a small cup of something dark red. His landlady, as always, was dressed in a simple, comfortable looking outfit which somehow seemed a little more expensive than it should be. Perhaps it was hints from the way the fabric moved or reflected the light told him the material was way outside of Alex's usual price point, even a nice shirt or pair of pants.

Her long black hair was loosely tied together, a few braids scattered throughout it. She wore a bemused yet somewhat detached expression as her silver eyes lazily swept over him. Song wasn't what made him hold his breath however. No, it was the object a few feet in front of her. At the center of the room, atop the simple coffee table at the center of a few other chairs, was the rest of the Iron Menace's gear. And every single bit of it was repaired.

"I can't figure out what you did with this silly thing," she scooped up his left gauntlet, the casing of it no longer cracked open.

"But the rest of it was fairly straightforward."

"I can fix that with parts from a microwave. There's a video on NewVid," he told her, earning him a bewildered look which snapped him to his senses.

"What- Why did you fix-?" Ms. Song languidly rose out of her chair and placed the gauntlet back on the table. She smiled at him, exposing teeth that were just a tad sharper than they should be. A tingle ran down Alex's spine as he felt a sense of danger in the air.

"I don't suppose that," she gestured at the bag, "is your spoils for tonight?" Alex winced, "No, it… This is… the rest of my gear." Song's expression flickered, something darker behind it peeking out for a moment.

"So, you ran out with a barely functioning suit to-" she slid forward towards him, her words oddly melodious but tinged with sharpness of a shark's tooth, "I'm assuming to rob a gas station or something equally small – only to have some nosy, busy-bodied hero grind your nose into the pavement. That wasn't very smart. Was. It?" She spoke the last part of that through teeth that almost touched each other while punctuated the final two words with taps on her glass.

Alex winced both times as though she'd fired a projectile gun next to his ears. Standing here in this room made him feel more vulnerable than being stuck to the wall less than an hour ago had." Why did you do such a silly thing?" she asked and a pressure seeped into Alex's mind. It clawed at the truth inside him, gently pulling on it and twisting it up. He could feel the invasive tendrils of her power, her influence alien inside his thoughts.

Despite this, that sensation didn't feel violating as much as it felt like a coaxing that seemed to reward him for leaning into it. There was a barb of it when the words touched his ears, but he felt like he could fight it off if he tried to power through it. But gods it had been such a day that the small reward of indulging it was a sense of relief that he craved.

"I'm in trouble," he admitted, though despite the subtle praise that flowed into his brain, massaging dopamine receptors he never knew he could feel, Alex still held back the full details.

"I needed to get out of town and needed funds for that, my gear, and rent." When she cocked an eyebrow at him at the last part, he added, "I didn't want to raise suspicions so I wanted to leave on good terms with you and the rest of the people who knew me."

"Hmm… more of a plan than I thought you had," she sipped at her glass before offering a sly grin.

"But still not good enough. And now you're worse off than when you left tonight." Alex nodded. On the way back he realized how much worse, beyond just having to de-gunk his gauntlet. ArachNed was infamous for following up on villains if they crossed his path. A lot of his rogue's gallery ended up in there because of a single meeting with the hero which seemed to spiral into to him constantly showing up to foil their plans.

And if ArachNed did keep poking around, he might either find something out or get attention on the Iron Menace that he didn't need at the moment. Alex felt the world closing in on him as possibilities closed themselves off from him. He barely kept his breathing under control as he felt like a child again, locked in a room waiting for the door to open and the nightmare to continue. Ms. Song studied him as he spiraled.

Her gaze was the only thing keeping him grounded, wanting nothing more than to flee upstairs and have his breakdown in peace. After a moment, her expression beginning to sour into a snarl.

"How long have you lived here?" she asked him with an edge in her voice. Alex blinked, forgetting his worries under the sudden and unexpected threat in the room once more. When her lip lifted up a millimeter more to expose a dangerous canine, he quickly answered, "It's been almost a decade now." She rolled her eyes, "At least nine years. And in those nine years, you haven't expanded your capabilities much, have you?"

She gestured at his bag and the pieces of his armor laying on the table, exposing the truth of her statement. Those armor plates and the paired gauntlets had pretty much remained largely the same as when he'd first started. He'd only added the barest of upgrades onto them over the years when they'd been strictly necessary or so dirt cheap he didn't worry about tossing them on.

"I- I've had bills to pay!" Alex protested, though he knew it was a lie. In hindsight, that excuse probably sounded a little too close to an accusation when talking to one of the people who collected on those bills. Her glare swept into him like a hurricane, almost knocking him over with the force of it. It forced him to confront the truth. His gear wasn't the only thing he'd given up trying to improve on.

After that whirlwind first year when he became the Iron Menace in this city, he'd given up trying for upgrades and for bigger and better jobs. His anger and frustration had been spent and he'd simply settled into the role he'd scratched out for himself: a villain of the day, not even of the week. His resume had a decent amount of robberies that he got away with because he was in and out before the heroes showed up or had temporarily join a small team up for a heist that was there for gains not glory.

On the few occasions he walked away beating any hero in a fight, it was usually a 2-on-1 situation or he was up against a solo hero that severely overestimated their abilities or one having an off day. Alex had become content with where he was at, happy to avoid having to fight more and more powerful heroes. He knew that if he ended up constantly upgrading his gear, becoming a bigger and bigger threat, he'd eventually find the point where he'd be too big to just let go with a warning…

or worse, find out that he couldn't keep up with the heroes. Better to set his own ceiling than to find the one he couldn't break through, and only let his gear improve when it was the kind of thing everyone else was rocking by that point. He couldn't depend on his magic talent after all. That lesson had been learned long ago. So he avoided even trying at all and kept to the kind of jobs that both he and the cape sent to protect whatever he was trying to rob would both be able to shrug off the loss of after a week.

No big schemes, no getting an anti-hero raygun that shut down the entire powerset the local name cape in a neighborhood, no crime sprees that left a team of heroes stumped and frustrated with him, vowing to see him put to justice. He was a nuisance and nothing more. Just a menace, not a threat. His quiet brooding seemed to irritate Song even more.

"So now you're a pathetic little lamb, and you can't run away as the wolves begin to circle," she accused.

"So tell me, are you going to run to the heroes now and throw off your little gloves and swear to be a good little boy in exchange for them keeping you safe or cutting you a deal?" Like that, the anger was back. An older rage than what he'd felt after being given pity by the guy he tried to rob tonight. Something from his childhood, where he remembered himself shut away in a dark room with a screen illuminating his face as he watched the heroes he hated breaking all the villains' cool toys.

"No," he growled.

"I'm not going to beg them for help." Song's twisted grin deepened, "Oh, so then are you going to throw yourself at the mercy of someone stronger than you? Maybe swap your red for whatever color matches their lackeys and finally bend your knee to your betters?" In his fury, Alex couldn't tell if her powers were touching him, but he didn't care. This buried anger – the one which had driven him during that first year in Victory – had been born when he'd been forced out of his home in Orion City.

All because of the stupidity and ego of a low ranking member of the League feuding with a hero. He'd lost everything all because he chose to work for someone else when he could've taken the few gadgets he had to his name and tried to be his own man. He shook. As much as he feared them like any sane cape in the business that wasn't close to being a god, he hated the League for that day. Still, over time his hate had been buried under detritus of the simple life he'd built up.

But like a coal fire raging underground, it had never been smothered. And now that Song had brought up falling back into that pit he'd pulled himself out of, the fire was raging into the sky once more.

"Never," he held himself back from shouting, the words coming out in a barely restrained snarl as his teeth gnashed together.

"There you are again," she said, an almost motherly admiration painted on her face.

"That was the villain I met nine years ago." Alex blinked and looked her in the eyes. She chuckled.

"Of course I knew," she laughed.

"You think the rent here is actually that cheap? Actually…" She sauntered over to a nearby desk and opened a drawer, quickly pulling out a folder and in the same motion she swiftly slipped it onto the desk. A sheet of paper slipped out only for her finger to stab it in place on the desk. A pen flashed into her hand, and in half a second she'd written over half of it.

"There, you don't have any rent for the next few months," she returned her gaze to him. Alex's understanding of her had shifted in these last few minutes. There was a predatory element to that gaze. Something that knew it was the top of the food chain and saw everything around it as toys until they were food. He wasn't sure what kind of animal it reminded him of, only that he was definitely its prey.

"Are you sure?" he asked, not willing to risk asking more. She rolled her entire shoulders along with her eyes in response, "Please, most of the residents here are more than happy to give up their ill gotten gains to me. All I need to do is ask for a little more, and they're happy to oblige."

"This really is an apartment full of villains," Alex shook his head.

"Not those types," she chided.

"The ones that wear suits and steal with pens rather than lasers and silly gauntlets. There are only four real villains here." Alex had a strong suspicion that two of them were in this room.

"However," she held up the file she just scribbled over, and Alex couldn't help but feel like his signature on that paper somehow looked a little too much like a target with the way she'd circled it, "this little bit of leeway comes with some new rules." A finger raised off her glass, "Rule One isn't really new. It's mostly the same as it always has been: Do. Not. Bring. Your Trouble. Here."

Though that was exactly the same as what she'd told him awhile back, there was something unspoken added to it that Alex knew better than to have her actually say aloud. An "Or Else" that if she had to voice, it would mean blood. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Good, smart enough to understand that. Now Rule Two is simple, you need to be more than the Iron Menace. I'm long since past with that failure here. Oh, and no settling for plain old Alex Adams either. He won't make it here long," her cold words chilled his very spine. He nodded, not trusting his voice.

"Lastly, Rule Three. I need to know something. What are you planning to do to survive?" He wasn't ready this time. The words this time were more than just brushing against his surface thoughts. They were digging deep into him, questing for the truth. Like the knives of an amateur surgeon clawing around rather than the smooth waves that previously pulled on him, this question was vicious and cruel. They brushed against secrets he had kept hidden for years as they peeled back the reality of who he was.

Rather than yanking those up, they just dug deeper, looking for something else.

"I-I'm going to find someone to upgrade my kit," he struggled to get the words out, doubling over. The pressure didn't relent. It was as though the answer wasn't enough and he knew it. Not that it was too pitiful but that there was something further down buried below that he was holding back." And then?"

"I'm going to figure out a new name! Argh, a new identity…" his knees gave out and he dropped to the floor, his bag rolling off his shoulder and the contents sliding out. His helmet stared at him, the slight M shape of the visor telling him that there was something more that he wanted to say." What are you going to do then? What are you holding back?" her voice assailed him. What was he holding back? Something inside of him screamed that he wanted to do something more.

His mind threw his problem in his face to force him to see it. He needed the League to back off. They were relentless and petty, unwilling to stay away from anything but what they respected. If you became powerful enough, it was join or die. You didn't just spit in their face and walk away. Unless you were someone like Astralas or King Phoenix, villains no one messed with. Or groups like the Seven Beasts or the Ant Hive, organizations which banded together and put the world's heroes through the ringer on their own.

The type of people who were powerful enough to catch their attention but still could… who could… on their own… As Song's strange voice dug into his mind, Alex drifted back in his thoughts. A child watching a televised address and a seed being planted in his very soul. That tiny little thing was resonating with his landlady's voice now as a fragment of a memory pulled itself to the front of his mind. Another time when that small little wish had churned in his belly. It at least twelve years ago.

One of the many times he was sitting around with his friend Roger from his time as a minion. The two would often end up chatting about their boss's various decisions on the job, something the two would do on various assignments. They'd meet up on patrols or after their shifts were over to compare notes on what they thought of the villain they currently worked for.

A lot of time spent as a minion meant you got an eye for when your boss was about to kick a hornet's nest and you needed to get ready to run once the heat came down. If you had a pal you liked, you typically would keep them in the loop. This memory was such a small little thing: a chat they'd had in the hallways of that secret island base between missions.

"It's why you gotta do it!" Roger had explained after the entire base's masked staff had been forced to listen to their boss's crazy master plan at the time. He'd called it over ambitious earning this entire lecture from his friend. Roger had continued, "If Frost Fiend ¹ takes over a city, he has like a month before the heroes come together to kick him out. Boss takes over a country, we probably hold it until a local rebellion or the League comes in to put him in his place.

It's why you gotta aim for the highest height of all!" Frost Fiend had declared they were going to do the absolute classic. A stupid dream that only the truly delusional had. One for children and idiots. Still, Roger had loved it and had been trying to convince him that it wasn't just Fiend accidentally inhaling his own cryotubes. Because it was the dream he had given up on himself.

His friend had beamed and looked him in the eyes as he explained the logic of it, the young man's hands wrapped tightly around the helmet he brought almost everywhere even when they were off the clock, "No one actually expects you to hold it for long. You just gracefully lose a fight and things go back to normal.

But if you want respect and to get the other fuckers to piss off, let you continue being a villain all on your own and never bother you again, it's the thing you need to do, and you need to do it only once-" Alex grinned. It was stupid. It was way over his head. But when he let himself dream stupid dreams, when he let himself imagine, this was exactly what he'd wanted to do since he was a kid.

Sometimes, back on the job, he let himself imagine this even while working as one of the many faceless minions for many a villain who hardly anyone remembers these days. He'd briefly thought about it when he first became the Iron Menace, planning to take Victory City by storm and dreamed of fighting even Mr. Wonder. Why not? He was dead if he didn't anyways. Might as well shoot for the very top. Why not put all those little daydreams and imagined plots into motion?

"Easy," he met Ms. Song's gaze as he rose off the ground, grabbing his helmet on the way up. She was grinning at him in a way that led him to believe she knew he'd say this before even he did.

"I'm going to take over the world."

After almost 12 hours in a single godsdamn meeting, Over Seer finally managed to retreat to her room. She was clad in a long black dress that flowed past her feet and dragged along the ground even as she tiredly floated about a foot above it on her trip to a hovering chair. It was located in the middle of a candlelit room full of mystical tomes, dozens of screens, and more than a few empty energy drink cans. Ordinarily one of her many servants would've cleared them out, but they'd been just a little busy lately.

Sure she had a lot of them, but only a few trusted enough to be in this room, and all of those ones were understandably off doing something important at the moment. Being the spymaster of the League of Domination was somewhat lonely all things considered, and while she would never dare wish for a menial life that squandered her talents, it was days like today where she understood why several villains faked their own deaths and retired at their prime.

She knew where half of those ones were but after three years in this job, she found that even if she needed to pull some strings to try and coax them back into the cowl, she'd actually feel guilty about it.

The massive eye made of silver flame that hovered in front of her blindfolded face rotated along the ring surrounding her head, taking in the massive podium nearby full of all sorts of enchanted stones, scrolls with upright pens digging into their vellum, and even several phones of various models ranging from rotary to smart ones. Almost every single one had a candle lit next to them, their eerie green flames flickering to let her know that one of her top spies had contacted her through the nearby object.

Her teeth ground as she began dreading how long it would take to go through all of them. A normal day was already a monumental burden that only someone of her skills, talents, and expertise could handle.

With twenty eight – no, twenty seven now – members of the head council of the League above her, ² all demanding information constantly from her, coordinating with and spying on Overlab and the other sub-departments of the League, maintaining and manipulating their extraterrestrial and extraplanar "allies", and attempting her own schemes under the noses of her superiors, she was usually stretched thin.

And then Maniacal had gotten himself killed and gotten Baron Zen and Stormfury captured, not to mention stranding Ikor and three other actual useful assets out in the field. Apparently, the Doctor also had never bothered to follow up on the many emails Seer had sent him either, so looks like he took the codes to the Overlab's secret projects to his grave.

She had to pretend not to already know them for at least a week or until one of her so-called superiors told her to cut the pageantry so Calhoun's eventual replacement could actually take over. In the meantime she was obligated to deal with almost 40 pissed off mad scientists that were important enough to warrant being able to contact her in the first place, including some of her own agents who'd gone native.

Oh, and speaking of those "superiors", the meeting with the council had been thoroughly unproductive in every way. They decided to waste time grilling her for not knowing everything when she'd flat out told Maniacal that his stupid Ascension Machine would create a blindspot three weeks ago even though it had been that fool's own decision to block out all tech surveillance left over on his own.

All because 4 years ago, the only evidence of one of his missions was a shaky cam footage by a civilian that missed all the actual action in favor of hovering over an injured Viridian Paladin. No! This was her fault for not immediately knowing all the answers before the dust cleared.

And rather than dismissing her once she basically pulled no less than five separate agents from extremely important assignments to appease them, they'd kept her around on the off chance they needed her as they all just kept shouting at each other.

If it weren't for the infernal contracts I helped them get, I'd have killed half of them by now, she mused internally, fingers running over her three runed rings instinctively as she let her traitorous thoughts flow freely, safely behind the mind-shielding wards they provided. They were worth a fortune each since it was devilishly difficult to find any type of warding that actually worked without disrupting magical ability.

After a moment of decompressing, Over Seer readied herself to begin casting a few constructs - naturally magical copies of herself as no other construct would be suitable for the tasks required – into existence to help her go through the urgent messages when her floating eye fell on one in particular, a blue phone whose adjacent candle was longer than the others. Her hand flicked through a quick cantrip and pulled a laptop up to her chair, a wire already plugged into its side.

There were multiple layers of security routed through her chambers and methods of communication and, while she claimed this was another, she simply had no desire to deal with this on a smaller screen at the moment. She opened up the laptop as the phone floated over to the cord. It came alive like a serpent and lashed out to connect itself to the smaller device. Leaning back in her chair, she motioned at some ritual components to begin arranging themselves to create her simulacrums to deal with the other spies.

This one always tended to prove… enlightening. She opened the screen and quickly inputted a one-time use password based off the prompt on the screen. She realized with how easily she could remember the cipher, she'd need to have a new one created soon. It had already been in use for a few weeks now and was well past her preferred lifespan. She opened up the messenger program on the computer. blue: lol why did u guys kill ur own? Okay, maybe she'd thought too highly of this one. Perhaps they needed to die.

A flick of her wrist quickly finished the spell she'd been sub-vocalizing and over a dozen copies of herself materialized in the air woven from ash and green flame. All of them lacked her distinctive floating eye brand and were slightly translucent, ill-suited for subterfuge but perfect for delegation. They busied themselves with gathering the other objects on the nearby plinth as she grumpily reclined further in her seat.

"Don't even start with me right now," she dictated, the words automatically typing themselves on the screen. Not through a microphone, but rather the keys on the laptop depressed themselves at her words.

"I just got out of a 12 HOUR meeting and it wasn't any of them." blue: it was totally thunderer tho. SeeredSteaks: No, they were fighting magical girls below Tian. ³ Solid alibi especially since they managed to get one of the three tablets they've been after finally. Not that it stopped Arex from yelling about it for almost 3 hours. blue: isnt he a conspiracy freak? he still believes in the atlanthean moon theft thing right? ⁴ Over Seer smiled.

Okay, so this was the real reason she loved taking messages from this one in particular. In a position like hers, there were very few opportunities to talk shit about her bosses. SeeredSteaks: Yeah, he's still trying to get us to approve a mission to either Nautalia or to the Nations Union to kidnap someone to make them tell the "truth". blue: lol blue: it was red lightning tho Over Seer groaned, the exact same issue that came up in the meeting.

She repeated the statement yet another time, "Almost 30% of all magic is red. If it was an overload from his machine, any magical coloration would taint the color of the resulting lightning. Based on everything we've seen, it all points to it being an issue with the containment field breaching and the filtering process breaking down. He basically boiled the ambient power he was trying to steal, it fed into a natural storm. His shield failed due to incompatible magic, and boom, crispy doctor."

Even with just the footage she had access to, as a well versed spell caster it was plain to see what happened. It was essential to maintain wards when you worked with external pools of arcane or primordial power if you didn't want to immediately get cooked by that energy rushing to fill a waiting vessel. Something about the ability for an object or person to contain power drew magic to them, regardless of if the vessel could handle the full amount headed their way.

There was a scientific name for the principle, but most magic users just summed it up as "power seeks a host". Magic tends to prioritize the most suitable host but beyond that, it was ill understood. Maniacal might not have been a spellcaster, but he was the closest thing that counted as a vessel to his tech-ritual when the wards fell which was probably his downfall. One of her clones finished up, depositing the scroll in its hands back on the nearby table before snuffing the candle next to it.

It crossed its arms and vanished with a pop, and suddenly the memories it had flooded into her. This method was great for managing so many fires at once, but the mental load meant that Over Seer would require almost an hour's extra sleep for every clone that she created. Well… if you didn't use some spells to push your exhaustion to your subordinates and siphon some of their own rest from them. She had an entire division of people located in Avalon who had signed a magical contract without realizing it.

They believed themselves to be part of a sleep study, and all of them would feel like getting to bed an hour early tonight. blue: apparently all the magic made it so the library cant figure out anything on his corpse either blue: wait is he gonna get back up? u guys have that contract Ah yes, the other thing that the council didn't like learning about and blamed her for. SeeredSteaks: Nope. Despite explaining to him so many times, he refused to sign the infernal contract we had drafted up.

So unless we can find someone to delve into hell and get him back, that corpse isn't going anywhere.

Maniacal had been deeply opposed to trusting his soul to the demon the League had contracted for their "backup plan" and had refused multiple times to sign the (literally) damned contract, despite the many explanations Over Seer had to covertly send his way on how the League planned to betray the demon and the steps taken to deal with the chain of "I was expecting you to do that" which would unfold as the demon and the League worked through their backstabs at the moment of truth.

Apparently while he accepted that he'd probably be burning for eternity if he did die, regardless of the contract, he'd assured her that he had something in mind to make that irrelevant, scientifically of course. Obviously, it hadn't worked. She was about to tease "blue" with more details about that contract since they'd been interested in it in the past, betting she could coax some more details out of them with their guard down, before she realized something. SeeredSteaks: Wait.

You said the Library can't get anything off him either? The Multiversal Library Of True Knowledge And Enlightenment For The Betterment Of All was nothing to scoff at, even if they rarely gave answers directly when asked. In Victory City, their "branch", the elusive Secret Keeper, had at least two dozen monks amalgamated into themselves, with at least four sages readily available on the surface.

If the ward breach really had scrambled most of the lingering traces of magic, there was a good chance most of Over Seer's spies would be useless here. And some of her best would truly struggle to get anything without revealing themselves in the process. blue: relax lol blue: well know more tomorrow. promise. ive got some Several minutes passed after the message abruptly cut off. Over Seer stared at the screen the whole time growing agitated.

A few more clones of hers popped in the mean time, the stories from the various objects on the table flowing into her. One of her cells that she'd hastily relocated during the meeting to appease the council reported that heroes had noticed their espionage due to their hasty retreat. Another account confirming that Thunderer had been in Tian personally. A few other various reports played out in her head, none of which could properly distract her from what her spy had been telling her before being cut off.

Her clones had distributed directions to her contacts based off what she would tell them to do in the situation, so there was nothing more she needed to concern herself with for those. After a few more moments, she cleared her throat to begin to ask what had happened before a symbol popped up to let her know that the other side was typing again. blue: sorry. had a call i had to take.

need to keep being important or this falls apart blue: anyways the body is being looked at by an expert tomorrow and they know a few more tricks than even the library does Over Seer tapped her fingers together. This wasn't exactly what she needed. She'd been hoping they'd have something more solid than a promise, especially one to outperform Secret Keeper. However, this contact had been reliable so far and they'd proven themselves time and time again.

"Fine," she responded, the keys tapping to her voice.

"But I want to be the first to know whatever you find out. The council wants blood and by this point so do I. If you get a name, feel free to let the other heroes know it only after you tell me." The contact signed off in the affirmative and she closed the laptop and levitated the phone back to its place on the pedestal. Her hands steepled as she thought of the punishments she'd inflict on the fool that dared to challenge the League and ruin her day.