Chương 48: Turning A Profit

Riftmaker held out a hand, "Thanks for coming." Turnaround, holding her helmet under her arm, shrugged before shaking it with her free hand, "Well… I might not officially work for you yet, but I really needed to get out of the house. Was about to start flipping my couch around and Devil hates when I do that. That said, T was really vague on details over the phone. Gotta ask: what's this job?"

"She made me promise to only tell you at the briefing," Riftmaker sighed as the villainess fixed him with a sour look. The moment he'd explained his plans to her, Lyn had been insistent on bringing Turnaround into this job for some reason, clearly seeing something funny about it that he just couldn't place. His girlfriend had been on the verge of tear-filled laughter several times before she could even coherently ask him to let her reach out to the other villainess.

In truth, Riftmaker had a small idea as to what could be the cause, but it couldn't be that simple, right? Lyn was a professional when it counted and he couldn't really see her insistence coming down to just a joke.

"Ugh… that whole lab," Turnaround muttered, peering over his shoulder at Starweaver. The mysterious third member of Starsilk had been eyeing the pair the whole time in silence, dressed in her full costume. Riftmaker was almost inclined to agree right now, despite how infatuated he was with Lyn at the moment. Celeste had been cantankerous lately. That didn't feel like anything new in his experience, but it had meant that getting updates on when his gear would be done was like navigating a minefield.

The mad scientist had pulled through in the end and he could hardly believe what he was wearing. The outer casing of his gauntlets was significantly slimmer, while still maintaining their angular design. With his beam emitters now located in the palm and knuckles of his gloves, she'd had room to throw so many small gadgets in there. Additional lasers, several additional cables and a winch to go along with them, and a micro sonic weapon that she warned was placeholder and wouldn't last more than a couple uses.

It was complete overkill for this job but knowing he had all that just on his arms made him feel like a complete badass compared to his days as the Iron Menace. A high tech job just a few months ago meant renting a decade old jetpack and borrowing someone's night-vision goggles. He never imagined having his own personal mad scientist on payroll like this.

Speaking of his associate's penchant for giving him the good upgrades, she'd completed the smoke vent system and had hooked it up to various panels of his armor allowing him to choose how to release that. There was an automated system if he ran his gloves too hot – which was a lot harder to do now according to her – but she'd won him over to the idea of manual control with a few suggestions.

Her favorite also ended up being his own: venting it to the soles of his boots, creating a trail of wispy footsteps in his wake. Granted, it required him to actually spin up his gauntlets first before entering a room, but the effect looked downright sinister so long as no one caught him playing around with his gloves beforehand. He'd also experimented with letting smoke flow out of his wrists, trying to get it look like he was holding onto orbs of shadow or something.

Going for that "power in the palm of my hands" thing a lot of capes tended to show off with. Sadly, it wasn't quite there yet and he just looked like his wrists were overheating. In an event rarer than a complete planetary alignment, Celeste had seen the potential in that particular aesthetic and set to work trying to see if the vents could be placed near the palms, but apparently to both their disappointment, it looked to be a dead end....

And of course, the two of them had spent more time than they should've showing off how to fart clouds with the new vent system. De-stressing after engineering projects was important, especially when it's objectively funny. You would think that bonding between them would've meant something, but the moment it was over, she'd immediately launched into another three projects and got downright territorial if he lingered too long in the lab area. She'd even sicced Val on him once or twice.

Other than the heart attack of seeing her appear out of nowhere, she was mostly harmless but being chased out of his own mad scientist's lab still hurt his pride. As for the other member of Starsilk…

"Got everything sorted with Turnaround?" Weaver asked, a sharp nail tracing one of his pauldrons as she passed by. He spared a glance over at Turnaround, whose raised eyebrows told him he wasn't alone in reading how she'd been acting. Riftmaker hadn't seen her around much until today, but it felt like there was an oddly flirtatious tone to her interactions with him. He was trying to figure out a good way to shut that down, especially since his more subtle methods of shrugging her off hadn't really worked so far.

"Yep," he said in a clipped tone, hoping she'd get the message. A mischievous look in her eyes let him know that probably wasn't the case, but she mercifully left him alone.

"Uh… how long has that been-?" Turnaround asked.

"Don't."

"I mean… You sure about that? She's, like, a solid nine. Ten if you're into the spider thing, which I mean, you're working with the right lab if you are."

"Please don't objectify your coworkers."

"Fuck… Do we have HR now that you've got little minion babies running around?"

"I'll get on it," he sighed, earning a boo from the neon woman who was most likely to be that department's number one problem in the long run. As for the current HR nightmare, Riftmaker still hadn't gotten a straight answer on the exact relationship Lyn had with the other spider villain. Though to be honest, he hadn't really concerned himself with that too much during the last week despite – or probably because of – how much he'd been glued to his new lover.

The pair had managed a few dates and gotten to know one another a little better. Well, dates of a sort since Riftmaker didn't have a suit to pair along with her out in the city and she obviously stood out a little. Although he'd gotten creative and managed to bring her along for a quick drink run one night at a place he knew by one of the parks. They'd enjoyed a nice bit of seclusion under the trees together. The rest of them were basically hanging out at Starsilk Labs.

Lyn basically had a million hobbies that she could do from home, on account of being fused to a giant spider, and had been slowly having Alex take a tour through them all. The woman had strong opinions on the direction of the plot of certain fantasy properties, but they'd found shared ground over griping about the latest quadrilogy from the Star Ninja series.

During a stay-at-home date night, he'd also discovered that his Game Arena 4 was apparently 3 console generations out of date, a fact that had made it to the mad scientist who demanded that he somehow find time between planning his heist to correct that fact and play the latest of an obscure mecha game series that she'd clearly modeled his HUD after. Starweaver hadn't come up at all, not even in some of their awkward relationship boundary chats, nor in some of the more… private conversations they had.

In fact, until today, Riftmaker had largely forgotten she was part of the lab outside of a few grumbles from Celeste.

"Hey, did T ever end up tracking down that loser she was crushing on?" Turnaround asked as the group was making their way to the other room. He halted in his steps before turning to look at her, trying to figure out if she somehow knew and was fucking with him. She apparently took his silence for some form of judgment as she clarified, "Well, I mean the guy's not the worst, but he's kind of a dork I think." He just stared at her, still not able to get a good read on her.

Turnaround shrugged, "Guess you haven't heard the gossip then. I'll ask Cyborg Shorty later then." When Riftmaker looked away, he caught Starweaver looking back at them. Amusement danced in her eyes as they fixed on him, only to shift to something a little dangerous when they swept over to Turnaround. He shook his head and moved to the doorway that led to the larger room in this abandoned apartment, not willing to try and sort out whatever Weaver had going on right now.

They'd set up shop here for the last hour while waiting for Turnaround to arrive. Besides getting some time with his new girlfriend, this week had come with the lovely news that places like this were no longer likely to be crawling with League squatters. Victory's vigilantes had crawled out of the woodwork to teach the newcomers that they weren't the only ones who flew under the radar and a lot of the city's free real estate had opened back up.

¹ Riftmaker suspected the local villains were about to start realizing their competition was scurrying back to the shadows soon enough and was antsy about getting this job done before anyone could prepare for it. Opening the door to the next room revealed the squad from Wakeland's Warriors that he'd met the other day, all of whom immediately straightened and saluted the moment he crossed the threshold.

"Hail, Lord Riftmaker!" they cried out as one, thankfully opting not to salute in unison. He held up a hand to dismiss them and looked over at the other two villains. Turnaround had slipped on her helmet and thus her face was as unreadable as his own. Still, he fucking knew. He fucking just knew what was going on behind that mask. Thank every fucking god, living and dead, that she kept her mouth shut.

Meanwhile, he couldn't see the smile on Starweaver's face, but the sparkle in her glowing eyes told him it was there. Unlike the one that was definitely on Turnaround's face, he got the uncomfortable feeling that this one was more proud… and hungry. Anyways, this was not his fault. The entire group of henchmen had done this completely unprompted!

"Alright," he spoke up, activating the speakers in his helmet to boost his voice just enough to carry as he approached the map laid out on a table which had been dragged to the room's center.

"I'm assuming that you have chosen who's wearing our spare kit?" A familiar woman – the same one who had been the one most excited at this prospect back during his tour, he realized, despite not seeing an inch of skin on her – moved forward to cross his old gloves across her chest and nod at him. He glanced over at Wade Wakeland, who had chosen to accompany this mission, somewhat surprised to see he hadn't opted to pull rank.

"Tina's been trained to act as a heavy," he shrugged. Huh, they hadn't covered that before now. Acting as a heavy minion tended to come with a few more duties than just knowing how to wield the super tech in question, as you'd often be the biggest target in the room. Heroes were more likely to want to, as Lyn put it, "take out the troublesome adds" than go after the villain once henchmen started to saturate the air in energy blasts.

Knowing when to be the center of attention and when to pull back for the villain's time to shine was something of an art.

"So you and her are wearing our ripcords?" Riftmaker asked to confirm. Wade frowned, "I don't like emergency options I didn't bring myself."

"And I don't like having my henchmen's leaders at risk of capture if things go south," he countered. Wade grinned, revealing it to be another secret test as he lifted his jacket just enough to showcase the large buckle hidden underneath. Riftmaker turned his attention over to Tina who glanced at another minion in the group. The man shrank under the attention.

"Roy's got an Arrestor's record and a kid," she explained.

"So-""Best pick for it. That's fine," he cut her off.

"You aren't wearing anything too valuable, just try not to break any bones so they'll go easier on you just in case." The Warriors were all in face concealing masks so he couldn't judge the reaction to that, but they all seemed satisfied with that. So he turned his attention to the most surly person in the room. Or rather the radio that linked to the most surly person listening to this conversation.

"Dr. Celestial and I," he told the room, smiling as he imagined the gremlin gnashing her teeth on the other side of the line, "have plans for the future that require obtaining something in particular and we thought this would serve as the perfect trial run for this partnership."

"Indeed," Celeste's voice growled through the device propped up next to the map." Lord Riftmaker here has me working on quite the invention. If you lot pass the test, you will have the honor of seeing it in person soon enough. However, the magnificent device has run into something of a 'delivery problem' that we needed to sort out. You are all here to help steal our solution." Riftmaker ignored her small barb and pointed at the map, "This warehouse stores our target-""Which is?" Turnaround interrupted.

"That's a small commercial site. Cheap stuff only. Honestly, something Val could take care of on her own. We're talking flashlight cops here." The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Riftmaker turned and stared at her. Her T-shaped visor just stared back. Stealthily, he opened a hand and produced a tiny beam of gravity alteration aimed at the wall behind him. Nothing that would actually move anything, just enough to rev up the smoke.

He let it hiss from vents located on the cheeks of his helmet, black smoke billowing as though blown from fiery breath, and mimicked Starweaver, " Be silent." She seemed taken aback for a moment but seemed to understand the message: Trust me, this will pay off. More importantly, this looked like a show of force in front of the minions. Sadly, he couldn't judge if it got the intended effect with everyone wearing masks, so he just continued.

"Indeed, this will be an easy job to start out with. But one with the potential to be a lot of danger if things go wrong," he explained.

"This place is leased by the city government and our target belongs to them." He could hear a few hisses of breath, one of which definitely came from Turnaround, but she mercifully stayed quiet to allow him to continue. Government targets usually meant at least some heroes guaranteed and tended to be more trouble than they were worth. Most villains weren't crazy enough to touch anything federal, but even local governments tended to have the pull to make your life hell after a job you walked away from.

It's why he'd originally dismissed Celeste's idea until she'd sold him on the fact that this was small scale enough to not be missed, and with the League everyone's primary target, this was the perfect opportunity to go for it and not even register as a blip on the radar.

"We're here to steal the 2121 Victory Day float," he told the room and watched the confusion spread. As expected, Turnaround was the quickest to snap back, "Are you serious? Why the hell do you want a float?"

"Because it was built by a group of idiots from Nottam to be way overspec," Celeste's voice cut over the chatter spreading throughout the room.

"Its frame is made with reinforced Junean composite polymer banding and the motor reaches 98 miles per hour for some reason known only to the gods and drunken college students." The room quieted as she continued, "The city only used it once and it nearly caused an accident, but they'd contracted it out for a decade of use due to the frame construction material. So it's been sitting there for the last five years gathering dust despite being perfect for what we have in mind."

Starweaver interrupted, her voice unusually chipper, "The float was designed to accommodate any holiday decoration, as part of the central feature that these two want to steal it for. It's built with a very particular mechanism in mind: a rotational platform that would allow large structures to pivot into almost any direction." Oh gods, it was that simple, Riftmaker realized. Turnaround's voice was flat, "Did you seriously call me in because you're stealing something that spins?" To his horror, Starweaver nodded.

He was back to wondering what kind of friendship she had with Lyn that let her know these things before him. The other villainess began chuckling before outright devolving into full fledged belly laughter.

"Holy fuck! I take it all back, I love you guys!" she cried out.

"Oh, it's been forever since I've done a themed heist! The last one was the big penny!"

"How is that themed?" Riftmaker asked, remembering reading that someone had stolen the large novelty statue from one of the parks a few years back.

"Because it flips," she mimed a coin spinning through the air with her hands, her voice a little defensive.

"Oh!" he heard one of the minions say, letting him know he wasn't the only one to miss the connection. The villain looked around to figure out who had said that, giving Wade the chance to speak up.

"This seems rather straightforward, though I assume there will be some difficulty in transporting your prize to safety. However, I feel like I need to remind you that our contract is based off of shares of spoils, so I'm wondering if that's all you're planning on stealing here." Riftmaker smiled behind his mask, glad for the chance to reveal the next part of the plan, "Of course not. This facility is used to store a few other things the city bought to celebrate with, but has needed to stow away for a bit.

We're going to load up on their entire store of helium while we nab the float." From the confused reaction of the room, it looked like this would need some explaining.

"Uh, why the fuck do we need-" Turnaround began. A loud sigh from the radio interrupted her, "I hate to admit this, but the whole thing is actually clever. May I?"

"Go ahead," Riftmaker reluctantly ceded the explanation to Celeste, knowing this would earn him a small amount of goodwill from the cantankerous mad scientist. The scientist launched into an explanation, "Helium is difficult to produce safely and the processes for doing so are expensive as hell thanks to the safeguards. Chemically, it's a noble gas – so it pretty much doesn't combine with anything.

Meaning you can't really extract it from other compounds, so it requires supes that can manipulate atomic structures, either directly or by helping to kickstart nuclear processes. Both methods requires extremely isolated facilities, often located outside of the atmosphere for safety reasons. Supes that go into that business get to name their own prices for the inconvenience. Hell, it's one of the few retirement plans for some A-listers."

"Okay, but does that mean we're selling to King Clown, then?" Turnaround interrupted.

"I get this stuff is hard to make but what's the market actually like? If it's balloons and squeaky voices, I don't get it. Oh, wait, are blimps coming back?" Riftmaker could tell in the audible pause that followed that Celeste was almost certainly trying to strangle Turnaround with her mind.

"The market," she said through clenched teeth, "is among the labs around here. We're not going to be selling helium gas for balloons or blimps." Riftmaker held back his own comment here. He was very sure that Celeste wouldn't appreciate the irony of her original plan for the death ray's mounting system being thrown in her face and it would look bad to fight too much with anyone other than Turnaround in front of the minions.

"We're going to be selling liquid helium," Starweaver spoke up.

"While it's hard to find supes with atomic powers, cryo supes and tech are dime a dozen. Starsilk already has the equipment to transfer it to more appropriate containers and we've got the favors to turn all that gas into liquid gold. Plus I've already put out feelers and have almost twenty buyers looking for at least five tanks of the stuff." Turnaround's head whipped around and Riftmaker noted the henchmen glancing at one another in shock as well.

"Wait, can we actually fit that much on the float? And if so, why does the city have that much of it?" the excitable villain practically tripped over her words.

"It's a big float," Riftmaker shrugged, though he knew in reality they'd probably need to fill up another vehicle in order to hit Starweaver's aggressive quota.

"And the previous administration loaded up on it. When Cinderoak came into office, there was a little more public attention to the scarcity of it, and he thought it was a bad look to throw around balloons full of the stuff. But since it's now city property, there's an extremely long and arduous process to actually sell the stuff to prevent fraud, so it's just been sitting there for years now."

The room turned to him only for Celeste's voice to echo through the radio, "Seriously, it's weird that you know these things."

"You gotta learn the law to break the law," he sighed.

"Come on, we're professionals here." The room didn't know how to take that, glancing at one another again in confusion so he continued, "Officially, the evaluated value of this warehouse is low enough that the city can't request Amberheart to station anyone here, since the helium was bought at market value before the Ravog invasion, the float was a student project, and nothing else in there is worth much individually. They have a silent alarm system and two security guards, one off-site."

"I'm taking care of that," Starweaver piped up.

"Yep, otherwise, we just have to deal with anyone nosy. Unfortunately, the float needs to go onto the street for about fifteen blocks before it's in the clear," Riftmaker pointed at the city map, tracing a line down the streets between two marked points.

Technically, after divvying up the haul, Starsilk and he would be actually running a negative balance on this job since the plan was to pay some other villains to get the float delivered after stashing it away in a safe spot, but it would still be cheaper than building their own version of this when all was said and done. Plus this let him test the Warriors in a moving engagement. He let his eyes scan the assembled group to see what reaction they had to this news.

A lot of villain jobs tended to involve locking down an area and fleeing with your loot, and in his experience as both a villain and a henchman, it was the getting away part that caused the most trouble. Escaping came with a lot of unknowns where you'd have to split focus on keeping pace as much as on the fight at hand. If he wanted a team to help him take over the world, there would be a lot of missions where he'd need folks who could run and gun as much as they could strike fast and strike hard.

If the Warriors were bothered by this, they didn't show it. If anything, they seemed to take the pause after explaining the plan as the perfect time to hype themselves up, faceless heads nodding in support.

"So what am I doing?" Turnaround asked, eyeing the map.

"If we're not expecting heroes on guard, what do you need another villain for?"

"Easy," Riftmaker looked over at Starweaver, knowing both of them were smiling behind their masks, "you're driving the float."

A rapping noise woke Leland up, somehow managing to be heard over all the machines keeping him alive. He groaned and turned to look over at the window, thumbing a button on the remote he kept next to his bed. The curtains pulled away and the shutter rose to reveal a small sparrow framed by the courtyard lights of Bright Heights Assisted Living – a name that was too damn accurate tonight of all nights. It pecked at the glass incessantly. Leland just shot it a tired glare.

"If you can't see," he huffed.

"I'm not getting up from this damn bed, so either come around the other way or open it your damn self." Honestly, he wasn't completely bedridden. Most of the stuff attached to him he was allowed to cart around the room, something he'd regularly do on his own damn time. But his knees always hurt after waking up and he wasn't in the mood for whatever superhuman bullshit this was. He was tired and it was late. The sparrow turned its head at him to eye him for a moment before shrugging like a person might.

Its small beak opened and strands slithered out to slip through the crack at the bottom of his living room-turned-bedroom window. These tendrils crept up and unlatched it, and the whole thing rose eerily. Leland closed his eyes and sighed, knowing who this was. He missed Arex's transformation. By the time he opened his eyes again, the villain was standing at his bedside, a toothy grin smeared on his face as he lowered the window once more.

A giant hand gently tapped the same remote Leland had used to shut the room off from the outside, darkness creeping in.

"You here to kill me?" Leland asked as the massive figure stalked around his bed, his shadow barely visible as the old man's eyes adjusted to the gloom returning. He heard a wet sound as the man pulled an object out of his own chest. Then the lamp in the corner of the room where the villain was standing clicked on, revealing him once more.

"Yes," Arex smiled, holding out an object.

"Slowly." Leland barked a laugh as the giant shook the wine-skin. He pointed over to a small kitchenette where he kept the glasses. Arex chuckled back before rummaging through the drawers and pouring out two glasses.

"I'm not supposed to have any after I take my meds for the night," he admitted when the giant offered him one of them.

"Oh no," Arex's voice was heavy with sarcasm, "I'm sorry. It must be so bad for your health. And you must have such a long life ahead of you."

"Asshole," he laughed and took the drink, preferring not to think about the fact that the bird had been way too small for the container Arex had just poured this out of.

"I'll have you know the doctors here have generously said I'm good for at least the next four months."

"Damn, you really are set to outlast us all," Arex downed his first glass in one shot and smiled. That didn't last long.

"Sorry…" It was odd hearing one of the people who had once tried to kill you in a wildfire at the center of an experimental weapons lab apologizing for a joke made in bad taste. Leland decided he hated the feeling, "Don't. I'm not gonna be lonely for much longer. Can't promise I'll say hi to your friend though." Arex gave a half snort, "Yeah… Manny's probably not where you're heading. Gods… he really is gone."

The monster's eyes seemed to stare out into an unseen distance, looking past the cluttered walls of Leland's room to something far, far away. Despite everything this man was, what he'd done and planned to do, Leland knew that look all too well.

"He said he was gonna stop by here," the man muttered.

"Couldn't tell if that was to mock you or try and dose you with something." Leland took a sip from his own drink and nearly coughed it out. The taste was great, smokey and crisp, but the burn reminded him of some of the fires he'd been in.

"Probably the latter," he choked, weakly banging a fist against his chest while trying to avoid popping off a sensor.

"He was obsessed with trying to get me back in the fight." Arex slouched into a chair nearby and poured himself another glass, "That and getting Dark Star… Glad he at least went out fighting your brats." Leland's mouth twitched into a small grin. Yeah… the kids had at least been there during that final showdown. At least that was something.

"You're here to find the guy who did it?" Arex nodded, staring at the liquid in his cup.

"So why are you here? Like, in this room?" Arex stood up, strode over and despite Leland's protests, topped up his drink.

"Why don't we just talk for a little bit longer?" he said, running a finger along an IV line.

"And we'll get to the point in a bit." He extended his glass towards the former hero, who knocked his against it. A dash of the drink flew out and landed on the carpet. One final stain. One final mark on the world from a clash between the Prism Paladin and a villain.