Chương 54: FAFO

The giant idiot, Arex, slammed to the ground with enough force to crack the blacktop of the basketball court. Over Seer's fingers dug at her sleeve in irritation but she was determined not to get into a fight right now. Not when they were so fucking close to resolving this. They were running out of time. Draven's grand plan was unsustainable, and everyone knew it. Taking Mr.

Wonder off the board by heavily assaulting the gas giant two planets over would buy a lot of time since he'd have to take the trip there the old fashioned way. Especially since the League specifically kicked off this massive interplanetary assault by ensuring that all long range teleportation to and from every single moon and space station surrounding Junea was offline. However, this far off distraction also meant diverting a lot of the League's larger firepower out into fucking space.

Roughly 60 percent of their death bots, flying weapons platforms, and A list chumps who boasted the power to trade blows with the bigger heroes on the block had been stuffed in space ships and launched millions of miles away. Which meant that the plan back soil-side – the one where the League needed to suppress, oh just, every single hero on the planet – largely hinged on the council members respecting the unofficial leader of the League enough to do what they were told.

From Over Seer's experience respect was the one thing those narcissistic egomaniacs had in short supply.

If the Atlantheans – Sea Seize, Shell Breaker, and Abyssa – got distracted trying to make a play for their underwater kingdom and pulled all their troops away from the coastal cities, or if NecrOver and Life Tyrant started feuding, or any number of stupid ideas popped into any one of the big wigs' heads, then the heroes of the world wouldn't need the big flying teddy bear to cause this whole thing to topple over.

But even if that didn't happen, it was inevitable that Wonder's eventual return would be the first domino in the chain. When that happened, the League had better have its true prize or else. Sure, Draven was a master at spinning just about any loss as "all part of the plan" to the outside world, but the internal politics would be brutal.

He'd be unlikely to actually lose his honorary spot at the top of the food chain since no one else could set aside their egos enough to appease enough of the rest of the council to follow them. Even if Shell Breaker, Hive Mind, Empress Envalla, Xceller, and Cyber Wyrm all had experience with pretend games of court, when push came to shove, all of them had made too many enemies of enough other chairs.

Plus, each of them had too many of their own branded followers for anyone else to feel like them moving their seat to the center of the room and calling the shots for a bit wasn't just the prelude to a true play for the throne. This was why Draven's actual super power was having no powers. Everyone thought that if they truly wanted to claw back whatever authority they'd ceded to him, they could do so with ease. Most days, that line of thinking was adorable.

Draven had seeded the council with enough yes-men and fostered enough goodwill through well-placed bribes and favor trading that trying to muscle him out would go poorly. Except, that only worked if only a couple voices dissented. A voice or two was something he could lean on using enough of the others to smother them out. He was a master at making everyone else feel empowered by doing so, rather than becoming outraged or paranoid that they'd be next up to be trampled over.

However, if suddenly everyone were a little more stubborn about listening to his advice or amenable to trading favors with one another all at once – like, say, if they felt they just wasted a significant investment of resources on a multiweek global riot that didn't give an actual win – then Draven might end up becoming the puppet he saw everyone else around him as. A mouthpiece to read the script of whatever his peers agreed he should say to the whole world as though they were operating with one voice.

And he'd make Over Seer's life hell for it. She just knew it. The weakest League council member still outranked her by design. Gods. Fucking. Dammit.

"So how the fuck did you find the bastard?" Arex asked, dusting off an arm. Pure godsdamn posturing. Those muscles hadn't even existed a few seconds ago when he'd landed.

"While running this whole operation," she sneered, "I've still been scrying using every method I can on that damn chunk of rock we got from Fencer. It's been nonstop arcane dissection of every scrap of information I can wring from it – whenever I'm not wrangling idiots and having to relocate my entire operation." Arex's smarmy fucking grin at her frustration made her want to spit in his face. He had the audacity to rub it in by asking, "Underestimated the heroes, huh?"

Her teeth ground together as the flaming eye sigil that wrapped around her head flared, but she fought down her anger.

"Yes," she admitted, letting her irritation bleed off her with the acceptance.

"Victory's reputation doesn't do them justice. They're far better at intelligence gathering than one might surmise. I suspect that this might be due to the return of that Librarian, or perhaps Azure has other tricks up his sleeve. Did you know I've had to organize discrete bribes because some heroes are actually casing neighborhoods on their patrols and hitting up civilians? Just… walking up to people on the street and asking them if they've seen anything suspicious? The worst part is that it was working too!"

She exhaled through her teeth, "Still, the blindspots in their search gave me quite the idea for our own." Arex arched an eyebrow. Rather than sticking around to explain this to him, Over Seer decided to move away from his conspicuous landing spot as she spoke. This court was a few blocks away from their target, but the foot traffic in this area was almost non-existent.

She suspected this to be one of those places the local villains had a heavy presence in, with residents that minded their own business and didn't stick around to talk to colorfully dressed people in masks. That made it ideal to meet up at. Even so, it wouldn't do to linger for any flying supe to catch sight of them.

"I noticed that they're awful when it comes to locating our organizations via magical surveillance," she explained.

"Their failure to deal with even the most simple of my arcane countermeasures gave me the ingenious idea to return to the basics and see if could track him by tracking where he shouldn't be. Before any of that, I obtained a sample of the magical essence the heroes managed to extract from the scene of the crime. No doubt the heroes have been working nonstop to try and sweep for matching signatures around the city. A nice start, but obviously doomed to be a failure from the onset.

Our 'friend' has spent years in hiding and no doubt has concealed himself from such rudimentary tracking. Obviously to make sure our Akashic deficient friend is the same one who bolted Maniacal, I decided it was prudent to check this first. See how the essence's idiosyncrasies held up against that damn rock, to see if my methods would be worth pursuing." Arex kept pace with her, seeming to take one step for her every two, and didn't bother to ask any of the obvious questions. Fucking supervillains.

No one wanted a conversation because they all expected to monologue or be monologued to.

"Firstly, I got confirmation that what we have is the genuine article and that Fencer is a snake. Not that I needed proof of that. The fragment had similar magical traces on it," she spat. Arex was about to respond to that but she cut him off, "Barely there, but still. However, as I suspected, just as the fragment we have lacked Akashic properties, it also lacked any sign of longer term exposure to this magical signature. Like it was scrubbed of all magical properties regularly."

She mimed a vigorous cleaning motion with her hands for dramatic effect. Arex frowned, "So he dunks his kit in anti-magic juice?" She growled at his simplicity, his stupidity, and at how frustratingly close he was to the truth with that comment. Seer pressed him, "Are you even aware of what 'anti-magic' entails?"

"Magic equivalent to anti-matter?" Over Seer stopped dead in her tracks to turn around and fix him with the strongest glare her eye sigil could muster. His smile looked too close to a sneer to her. She'd been about to snap at how obviously wrong he was on instinct. However, with all the hatred in her heart, the moment she gave his insipid answer a second thought, it turned out that his limited grasp of allusions wasn't too far off from the principle of the thing.

"In some cases, you're not entirely wrong, since it tends to break down magic into something close enough to energy that the differences are negligible," Over Seer admitted. Magic wasn't energy or matter. But also it was both of those things. That was a reason the arcane arts were still referred to like that rather than truly becoming a science. And so, Arex's childish answer held some truth. When most forms of anti-magic interacted with magic, the resulting forces conjured needed to find an outlet.

More than a few tended to transform perfectly ordered spells into unbound primal magic that had a habit of being a little… tempermental. You wouldn't actually cause an explosion by disrupting a massive ritual in that way, you'd just toss the magical equivalent of aersolized nitroglycerine everywhere, often in an evironment with metaphorical sparks everywhere.

"Most forms of anti-magic dissipate intent and attraction of magic, weakening bonds or enchantments or preventing a spellcaster from calling upon magical power surrounding them. Warding would be the most common of this when you consider a magical solution. But to actually touch Akashic properties would require severe wards or significant exposure to a ward's most intense exposure area for prolong periods.

In the case of the former, we're talking power on the scale that the Sanctum would be involved, and nothing about our mysterious 'Roger' indicates that we have one of the Crown Caster's former students running amok," she told him, leaving out a lot of details on purpose. He nodded as though his feeble pseudo-reptilian brain would grasp any of that.

"There's another answer though. A form of anti-magic where prolonged exposure to would actually erase a primordial essence from an object if exposed to it for long enough. Something that strips away memory down to the Akashic field along with everything else of power," Over Seer pointed out. Determined to infuriate her, Arex got it in the first guess, "Counter super technology." Her eyes bulged behind the blindfold and she balled her fists. Arex chuckled, "I know death rays and Arrestor cuffs fuck with memories.

You were the one to tell me to sunbathe under a couple of them." A blush threatened to creep onto her face as she remembered that conversation. Arex kept claiming that the number of moons in the sky was wrong and that some genetic memory kept screaming at him whenever he turned into something based off the actual DNA of a prehistoric creature. He'd wanted her to support his stupid three moon theory. She'd "politely" informed him of a method of prolonged exposure that would solve the issue.

"I keep track of too many things to remember which of you morons I tell to kill themselves," she snapped and Arex howled with laughter. Too loud. They weren't close yet but they were still on the streets.

"Shut up before anyone hears you!"

"Ah, that explains why you're walking," he noted, wiping a tear from his eye.

"Don't want to give us away. So, we got someone in love with Professor Death's greatest toy?"

"No, of course not, they're probably using wards," she dismissed him.

"You just said-""Yes, but also wards are easy to obtain in numbers and we're talking about someone wanting to hide from an angry goddess and us. They're not microdosing on death rays or spending their whole life wearing cuffs. If they had that much of a death wish, they wouldn't have taken ten years to pick a fight," Over Seer pointed out.

"That's how I found them." Arex stiffened, clearly willing to drop the carefree attitude now that she was getting to the important part of the story. She used that opportunity to push forward again, still trying to keep on track, "I went with the assumption that this Roger Stevens character was obviously paranoid enough to be employing multiple wards. No doubt on his person but also in the places he travels.

Obviously, this city has wards scattered throughout it, as all cities do, so it's not simply a matter of looking for warded areas. There are literally thousands here, some probably long abandoned when someone set them up in secret and neglected to remove them after moving out." Arex nodded, all too aware as an international villain how common it was to move into a place and throw down some easy anti-scrying charms on a temporary hideout. Half the time they weren't worth the effort to clean up after you left.

This city had hundreds of apartments, abandoned warehouses, factories, and high rises that would've pinged off being warded in some manner.

"Instead of trying to track him directly, I looked for instances over the last few weeks of ward interference. Occurrences when one bit of anti magic touched another. These would be moments where someone might cross a threshold or portal somewhere while warded. Small flares when the magic of antimagic met a different form of antimagic." Her eye sigil swiveled around to focus on him as he walked behind her. She was still able to perceive the world ahead of her but it was a little grainier now.

A fine tradeoff to allowing her to witness Arex taking in her genius.

"That would obviously end up including instances of teleportation pinging the results. The effect portals have with folding space causes odd interactions with magical properties just as much as physical ones. The details are fascinating but unimportant except for the bit where they would also help us track our quarry since it would also yield these flashes of conflict. Obviously, I still had to narrow the search further, so I looked for areas with high interaction on an almost daily basis.

That caused us to get down from 428 zones of counter magic fluctuations to 96." Arex whistled, "Quite the reduction. Enough to check manually?"

"Too risky," she waved him off.

"No, this was the point where I had to temporally scrub these zones and search for Akashic deviations over the chronosphere. Areas where perception itself was being eroded. Risky places to linger." His brows knit together and it was her turn to laugh at his face.

"As much as we dump into our own counter-surveillance methods, the method that our target is employing is risky. If you scrub yourself from the perception of the world itself, then who you are is at risk. Useful for changing names and hiding, but so easy to lose yourself. So I looked for places where names were in flux. Down to 7." A broad grin adorned both of their faces. Arex's quickly fell and he reached out to grab her shoulder.

She almost summoned up a spell to fling him away when she heard the car speed by, directly where her path would've taken her had she kept walking. Arex coughed and looked away, pulling his hand free and pretending that hadn't just happened. Over Seer made sure not to face him, swiveling her eye sigil back around in embarrassment.

"A-anyways," she continued, "then I examined the incidents in question, searching at last for our mysterious magical signature. This wasn't easy and those temporally isolated zones were all areas with wards, meaning the actual results were garbage. No false positives, but that doesn't mean there weren't false negatives. It's entirely possible he might not be at this one right now, but I'm certain he's here often enough that we'll get enough here to track him wherever he runs."

She could feel Arex's tension bleed off him with the possibility that this hunt wouldn't end in blood tonight.

"Relax, if this one doesn't work out, we'll hit the rest within an hour," she promised as they finally arrived at the last street before their location.

"For now, you and I are going to be the first in. Axgrinder and Oni Overlord are already here and waiting. Moth Mercenary, Moon Glory, and Underhand are on the rooftops." The three non-council members had been a careful consideration on her part. She didn't trust any of her own people at the moment with how badly they'd been fucking up OPSEC considering how often she'd had to relocate. That left her scrambling to find three decent powerhouses who could keep quiet and get here fast.

If Arex minded that she'd poached Underhand from him, he didn't say anything. If anything, he seemed to be focused for once. She took a deep breath, "We're-""Someone's coming out," Arex strolled past her and towards the building across the road. It took every ounce of self control to keep herself from launching a dozen curses his way as the imbecile broke cover and moved with rapid speed towards the woman who had just exited the door. She didn't appear to notice them as she seemed to take care closing the door.

That allowed the massive villain and the trailing sorceress to get within about two dozen feet of her without alerting her.

"Hey," Arex called out.

"Mind if we have some words?"

"Oh?" the woman asked, slowly turning to face him. Over Seer sighed, knowing they'd be recognized instantly. So she began to prepare a spell to silence the woman as she approached, feeling a tingle as she crossed some kind of dividing line on her approach. A ward that most wouldn't realize was there. This was definitely the place. Hopefully Arex didn't… Wait, do I know her? Over Seer wondered as she saw the woman's face. Arex asked the same thing aloud, "Huh? Do I know you?"

She chuckled and ice ran down Over Seer's spine.

"I'm probably not familiar like this," she said.

"Let's try another angle. Put your filthy faces to the ground, now." The force of it was overwhelming. Ripping and tearing through Over Seer's mind as it slammed into her like a clawed hand seizing her brain. Her nose cracked against the road and she tasted blood. Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! The woman whistled and Over Seer's head was full of shards of glass, barely able to recognize the screaming of Axgrinder and Oni Overlord. Maybe the other three too.

The sonic assault caused her soft tissue to writhe in agony as nerve endings sent white hot signals to her brain that she was being peeled apart." All of you hiding in the shadows, come here. Now." Her command caused the shrieking voices to grow closer and Over Seer realized that the other five villains were now kneeling on the ground next to her in moments. She couldn't focus on them at all. None of them could defend against it. Not even her.

This wasn't magical, but a psionic assault mixed with soundwaves perfectly trained to attack the nervous system and musculature of anyone it touched. Over Seer knew her powers would even work on cybernetics and inhuman bodies as well, having spent more than a human lifetime training her terrible voice to carefully slice through whatever it could reach. Stolen story; please report.

As gentle as the caress of silk or as ruthless as a combine thresher, the only defense was to have sonic countermeasures ready to go in an instant." Now tell me," she strolled leisurely over to Over Seer, and tapped the sorceress's face with the tip of her shoe, "why has the League decided to break the rules of our truce? I'm retired, and Draven said that he'd leave me alone." Over Seer looked up into the cruel eyes of Death Siren. The exiled princess of Atlanthea's former monarchy. One of Mr.

Wonder's deadliest foes. A former sitting council member of the League of Domination. The Scourge of the East Sea. The murderer of the Crown Caster of the Sanctum, Roland Regal. ¹ The woman who had put four of the League's top assassins into med bays when the previous leadership had tried to deny her a graceful exit. One of Dorian Draven's first problems solved as the new leader. And the person who had no doubt ordered the assassination of Dr. Maniacal. This was the highest level of League backstabbing.

The type that saw big names get wiped off the board for long forgotten grudges. And Over Seer was currently doubled over and at her mercy.

"W-we didn't-" she gasped.

"No, you didn't," Siren's smile was dark and cruel.

"Not a single thought in that pretty head. I doubt I'd see a difference if someone had come along and sung a little song at the resonant frequency of your brain tissue." Her tongue traced a letter on her teeth as she mouthed the first note of Over Seer's potential death. The magician's teeth chattered, desperately considering her options. She couldn't cast a spell fast enough to stop Siren from pulping her head. Attempting to do so would surely mean her death.

A grunt to her right made her heart hammer in her chest as Arex tried to fight the woman's mental commands. He was going to get them all killed! Over Seer had to-"N-nice to, agh fuck, see you, ma'am," he told her looking up at her.

"It's been too long."

"And yet you're still a lapdog after all this time," Siren scowled, but mercifully refrained from inflicting anymore harm.

"What are you doing skulking around my home?"

"S-searching," Arex admitted, and Over Seer saw his body fraying and hundreds of small mouths crying out in silent screams as his body was wracked with pain.

"For-""I'm aware," she cut him off, confirming Over Seer's fears.

"But you're not going to cross this threshold."

"You're sheltering an enemy of the League!" snarled Axgrinder, his voice barely muffled behind the metal plate covering his face with how loudly he shouted.

"We're going to kill you for this!"

"Shut-" Over Seer began to shout. Death Siren clicked her tongue and the pressure on Seer's body and mind vanished, leaving her dazed. Almost all the villains were left confused and stunned, except for Axgrinder who leapt to his feet, his weapon sweeping out before he'd even fully stood. Axgrinder possessed a very simple powerset: there was almost nothing he couldn't cleave through with a blade and he was tough as shit. A nearly unstoppable force and an almost immovable object.

But he was limited by his reach, how much punishment any weapon he held could take, and a lot of human weaknesses. That was the kind of heavy muscle that wouldn't normally warrant a council seat. But in Axgrinder's case, he came with an unwavering devotion to Draven and a cult following of machismo poisoned knuckleheads who bought into the philosophy he peddled. Some of the larger names definitely saw him as a glorified lapdog in a seat he shouldn't have earned.

But he was still a force to be reckoned with and almost none of the council would actually want to pick a fight with him on even terms. The man moved deceptively fast. Not part of his powerset, just raw training and a lot of experience in fights. He was six foot nine and moved like a bullet.

Couple that with the resilience to shrug off almost anything but the strongest of superpowers or superweapons and the ability to dish out even more punishment than he could take when you were in his threat range and everyone knew to fear him. He might not be flashy, might not be able to deal with larger super teams all on his own, might not be able to fight in space or water, but in a one-on-one fight on solid ground, Over Seer would've put her money on him 9 times out of 10. But Death Siren was a Mr.

Wonder villain. He'd held up collapsing buildings all on his own. He'd kicked a kaiju so hard the massive beast had skipped across 10 miles of ocean. Hell, the guy had pushed one of the moons back into orbit after it threatened to fall on the planet. Sure, Draven might've tussled with him with the aid of his various mechs and power suits, but Siren had done so with nothing but a tight outfit that most would consider swimwear.

Even knowing that, Over Seer wouldn't have thought this fight should have been so one-sided. Siren dashed under the axe strike. It hadn't been a clumsy one that you might expect from a meat head like Grinder either, but a careful chop delivered at blistering speeds which he'd still kept close and contained enough to recover from quickly, leveraging his hand close to the axe head to sacrifice raw strength for control.

He was quick to react to her dodge, releasing the weapon the moment she'd slipped beneath and under his guard, opting for a grapple instead of trying to reposition to get her back in a suitable range. Over Seer had seen this play out once before, where Axgrinder would forgo his namesake to his opponent's surprise. They wouldn't expect for him to turn this into a wrestle that would allow him to go for a hidden knife.

Rather than making any effort to avoid the massive hand clawing for her, Siren pulled back just enough to wind up before hammering a fist into the man's ribs before he reached her. Over Seer heard the snaps and crunch from the blow. Blood exploded from Axgrinder's lips, visible when the spray of it shot out from the chin of his mask and the brute staggered backwards.

Siren's hand snapped around his massive wrist, her small fingers digging into the stony flesh with an unexpected power behind her grip, and pulled him back towards her as she leapt into the air. Rather than pirouetting off him or performing some acrobatic maneuver, the jump was part of another wind-up for a devastating blow. Her knife hand strike crashed down into Grinder's clavicle and the wet crunch that split the air almost made Seer vomit.

Axgrinder slammed into the ground, only keeping his face from hitting the asphalt with his one good arm as he wheezed in agony. Death Siren slammed a heel into his lower back. The League capo howled in agony before she seized him by the back of the neck. The clear victor of the fight leaned down and whispered into her opponent's ear." Cease." Grinder's body quivered before collapsing fully, spasms rocking their way through it.

For a moment, Over Seer thought he was dead and she was watching the last twitches before his body shut down. Then a shuddering breath rattled out of him. Then another. His powers were barely keeping him alive. None of the others had moved in the seconds the fight had lasted, afraid of attracting her attention themselves. They'd remained on the ground, stationary as they'd watched the one-sided maiming of what probably was their best duelist at the hands of one of their former overlords.

Unfortunately, without a foe, Death Siren was free to pay attention to them once more.

"You've now invaded my home and attacked me without warning or explanation for your actions," she noted.

"I can only assume you're here for a tenant of mine."

"Tenant?" Over Seer repeated, barely aware of her own words as she watched Axgrinder bleeding out a few feet from her.

"I run a respectable business for housing those with particular interests," the former League council member said, dusting off her clothing.

"A business put at risk by people running around in costumes and attacking people out of nowhere. This is an express violation of multiple terms of my agreement with the League's leadership. I believe we will need to forge a new contract to ensure that no further misunderstandings are had."

She moved over to Arex and hoisted up the giant by his coat, her supposedly average frame once more displaying a startling feat of strength, "I'll give the terms to this brat here and you all will vacate the premises immediately. One of those terms will be the cessation of hostilities with any of my tenants for the foreseeable future until we can come to an agreement I can trust the League won't break so easily."

"But-" Over Seer spoke without meaning to, knowing she had to object. She couldn't just let this go, even if Maniacal's killer was under Death Siren's protection.

"In. Ex. Change," Death Siren hissed and everyone winced as a wave of agony scrambled their brains, "I will permit you to save the life of this worthless fool who dared to test himself against a real supervillain." She gestured at the dying form of Axgrinder. Fuck! Over Seer thought, weighing her options. Draven's going to flip regardless. But another council member dead before Mr. Wonder got back would probably be the thing that would doom this entire plan. I… fucking shit!

She looked over at Arex, for once in her life seeing the shapeshifter look intimidated by someone else. He met her eye, face twitching as he fought to appear calm.

"Don't fuck this up!" she warned and turned to the others.

"Oni, open a portal, now! The rest of you: If I hear a word of this breathed elsewhere, I'll make sure your souls are burning in hell for ten thousand years!" The three weaklings scattered as the large yokai slammed the ground with his club, conjuring a hole in reality that quivered inside the wards of this place.

"Be more careful," Death Siren warned, causing all of them to flinch. Over Seer raced to secure Axgrinder and get him through the portal to the League's healers. As she descended into the black pit, her mind raced with all the implications of tonight, knowing just how fucked they were. If Death Siren really had ordered a hit on them using Roger Stevens, then was she also responsible for everything that had happened in Orion? How long was this plan in motion? Fuck, this was bad!

Stevens might still be the priority here, or he might just be one of her pawns. Where did that leave the AHM gas? This was suddenly not a situation Over Seer was in any position to handle until the council made a decision. She needed to drop everything regarding this and leave it to the idiots above her to sort out. This mess was above her in every way and there was nothing to be gained by pursuing it further.... Unless…

She glanced back through the portal as it began to close, Oni's dark realm closed in around her. Death Siren was eyeing her through the sealing gap. Over Seer knew the supervillain could taste her emotions, so she forced her panic to linger until the hole sealed. Wore one more mask like she'd trained herself to do countless years ago when she'd first been recruited as a spy for the League. Faked her feelings to let the psionic's roaming touch skim over them.

The two stared at one another until their realities parted and the light was gone. Then the spymaster began plotting.

"Hey! Open up!" Vandal Eyes beamed into the security camera, holding up a small bag which she proceeded to shake.

"I've got presents!" Alex shared looks with Celeste and Turnaround.

"What the hell is she doing here?" Turnaround asked as Lyn and Sand Devil stormed into the room, both seeming ready for a fight. Celeste tapped her pinky finger to her palm and held the robot arm up before asking, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Hopefully celebrating," the punk themed villainess told them through the feed, apparently answering an intercom.

"Also I need to speak with Menace. Don't think you guys want me to do that out here." All eyes turned to face Alex who cursed, "Fuck…"

"Do I want to know?" Lyn asked.

"I owe her a favor," he explained.

"Okay, but how does she know-" Celeste asked before looking back at the information broker.

"Yeah, never mind, stupid question." Vandal waved the bag once more, "Look, would you guys open up? Paging Dr. Celestial: I brought a Khandric oscillating heat sink." When Vandal addressed her by that name, the short cyborg scowled, about to correct her before clamping her mouth shut as the woman on the security cam finished making her bribe. Instead, she tapped her thumb against her knuckle and a light above the door flashed on as the klaxons shut down.

"Seriously?" Lyn gave her roommate a flat stare.

"I need one of those," Celeste replied without an ounce of shame.

"Besides, she's not here to blackmail me. You want to scare her off, be my guest, but be sure to at least steal the heat sink first. Menace, once you're done with all this, remember to dump your gear by my table. I really want to work out the kinks with those vents." She strolled away without another word, leaving the villains to handle whatever Vandal was here about.

"So what's she got on you?" Turnaround asked first, while moving towards the door.

"She, uh, helped me escape from some heroes," Alex followed with Sand Devil and Lyn in tow, the latter shifting into her smaller form in order to walk beside him down the hall.

"I owe her a job."

"And now that you're the number one villain in town with some lackeys to boot, she's here to collect," Lyn grumbled as she leaned against him. He exhaled, having come to the same conclusion the moment he saw her on the screen. This is why he hated being forced into favors. Hell, there was a good chance this was the first of a few calls since he knew a couple of D-listers who he still owed for a some parts or help on a small job that were just mercenary enough to see the potential profit now. Fuck…

did he owe Laser Badger anything? He was pretty sure they were square after the Silver Street gig, but leave it to the rodent to remember the tiniest unpaid debt imaginable.

"Any chance you could help me out?" he asked Sand Devil.

"Probably not," she shrugged, keeping an eye on Turnaround as the villainess skipped ahead of them. A ghost of a smile threatened to grace her face as she watched the woman, "But I can smother her if things take a turn." That was probably the best he could ask for, all things considered. The group didn't take long before they encountered the intruding villain wandering out in the open, looking around.

"Oh, hey, you're here," Vandal greeted them with a smile, depositing the bag on a nearby table that was already overflowing with junk.

"Again, congrats!" No one answered immediately, all watching the woman for a moment. The silence lasted for three seconds before Turnaround broke it, "Yeah, my driving was pretty great. Or are you talking about our pal Menace finally finding a name that works?"

"Oh, I was talking to Terrorantula," she gestured at Lyn, who hadn't shifted back into that form. Alex felt her tense against him. His own fists balled. Vandal quickly held up her hands, "Uh, the office had a security camera on the roof. I scrubbed the footage, free of charge. Consider it a gift to celebrate IronTerror becoming canon?" That earned a set of guffaws from all the villains opposite her, except for Turnaround who instead broke into wheezing laughter and doubled over.

"Alright," Lyn smiled as she playfully said, "you can blackmail my boyfriend."

"Within reason," she quickly added with a sharp tone, her red eyes flaring.

"Is it really blackmail if I know you guys are going to love this job?" Vandal asked after withering slightly beneath Lyn's glare.

"Hey! I don't work for him!" Turnaround spoke up, finally recovering from her laughing fit. The information broker cocked her head, "You were literally out there tonight."

"Yeah, but," Turnaround gestured wildly, "I got to drive a float. And it had a spinning thing at the center. It was like a thematic thing. This is more of a team-up thing until he actually gets some new digs rather than crashing on his girlfriend's couch."

"I have a place of my own," Alex protested.

"And your girlfriend crashes on your couch."

"Shut-" Turnaround clamped her mouth shut then changed the topic, "Then why don't we ever hang at your place?" Alex counted off on his hands, "Because you didn't know who I was until tonight. Because, like you said, you don't have a contract with me yet. And because my landlady is scary and I don't want you fucking shit up there." Turnaround seemed ready to argue but Sand Devil spoke up instead, "As I do have a contract with Lord Menace here, I wish to hear the details of your job.

Especially as I am able to reject assignments should the risk involved outweight the potential profits." Hearing that new name is still weird to me, Alex thought. Vandal clapped her hands together and smiled, "Oh, it's quite risky, but I think you'll find it's the perfect job to celebrate a new step in your villain careers. After all, wouldn't you all like to be the ones to finally steal the legendary Triumph Gems from the annual Victory Day Ball?"