Chương 71: Chapter 69: Politely Saying "No"

Arex reclined in his seat, shooting a glance over at the bar taking up most of the wall to his left, "You know, places like this always get me hungry for some greasy fries. Don't care for 'em any other time, even at real pubs with the same amount of shit on the walls. Something about shitty booze and the stink of failure makes you want to indulge, you know?" Lord Menace – that was going to take getting used to – ground his teeth together while clutching his glass tighter, trying to figure a way out of this.

He might not have his armor, but he wasn't completely unarmed. However nothing on him would probably even slow down the guy who could form a skull with a four foot jaw filled to the brim with razor sharp teeth in less than a quarter of a second. No… the best bet here was to create a distraction and try to dodge whatever Arex threw his way while making a break for it. No jet boots meant his options were limited for shaking a tail though, and he didn't really know how keen a sense of smell the monster had.

That meant finding a teleport pad somewhere around the city. Preferably one of the ones his old contacts had set up so he didn't just lead the guy back to Starsilk. He couldn't risk-"Relax, kiddo," Arex flashed a toothy smile his way again, and Menace felt like he could see the true face of the supervillain peering out from under the gums.

He remembered archival footage of the bastard grabbing a camera to deliver a speech midfight and saw that same manic expression on the fake body now telling him, "It's smart to know your limits, but I'm here to help you out. You and your whole little team… but mostly you and the two spider chicks." Menace fought to keep from baring his teeth at the mention of Lyn. A protective urge warred with his self-preservation, screaming for him to glass the fucker right here and now.

Thankfully over thirty years of picking his battles gave him the self control this time to not to piss off the mass of claws and fangs pretending to be a human sitting across from him.

"Look, you know who I am," Arex jabbed a finger at Menace, "so I'm betting you know how the League works: You join up and we help you out as long as you play ball with us." Menace knew he should just keep quiet, maybe make some half-hearted head nods. He definitely shouldn't be cutting off one of the League's head members or doing anything to actually piss the guy off.

So he wasn't sure why he snapped out, "Yeah, I know how your fucking pyramid scheme works: Slave away so you fuckers at the top can do whatever the hell you want." Arex looked just as surprised as Menace was to hear that slip out, his false face the picture of shock for a few seconds before that confident grin split it again, "Oh? You know, I did a quick check on you a few days back and didn't see anything about you having joined up before, but that's some personal anger right there. Guessing there's a story."

Don't fucking say a word, you absolute moron, he told himself as he clamped his jaw shut. Arex's reptilian eyes scoured him, probing for information. After a few moments of tense silence, the shapeshifter spoke up once more, "I'll let you in on a secret. Despite my reputation, I'm actually quite the chill guy. I can take that little bit of lashing out on the chin, even an interruption or two.

But word of advice, since you apparently need it spelled out despite your little friend learning this lesson the hard way herself: if you piss me off, I will make you fucking regret it. I might be sitting here 'cause your brazen little stunts have impressed me, but if you think that's carte blanche to mouth off at me just cause you think you're hot shit then I will snap you in fucking two. And there's no healer with me today. You understand?" Lord Menace said nothing, just met the fucker's eyes with his own glare.

"Good, you can learn," Arex seemed to interpret his silence that as obedience.

"I'll get to the point though, since I'm not Draven. Yeah, ordinarily you'd have to do grunt shit at the bottom. Pay your dues first and then we'd let you run your own ops-" Un-fucking-likely, Menace thought to himself, remembering his time under Marquis Blood and a few others. The minion orgs he'd been running in hadn't never really been part of the League but he'd seen enough from the cliques of villains he'd been forced to break his back working for.

"-But like I said, your group impressed me," the supervillain hunched forward, his slit pupils burrowing through Menace's skin.

"An old friend of mine helped me pull the trigger on an idea I've been kicking around for a bit. I want your little team to work directly for me. Call it an apprenticeship or mentoring or whatever you want." Menace blinked in surprise, his mouth flapping open. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, "Wait, like Raptor Raider and Long Fang?" Arex laughed hollowly, "You mean my little cheer squad? Nah, half of them are just the rest of the council pushing anyone with a similar theme onto my ass. The others?

Fuck, all they care about is kissing my fucking boots. Not an ounce of ambition or an inch of a spine between the lot of them. No, I'm looking for the hot-headed types that actually want to try to make a run at a council seat themselves… Just making sure that you've got the right direction in mind for when a spot 'opens up.'" He stretch out those last two words with conspiratorial glee, all but announcing the murder he had planned.

Most people would focus on the sheer gall to suggest such a thing, but Menace was stuck on a different word.

"And what 'direction' are you talking about?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. The other man shrugged, "I'm not asking you to kiss my ass or trying to line up a vote or two or any dumb shit like that. No, I'm talking about the big picture here. About whoever gets the seats doing the smart thing and avoiding all the little league bullshit the rest of the council drags their ass into." His nails dug into the table as his fangs gnashed together, eyes locked on Menace as the other villain met that gaze.

"And what kind of bullshit is that?"

"The narrow focused kind. The pathetic fighting over scraps kind. The kind where every single fucker can't put their ego aside and has to keep trying the same old bullshit kind," Arex became more animated the more he spoke, finger jabbing the table to punctuate every sentence like he planned to punch a hole straight through it. His teeth were on full display and his eyes seemed to be looking past Menace as he spoke.

"The kind that forgets there's a big old cosmos out there with tons of alien worlds to conquer. That's what they all can't understand," the supervillain sighed, sinking back into his seat.

"Fuck, despite how much she scares the shit out of me, it's what she can't get either! Who cares who rules one single tiny little mudball when it's just a stepping stone?!" Alex sat there in that booth for a moment that stretched into a lifetime as the words lingered on the air, threatening to smother him.

The shoulders of League council member opposite him, one of the heads of hundreds of other supervillains, were heaving up and down as he'd worked himself into a frenzy, his stare still locked onto the man sitting across the table from him even though it lacked focus. That man in question felt his jaw working to try and come up with a response but words weren't coming out.

The whole world around him felt numb, like everything around him besides the shapeshifter was a haze that wasn't worth paying attention to at the moment.

"So… you want to skip all the bullshit? All the wind-up and petty little infighting and get everything you could ever want?" Arex asked.

"You and your little team comes under my wing, and I'll get you whatever you need. You want a supersuit like Draven runs around in? Done. You want proven drugs that'll give you whatever superpower you want? I can get you that. Fuck, you want me to shake down Over Seer for the type of magic that scares the Sanctum shitless? My. Fucking. Pleasure. All I want is for you to help me right the course of this fucking ship and be the best damn villain you can!

No idea what little plan you thought you had running, but let's face it, you were always going to have to come crying to us if you wanted to go international." He sneered down his nose, "I can tell, you got the same look in your eyes as that girl that stabbed me in the hand. Same as your little doll from the TV too. You got that crazy that this city seems full of these days. But that only gets you so far. I bet you're trading favors with all sorts of chumps right now for scraps of power.

Let's be honest, how do you think that ends? You get just annoying enough to piss off one of the others in a big chair and they slam a hammer the size of Orion on your head and hit everyone else around you in blast. Forget stealing parade floats and picking fights in parking lots. This is your one chance to actually matter. So what do you say?"

This one moment stretched along, the weight of it pinning him there in that cheap and worn down booth clutching a shitty beer as one of the most powerful men in the world had just laid out the offer of a lifetime for anyone who would dare call themselves a villain. The villain in the other seat only had one response.

"Go fuck yourself." Frankie, the owner of this establishment, was a big man. Not rotund, but he ate up a lot of space, and had built the place to accommodate some larger villains. That meant he preferred lining the booths with tables you could move around, rather than bolting them down, as a few villain bar owners might do in order to keep the rowdier nights from shuffling all the furniture around.

Unfortunately, that meant Arex was free to slam the table forward into Menace's sternum and pin him against the booth with more than enough force to drive the air out of his lungs. He coughed and spasmed as the monster across from him angled the improvised weapon upwards, lifting him out of his seat slightly while his hands scrabbled to try and push back in vain.

"I'm here cause you got rocks, but I believe I warned you about being polite, dipshit," Arex growled as one of his arm snaked under the raised table while the other held him in place.

"I think you need a reminder real quick of the reality of your situation." An elongated limb curled up from underneath the table, scales rippling in the dim light as it coiled up towards his neck. It was misshapen and had far too many joints on it, like someone had just kept adding elbows or knees along a mass of reptilian flesh. The grotesque appendage ended in a jagged point which Menace struggled to identify as a claw, a tooth, or a horn.

Whatever it truly was, the razor sharp edge of it traced along his neck all the same, even as he tried to bat it away with one arm, the other desperately trying to keep himself from being bisected by the table. Arex just pressed it further against him with inhuman strength and he felt his strength bleeding away as his bruised diaphragm forced him into a coughing fit.

"You think you're hot shit," Arex's voice swam in his ears as his vision darkened.

"To be honest, you got a good reason: You're on a hot streak. Even if it's a little shaky in my expert opinion. I'll bet you've got a fresh new suit with some fun new gadgets all waiting for the next job. Maybe you've even got your little rent-a-merc's all buttoned up in cute little outfits?" The ugly limb slashed around in front of Menace's eyes like a thrashing tail, almost catching them with its flailing. His coughs were beginning to feel wet and painful.

"Here's the fucking truth though: No matter how good you think you are: You're. Fucking. Nothing!" Arex snarled, shoving the table forward one last time, causing the entire world to fade from existence for a split second before the monster abruptly pulled it back.

Menace gasped for air, dimly aware of the supervillain's words as his body desperately tried to recover, "Whatever super suit you've got in the garage, Draven, Smith, and Cyber Wyrm can just shit out better ones when they're bored without even needing to hit up Overlab. Think you've got other tricks? I work with half a dozen finger wagglers who put the best mages in the Sanctum to shame. Maybe you're hiding a cool power or two. Can it handle a guy who tosses hurricanes around like wads of tissue paper?

How about a kaiju or two? The chick who lit the west coast of Uropa ablaze? Do you honestly fucking think you have a chance against any of us?" Menace shuddered as he hacked up his lungs, only for the bladed limb to slam him into the table, head first, thankfully avoiding impaling him in the process, "But maybe I misjudged your ambitions and you really wanted to just be the big man here? Wanted to run your own little org off on the sidelines of the real cape world?

You don't need to come crawling to us for that, right? Only one little problem. We. Own. This. World." Menace's arm flailed, trying to grab at the mass of scaled flesh holding him down only for it to smash his face against the table once more.

"See? I get the impression you're not aiming to be some little nobody off in the boonies who will vanish after one big score. And even if you were, you and your little pals caught my attention with your – frankly – half-assed schemes. And the truth of the matter is that's probably the greatest thing you could ever hope to accomplish that'll mean anything in the end. Cause we can't let you ride off into the sunset after catching our eye. It'd give too many people the idea they don't need us anymore.

And I might hate what the League's looking like these days, but I'll be damned if I let some little shit like you undermine my plans to recruit some real fucking villains with the balls to fix what's wrong with it because you put some stupid ideas in their heads." The limb ground his face into the spilled remains of his drink, "Sure, we can always scoop them out of a jail cell when they fuck up, but I get the feeling that this kind of pride is contagious, judging from what I'm seeing around here.

Maybe you fuckers think Manny's death means there's blood in the water, but let me disabuse you of. That. Notion!" One of Arex's human arms lashed out and seized Menace's face, dragging him up to eye level as he hissed his last two words before tossing him back into the booth. The coiling limb hovered over him like a scorpion's tail, aimed at his heart ominously. Menace didn't bother looking out to the rest of the bar for help. This wasn't the first time people got rough at Frankie's and it wouldn't be the last.

He just hoped the big man himself wouldn't try to break this up like he usually did when things got too wild.

"So let's try this one more time, little lord," Arex's lip curled, flashing his teeth with every word.

"Whatever you think you've built here, it's nothing compared to the kind of power the League could offer. You can either have that under your thumb, or it will crush you and no one will remember your name in half a year. Or maybe they do… as a cautionary tale. I suggest you get on the right side before it's too late. I'm on a time table here."

Menace fought to get his breathing back under control, ignoring a bead of blood making its way down his forehead, as he looked the shapeshifter dead in the eyes, "What are you talking about?" Arex's snarl faded into a smile, "Things are happening behind the scenes that are beyond you right now. Shit that actually matters. That's why you're even getting a little job interview. I need pieces in place for when it all hits the fan."

Menace steadied himself with one last deep breath, fighting the urge to cough once more and met his glare once again with his own, "You… you sound a little desperate there."

"Because I'm asking a nobody like you?" Arex shook his head.

"No, I've just got the resources to turn backwater refuse into gold and I figure it's time I put that to use. Draven already does that. Finds yes-men like Axgrinder or fucked up headcases like Star Mettle that he can manipulate and pumps resources into them until they're ready to sit on the council and do his bidding. I'm just finally playing his game. You have the honor of being in the right place at the right time to benefit from it." Lord Menace took a moment to let that sink in.

His entire rise so far had been similar lucky breaks. Just accident after accident that all came together. Was this any different? Fuck… he should just say yes and plan his eventual betrayal after milking this for all it was worth. Hell, it sounded like they didn't even know who he really was. This might be his chance to slip their notice, perhaps even sabotage whatever investigation they had going on. Hell, even if this was a trap then Arex was right about what the League could do anyways.

This might be his one shot to slip the hangman's noose. But his mind kept going back to the villain's prior words. About how casually he dismissed world domination all to aim for the stars. That flippant dismissal rattled around his head, carving lines through his brain as the words repeated themselves over and over again while the fucker plotted his own betrayals before him, concerned over politics and "direction."

Suddenly, Menace wasn't some 30-something-year old in a dingy bar but a child sitting in front of his small TV, just as bruised and beaten as he always was, watching a cavalcade of different supervillains declaring the whole planet belonged to them. He was holding back tears from yet one more time where his mother had verbally torn through his every effort, finding fault in everything he did and saying how embarrassed she was of him.

The men on the screen talked about similar injustices and how they would make everyone regret their words. How they were in charge now and everything would change. He was a young man, being yelled at by a stupid villain dressed in century old clothing while he loaded canisters into a machine, being told that no matter how important he thought he was, he was nothing in the face of the changing world order. How the gas being loaded up was more important than a hundred thousand of him.

It was the latest in a long line of being treated like a slave who didn't even warrant a name by this prick, no different than the other contracts his boss had them run for other League dipshits. In the end, the gas inside that canister wouldn't end up changing the world, just ruining one apartment building. He was standing in front of Lyn, a woman who had worked so hard to break out of someone else's shadow. He was promising her that they were going to rule the world. To be on top.

Not sharing it with someone else or hunkering underneath the shadow of some maniac who liked big lizards too much. For things to finally fucking change. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Lord Menace grit his teeth as he met Arex's cold eyes, "You heard my answer the first time." Arex frowned, "I want you to think about that one more time. And this time, consider what you're about to do to your little buddies. What I'm going to do to them."

Menace ground his teeth together, not trusting his own words right now. He-! He couldn't just roll over and fucking let the League steal everything from him! Not again!

"I-" A loud cha-chunk interrupted him and the two of them looked over to see the very large – and very illegal – barrel of a pump action shotgun ¹ pointed directly at Arex's head. Both of the villains in the booth raised their surprised eyes towards Frankie as he aimed the weapon with steady hands.

"I think you were just leaving," the large man said, without an ounce of fear in his voice. Menace realized that Arex's mutated limb was still hovering in the air, the tip drifting back and forth between him and the bar owner. Arex chuckled dryly, "Really? I'm not sure what you've got loaded in there but I guarantee it's not gonna go the way you want it. Run along before I feed you that, stock first." Frankie – who Menace was sure didn't have any powers of his own – just smiled back, not saying a word.

Movement behind him drew the attention of both of the villains in the booth. Looking past the bartender, they saw that practically the whole bar had gathered behind him, forming a semicircle around them. A number of the gathered crowd flexed their powers in warning. Flames danced in their hands. Lightning sparkled between fingers. Skin hardened into steel. Claws extended, hungry for blood.

Arex sneered before his face twisted and convulsed, rippling as it shifted to reveal the true visage of the monster the world feared. He stood, growing in stature to be about half a head taller than Frankie as he did so. The monstrous arm folded itself back into the rough form of a human one, albeit one the size of a small tree.

"I think you all might be making a… rather costly mistake," he announced, spreading his arms wide as though inviting the gathered crowd to rain their powers upon him.

"In case you didn't realize-""Piss off, Arex. And don't stop until you get the fuck out of our city," a man with white hair – Frost Claw, maybe, given the way the ice gathered on his knuckles – interrupted. A chorus of jeers joined in agreement at that. Over a dozen villains all stood ready for a fight, the resentment that had been bubbling up inside them for weeks now suddenly breaking loose.

The League villain look on, stunned for half a second, before he rolled his shoulders, "The fuck are they putting in the water around here? You idiots really want to die today? I'm happy to oblige. It'll make a good lesson." He glanced back at Menace, his eyes promising violence. He really was planning on killing everyone here. You didn't get to a place like Arex had by making empty threats.

And Menace could see the wounded pride at the wheel, ready to make everyone around him bleed just to make one thing clear: you didn't cross the League. The man's flesh began to ripple and Menace swore he could see the scores of hungering mouths beginning to flow down the giant's arms. The rest of the bar saw it too and everyone began to move at once. Menace began to withdraw a collapsible baton, fully aware that it would be a futile gesture but determined to go down swinging in the seconds he had left to live.

The front door exploded and the lights around the bar went dark. Then hundreds of pale blue sigils ripped into existence on every surface in sight, pressing down on the interior like they were attempting to squeeze the life out of it. Half the villains surrounding Arex went flying backwards through the air like someone had yanked on invisible strings while another half screamed and clutched at their heads in agony.

Menace felt the barbs of something close to psychic assault stabbing into his own head, but it was a dull pain as opposed to whatever hit the others. Arex himself winced, apparently not excluded from whatever had just hit the crowd but seemed to be hit with the same degree that Menace was probably getting. The large man recovered quickly and glanced towards the front, past the hunched over form of Frankie who thankfully hadn't misfired his gun even when he'd doubled over in pain.

The glowing symbols faded, the trail they traced leading back to an approaching figure floating over the prone bodies around her. As they did, Menace felt the pressure leaving his skull.

"Arex, we're leaving," the blindfolded woman dressed in all black said, matter-of-factually. The big man glowered, "Hold on, I got some education to dispense."

"This is urgent," the sorceress hissed.

"Regarding our primary mission. These nobodies don't matter." The shapeshifter blinked, "Primary… Wait! What did I miss?" He trudged along as the woman floated away. A black void opened in the empty doorway, swallowing both of them before either could say another word, leaving the villains to slowly push themselves to their feet.

"You alright?" Frankie asked Menace as he unchambered a bright purple shell from his shotgun, deftly catching it as it ejected. It took Menace a moment to realize the man was even talking to him as he struggled to come to terms with the fact that he was still alive. He nodded at the owner, who was busy inspecting the shell.

"Did you really try to threaten Arex with that?" Menace asked, as the tension began to bleed off him. Frankie's stern face broken into a sly smile.

"Fucker almost learned a lesson of his own. Bet he thought this was gonna be a regular slug. You don't run a place like this without learning to pack PDS shells." When that ended up getting a blank look, he shook his head, "'Professor Death Special.' Cartridge is full of pellets that radiate the same shit death rays give off. Guy treats his own flesh like Silly Dough, right? Met those types before and this is the perfect answer. Don't care how scary his healing is if his plan was to eat the shot.

Sure, might not be able to kill him but he'd be limping that off for weeks." Frankie turned his attention to the ruined front door and his face immediately fell as he stomped past a few bodies that were slow to get off the ground.

"Aw shit, everyone out! Before the goodie-two-shoes show up!" the big man howled, hopping the bar and stashing the gun away.

"Bar's closed for now! Swing by later to pay your tabs or else!" A couple of the out-of-costume capes grinned to one another, but Alex bet they'd be good on settling up. Folks who came to this dive weren't the type to risk a lifetime ban. Most of them rushed out the doors like the bar was on fire, not willing to risk testing their luck a second time.

Alex finally managed to extract himself from the fucking booth he'd been trapped in and scooped up his baton, which he'd dropped when the creepy chick had brain blasted the bar. As he slipped it into his pocket once more, he froze. She'd mentioned the League's primary mission here. But… wasn't that him?

Over Seer emerged into her latest safehouse with the F ucking I diot hot on her heels.

"So what happened?" he asked.

"Did Draven piss off Siren enough to kick off a war? Fuck, that's earlier than I thought it would happen…" He strolled past her, further into the repurposed shipping container that she'd been forced to appropriate for sleeping in these days. Her eye twitched behind the blindfold as she watched him bumble past the bag of her spell components that she'd only barely managed to save from the last safehouse she'd been forced to abandon. His foot grazed the edge of it and something snapped.

"Oh it wasn't Draven," she said, with the most sickly sweet voice she'd ever used in her life.

"No, someone else just made a huge mistake and endangered the whole mission for their ego." Arex grinned, missing her meaning for now. That face made her forget any semblance of caution or polite reverence.

"This stupid. Fucking. Moron." she snarled, punctuating each word with a fist banging against the side of the shipping container.

"Was about to kill an entire bar of villains and ruin everything!" Arex went rigid before his face twisted in rage, his lips peeling back to show far more razor-sharp teeth than it should be lined with, "You dare-?"

"OF COURSE I DARE!" she screamed, her voice reverberating in the metal box.

"We're having to constantly shift operations and deal with the heroes actually coordinating their responses while Draven fucked off with half our forces! And you were about to galvanize everyone in this fucking city against us!" She stabbed a finger towards him, "Do you have any idea what would've happened?! That much blood would get all of my contacts running scared! No one wants to work with us if they think we're going to turn them into pulp at a whim!

Not to mention giving Amberheart the last bit of ammunition it needs to unify the heroes of this city! They weren't in masks! They could spin it as you killing a bunch of civvies!"

"You said you had a plan to take care of that Azure punk's little Orion plagiarism project if he ever managed it!" Arex shouted back.

"So it shouldn't fucking matter if a few bodies get ink on paper!"

"That was when I had a three times as many capes here!" she pulled at her hair, frustrated at how stupid Arex could be.

"And embarrassing them only works if the entire city isn't scared shitless that they're going to be the next statistic in a newspaper! Oh, and in case it hasn't occurred to you yet, but I'M FUCKING BUSY RIGHT NOW!" She threw her hand towards the bare mattress she's only gotten to use once, "And after teleporting around twice without being able to set up wards, we have to relocate again! We have maybe thirty fucking minutes before the heroes move in! All because you fucked up your stupid plan!"

Arex's anger dropped off his face, a stupid expression of surprise replacing it, "Wait, you saw that? But I-""Do you honestly believe that half of the wards that you idiots use actually work to keep me out?!" Over Seer guffawed.

"Besides, Draven's on my ass to keep an eye on you! The moment you go off grid, one of my agents would be on you anyways. Which cuts into my already limited resources!"

"I-""You're plotting against Draven. I don't fucking care. Six of you fuckers have long running plans to kill him anyways and I'm still figuring out if I let one of those go through," she laughed.

"And you're not even the only person trying to groom a little cabal for it, in case you thought you actually were being original for once! All I'm on the hook for right now is keeping you from plotting against his stupid fucking negotiations with Death Siren or ruining things here before Draven orders the retreat. You want to recruit a couple chumps and pump them up until they can fist fight Wonder, then try a little coup? Not my fucking problem until I'm told otherwise.

Just don't throw a fucking tantrum when someone turns you down!" Arex seethed, "You don't get it! It wasn't rejecting the offer, it was spitting in my face! In the League's face!"

"Yeah," she shrugged, casting a spell to gather up her meager belongings as she did so, thankful that her own people had already cleared out the important gear when she'd first teleported away, "he was really turning down the League by not helping you with a coup attempt! Perhaps trying to strong-arm some guy who was knocking over convenience stores into a position where 26 other people just as scary as you will be out for his blood might've been the wrong sales pitch to the wrong idiot."

"It wasn't fear!" Arex growled before suddenly a contemplative look crossed his face.

"It… was resentment. Guy like that shouldn't have that much pride, at least not to the point to tell me to fuck myself to my face twice." He looked up, something forming behind those golden eyes of his, "I need you to look up more about him." Over Seer finished levitating the few things she still owned that weren't in her sanctum back home, not bothering to turn her head towards him, "No. I'm busy."

"... What?"

"I said: I'm bus-" The maw of a half-formed tyrannosaurus engulfed the entire space behind her. Her wards gave her enough warning to cast a rudimentary shield to block the onrushing jaws, though the teeth penetrated the hastily constructed arcane barrier. She was already attempting to cast again when those fangs exploded towards her, the tips becoming Arex's massive arms.

The giant's hands seized her by the throat and hands, crushing her windpipe and fingers to preventing her from speaking or making the gestures to summon any more power. Her shield collapsed along with most of the dinosaur's mouth as it dissolved into cords of scaled flesh linking back to the shapeshifter.

"See? This is the issue. One tiny, insignificant little piece of shit dares to disrespect his betters. And when you don't stomp that out, suddenly everyone forgets who you are," the monster said through gritted teeth.

"You forgot who you work for!"

"I-I-I," Over Seer choked as the palms gripped her neck tighter, "W-work for t-the League." She couldn't manage to say "Not you" before the hands squeezed harder and her soulsight granted by her spells flickered and plunged her into blackness. Her body screamed in fear but her mind, aided by all the arcane runes she'd had carved into her skull beneath the skin, was lucid enough even as the life was being squeezed out of her. This was perfect! He was actually going to kill her in a rage!

He'd completely forgotten about the infernal contracts! He'd forgotten what was going to happen the moment her soul was returned to the sanctum! The others would kill him! She'd be rid of this fucking moron once and for all! All it took was dying one measly time. She'd pay that price. Her mouth was frantically trying to gulp for air even as she forced it into a smile. Her eyes were bulging behind the blindfold even as she tried to squeeze them shut and simply let this act of murder play out.

She began to feel the pull on her soul as the demonic magic was beginning to take hold. And then she dropped to the ground, air rushing back into her lungs. She couldn't even scream in frustration as her body forced her to cough and wheeze. Her spellcraft, linked to her life-force, didn't kick back on immediately leaving her laying there, blind and confused for a few moments, before Arex's voice rebounded around the shipping container.

"Fuck!" he screamed before a loud bang rocked the shipping container. Finally, her sight returned and she saw his fist sitting inside a dent in the wall. The rest of him had returned to normal, no traces of the abominable limbs which had been killing her moments before.

"It's not just him!" the monster howled.

"It's all of them! The whole fucking world! They've been laughing at us for years! And we deserve it! This fucking League! It's a joke!" Yeah, Seer thought to herself as a hand rubbed her bruised neck, that's what happens when you have a bunch of clowns running it. His glare her way made her wonder if he could read minds for a second. Then he threw himself ass-first on top of the shitty mattress still littering the floor, head cradled in his hands.

Seer shook herself free of the remaining adrenaline which her body had flooded her with and rose, letting her levitation spells resume as she did so. She ignored the giant beast groaning on the bed for now as she finished the last of her preparations to leave. She channeled her frustrations out the same way she always did: accomplishing what needed to be done while her superiors fucked around.

One day soon, Arex would be a liability that would be cut loose, but even though he'd come close to finally crossing that line, Draven, in all his shitty fucking wisdom, would no doubt brush aside this incident. So she filed it away in her own little corner of grievances and made some mental notes on which members of the League she should throw some subtle support towards in the future. Let their infighting be her revenge. It might actually serve some purpose for once.

Finally, when all but the mattress was taken care of, she glanced back, "Get up. We're leaving. You really want to show these idiots who's boss?" Arex's head rose to glare at her. His hatred was naked but it paled in comparison to the one festering in the depths of her mind.

"I have something in the works," she spat.

"If you'll behave for just a little longer, you'll have your chance to leave your mark here and remind everyone what crossing the League means." It took a moment for his grin to return. As it did, her mind raced with treasonous thoughts, wondering if there was a way to hurt him with her master plan. Probably not, and unlike this fool, she wasn't willing to ruin weeks of work over something as trivial as hurt feelings. No… Arex's downfall would require her full attention, and right now, she had too much shit to do.