“Tracing that company took some time, it went through a couple others of course, but we found it went back to, surprise, the hero association.”
Felix read over the paper, which listed out the owner of each company as it moved back up towards the real owner.
“Huh. Seems almost too easy,” Felix muttered. He looked up from the paper to find Lily watching him with a smile.
“It was. So either they’re incredibly stupid, and underestimated us, or they’re a puppet.
“Oh, did I also mention someone is opening up pawn shops next door to ours at every location?”
“Huh? That’s… strange.” Felix handed the paper back to Lily.
Felix had noticed Andrea had been coming in closer, slowly, out of the corner of his eye.
Now she wedged herself between Lily and himself.
Both he and Lily looked at her with a bit of a surprise.
“I don’t like it when you’re so close to him,” Andrea said. Her voice was soft, almost the point they couldn’t hear her.
Then she looked from Lily to Felix and turned a bright red. Pressing her hands to her face, she fled, her tail hanging low behind her.
“What… did you do?” Lily asked. She’d watched Andrea leave, but now turned her eyes back on him.
“I raised her intelligence. It was the only way I could give her a new power.” Felix shrugged.
Lily made a humming noise and tilted her head to one side. “I’ll talk with her. No more upgrading people without consulting me.” Lily smacked his forehead with the rolled-up sheet of paper. “I’m your account manager, both monetary and points; don’t do things without consulting me.”
“Yes, dear,” Felix said in a mocking voice.
“Good, so long as you understand. How am I expected to balance the household income otherwise?
“And about our budget. We’ll need to rely on you making our money for a while. These pawn shops are literally doing everything they can to drive us out of business.”
“Huh. What exactly are they doing?” Felix set the helmet down at his feet, then reached up and started to take off his armor.
“Oh, the usual. Undercut our prices, buy things for more, sell them for less. Honestly, they’re probably hemorrhaging money doing it.
“They’re definitely making more money than we are, though, since we’re not making any at all.
“Without you backstopping our finances, we’d be out of business in a few months.”
Felix frowned at that, dropping the breastplate and its undergarment to the ground. “Which means they knew our finances when they concocted this plan, but not the extent of my powers. Interesting.”
Scratching at his bare chest, Felix thought on that.
Reaching down, he pulled his boots off.
“I would almost think we had a rat, except for the fact that no one can discuss anything about us, with anyone. Maybe I should look into upgrading the building with anti-listening measures.”
Lily nodded after a moment and then leveled her paper at his chest. “You’ve lost weight.”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Miu and Ioana kick my ass daily, then make me work out.” Felix looked down at himself as he spoke. He’d had a tummy when he’d been working. Free fast food saved money, even if it did nothing for his physique.
“Not eating fast food every day probably helped as well.”
“Hm. Get a haircut and start shaving more regularly. You’re not unattractive as you are, but with a little work, you might actually get a girlfriend.”
“Heh. Who wants to date a slaveowner and be bound by an oath to not speak of anything they saw?
“No. My social life will be even worse than it used to be, I’m afraid.”
“Why not date an employee, then? I’m sure there would be those who were willing.”
“That seems almost worse. No way to tell if they were dating me for the perks, or for me.”
Felix reached down and got the lower portion of his armor free.
After a second, he got it unlatched and stepped out of it, letting it clatter to the ground.
“Gah, free. Free at last.” Felix twisted himself one way, then the other, getting his spine to pop.
Lily met his gaze with a smirk. She deliberately ran her eyes down along him slowly and then back up.
For whatever reason, getting out of his armor had taken precedence over caring that he was only wearing boxers underneath.
Now, however, standing such in front of Lily, he was forced to realize that this had not been a good idea.
Lily had no interest other than provoking and prodding him. And all he’d done was give her an easy target.
The fuck is wrong with me? Like something out of a terrible movie.
“Uh. I think I want a shower.”
“Is that so? We can continue this discussion in your bathroom, then.”
“Ah, no. That’s fine. We can pick this up later.”
Felix turned and marched off with as much dignity as he could muster.
Chapter 23 - Reactionary -
Felix had set himself up in the appraisal room for customers and clients.
There weren’t any, since everyone was going to the competing pawn shop, but he still wanted to keep to his schedule.
To keep himself busy, he was going over the available upgrades and point purchases he could make.
“Dense materials. All exterior surfaces and materials are upgraded. Prevents listening equipment and superpowers from hearing anything inside the building. One-hundred twenty-five thousand.”
“That sounds nice,” Andrea said. She was seated at the end of his appraisal table, working on her tablet.
“Mm. Definitely seems like something worth taking. Add it to the list.”
Andrea made a musical noise in the affirmative.
Felix kept reading through the listed improvements. There were a number of them didn’t seem to be worth the cost.
Stain-resistant floors. Upgraded insulation. Energy-efficient lights.
Felix shook his head and closed the window. They’d already gone through and picked out the ones that would be useful.
“Can you read the list back to me?”
“Mm-hmm.” Andrea tapped at her tablet and then cleared her throat. She opened her mouth, and then stopped.
After a second, she dropped the tablet and turned her chair around to face him.
“Actually, I want to ask you a favor.”
Felix waited patiently. Andrea being serious was something out of the ordinary.
“I’m listening.”
“You… made me smarter.”
“I did.”
“Twice.”
Felix had to think about that for a moment, but he nodded his head. He had indeed moved her intelligence up previously as well.
“I… understand things I didn’t before. Things that seem obvious to me now.”
“Okay. I’m not sure if you’re complaining, or…”
Andrea gave him a small smile. “Maybe I am. Well, I’d like to ask if you can upgrade my powers.”
Felix nodded his head. The request wasn’t surprising. Not really. Not when he thought about it.
“Okay. And what do you want me to upgrade exactly?”
“When I… when I take in my Others. I take in all of their memories. And if they’re dead, I take in their memories of their death.
“After a while, it… it can be overwhelming. All those memories of death. The pain. The suffering that comes right before. The emptiness and loneliness.”
I can only imagine.
“After a while, I have to create a Death Other. I give them all my memories of death, the pain, the horrible things that happen. Then I send them out. They normally head to places that could use a vigilante.
“Where they can put our skills to use while trying to live with the burden we’ve given them.”
“I see.”
“I want you to upgrade me so that I can choose the memories I take back. That I can
leave out the ones I don’t want.”
Andrea looked at him with wide eyes, her hands clasped in her lap, gripping each other.
It explained her partitioned mind power, as well as why she seemed disturbed and happy at the same time.
“I’ll see what I can pull up. Why don’t you call Lily in while I do that?” Felix turned back to the table. Focusing on her power, he tried to encapsulate everything she’d told him as part of an upgrade to her existing powers.
That and so that it didn’t take as much out of her with each clone.
Power Upgrade: Multiple Self Projections
Required Primary Power: 40 (Unmet)
Upgrade?(5,000)
Power Upgrade: Partitioned Mind
Required Secondary Power:50 (Met)
Upgrade?(5,000)
Expensive when you count in the cost of getting her up to Primary Power forty. Something like forty-five thousand points.
“You rang, dar-ling?”
Felix glanced up from his power screen. Lily was perched on her elbows on his table, her face resting in her palms.
“Yeah. Andrea wants an upgrade to her power set. Total cost is around forty-five thousand points. I think it’s worth the cost. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing on the point calendar today, either.”
“There isn’t. And no, I don’t disagree with you on the upgrade for her.” Lily’s eyes flicked to the wolf girl, then back to him. “Though you’ll need to upgrade Ioana, Miu, and Felicia after this as well. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”
Felix sighed, pressing a hand to his temple.
She was right, of course. Doing so much for Kit, Lily, and Andrea put him in a strange spot for the other three.
“Yeah. You’re right.”
“I know I am. Your point calendar is empty tomorrow as well, we were just going to have you make gold. Our finances are doing well enough in our other investments that we can spare the points.”
Lily stood up, rearranged herself, then moved to sit next to him on his left.
Felix accepted the upgrade for Andrea as he turned to Miu in the corner. “Come on over, Miu. We’ll do yours next.”
Lily’s head snapped around to where Felix had spoken to.
“I want nothing,” Miu said from the shadows.
“You sure? Could give you the ability to blend in with shadows. Actually become one.”
Miu was silent. The spot that he thought was her shifted. Barely.
“I will consider it. For now, nothing.”
“As you will.”
Felix sighed and looked to Andrea. “So? Was that what you wanted?”
Andrea gave herself a visible shake, her eyes turning to him. “Yes. Yes, it is. I’m… I’m going to go. I need to call my Death Others and bring them home. Those who are alive, at least.”
Getting to her feet, Andrea moved to leave, her tail swishing back and forth behind her energetically.
Stopping at the door, she turned to him. She gave him a bright, warm smile. “Thank you, Felix. I’ll repay you.”
Then she opened the door and stepped out.
“My, my. I think she even gave me butterflies with that,” Lily whispered in Felix’s ear.
Flinching away from her, Felix tried to ignore her completely. “With that many points spent, I’d rather keep the rest just in case. Besides, we really could use the money.”
“Not a bad thought. Just make sure you get back to Felicia and Ioana soon. And Miu, too, if she figures out what she wants.”
Felix could only agree. Now the rest of the day sat ahead of him. There were no appointments scheduled, which meant it’d be time to catch up on paperwork.
“So. What ever shall we talk about?” Lily asked, smiling. “How about the fact that those boxers you had on the other day looked like they were ten years old?”
Felix was making the rounds today. Visiting each department, asking about the few people he knew by name, trying to learn the names of a few more.
Everywhere he went, he found people working hard in their various jobs and tasks.
He also got a chance to really explore the layout on foot, as blueprints and maps only did so much for him.
In his head, he now divided each “section” by three floors. For each section, there was one communal dining hall, a number of training rooms, classes, supply depots, section stores, armories, restrooms, kitchen, morgue, conference rooms, meeting hall, a number of break rooms, and a good number of recreation areas.
Felicia had truly aimed at producing in each section everything someone could ask for in their lives.
People worked shifts, were given an allowance, and could socialize freely. Nothing was restricted to them, except speaking of the organization.
Outside internet connections weren’t available on personal PCs. It was accessible at public computers, through a VPN and firewall that scrubbed everything going out and in.
Somewhere along the line, they’d picked up a rather proficient IT team.
Then there was the other side of the “underground world,” as some had taken to calling it.
The departments. With the main elevator bays acting as a central hub, half of the section was divided into the departments. The work areas.
Residential and commercial zones did not overlap.
Thumbing the biometric lock to get into the R&D lab, Felix waited for the door.
Mr. White had hired a team of people to work for him. All with the approval of HR and magically enforced Indentured contracts.
Every time he visited, which wasn’t as often as he’d have liked, but probably more than he needed to, there was something new.
Felicia’s team shared the workspace with him. Mundane engineers and supers working side by side to create the best tech for Legion.
The big security door moved aside, the three-inch-thick steel ominously silent.
Walking in, he found Mr. White and one of his team members fiddling with what looked for all the world like a soda can.
If soda cans glowed and had circuity that seemed to guide that glow.
Felix said nothing, as he didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, but instead took a seat and merely watched.
The team member took the can and inserted it into a slot at the bottom of a box-like contraption.
With a flick of a switch, the box started to glow and gently hum.
“Good, take it to Felicia.” Mr. White shooed the assistant off and turned to face Felix.
“Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. White.”
“You just witnessed the first time we had a successful energy cell power up something other than itself.”
“The soda can?”
“Exactly. That soda can could power everything in this building for a few hours.
“And with that successful test, we’ve now solved the problem we had with our energy weapons. There was no way to supply a sufficient amount of energy, to create reliable weapons.
“Sure, it’d fire once or twice by conventional means, but that was it.”
Felix had to admit that sounded like a pretty terrible problem. Why take a weapon that can fire twice, when you could take a firearm that could put hundreds of rounds downrange easily and still fire more.
“We should have a working prototype in a week. Felicia built a machine that creates those soda cans.
“Works off a similar principle to how Lily charges things, I guess.”
“Makes sense. And yeah, that sounds like Felicia. Anything she can think up, she can probably build. Provided she can think it up.”
Felix held out one hand towards Mr. White.
“How goes the progress with th—”
A deep rumbling brought Felix up short. He could even feel it on his body.
This particular lab was rather far below surface level, which meant whatever had just happened was huge.
Then the emergency lights started flashing, and a low buzzing could be heard.
“We’re
under attack,” Mr. White said, looking up at one of the flashing lights.
“Take your position, then.” Felix moved over to the security door and thumbed it open.
He’d be needed in central control. Being able to repair anyone, or anything, from anywhere in the building, made him invaluable.
But he had to see what was going on.
Another deep rumble overtook him. It was louder this time.
Did they fucking nuke us?
Setting off at a run, Felix felt like he couldn’t get there quick enough.
Eight soldiers, as they couldn’t have been anything else in the gear they were wearing, in front of the vault door for central command and security saw him coming. They were armed in what looked as if a modern-day soldier had gone through a science fiction novel.
Each was armed with a machine gun that was mounted to an exo-frame that was issued to the elite forces in Legion.
The weapons were belt fed from a backpack that hung off the back of the exo-frame.
Their tactical gear had the feel of blast gear that didn’t seem to encumber them at all.
Their helmets were the stuff out of comic books. Much like the rest of their armor, it was dark, sleek, metallic. An eyepiece over one side of the dark black visor added to the strange look of it.
He’d seen these soldiers training with Andrea and Ioana. He knew they were superior in many ways. Quick, strong, determined, intelligent.
Those exo-frames weren’t a joke either, and could power them along as fast as an Olympic sprinter for as long as they had power. They could lift things far beyond their capacity as a normal human.
Those frames put them on a level with low-powered supers.
Each of the fifty exo-frames they possessed had been created by Felicia’s team by hand. They weren’t able to be mass produced yet, as the energy source required hadn’t been available.
That and it was inefficient as hell.
They ate up power. They were only good for three hours before needing to get recharged.
Until a few minutes ago, that is. Mr. White solved that problem.
The gigantic vault door began to unlock itself and hiss as Felix got closer.
Super Sales on Super Heroes Page 26
