Alex looked at the meeting room and wondered, not for the first time, what this place had been before Starsilk had gotten their hands on it. The furniture of this room seemed too uniform compared to the mishmash of what he saw in constant use by the lab that he knew it had to be left over from the previous inhabitants. Several of the rooms scattered throughout this building seemed like perfect snapshots of the very moment this place was abandoned, Starsilk having not made those places their own yet, and they told fragments of a story of the previous owners.
Besides the furniture, the only thing Alex could see that definitely belonged to the previous residents were only office supplies. No storage boxes or raw materials or even left over products stood out to him. Despite this place looking like it might’ve been a manufacturing or processing plant, the absence of anything like that while all of this mundane office equipment was left behind screamed “shell company” to him. Probably not the League’s since they’d have stripped this place completely bare before disappearing and he got the feeling Starsilk would’ve found the secret tunnels underneath it if they’d been here long enough to get cozy. That still left a lot of options.
Smaller villain organizations, a hero’s rich secret identity with support staff, a supercorp, or even a former operation by a foreign spy agency. Any one of them could’ve set up a fake company, staffed it with some randos alongside their actual agents, and fly under the radar for years. Then when the jig was up or they’d gotten what they needed, pull everything they cared about out and pawn the remainder to whatever underground broker they could.
It was hard not to think about these kinds of ghosts of false identities of the past as he waited for Lyn to lock the door behind her. He stewed there as she settled in, wondering what exactly he should start with… and what exactly he should leave out for now.
He wanted to have someone he could trust and confide in, desperately missing that feeling. Gods, it had been what? At least ten years. Fuck, he barely considered the people that he went drinking with on the regular before these past couple weeks as “acquaintances.” Yet another thing he knew his family was to blame for.
His father had taught him well what happened when you let weakness be exposed. His sister had taught him what happened when you trusted the wrong person. His mother…
You can only trust what you can control, her words lilted into his head. He no longer heard her voice when those words ran through his head, but they remained etched there in some corner of his mind.
He’d spent enough time away from that cesspit to realize that philosophy was mostly bullshit, but to be honest his fantastic upbringing had just been the start of that particular lesson. Cape life had kind of shown him there was a kernel of truth to it.
Sure, you’d occasionally meet people like Roger who would basically bond with you like a puppy or Steven who would actually set you up with a new job without pulling some favor trading bullshit. But for every best friend you’d meet a partner who would stab you in the back after the best year of working together like Gold Grabber, a girlfriend who kept a detailed list of your crimes to sell off to an information broker when the rent was due, and a coworker who would try to push you off the railings above an acid vat because your job would be open for a promotion if your bones floated up. Sure there were a lot of people that wouldn’t bother to try and fuck you over, but the ones that did seemed to get damn creative about it.
Those still all beat his stint in retail however. What the unholy fuck was that? If he hadn’t spent his life wanting to be a villain already, he was fairly sure that would’ve been his origin story.
Lyn’s adorable cough thankfully dredged him from those memories and he looked up to see her awkwardly eyeing him, clearly unsure of how to begin. Fuck if Alex knew himself. It had been a long time since he’d dated and even longer since he’d dated in the biz.
“Um,” both of them began at the same time before freezing up.
My last relationship wasn’t this- he began to think before realizing he was lying to himself. It might’ve had the advantage of meeting outside of work but he remembered that one had also involved his ex and him stumbling around awkwardly in the beginning.
“So, where should we begin?” he decided to be the one to ask first.
Her blank expression told him all he needed to know so Alex continued, “I mean… Okay, we both know we’ve got secrets and I’m willing to let those come up naturally, but we gotta start somewhere, right? Get to know each other more.”
She nodded, “Uh… I guess we can start with favorite foods?”
Alex raised an eyebrow and Lyn huffed, “I don’t know, okay? Isn’t this the kind of thing you do on a date? Like dinner or something?”
She had a point. Fuck, this whole “who are you and what are you looking for” shit was the kind of thing her remembered fumbling his way through over coffee or by blowing a whole paycheck on some restaurant where the waiter gave him dirty looks for whatever fuck-up he didn’t realize he was making. Usually fashion related. Ugh, at least in this relationship he could probably get away with wearing one of his super suits out to dinner.
He sighed, “Yeah, I guess… Do you want me to order something?”
She bit her lip and shook her head, “No… Well, I think it would be nice if we did something a little later tonight.”
Her face darkened as some thought hit her, “Suppose ordering in is going to be a running thing, isn’t it? It’s not the best idea to head out…”
She glanced down and her spider legs fidgeted.
“Yeah… because of the League,” he noted. “And I figure most of our future plans aren’t exactly the type of thing we should be chatting about anywhere that’s not a villain hangout.”
That seemed to surprise her and she laughed as though he’d said something funny. He took the unexpected win and smiled back.
“Actually, speaking of future plans,” she shifted and moved into the room. “You’re suddenly trying to take over the world? I don’t remember you ever mentioning something like that on our previous team ups.”
“Yeah, well…” Alex scratched the bridge of his nose, “I kind of… felt like I needed a change after that day a couple weeks ago.”
She nodded, “Yeah… I know what you mean.”
She paused, realizing something, “Wait, did you decide to conquer the world because of me?”
“It was… a factor,” Alex felt his face going warm.
Despite the fact that Lyn burst out into laughter at his admission, he didn’t feel embarrassed. There was something to that laugh that felt like she was laughing along with him at some shared joke.
“I didn’t know I had quite that effect,” she smiled. That smile grew fragile as she muttered, “I didn’t think you could like me like this.”
“I think there’s a broken chair that speaks to the contrary,” Alex joked, and it was Lyn’s turn to blush. She muttered something he could barely make out that sounded like something about Starweaver. He’d need to get to the bottom of that in a bit, but figured he should at least set the record straight while they were on the subject.
“I felt…” he almost said “small” but cut himself off, searching for something else, “like I needed to change. Like I needed to do what I always wanted to do.”
“You always wanted to take over the world?” she asked.
He nodded, “Yeah… I mean, I was always going to be a villain because of my family.”
She laughed and nodded along, “I know what you mean. Kind of feels like my folks set me up for that.”
“You also came from a villain household?” he was surprised.
To be honest, he had Saga’d her a totally normal amount of times in the past but never really clicked on any of the links detailing her civilian history, feeling that was a little ghoulish. He could be nosy sometimes, but it felt really weird to look up people in your orbit to find out who they were without the mask if you weren’t catching seriously bad vibes from them. Villains didn’t really do background checks as much as vetting rep until you started triggering the “this guy munches on puppies” kind of alarms. At least that was Alex’s experience. Pretty sure the League considered that a bonus.
Those headlines he’d scrolled past never really painted her as a legacy villain. Usually articles really loved mentioning any known hero or villain associations to drive up clicks. While he thought he remembered once skimming over “Evelyn” and forgetting it as a courtesy, much like how he had mentally deleted the real names of Crackback, Serpent Surfer, and Laser Badger, he was fairly sure he’d never seen any other names but ArachNed in the headlines alongside Terrorantula. He hadn’t been looking too hard at the words during those Saga searches though to be honest. In a completely respectful way of course.
“No, uh, corporate lawyers who spent more time with work than me,” she explained. “You were a villain household?”
He fought the urge to wince with the revelation he’d apparently overshared and reminded himself that this was supposed to feel vulnerable and that they were supposed to be sharing with one another.
“Kind of… It was kind of like a ninja thing?”
“You said you were from Avalon,” she pointed out and Alex racked his brain trying to remember when he’d shared that detail.
Oh right, the Painting of the Webbed Castle heist. He’d pretended he knew anything about castles from his family’s time in Avalon when he was like 4.
“I said ‘kind of’. They had, like, a dojo and made us wear cloth masks,” he explained. “I think there was some Sian symbol on the wall once but I don’t think I heard them speak any other language. Anyhow, they hammered home the whole ‘never trust heroes’ thing and were setting me up to join some mercenary company before I bounced.”
It was clear that Lyn hadn’t been expecting that and was puzzling through a response. That let Alex know he should probably save the other details from his amazing childhood like the sibling duels and his father’s more creative training methods for later. This was supposed to be the two of them seeing if they were a decent fit for one another, not a therapy session. Besides, he didn’t need therapy, he’d already worked through all of those emotions by now. He only dealt with a few stress nightmares every month now.
“Do you… hate heroes?” Lyn surprised him by asking.
“Huh? Because of my family?” Alex figured. “No, honestly I don’t put much stock into their beliefs these days. I just had an early start on loving villains and watched some of the old take-over-the-world types on tapes.”
“So you don’t hate heroes?” she repeated, something deeper being asked there.
He thought on that for a second, letting his hand drift to his chin as he really digested her words and wondered what deeper meaning they had.
“They… annoy me,” he admitted. “They get in my way and won’t leave well enough alone, but… I kind of don’t enjoy picking on civvies. It’s just not the same as a fight with a hero. It’s part of what I loved about those old villains was that they’d fight this whole team of heroes at once and make it look easy. It took five or ten of the best heroes ever to get them to retreat and they’d be back soon enough.”
The words kept flowing out of him, “Some of them scare me. I, uh, don’t think- No, I know I’m not able to deal with them just yet but I… I want to. I want to be better than those ones. I-”
Don’t want to see Thana’s face in my nightmares anymore.
“Want to be strong enough that people know you for you, not some other hero?” Lyn asked and Alex nodded. “You want to see them frustrated by something that’s so easy to you? To know that you leaving is them catching a break, not you retreating? To have the world wonder when you’ll next appear and be kind of excited to see you?”
Alex noted her words coming quicker and quicker and her sentences stopped ending like questions, “You want to be the one standing on top after a fight. You want every other villain to cheer when you walk into a room and to ask you which hero was your favorite to fight. You want to put a plan together and watch everything fall into place.”
She was grinning ear to ear as she locked eyes with him and he felt something connect the two of them. Then a mask of uncertainty covered her face and that connection broke.
“Uh… but uh… heroes… They save people and…”
Oh right, a lot of their peers had anger issues they were working out. He smiled to reassure her that he was above such things.
“I kind of admire heroes for some of their goodie-two-shoes habits when it comes to keeping regular people from being splattered,” he assured her. “I’m not trying to rule the world to cut population numbers down.”
“Cool…” she muttered. “I just wanted to make sure. I… don’t know if I’m… Ruling the world never was something I cared about, but I’m glad we’re on the same page with heroes.”
Alex bit his lip, realizing that his goals here were probably the biggest concern. They’d danced around it the whole time but honestly his ambitions were probably going to be more of a concern than whether the two of them both liked spicy Samhan noodles or what movies they both enjoyed. This was kind of a huge commitment.
How did he sell her on this without mentioning it was a do-or-die kind of thing for him? How did he bring that up without bringing up Maniacal? Did he even want to hide that? Didn’t it feel like they clicked? He racked his brain trying to figuring this out when she spoke up again.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“I… could see about giving this a shot,” Lyn took a deep breath. “Taking over the world. I wanted to change too. And this, with you, sounds interesting. You weren’t the only one who took a plunge on something that day. I-”
She abruptly stopped and stared off into space for a moment. Alex was about to call out to her when she shook her head, “Sorry, I just remembered that subject might be off-limits.”
Alex decided to hazard a guess, figuring it related to one of the elephants in the room he’d recently run into around here, “Is it about Starweaver?”
The look on her face told him he’d gotten it in one go. He sighed, “Celeste told me that you two met because of a wizard. And also that I shouldn’t be jealous of whatever’s going on.”
Lyn raised an eyebrow at him using the mad scientist’s name, but let that subject slide as she stewed on her next couple words, eventually saying, “I… want to tell you more about that, but-”
“It’s fine,” Alex lied, desperately wanting to know more about the other spider woman running around Starsilk after Celeste’s explosive reaction earlier. But his desire to not fuck this up was overriding that bit of curiosity at the moment. “We’ll talk when you’re ready.”
“You’re okay with that?” she asked.
“Yep!” Alex said, a bit too fast so he kept talking in hopes of disguising it, “I’m assuming it’s magic stuff and it’s complicated. I know how that is. Got my own magic problems too!”
“Really?” Lyn’s eyes widened. “I thought you didn’t deal with that stuff.”
“I… don’t because it doesn’t really work for me,” Alex’s mind raced as he realized where the subject had headed with his lips on autopilot.
He found himself trying to figure out what was safe to say and what would lead the conversation a little too close to “Oh by the way, my magic has gone crazy lately and killed Dr. Maniacal. By the way, your new boyfriend might be dead in a week or two.”
A small voice told him he should actually warn her about that little detail. Another voice screamed out reminders about Celeste’s comment earlier today about how things could end if this relationship didn’t work out. Particularly the part of her having to help bury him in a shallow grave. Was he really willing to risk telling her that he was the guy who offed the Doc before they even finished hashing out if they were a good fit for one another?
As he was thinking through this, Lyn spoke up, “Um, I can’t really talk in too much detail but… Celeste might still have some details about that wizard. They might be able to help.”
Alex was about to brush it off, tell her that he’d already tried a bunch of things already, but the imminent threat of death and the fact that he remembered he should probably try recommendations from a romantic partner tickled the back of his mind. He nodded instead, which seemed to please her.
The conversation lapsed a moment before Lyn surprised him with one last question, “What is the first thing you’re going to do when we rule the world?”
He cracked a grin at that, finally feeling like he saw the future of the two of them together unfolding.
“I think I’m going to do something petty first,” he told her, remembering an old childhood drawing of his that he’d kept folded up under his mattress after watching Professor End Point’s big moment like 20 times after a particularly rough sparring session. “I’m thinking a statue of myself in front of the Nations Union headquarters or having all the flags there changed to my own design.”
A thought crossed his mind as a different childhood idol popped up, “Maybe I’ll even make them dig up the head of Plasma Overlord’s Mega Mech. I hate that it’s just sitting in the ice near the south pole.1 Even if some heroes eventually manage to kick me out and topple my statues, I’ll at least finally put that pet peeve to rest.”
Lyn chuckled, “Oh, if we’re righting some grievances that fools consider ‘historic’, could we fix the Tilted Temple of Theomenes? I want to see them justify fixing that.”
Alex pictured a bunch of heroes standing around the base of the temple with shovels looking at one another before having to lean the whole thing over again and he snorted, causing Lyn to begin laughing in earnest. The two began swapping ideas back and forth as they chortled to one another.
It was a stream of small things, minor annoyances that they shared, vowing in dramatic tones that they would force the world to bend to their whims as they acted out the lines of classic villains of the past. Alex couldn’t even really remember who started it, only that they’d both jumped into the bit with the same enthusiasm. Suddenly, the rest of conversation just began to flow more naturally as the two of them imagined a future together as the rulers of the world.
Even as they both knew whatever they were building was happening while they both held onto secrets they weren’t ready to tell each other, it finally felt like for the first time in almost ten years Alex finally had someone he could really connect with. It wasn’t trust yet, at least not the kind of trust that he wanted it to be, but it was closer than anything else had been for so long. And he would burn the world if he could make this last and grow.
One more reason to secure a power base, he thought, causing him to remember Song’s advice.
Focus on your greed and what you desire… her voice reminded him. And as he continued to stare at Lyn’s eyes, more of the woman’s words floated through his head. ...Will need allies, pawns… and more.
The two of them spent the rest of the day glued to one another, eventually making good on that promise of a dinner together. Lyn had insisted on paying for it since she knew how much of his cut from the recent job had gone back into Celeste’s projects, but Alex promised to get the next meal. Lyn’s smile told him that there would definitely be a next meal.
From there, the two had a playful argument about a popular science fiction series before resolving to spend the night watching some movies that Lyn had been meaning to get around to for awhile, one blending into another as the two of them refused to let the night end.
It wasn’t quite a first date, but as the two of them drifted off in each other’s arms in a strange arrangement of cushions that Lyn had obviously put together in a way that worked for her, Alex felt more at peace than he had for years.
---------------------------------
A knock on the door interrupted Ikor’s latest round of bitching.
He’d returned to Vandal’s hideout after reluctantly doing whatever task the League had sent him on after a few hours, buying his way back in with a bag full of snacks and the same brand of energy drinks that Vandal drank.
In truth, she’d let him back in more because their conversation earlier had been quite enlightening. He’d dodged the question on which council members were in town alongside Over Seer, but was more than willing to rat out what other capes and minions they’d brought to bear in the city.
There was a lot of small time muscle that they cultivated in some of the hero cities like Orion, Darkwater, Lumiè, but also some of the rotating faces that would pop up when the League wanted someone with a history of being able to hold their own against the hero guilds’ international heroes. Vandal recognized the likes of Cage Match, Bullet Train, and Snaila as some solid B grade threats who had tackled with the Protectors before just like Baron Zen, Stormfury, and Ikor did.
Admittedly when they’d moved off the subject of capes, she had to come to terms with the fact that she had a blindspot for henchmen organizations and didn’t really know most of the names he rattled off. But at least, she’d heard of the Skullmasks and the Red Robes and as such wasn’t surprised to hear that over half the unpowered forces in the town came from those two groups. Most of them were on loan to various trusted villains around the city, but their true loyalties would be with their own upper ranks, a couple of whom were running around Victory themselves. Worryingly, it sounded like the ‘masks were headhunting talent from the local hench-groups. She’d been stewing on that detail for hours after Ikor left the first time, wondering how best to disrupt those efforts.
While Ikor didn’t know the entire chessboard, he at least helped fill in which villains were commanding some mooks and which weren’t. Vandal was starting to realize how things would need to play out when she finally was free to make her escape. Right now, she eyed the door, aware that it was probably one of the other two “handlers” about to check on why the walking slime was making a return trip.
“Godsdammit,” he grumbled. “That better not be Razor Beast… Fucking boot licker…”
She watched as he peeled himself off her favorite chair which he’d been monopolizing and stomped over to the door, ready to fight the other League flunky on the other side.
Vandal decided to check remotely, aware that if Over Seer was pulling the same trick as last time, it wouldn’t really help her out. She might get forewarning of which stooge she’d picked to knock, but Vandal hadn’t figured out what trick the mage was using to keep herself hidden.
For her trouble, the information broker got enough forewarning to leap aside just in time. Ikor didn’t have that chance as the entrance exploded and everything in a cone from that opening was flash frozen in an instant. Vandal groaned as she realized that included some of her computers.
“I was handling it,” she glared at the figure strolling inside, not that he could see that through her blindfold as he casually knocked the frozen sculpture of Ikor to the ground.
The slime villain didn’t shatter, not that she suspected that would kill him, which was testament to just how solid the ice surrounding him was. Adding to how impressive a feat that was, only the villain himself was encased by the frigid blast. Being able to twist one’s frost powers to freeze only the immediate air around a target without simply creating a solid cone of ice was an extremely advanced technique requiring a lot of subtle control, but it was one that Ice Hawk had mastered long before he’d taken on that name.
Hawk turned his head her way, his face once more devoid of the goggles that were technically part of his outfit. He’d told her that a full face on display tends to look more heroic and makes people think you have less to hide.
“I heard Over Seer paid you a visit,” he said, strolling over to her as she picked herself off the floor. “I don’t like leaving anyone in League hands for long.”
She saw him eye the fallen Ikor with a sneer.
“Well, you just froze my mole,” she sighed and looked over at the computer equipment left in the room, wondering if she should try to take any of it with her. No… better to leave all of it here and just trash it all. She had everything she needed uploaded to a hidden server anyways. “And now we have to fake my escape from you so that Ikor and the other two won’t realize we’re working together.”
“Just him,” Hawk shrugged as he looked away from the ice pop and moved deeper into her shack. “Sure I can’t salvage anything? I hate breaking your stuff like this.”
She almost reassured him it was fine before she realized what he’d just said and groaned. Of course… they were League. Still, that was two dead lookouts that the rest of them would be noticing soon enough.
She wasn’t going to berate him over it, as she didn’t need her mom and dad’s deaths thrown in her face one more time. Her uncle hadn’t let his sister and her husband’s death go and likely never would. While the incident may have led to him fleeing Orion’s underbelly with his orphaned baby niece in tow and the following two decades had seen him turn over a new leaf as a hero alongside the other Wild Warriors, the League always brought out that darker side of him. Worse than that, Vandal always felt like he was mad that she didn’t hate the League as much as he did and would probably flip a gasket if he knew she’d needed to work with them for a bit there.
Still, as much as she knew this was the huge red button that brought out the worst in him, it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to quietly fume over his fuck up. He noticed her silence and turned back to her.
“We’ve got time before anyone notices. The lookouts completed their check in beforehand,” he reported, clearly thinking she was mad about losing this hideout. “I’m pretty sure we can make enough of a mess that no one will notice some harddrives missing or anything else.”
“It’s fine,” she told him, but walked over and yanked the panel off her now frosted computer anyways and retrieved a particular drive based on how expensive it had been. Feeling like she had to sell the damage, she opted to rip it from its housing, likely damaging the motherboard in the process and pretending that didn’t bother her. “So how are things at Amberheart? Did Terror’s stunt do enough or are we still depending on the plan?”
Hawk groaned, “You’d think it would’ve helped out more but it was absolute shit timing all around. Sun Light’s quitting the Squad.”
Vandal looked over in his direction as she brushed ice crystals off the computer part in her hands.
Ice Hawk rolled his eyes, “Yeah, ordinarily that would be a win for what we wanted, but she’s blaming the loss on the division of heroes in the city and is spewing Azure’s propaganda while joining up with the Young Guardians.”
“So what?” Vandal asked as she waded through the hideout to grab the small creature comforts she’d brought here. She carefully considered how best to transport some of her plates and figurines as she continued her train of thought, “The only one that can legally graduate from there is Phantom Foil and I doubt he’s going to up and copy her script if she kicks him out. Everyone else has a minimum of two or three years before they’re allowed to run off and join grown up teams.”
“The issue,” Hawk walked up to her and formed a container made of ice, grabbing one of her wash cloths to line it before offering it to her, “is that the mayor and DA really need a puff piece after the last couple weeks and the League moving in, especially since everything but local news is showing the entire hero world getting its teeth kicked in. Guess who the local news has been instructed to follow around to showcase ‘the next generation of heroes’.”
Vandal cursed as she accepted the makeshift transport box, “Yeah… I think I see where this is going.”
Hawk grumbled, “I don’t know how Azure got to the DA, especially since she hates Amberheart getting any more teeth, but it reeks of her meddling, especially since ABN’s local branch2 had an entire piece lined up for tonight. I think she’s trying to get the Arrestor branch expanded in the process but whatever the case, this moves up the time tables a lot.”
“Plus the League is leaning hard on the hench-sector,” Vandal explained as she carefully selected her favorite dishes. “Just like you said. They’re planning to immediately start recruiting the moment villains notice the sky getting darker.”
“So do you have everything in place?” Ice Hawk asked as he helped her out.
She bit her lip, “Not right away. We might’ve gotten an unexpected windfall with Riftmaker and the rest of his team, but I still need to reestablish contact with everyone. Not to mention the fact that I NEED the final details on-”
“Yeah, yeah,” he rolled his eyes again. “Obviously the plans changed with the League in town. At this rate, you might need to select a new target.”
She shook her head and pointed at the toppled Ikor, who was completely catatonic under the shell of ice, “Nope, we’re gonna use his intel and hopefully that solves a lot of our problems at once.”
He glanced over at the fallen villain and raised an eyebrow. Hawk was at least practical enough in his hatred of the League that he’d stomach working alongside them, so long as it meant betraying them down the line.
“We’ll do the usual dead drops and see if we can’t score some wins for Victory’s heroes, focusing on the loners and the teams not kissing up to Amberheart. If we get the ball rolling enough, I’ll see if I can’t get Victory Broadcast News to ‘notice’ that things are shifting in the heroes favor and maybe take some wind out of Azure’s sails AND get everyone comfortable enough to run the event,” she said.
Hawk stroked his chin, considering it. Then nodded, “Alright, but avoid Ned. We don’t need the paranoid bastard figuring out you’re involved.”
Vandal almost summoned up some sigils to roll her eyes with. She could just take off the blindfold, but it always took her a bit to get it back on correctly and to get her powers readjusted to see through it again when she did that, and she was about to need those powers working right for this upcoming fight. It might technically be fake, but Hawk would make her sweat still.
“I know to avoid ArachNed,” she pouted. “You’re the one who’s been flying too close to the sun recently. It doesn’t matter how much face-shifting you’ve had done – if you keep directly poking at Azure and Ned, they’re gonna find something.”
The bridge of his nose crinkled at that and for a moment his face almost resembled the old photos he’d shown her from his days in Orion. He’d opted for something subtle rather than a full rearrangement, but honestly there wasn’t much chance of anyone actually finding out about his old days. Someone would need to both have a reason to run his face through a detailed scan and have an old picture with a fantastic resolution of his eyes. Or they’d need to do a biovest to catch the altered physiology of his face.3 No one would think to look that deep just as long as he stopped dropping League members into gutters.
Vandal handed him the ice box with all the stuff she’d collected from the shack before he could respond to that and he flew it away, giving Vandal a moment alone. Well, as alone as she could be with the flash-frozen body of Ikor laying on her floor. She wondered if she could slip a communicator on him but thought better of it. This had to look like a sudden and intense fight that she barely got away from. Purposefully leaving behind a way to contact her would immediately ruin the illusion.
She instead made a mental note to have someone track him down later. Taking one last look around, she sighed. This had been a decent spot all things considered.
Oh well, time to blow it up.
She used her powers to nudge Ikor into a corner where she wouldn’t have to worry about him getting caught in any of the blasts, her sigils acting like little fulcrums she slipped underneath him and kind of pushed him around the floor. She heard Hawk landing outside shortly after she finished up.
She took a deep breath and summoned up some more sigils, imbuing them with a little more explosive energy.
“You ready, old man?” she challenged from her doorway.
“Just don’t cry after you take a few hits,” he smiled.
1. Plasma Overlord’s eventual defeat took place in the antarctic regions where the Revolutionary Six and several other hero groups, including the newly emerging Protectors of the Globe, fought his robot army to prevent the villain from melting the ice shelf. The giant robot the villain was piloting was notably trapped when it was pushed into the giant hole it was making and frozen over by the Walking Blizzard of the Revolutionary Six. While most of its internal structures have been dismantled in the decades since, the head, which remains above the reformed ice shelf, was left in place after all weapon systems were removed as a monument.
2. The Ameran Broadcast Network is a prestigious journalism outlet that operates throughout the entire federation. The organization has been lauded for its commitment to honesty and has often been considered to be one of the balancing forces on the superhero community throughout the Ameran Union. Its storied history included exposing the police corruption in the 2030’s that led to the AU’s Arrestor reforms which saw the end of the various crime organizations which had proliferated throughout the Union.
3. Face-shifting, even that done by those extremely adept at organic manipulation, tends to have identical drawbacks. Due to the risk of nerve damage, eyes tend to be largely untouched during the process, as even altering the color of an iris could result in unintentional damage. In addition, biological investigation abilities can reveal the alterations quite easily, even decades after the procedure has been done.
