System Supervillain, Chapter 139

Chapter 139 – Darkness

“Master, your two o’clock has arrived.”

“Thank you, Su-Yun. Show them in,” I said, looking at the request on my phone one last time before putting it away. Sibila, the Oracle of Rio di Janeiro, wanted to meet me, and she wasn’t the only one.

The last couple days had been rather interesting. Obviously, everyone knew I was planning on going to ‘visit’ the Gel-nak. I had said as much in my last global threat, after killing the Emperor. That much was expected. The questions I’d gotten after bringing Serafina to cure the undead in Moscow of their infectious bites was evidence of that.

What I hadn’t expected was that people would start talking about me being willing to haul devices to allow people from Earth to go to planets in the Empire, though it shouldn’t have surprised me, in retrospect. Still, the veritable avalanche of people trying to get in touch with me, wanting to get a bit of revenge as well, was greater than I expected. Lots of people wanted to stick it to the aliens, and weren’t exactly willing to wait until the aliens eventually showed up again for round two.

It wasn’t just supers who were based in the cities or countries that were attacked, either. Sure, they were the ones who had more personal reasons to join the fight, but the people looking to avenge lost loved ones or strike back out of national pride were actually in the minority of the people contacting me. The idea of aliens trying to ‘order’ humans, making them genetic slaves to the Empire, ruffled a few feathers, to put it mildly. There were few things that were almost guaranteed to unite the superhuman community, but that was one of them. And EVERYONE wanted to make sure the Gel-nak learned their lesson.

The superhuman community wasn’t alone in reaching out. I was getting contacts through the Guild from actual governments, unrelated to the sale of ships that the UN was handling. Russia, England, Brazil, and India all wanted to send troops to either counter-invade, or attempt to recover any surviving prisoners who had been taken as slaves. That much was understandable, and I was inclined to agree, since it would be great press for me, so long as everyone understood that I had no obligation to ensure that the path home remained open for them. If something destroyed the portal, they would be on their own.

The ones I wasn’t quite as willing to agree to were some of the more ‘morally flexible’ government contracts. Mutually Assured Destruction only counted when the destruction was assured to be mutual, after all. If someone could get a leg up on the competition, then that changed the whole equation. Some of the less scrupulous individuals wanted samples of the Gel-nak bioweapons and other WMD. Ostensibly to research countermeasures. As if I believed the CIA when they said something like that.

The fact that those contacts made it to me without being flagged just showed that the Guild was holding to its standards of not reading the messages it facilitated. The guild’s stance on bioweapons, especially ones like what the Gel-nak used, was clear, and decisive. Actually, their stance on weapons that ‘merely’ caused mass death, like Plague Doctor’s weaponized Ebola outbreak in the 90s, was softer than ones that tried to mutate or enslave populations.

If the Guild had read those messages, then they would have immediately put sanctions on the people sending them, and the message would have never reached me. But reading those messages beforehand would break their neutrality. So, I forwarded those messages to the Guild. Someone directly warning the Guild about things other people were planning didn’t break their neutrality, after all, meaning that they could sanction the individuals involved without breaking their own rules. More importantly, it meant that I had cover if any of those weapons eventually did end up in the hands of shady government types, so the Guild wouldn’t come and try to sanction me.

But that wasn’t what I was dealing with, now. There were some discussions that couldn’t take place over the phone, and I didn’t invite anyone who wasn’t my pet or my kid to my lair. So, I’d taken a suite in Hotel Blue, which was the Guild hotel in New York City, and brought Su-Yun, better known as Lady Abstract, with me as a ‘date’, but actually to serve as a maid and backup, just in case anyone started something. This was a Guild facility, and Guild rules applied, but some people always thought they were above such things, or could avoid getting caught, as Maestro’s fate proved quite clearly.

And, given the company that Su-Yun led in, I wasn’t going to take chances. Sure, these three might not actively want me dead, but I hadn’t lived this long as a supervillain by trusting people, unless there was something more than just Guild bylaws keeping us from coming to blows. That went double with powers like these three had.

“Ladies,” I nodded, before gesturing to the sofa and second chair in the ‘living room’ of the luxury suite. “I must say, I was surprised when the three of you contacted me, especially together.”

“Mmm, Mirikon, you’ve really outdone yourself this time,” Lucy Morningstar chuckled as she stalked into the room and sat in the chair opposite mine. She crossed her legs in front of her, giving me a momentary tantalizing view up her skirt that was entirely too short for such a maneuver, especially since she clearly didn’t have anything on underneath. Her smoky voice did nothing to settle me down, either, and I knew that she was doing it on purpose. “I checked with Daddy, you know. It has been a long time since anyone pretty much singlehandedly stopped an entire invasion fleet. And your kill count is up there with some of the greats, now. His records are crediting you with almost twenty million, just in the last month.”

“Well, I’m not one for false modesty, but I don’t think you could count what I did as being ‘single-handed’. After all, I had my pets with me, either actively engaged in combat, or helping with things like the Uprising Controls. I would not have been able to pull off half of what I did without my girls.”

“You misunderstand. Daddy’s records apply to those who have free will. Your lovely little slaves are bound to you, and so their kills, while under your control, count as yours.”

“Fair enough,” I nodded, conceding the point, before turning to look at the other two women, who had seated themselves on the sofa. “And what of you, Midnight, Mindtaker? What brings you here today?”

Mistress Midnight looked just as she did when we last spoke, after Stepford’s party. She still didn’t care for me, but without the Rivalry disadvantage pushing her towards conflict, she was able to keep a dispassionate look on her face as she said, “I am here as a chaperone, you could say. After all, someone needs to reign in the Devil’s Daughter, and Mindtaker has been through a lot. Though I am also interested in your claims that you’d be open to opening a path for people to strike back at the Empire. While I personally was not caught up in things, I knew some of the people in London who did not escape the city before the shield went up, and haven’t been seen since the Gel-nak were defeated. They’re good friends, and I need to know for certain what happened to them.”

Mindtaker, on the other hand, was visibly different from the last time I’d seen her. I knew that, as part of her day job, she worked as a model, but a model wouldn’t have a ragged scar on her face that went from her temple, across her right eye, and down to her jaw. Whatever blade made that cut, she was lucky that it hadn’t taken her eye. Though it did make me wonder why she hadn’t gone to the Guild to get it healed up.

Attitude-wise, she was…  well, she looked like she’d had better months, let alone days. When she spoke, her voice was brittle, like someone who had nothing left to lose. “I… I lived outside Houston, before the invasion. Me and Linda. We were a thing. She didn’t know about all the other stuff. Being a villain and all. We were at home. She didn’t want me to leave. Wanted me to stay with her, where it was safe.”

Mindtaker’s eyes had a dead look to them that worried me, but I didn’t interrupt. “Safe. I didn’t keep my gear in the house. Worried she’d find it, and ask questions. Left it with the thralls. Didn’t need it for most of my powers, of course, but a bit of armor always helps, yeah? She didn’t know, and I didn’t want to tell her. And then everything went wrong.

“Superdude punched the destroyer to death, I guess. Broke it apart. But the pieces had to go somewhere, right? And that somewhere was on our house, apparently. We were in the basement, like we would do for tornadoes. One minute, we were fine, the next, the world dropped on us. I was cut, bleeding on my face. Piece of spaceship pinning me down. Linda… It was quick. Piece of metal through the chest. She didn’t suffer much, but I could see her face. I tried to call her, talk to her in her head, but she was already gone. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

She looked me in the eye, then. “I was trapped for hours, before the rescue crews found me. With Linda there, getting cold. I couldn’t do anything. And then, they took me to the hospital. Fixed me up, as best as human doctors could. Shattered femur, broken ribs, and my face half off, but I was alive, and they put me back together. Gave me blood so I didn’t die. Went to the Guild after I was released, got them to heal me the rest of the way. Made them leave the scar.”

“Why the scar?” I asked softly.

“Because I can’t go back. Not to how it was before. She’s not here. She isn’t with me. And Linda always said that… if anything happened, not to revive her. She believed that we had one life, and then it was time to move on. Said it was why we had to make the most of life while we were here. She’d hate me if I got someone to bring her back. It would be selfish, I know that. She’d know it. I would die if she hated me like that.”

Lucy spoke in a tone of voice that was uncharacteristically somber. “Linda was also the descendant of someone I met in school, last of his line. He was a good friend, but we were all wrong for each other, and knew it. I promised him that I would ensure that anyone who hurt his family would answer to me. I keep my promises.”

I nodded to her, before looking back to Mindtaker. “What do you want, Mindtaker? And make sure you think it through. If you’re just looking to throw yourself to your death against the Gel-nak, then you can sign up with the Russians or one of the other governments that will be organizing volunteers to send people through portals, when they get set up, to punish the Gel-nak on their worlds. Most of them probably realize that it will be a one-way trip, of course.”

“No. I don’t want to go with them. Waiting. I want to go with you, when you take Devastation to their worlds. I need to be at the front.”

Lucy shrugged softly, and said, “If she’s going, I’m going. I owe Leonardo that much, at least.”

I sighed, and said, “Mindtaker, do you even have a way to hurt aliens? Most of your mental powers are human minds only, right?”

“I spent the XP I’d gotten since the Initialization. I have an Ego Attack that hits aliens, now.”

“And if you go up against the Leader Caste, who have mental defenses?”

“I still have my gun.”

“I’m not taking a suicidal berserker on my ship, when I get my ship. Not unless I have some way of binding her, keeping her from getting out of line. Making sure she doesn’t endanger me or mine as we get ready to fight. Lucy and Midnight I trust to keep a cool head, but you, Mindtaker? You’re hurting too bad.”

“I’ll do anything. Even let you control me.”

I ignored the blood flowing away from my brain and settling further south at the thought of claiming Mindtaker. Horny me made bad decisions, at times, and I could see the way that Midnight stiffened at Mindtaker’s words. I cleared my throat diplomatically, and said, “And that kind of thing is precisely why Midnight is here, no doubt.”

“Indeed,” the shadow-user nodded. “Mindtaker, I won’t let you throw your life away, and if you’re going to give up your soul for revenge, you have better options than him.”

“I need to be punished,” the broken mentalist said softly. “And not like a mindless thrall, like your shadows, Midnight. I need to be aware of it all, or it won’t be a punishment. If I’d told her about me, then I could have protected the house. It wouldn’t be just a normal building. She’d still be alive, if I hadn’t tried to hide it from her. But I wanted her to keep smiling, not worry about me. It is my fault.”

I looked at Midnight, and Lucy, before I stood. “I just remembered something in the other room. Su-Yun, if you would join me in the bedroom? Let us let these three discuss things for a moment.”

Mindtaker didn’t look up. Her gaze was still straight ahead. The other two nodded appreciatively at my giving them a chance to speak privately, now that everything was in the open. Su-Yun, on the other hand, was less pleased about accompanying me to the bedroom, since she had a good idea of how I would ‘entertain’ myself while waiting for them to finish their conversation. But I wanted Lucy and Midnight to have a chance to dissuade Mindtaker, if they could, and I didn’t want to make that kind of decision while thinking about bending the girl over and claiming her in front of her companions, maybe persuading Midnight and Lucy to join in… yeah, I needed to relieve some tension with my maid before making those choices.