Chapter 214 Assholes.

Chapter 214: 214 Assholes.

"ONCE!" he continued right over me, "I WAS BUT A HUMBLE TRAINER OF NUCLEAR WALRUSES IN THE MURMANSK STATE CIRCUS! BUT WHILE CAMPING NEAR A SOVIET SUBMARINE DOCKYARD, I WAS CRUSHED BY AN IRRADIATED BULL IN A POOL OF HEAVY WATER! SINCE THAT DAY, I COMMAND BOTH ATOMIC FURY AND THE UNSTOPPABLE MIGHT OF THE ARCTIC PINNIPED!"

"...Sorry, a trainer of common nuclear walruses?" I asked.

"THAT IS CORRECT! A NOBLE PROFESSION! PASSED DOWN THROUGH MY FAMILY FOR FOUR GENERATIONS!"

I glanced down at the tablet. True to Rhea’s word, Rhea-Search had already pulled up a translated Russian tabloid clipping from eight years ago. Sure enough: Circus Handler Flattened by Radioactive Marine Mammal. Well, I’ll be damned.

"Alright," I said, folding my hands on the mahogany and peering up at the tinted lenses of his gas mask. "And why exactly do you want to join my organization?"

"FOR THE POWER!" he bellowed, rattling the water glasses on the table.

Should have seen that coming. That was always going to be the hurdle with open recruitment—most costumed guys didn’t grasp the distinction between running a theatrical contracting firm and trying to hold the UN hostage from a volcano.

"Right," I said. "Now, before we go any further, you do realize we aren’t actually going to be conquering the heroes who fight us?"

"We’re not?" Uranium Walrus paused. His voice dropped from a deafening loudspeaker roar down to a regular, slightly muffled baritone.

"No," I said plainly. "Our job is to put on a loud show, wreck some insured property, and take a dive. For money."

"Oh." The PVC tusks bobbed up and down as he processed that. "Is it... good money?"

"It pays the bills. Full dental, too."

"Hmm..." He crossed his tree-trunk arms with a loud clatter of welded scrap metal, tilting his head toward the floor. "...Then I am still very interested!"

"Really?" I raised a brow.

"Of course! The only reason I turned to a life of crime was because the circus terminated my contract while I was in the hospital! They refused to cover my workers’ compensation! So I brought a terrible atomic vengeance down upon their accounting department! FOR NONE SHALL DENY WHAT IS OWED TO THE URANIUM WALRUS AND WALK AWAY UNSCATHED!"

"Right. Fair enough," I said, actually warming up to the guy.

Looking at the big picture, my roster was seriously lacking a heavy tank. Heroes loved fighting big, intimidating bruisers. Telling the public you can bench-press a city bus doesn’t play nearly as well on television as decking a guy twice as tall and three times as wide as you. And the viewing public went wild when smaller heroines took down the goliaths. Every PR agency in town paid top dollar to have their ninety-pound starlets knock out a mountain of muscle.

"So, break down your capabilities for me," I continued.

"THE TITANIC STRENGTH OF THE BULL WALRUS!" he boomed, flexing hard enough to make his hazmat suit squeak. "I CAN OVERHEAD-PRESS TWENTY TONS, SHRUG OFF SMALL-ARMS FIRE, AND PROJECT LETHAL BEAMS OF IONIZING RADIATION! ALLOW ME TO DEMONSTRATE—"

"No!" I barked, throwing a hand up as his chest plate started to hum. "I mean—no, thank you. We just had the walls redone. If we bring you back for the second round of trials, we’ll set up a proper demonstration out in the yard."

"Like kicking puppies," Psyren chimed in lazily from beside me.

The massive yellow figure froze. "I... will be required to kick dogs?" he asked, sounding genuinely conflicted behind the rubber mask. "I am an animal handler by trade. I don’t know how I feel about that..."

Huh. A built-in moral baseline. I could definitely work with that.

"Just a figure of speech," I assured him, offering a polite nod. "We have your file on hand. Once we finish going through the rest of the roster, we’ll reach out."

"THE URANIUM WALRUS ACCEPTS THESE TERMS AND THANKS YOU FOR YOUR TIME!" the big guy roared, executing a surprisingly crisp bow before spinning on his heel and thumping back out the double doors.

I waited until the heavy oak clicked shut before glancing to my right. "Well? What’s the verdict?"

"Honestly? Pretty straightforward guy, bossman," Psyren said, scratching Nibbles under his chin. "Zero plans to usurp your throne or stick a shiv in your back. His brain lit up like a slot machine the second you mentioned a steady paycheck, so if the price is right, he’s solid. Though," she added, heaving a dramatic sigh, "if you just gave me the green light, I could make sure he’s hundred-percent ride-or-die in about two seconds. Just say the word, boss, and bam—instant brainwashing."

She snapped her fingers, sparking a tiny, glowing pink heart of psionic static between her thumb and forefinger.

"Appreciate the offer," I said dryly. "But the rule stands: no scrambling brains on the payroll. Besides, mind control always wears off at the worst possible moment. I’ve watched enough Saturday morning cartoons to know how that ends."

Psyren groaned, slumping deeper into her seat. "Fiiiiiine. Spoilsport."

I tapped my earpiece to call in the next candidate. Unfortunately, if I’d hoped the Uranium Walrus was going to set the baseline for the afternoon, I was very quickly disabused of that notion.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Freelance heel work wasn’t glamorous, and while my brawl at the MPD looked from the outside like a declaration of war against the free world, I’d only torn the place down to get my girl back. Any half-decent investigator could connect the dots and realize the only reason the feds hadn’t sent an orbital strike to my house was because the Bureau had been dirty.

Villains, however, had a pathological allergy to objective reality. Superpowers and raging narcissism went together like kerosene and matches.

Most of the people waiting outside hadn’t bothered reading past the headlines. They assumed that because I’d flattened the BSA, I was gearing up to paint the streets red, and they were eager to pitch me some truly depraved shit to get in on the ground floor.

And the ones who weren’t violent psychopaths were just bitter assholes.