Chapter 283 Might.

Chapter 283: 283 Might.

"I bet. So, what exactly did you want to talk about?"

"Why, the uniforms, bestie! The fashion!" she squealed. "After all, a simple, classic French maid outfit is so very fitting, of course. Never let it be said that I don’t deeply appreciate a traditional servant’s aesthetic, Milesy. But we could do more. So much more! Oh, bestie," she breathed, her chest heaving dramatically like the swooning protagonist in a period romance. "I have such ideas! Such incredible ideas!"

"I bet you do," I sighed. "Well, put some sketches on paper and let me take a look at the concept art. We can go from there."

"Oh, bestie!" Lilith trilled in absolute delight, clapping her manicured hands together and beaming at me. "You don’t know how happy this makes me! I am just delighted! Simply delighted!"

"Yeah, sure. But maybe try to tone down the number of lethal spikes this time."

She gave a massive gasp of theatrical, mock horror. "Oh, bestie! Surely you don’t mean that! Surely not! Why, you may as well ask a fish not to swim! A bird not to fly! Oh," she sighed heavily, tossing her head with such incredible overacting exasperation it would make Shatner blush. "Oh, but if you absolutely insist, bestie... I shall try! I shall exert myself to the absolute greatest of my abilities! For you, Milesy. Only for you!"

"I appreciate it," I told her.

"I do hope so, bestie," Lilith said softly, turning away. As she strutted past me, the sharp tip of her red, spaded tail glided gently along my jawline. "I really, really do hope so..."

I watched her walk away, her hips swaying tantalizingly inside the skin-tight dress. I shook my head to clear it. Damn, but she was amazing.

And tempted though I was to skip my meetings and show her exactly how much I appreciated her (and damn, I was heavily tempted), I had a massive schedule to stick to. So, reluctantly, I headed through the heavy back doors and stepped out into the chalet’s sprawling backyard.

Once upon a time, the rear lawn had played host to an incredibly elaborate, massive hedge maze. It was very slowly starting to grow back, but only partially, mostly because Glacia had actively repurposed the clearing for her ’art projects.’

Her current piece was still a massive, half-formed block of blue ice, but I could already clearly make out the menacing pose: arms crossed, head thrown back in laughter, looking exactly like some piece of dystopic tyranny that would inevitably get blown up by a ragtag, ethnically diverse group of teenage rebels in a YA novel.

Glacia, surprisingly, wasn’t actively freezing the sculpture at the moment. In fact, she was standing near the fountain, reading intently over something on a ruggedized tablet screen.

"Working hard?" I asked, walking up to her.

She looked up, actively trying not to look smug and utterly failing. "Of course, sir. I always am."

"Glad to hear it. Now, what am I looking at?"

"These are the specific villains we shall be further examining today, sir," she said smoothly as she handed over the tablet. "After successfully working through the first grueling round of preliminary interviews, these candidates have been officially selected for further consideration."

"Excellent. Great," I said, skimming the screen. Then I paused. "Wait. First round?"

"Of course, sir," Glacia said, absolutely radiating smug, icy confidence. "Surely you did not think only those few initial villains actively sought to join and serve your illustrious self? Of course not! We currently have dozens of individuals of an evil persuasion eagerly waiting to join your league, sir! And more apply every single day! Why, you could raise a literal army of evil with absolute ease!"

"Oh. Yay," I said dimly.

Dammit. Yeah, having a massive, sprawling horde of bad guys waiting on your every command sounded fantastic on paper. But there was a very specific reason why—outside of a massive world-domination plot or aggressively ganging up on a particular A-list hero—villains typically went solo.

They absolutely hated cooperating. There was significantly more friction within a group of costumed bad guys than you’d find in an exhibition on industrial sandpaper.

The only viable solutions to managing a roster of supervillains were to either keep them constantly busy with jobs, violently purge the ranks on a regular basis, or alpha them so aggressively hard that none of them would ever dare start shit, obeying your every command out of sheer, unadulterated terror.

That last option never worked for long, though. You show one tiny sign of physical weakness, and they would jump you in a flash.

So while Glacia saw the glorious beginnings of a massive potential evil empire, all I could see was an endless slew of violent HR headaches waiting to happen.

I sighed deeply. Oh, well. I suppose in the end I shouldn’t be too surprised. I’d come this far with this crazy corporate project, and hey, if building a league meant I got to keep Glacia, Psyren, and Rhea comfortably around, it would be entirely worth the migraine.

Besides, all this really meant was that I had to do an even better, more ruthless job of actively weeding out the psychos who’d make a terrible addition to the corporate team.

"Got your freelance bad guys at the front gate, boss," Rhea’s voice chimed cheerfully in my ear.

"Great," I said, still quickly flicking through the digital resumes on the tablet’s screen. "Glacia? Mind bringing them around to the back lawn?"

"Of course, sir," she said, turning on her heel and striding off with her head held high. She moved with all the intense gravity and dignity of an ice princess formally welcoming the diplomats of a foreign land.

Damn, I really did love that girl.

By the time she returned with the applicants in tow, I’d managed to read through the short list and knew more or less exactly what to expect from the lineup.

First was The Uranium Walrus. He was a massive, terrifying bruiser built like a brick shithouse, dressed in a heavy-duty yellow hazmat suit that looked like a violent collision between Chernobyl and the Mad Max costume department. A thick lead bib with a radiation trefoil hung from his neck, and a pair of white PVC tusks jutted aggressively out of his rubber gas mask.

Then there was Devil’s Details, or at least the frontman of the crew. He was a literal, red-skinned demon musician carrying a massive, sharpened battle-axe that doubled as a fully functional electric guitar. His clothes were scattered black leather covered in excessive spikes, and heavy black horns jutted notably from his forehead. I’d briefly crossed paths with him before when he was touring with his infernal band, and I was genuinely curious to see what he’d do in a corporate setting.

Third was Finnegan Wake. He was some sort of highly advanced Frankenstein zombie, visibly stitched together from completely different people’s body parts. He was dressed meticulously in a classic tweed suit, a flat-top straw hat, and a pair of small, wire-rimmed spectacles resting on his mismatched nose.

The fourth applicant was Nightshade. She was undoubtedly female, but she looked exactly like a dark, shifting sheet of pure shadow had been tightly wrapped around an invisible woman. The dark fabric pressed against her curves in a pretty appealing way, I had to admit. But given that her specific power set seemed heavily related to death and necrosis, it was probably best that no one actually try and see what was really hiding under there.

It wasn’t a bad group to start the afternoon with. Sure, most of them hadn’t executed any major, headline-grabbing villainy yet, but that was perfectly fine. The absolute most important metric in this business was character, and those four candidates seemed at least marginally sane. Plus, they all had some really solid, thematic tools I could definitely make use of on a job.

"Alright, gentlemen. And ladies," I added with a polite, acknowledging nod to Nightshade. "Welcome to the second stage of our corporate recruitment drive."

"THE URANIUM WALRUS IS FULLY PREPARED TO IMPRESS!"

"Uh, yeah. Gotcha," I said, wincing at the sheer volume. "Anyway, you four have specifically been selected for potential further processing for one specific reason."

"BECAUSE WE ARE INCREDIBLY MIGHTY!" the Walrus bellowed, violently flexing in his yellow rad suit. The aggressive pose strained the heavy rubbery fabric somewhat alarmingly over his massive biceps.

"No," I said flatly.

Uranium Walrus paused mid-swell. "We’re not?" he asked, his voice dropping to a muffled rumble.