Chapter 285 Job.

Chapter 285: 285 Job.

"I WILL UTTERLY DESTROY... excuse me?"

"Exactly what I just said. Shoot the target, but do not actually break the ice," I repeated calmly. "You’re incredibly good at regulating the total radioactive output of your blasts to keep the area safe, but this is performative villainy.

"If you are fighting a hero while surrounded by a crowd or inside an insured building, the absolute last thing you want to do is fire away hard enough to cause serious structural damage. The real trick to our specific line of work isn’t in the punching; it’s in pulling the punches. Now, give it a try."

The Uranium Walrus turned back to the remaining ice sculptures, heavily flexing his yellow gloves. "Right. Right!" he barked, thrusting his hand out once more. "FEEL THE ATOMIC BURN OF THE ARCTIC PINNIPED!"

Ooh, nice line. It could make a very solid action-figure catchphrase. But the physical execution wasn’t nearly as good. The ensuing blast instantly melted the entire top half of the ice pillar into a bubbling, misshapen lump of boiling water.

"Good first try," I said diplomatically. "You’ve got incredibly solid fundamentals. Once you get the intensity dialed down so you aren’t vaporizing the set pieces, we can talk about putting you on a real job."

"THE URANIUM WALRUS SHALL NOT FAIL!" he bellowed, punctuating the promise with another fierce, rubber-straining flex.

"Fantastic to hear," I said. "Okay... Devil’s Details. Let’s see what you’ve got."

"Oh, hell yeah!" the red-skinned demon crowed as he sauntered forward, swinging his axe-guitar. "I’ve got a little touch of heavy metal for you to hear! Yeah ha!"

I nodded along as he ran through his routine. The rest of the candidates went through the exact same motions right after him.

It was about what I expected from freelancers. They all had highly useful, thematic power sets, but most of them didn’t have a great working idea of how to actively moderate their kinetic force.

Nightshade was by far the worst offender in that specific regard; her shadow claws literally eviscerated the solid ice blocks with a single, whisper-quiet swipe.

Not exactly great for staging a prolonged fight, but the spooky, ghostly aesthetic could be a massive hit on camera.

The specific way her shadowy cloak clung to her invisible curves would definitely win her a very dedicated fan base either way, that was for damn sure.

It was right while Finnegan Wake was showing off a pair of spectral, steampunk handguns that my burner phone started aggressively buzzing in my pocket.

I hastily pulled it out, checking the unlisted number. Well, well. Roger Lutz. Interesting. I’d worked with the guy quite often before I blew up. He was a dedicated talent agent for a number of mid-tier heroes. No one super popular—you absolutely wouldn’t see their masked faces plastered on any licensed backpacks or elementary school lunchboxes—but he did a pretty damn good job aggressively representing the roster he had.

"Take five, everyone!" I called out across the lawn. "Glacia? Keep an eye on things."

"I will not fail you, sir," she said, snapping a crisp, formal salute.

"Er. Right," I said, leaving her to babysit the psychos for a minute while I moved a discreet distance away across the grass and answered the call. "Roger, hey."

"Hey, hey!" came the aggressive, overly-caffeinated voice of a man who firmly believes you will absolutely love this used car, and that there is zero need to check under the hood or read the odometer. "How’s my absolute favorite bad guy?"

"Can’t complain," I said. "How about you? How’s the hero management business been treating you?"

"Not bad! Not bad at all, buddy. And speaking of the business, I was really hoping I might be able to get a hand on some of your specific services!"

"Mine?" I asked.

"Well, maybe not you specifically. Booking the Iron Polaris on a job might be just a tiny bit above my current client’s pay grade these days, eh? Eh?"

"Maybe," I said with a dry chuckle.

He wasn’t wrong. These days, I was a highly premium commodity. Just surviving three rounds with me was prestige work for an A-list hero. Not a lot of mid-tier agencies could suddenly pony up the sort of massive corporate cash required to fight the supervillain who successfully leveled the BSA on live television.

"That’s fantastic for you, man. Anyway! I think I’ve got exactly the right hero to take on one of your hot little league numbers. Great guy! Absolutely great guy. You’ll love him. He hits all those good, classic heroic notes! And that ice gal of yours might be exactly the ticket to get him on the map, eh?"

"We can talk," I said. "When should we meet up?"

"Anytime! How does tonight look?"

"I’m free. You know that seafood place down near the industrial waterfront? The Clam and Spam?"

"The one run by the weird fish people?"

"Yeah, that one. Meet you there at eight. We’ll see what we can do."

"Love it! I’ll absolutely be there."

"Until then," I said, hanging up.

Nice. A bit more steady work was always good for the ledger, especially reliable, mid-tier stuff like this. That was exactly how you built long-term relationships with heroes who were actively on their way up the ladder. Connections. That’s what it was all about in this business.

And I could do some really solid work with Roger. I genuinely wondered what kind of hero he had queued up for me. Not that it mattered much if he had told me over the phone.

I never, ever signed a contract without formally meeting the agent and the hero in person. I didn’t blame agents for trying to push unstable, underachieving heroes onto guys like me.

That was literally their entire job. But I wasn’t an idiot, so I never took on a hero without meeting the person my team would be physically fighting face to face.

It was always infinitely better to get to know them over appetizers before things escalated to the fist-to-face phase.

You could tell an incredible amount about a person by talking to them over dinner, and I fully intended to extract every single scrap of intel I could before I signed a damn thing.

With that in mind, I walked back over to the lawn to work over the new villains a bit more. Another few grueling hours of running them through the paces, and I had a very decent, structural idea of exactly where each one was regarding their skills and control.

Finally, as the sun started to sink below the tree line, I clapped my iron-plated hands together.

"Alright, everyone. Great first showing. I think we have a pretty good idea of what we have to work with here."

"Does that mean we finally get to fight the heroes now?" Devil’s Details asked eagerly.

"Not even close."

"Aw..."

I looked over the four bruised, sweating villains arrayed before me. "You’ve all got a lot of raw skill and highly interesting power sets, but we already knew that from your resumes. I think you’ve all got exactly what it takes to succeed, but it’s going to take some very serious, structural work before any of you are actually ready to try out in the field.

"Our job is a hell of a lot harder than just plain, street-level villainy. Those guys don’t need to worry about actively hurting civvies, minimizing property damage, or managing PR fallout. They can just blindly plow through the city for their objectives.

"But that’s absolutely not who we are," I said pointedly, meeting their eyes. "We are societal villains. When we finish a job, we don’t want the cops, the heroes, or anyone else permanently on our asses. So that means we have to operate ten times more professionally than even the heroes we are fighting. We’ve got the entire system stacked against us. But we can do the job, and we will do the job. And why?"

I paused, letting the silence hang in the cooling air.

"Because we goddamn like it!"

I could actively see the four villains straighten sharply at my words.

"That’s right," I said firmly. "We like being the bad guys! We genuinely like constructing massive, convoluted plots! We like being the ones holding the glowing death rays! We downright enjoy twiddling a metaphorical handlebar mustache while tying people to the train tracks! We love it! But," I added, raising a single, pointed finger as I scanned the quartet. "But! We also aren’t violent psychotics. We aren’t absolute lunatics. And we absolutely do not have fun causing actual pain to innocent people. We are professionals! And I am personally going to turn you four into the absolute best villains this city has ever seen. Are we crystal clear?"

"YESSSSS!" the Uranium Walrus roared, pumping his massive yellow arms, his eyes flaring with intense nuclear light behind the gas mask.

"Damn right! So I will see you all back here tomorrow morning, where we will pick up exactly where we left off. You are dismissed!"

I watched the four of them head off down the driveway, their postures radiating genuine pride. Hell, this whole crazy corporate expansion just might work out after all.

"Very moving, sir," Glacia said quietly by my side. "I am deeply inspired, as ever."

"Thanks," I told her, rolling the tension out of my shoulders. "It’s all just part of the job."

I turned, giving her a shrewd look. "Do you want to join me for dinner tonight?"

"Dinner, sir?" she asked, her icy blue eyes sharpening keenly.

"A work dinner. I’m meeting an agent about setting up a formalized matchup with one of his new heroes, and he specifically had an interest in booking you."

Glacia beamed in sudden, fierce excitement, even as she actively tried to play it cool and casual. "Of course, sir. I would be deeply honored to assist in any way that I can."

I nodded. "Wonderful. Then it sounds like we’ve got our evening all planned out."