Chapter 54 Stronghold.

Chapter 54: 54 Stronghold.

I woke up to the sound of overzealous birds chirping, rays of golden light beaming through the window and a dull throb in my ribs.

I slept in late the next day.

Between battling Captain Zero, his cronies, and reaffirming my new commitment to Glacia that night, I was exhausted.

When I finally got up, I heard her moan softly, rolling into the warm spot I left in the bed.

I looked back at her and couldn’t help but smile a bit at her sleeping face, snowy hair fanning across the pillow, her expression peaceful and soft.

Unspoken rule, In the villain business was don’t start a relationship with your sidekicks or henchmen. Way too much drama.

But fuck it, I was a villain. And what was the point if you didn’t break some rules?

I’d already have one ex chuck a knife at me, so what’s the worst that could happen?

I left her to sleep in. I had a lot of work to do, after all.

First I took a quick shower, grateful the plumbing in this wing of the chalet hadn’t burst in the cold, then I checked the rest of the building.

As I suspected, the Captain had cleared out the night before along with all his henchmen—least the ones still alive, leaving the place to me and Glacia.

We’d shacked up in one of the rooms which were still in pretty good repair. Good thing too, because the main building was practically in ruins from our little foray.

As I wandered by a window, I spotted a bulky white van at the gate. Hm. Good timing. The men were already in the back getting ready.

If there was one industry that supers fed, aside from media and lobbyists, it was construction.

Every time some hero smashed open the pavement and ripped up main street, someone had to fix it.

In fact, it was a bit of a miracle infrastructure survived before the development of Heroic Companies like Stronghold Constructions.

There were a lot of Heroic Companies around, but they mainly worked around the major cities. I’m guessing father-in-law called this one. Couldn’t exactly have his daughter living in a shithouse.

Their jobs were to go in once the dust died down and fix up all the damages that heroes and villains caused.

Many of those who developed powers on their own and didn’t immediately start putting on tights or committing grand larceny went into business fixing things up.

I knew one guy whose construction powers literally rebuilt half the city after that Ocean Master flooded the city a few years back, and another whose speedster skills let him do electrical work in record time.

Others, like Steve, used their multiplying powers to beef up a job’s manpower.

In fact, Steve sometimes moonlit with them when work was slow, but he was a villain’s man too much to give up the game completely.

Naturally, all this made insurance in the city expensive, but though people grumbled, what could you do?

Other than move to the middle of nowhere, and there were always those who just couldn’t give up the city life.

In fact, many cities took it as a point of pride that their infrastructure was often busted up by battling heroes. It certainly fed the tourism market.

And besides, Heroic Companies never took long to fix things back to normal, and big property damaging super battles weren’t really all that common, despite what you saw on the news.

Most were government organisations who worked slowly unless it was a public issue, but when it was something like a hotel fight, private companies were called in.

And if you were uninsured for that kind of stuff, like me, those private companies were out of the question. Though I trusted their discretion, I didn’t have their kind of cash.

I made my way down to the foyer, passing through the gaping hole where the front doors had been blasted in.

Walking outside, I halted on the steps and watched as a second van reached the gate, only to smash through them with a crash of metal.

I winced. Well, good thing I was getting that replaced anyway. I waited as the van swerved up to a halt, and I noticed no driver in the front.

Ah, self-driving. How unsurprising. The back doors of the van banged open and Patty sprang out.

"Ta da!" she cried, throwing her arms wide, the sleeves of her lab coat fluttering. "It’s me! Glorious me! And holy shit!" she added as she looked at the hole in the front of the chalet. "Miles! You did a hell of a number on this one!"

"You should see the other guy," I said. "But that is why I called you here—"

"Say no more!" she cried, throwing out her arms and bowing her woolly head. "Say no more! Rest assured, Patty Industries and Construction is on the job! We will see this building all sorted out and fixed up in no time!"

I assumed Zero wouldn’t leave the house like this, but if I was going to live here full time I needed the best security installation I could afford.

And Patty’s pay was significantly cheap.

She banged on the side of the van, and from the back rolled out two completely identical robots.

I stepped back suddenly, not expecting that at all. Box-like figures with heads like RoboCop and a red light flashing out

The sheepish scientist pointed at the ruined manor. "You know what to do boys!"

The two machines snapped their arms to their heads in impromptu salutes, then half rolled, half trundled towards the building.

I stepped out of their way, watching them go inside. Had they belonged to anyone other than Patty, I’d be quite nervous right then. But she knew her business, and I knew I could rely on her tech.

I looked over her to the construction crew who were exchanging confused glances between themselves.

"Get in there too, guys." I said pointing back at the manor before they hopped back into their steps.

"So, these are your new digs?" she said, pulling my attention back to her.

"Seems so," I said.

"Nice. Nice. A real proper villain lair you got now," she said.

"Well, I wouldn’t go that far."

"Of course not! Not yet. It doesn’t even have a lab, huh? Not even a big basement laboratory where a sexy, horny scientist can do her work for her villainous boss, huh? Oh yeah. A real villain lair would need one of those. Absolutely."