Jobs New and Old
The four rules to freelance villainy are as follows:
- Always wear a mask
- Never hurt civilians
- Never kill the heroes you’re paid to fight.
- And the bad guy always loses.
Seems pretty obvious, right? Well, you’d be shocked at how many morons messed it up. And if you did, you were either just a thug, or a member of the Guild of Villainous Foes, and those lunatics were a whole ‘nother can of worms.
See, if you wanted a peaceful life outside of suiting up, you needed to follow the rules. Anyone could menace Metro City with a gigantic death ray, but when the death ray blew up, the lair was in ruins, and the heroes were hunting you down, you couldn’t exactly stop by the local coffee shop and pick up a muffin and a frappe. You’d not only have the heroes on your ass, but the cops, and probably even a bunch of government spooks.
Besides, there was no money in it.
Most people thought villainy was like Dr. Dementor, with his floating castle and army of robotic minions, but that guy had both his own small European country and diplomatic immunity with which to menace Captain Fantastic.
Me? I had an apartment, a costume, and a bank account always on the verge of empty.
But them’s the breaks. And it beat prison. Fortunately, freelance villainy was always in very high demand. A lot of heroes had their brand deals, and those brands demanded exposure. Most heroes were walking endorsements, and they needed to be seen doing good. But there were never enough alien invasions to fill out the calendar. Weeks could go by without some lunatic getting his hands on a doomsday device, and what are heroes supposed to do in the downtime? There are only so many muggers.
That’s where I came in.
I was the filler villain. The Guild of Villainous Foes weren’t exactly lining up to knock over banks. Those guys generally had their arch enemies to menace or real super villainous plots to carry out. But heroes needed something to fight in the downtime. I was that. The monster of the week who fought the good guys and vanished after one episode. The floater villain who showed up across comic books for maybe an issue to demonstrate the new hero’s powers, get beat, and make way for a recurring antagonist. I had no ‘arches’ and I wasn’t part of anyone’s rogue gallery. I was non-exclusive, and could show up anywhere, menace anyone, all for a reasonable price.
It was tough work, but someone had to do it.
I yawned, popped my shoulder with a shrug. Oof! That was gonna be stiff tomorrow. I shouldn’t have taken that static blast head on like that, but hey, that’s what people liked to see. And being Magneron wasn’t the worst job in the world. Best a guy like me could get with a criminal record. And you needed a particular kind of person to do this job, and do it well. Not too many people can take the hits the right way. A notable percentage of those who got into the business did so because they liked getting their ass beat by a goddess in latex. You could always pick out those kinds, usually by the copious amount of leather they use for their costume. But me, I was a professional. No bullshit, no baggage. I went in, caused havoc, lost, and vanished while swearing vengeance that’d be useful to puff up the next encounter. It was a pretty good job.
Besides, it was fun.
Sure, I got my ass kicked by heroes all the time, but could you imagine a job where you get to not only concoct evil schemes, but carry them out? Some guys did the bare minimum. Hold the mayor hostage, maybe throw a few cars around, but that was beginner stuff. Above all else, you had to make the menace look good.
And I made it look good.
Walking down the street with a coffee as a reward for a job well done, I didn’t strike fear into the hearts of mortals. Sure, I was fit, maybe even a bit handsome though I wore the helmet when at work, but in civvie dress, I tried not to draw the eye more than necessary. Certainly not as the type of person who strokes a Snidely Whiplash mustache and plots the downfall of his foes, complete with copious property damage. Out of costume, I was just a guy.
And that’s the way I liked it.
I heard my phone go off and flipped it out. “Hello?”
“Excellent work, Victor!”
I grinned. “Thanks, Miss Carter. Just the usual.”
“Quite so. Electrica was quite happy, and even managed to plug the new anti-static cling laundry pads that Razer has been working on. But would you mind stopping by the office?”
My smile fell a little. Uh oh. That was never good… “I ah-“
“Great! See you in ten.”
She hung up. Shit! She never had me stop by right after a job unless she had a complaint, or was working some angle. And considering how pleased she sounded, I doubted it was the former.
I picked up my car and drove uptown, reaching Razer Industry’s building in short order. Glazed with black glass, it towered with art deco arches and windows like the Chrysler Building crossed with an iPhone and Sauron’s Tower. A mass of dark, corporate power surrounded by cement, some trees, and a couple panhandlers near the fountain with a giant sleek R as the centerpiece. Allegedly, the whole thing was built back in the 1880’s when superpowers first began appearing during the age of scientific discovery, when men first managed to build the sorts of science whose accidents can cause people to melt steel with their eyes, or disfigure themselves with the more interesting acids. I didn’t know much about that, but Razer was the biggest heroic marketing company in the country, if not the world.
As I walked inside some security goons in tight sweaters, high collars, nametags and holstered guns nodded stiffly at me from behind the massive desk that loomed over the lobby. If I couldn’t sense everything metallic in that room, I’d have sworn those people were robots. Not entirely uncommon with the bigger corps. Kept the headcount down and you didn’t need to cover dental. I hit the elevator for the fifth floor. The other people in there gave me looks. I must have still smelled like ionized air. Haah. If only I could have gone home and got changed first, but that ship had sailed. Carter was not a woman you kept waiting.
I reached the fifth floor and passed some offices and assorted plastic shrubbery before reaching the end of the hall, where Carter’s office took up a full corner of the floor. Another sleek black desk that looked like polished onyx pushed out of the wall and had a woman seated behind it.
“Julia,” I said, greeting Carter’s secretary.
She looked up, dazzling me with a smile. A set of glasses like a visor wrapped around her eyes, likely one of Razer’s newest products. Her hair was short and styled back in a bun, everything about her tight and crisp like she measured her hair with a ruler. Her smile was professional but with a touch of real warmth that was nice to see. “Victor! Excellent. I’ll let Miss Carter know you’re here.”
Julia rose smoothly, her skirt riding high along her thigh as she vanished through the door, leaving my in the foyer. I shrugged, sitting down, knowing how long I waited would entirely depend on Carter.
And I wasn’t alone.
I felt a pair of eyes watching me intently. I looked to the side to find a young woman in one of those uncomfortable leather chairs beside a table with some out-of-date magazines. She looked professional, sitting there in a tight fitting and spotless white dress, and over that a grey blouse and a heavy but expensive looking jacket. Strange in itself, because it was pretty warm in the building. Her hair was bone white and the sort of style you didn’t see outside of Mad Men reruns. Her hands were folded on her lap, her whole figure radiating a tension and weird intensity. Especially her eyes, the clearest blue I’d ever seen, and which were staring right at me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello. You must be Victor.”
How the hell did she know that? “Uh, yeah.”
She beamed, her pale face lighting up. She was pretty cute when she smiled, I had to admit. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Glacia.”
“Oh,” I said uncertainly. Weirder and weirder. “Cool.”
I rocked back in my seat, the silence growing heavy. Damn. I’d never been good at small talk, but much to my relief to door soon opened and Julia stepped out, smiling.
“Miss Carter will see you now,” she said.
I rose gratefully. “Thanks. Nice meeting you,” I said to Glacia.
“You too,” she replied with a bright smile.
Geeze, I could feel her eyes drilling holes into my back as I moved past Julia and shut the door behind me.
Carter’s office matched her perfectly. Huge yet imposingly empty, the only furnishing was a couple chairs in front of a desk before a glass window from which she could – and often did – look down with contempt upon the world and the people scurrying in it. Shelves swept along the walls, filled with strange cultural artifacts and doodads like voodoo heads, and pieces of warped stone art that were probably worth more than some small countries.
But Carter wasn’t gloating at the window, nor even lurking beside her desk.
No, she was on an exercise bike, and in nothing but a leotard.
That was the other reason I disliked visiting Carter’s offices. Not that Carter was unattractive. Far from it. Her firm, powerful figure had the subtle but clear muscles of a gymnast, flexing with every pump of her legs on the pedals. The real problem was I was seeing her like that at all. Carter was a blatant exhibitionist. She loved to show off her body and make people uncomfortable. Power moves, she called it with a complete lack of guilt or even hesitation.
Well, either way, it was a pretty damn good view.
Sweat gleamed across her thighs and in the valley of her firm breasts. Her chest bounced as she rode the bike, her brown hair tied back, her eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored glasses. Her panting breath came rapid from her exertion, but the exhilaration of her exercise was plain as day to see. Beautiful, confident, deadly, that was the head of PR for Razer Industries. The woman who managed a hundred of the top superheroes and their sponsors.
Lucille Carter.
I cleared my throat when it became clear she wasn’t going to be the one to greet me. “You wanted to see me?” I said.
“Just… a second… phew!”
She straightened on the bike, her feet stopping their constant pedaling, the motor humming as it slowly died with inertia. Carter pushed back her hair; her stomach visible against the tightness of her leotard as she gestured at me. “Here, toss me that towel.”
I glanced at the chair near the desk with a towel draped on it. “You know, I could have waited for you to finish,” I said, even as I did as she’d asked.
“Oh no! I couldn’t leave my favorite villain outside like that,” she said as she caught the towel and wiped her face. Sighing in satisfaction, she draped the towel over her shoulders and got off the bike. “Please! Sit. We’ve much to discuss.”
I did as she recommended, watching her. Anyone else would have taken a seat behind the desk in the imposing chair, but Carter wasn’t anyone else. Instead, she sat down on the edge of the desk, inches from me, smiling in a way both menacing and enticing.
“There we are. Now, first off, excellent work with Electrica.” Carter tilted her head and brushed her finger across the desk. With a hum, screens all along the wall came to life, their blue glow showing my ‘fight’ with the electric heroine from a dozen different views. “It’s blowing up all over the web. Bank heists are true classics.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I doubt you called me here just to say that.”
“See? That’s what I like about you, Victor,” she said with another winning smile, leaning forward as if just daring me to look down her tight top and at the valley of her firm tits. “You’ve got a brain in that head of yours. Mmm. And a body that just won’t quit. Would you mind if I felt your muscles a bit?”
“Can we focus, please,” I said.
“Is that a no?”
“Well, I didn’t say that…”
Her eyebrows flicked with amusement and she slipped into my lap. Fuck, she still smelled of sweat and leather. A medley that instantly had me hard as she touched my chest through my shirt, stroking me admiringly.
“Hmmm. This is nice. Ah, Victor, if only more of our villains were like you. So strong. So… vital. So willing to do everything it takes to make the job go right. Did I mention I find you deeply attractive?”
“I got the indication,” I said, but warily. Carter never played games like this without a purpose, and she was buttering me up like a slice of toast. And I hated to say it, but it was working. It was hard to say no to such an attractive woman. Especially when she was in my lap, ass practically grinding on my cock.
“How right. How clever. And I’ve been so impressed by your work today, I was hoping you might take on another little task for me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders, straddling my lap, smirking down at me and practically shoving her tits in my face. “We have a project coming up. A new heroine we’re hoping to deploy. She used to be a singer, believe it or not. Very big online.”
“You want me to debut her?”
“Kiiiiiind of,” she said, leaning in closer, the tip of her tongue sliding along her lips. It was a scene intensely arousing, spoiled only slightly by me being able to see my face in the twin lenses of her glasses. “She’s going to debut, but we’re thinking of going in a… different direction with her. We’re looking to ferment an arch situation. Two sexy young things in competition. Villain and heroine. The kids will just eat it up.”
“Woah, woah,” I said quickly. “I don’t arch. Never have. That brings way too much drama to things.”
“How true, dear Victor. And I know how much you loathe exclusivity. It’s one of the many… many things I find fascinating about you. And not to worry. We have another in mind. I think you’ve met her.”
“Who?” My mind instantly snapped back to the woman in the lobby. “Glacia?”
“Exactly.”
“Hm,” I said, mollified a bit. “But, I don’t really see how I fit into this.”
“Well,” Carter purred, lazily arching, pushing her breasts forward, gleaming with sweat, bouncing in the tight, tight top. “I was hoping you might see your way to… mentoring the dear girl…”
“Uh huh,” I said, for a second not quite hearing her, enraptured by the display. Hey, I’m only human. Then her words filtered down through my throbbing Id and into the Superego, and I snapped back to the present. “Hold up. You’re asking me to take on a sidekick!”
“Just for a liiiiiittle while,” Carter said sweetly. “Just to train her up and plan her big debut!”
“No. No way!” I said, grabbing her shoulders and pushing her back. “I don’t do sidekicks. I work alone! Sidekicks get in the way.”
She sighed, and even with the glasses I could tell she was rolling her eyes. “Come on now, Victor. You work with minions.”
“Those are minions. Henchmen! You’re telling me to take on a newbie. I can’t afford that kind of carelessness.”
Carter cocked her head at me, bemused and annoyed. “Really now, Victor. You have so much talent. So much potential. It’d be such a shame to waste it all on your insistence on being a lone wolf. And you’re really not going to work up the ranks like this. You need to build yourself an organization. Every self-respecting villain has a couple of quirky sidekicks. And Glacia is highly compatible with your own skills. I’m sure you two would get on like a house on fire.”
“Yeah, with a family still inside. The answer is no!”
“Pleeeease,” she said, leaning in close. “For meeee?”
“I-“
“And two million dollars.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
Her smile widened and she leaned back, arms crossed, every inch of her telling me it was a whole new ball game and I was up to bat. Damn. I was already regretting it, but that kind of money was tough to say no to. Two mil? I could afford a whole lot with that. Maybe even take a vacation. Yeah, maybe that seems greedy, but fuck it. Freelancing is tough.
“It’s a very simple job,” Carter said, which immediately made me suspect it was anything but. “You’ve heard about the Ice Diamond?”
“Yeah,” I said. I made an effort to keep up on big events in Metro City. I was often hired to menace them. “It’s being revealed at the Museum of Natural History in a week.”
“Exactly. Our dear girl is going to be there, and so will you. Glacia will break in during the party, cause some damage, make a nice big show for our guests, and get in a brawl with Mysteria. That’s the name we’re giving the new heroine we’re crafting. She’s going to be very big.”
“And that’s all I have to do?” I said suspiciously.
“That’s it,” Carter said sweetly.
Trying to get a read on what Carter was thinking was like trying to decipher a blank page. The woman had a poker face like no other, and having her tits thrust in my face wasn’t helping things. But two mil… even after expenses that was a lot of cash. And I supposed it couldn’t be too bad.
“Fine,” I growled at last.
Carter beamed, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “There we go! I knew you’d come around. Don’t worry. She’ll be just a peach!” She eased back, sliding from my lap and once more onto the desk where she tapped the intercom. “Julia?”
“Yes Miss Carter?”
“Show the new girl in, please.”
“Of course.”
I stayed seated, crossing a leg to hide my hard on. Fucking Carter wasn’t even giving me a second to compose myself. I glared at her, but her smirk said she didn’t care. In the midst of this very unequal contest of wills Glacia came in, as demurely pretty as ever. But her smile cracked that façade, radiating the kind of nervousness that put me off balance. I tried to smile back, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I could already tell this was going to be a big job, and an even bigger pain in the ass.
And that was going to be an understatement.
“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Glacia said, putting out her hand. “It’s an honour to be working with such a veteran in villainy.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks,” I said, no longer tenting my pants, meaning I could finally get up and shake her hand. Her touch was ice cold, which sealed the deal on her powerset, as if her name wasn’t obvious enough. “So, ice powers?” I asked.
She beamed. “Exactly, sir,” she said, raising her other hand. Into her palm swirled a sliver of crystalline ice. “I can manipulate and freeze moisture in the air.”
“Handy,” I said, and sincerely. Pure elemental powers were very versatile and generally powerful. I’d worked with a number of freezers in my life, and they were generally level-headed, if a bit melancholic.
Carter clapped her hands, making me start as the echoes died away in the large room. “Well!” she said, grinning like a tigress that just found a morbidly obese, blind and crippled antelope. “I can see you’re both going to get along famously! Glacia, listen carefully to what Victor has to say. No one knows more about menacing heroes than him. Victor? I’m counting on you.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” I said, with another glance at Glacia and her earnest smile. Well, no sense in delaying. “Come on,” I said. “We got some work to do…”