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Accidental Villainy 52
🕑 Added 2024-02-24 03:58:00 +0000 UTCAn hour later, I was playing with a small bag of clear-cut, polished diamonds, their general size and clarity putting the total market value somewhere around a million. Not exactly a small payout.
It was the second time I exerted a staggering amount of money from the Syndicate, but this time, it was even more of a troubling issue. The previous time, it was merely a gift to make sure I wouldn’t attack them. Considering I lacked both the capability and the intent to actually attack them, not exactly a difficult trade.
This time, I had just promised them that I would distract the Lady of Destruction from their operation. Of course, they didn’t know the true identity of her, thinking that they were just dealing with ordinary undercover agents poking around. It was more about controlling the situation than feeling any danger, while also testing my attitudes.
I gave them exactly what they wanted.
My hope was that he had been distracted by my preferred method of payment. Diamonds were hardly the most liquid form of wealth. Even without a serial number, they were not completely untraceable. Converting them took time, and also opportunity.
However, they were also far too portable compared to their value. Paper money was too bulky to bring around unnoticed, and gold was too heavy for an equal value. Both required a briefcase at a minimum, and once detected, they were extremely suspicious.
There weren’t a lot of excuses for walking around a million in cash.
Diamonds, on the other hand, were a good method for that. Also, they were a good method for a local villain to steal some from his mysterious boss. The old man was happy to bribe me like that, as not only it helped our relationship — at least on the surface — but also gave him an advantage over me. I did my best to look like it was going to be a payment to me.
Which meant he could use that to snitch me to my — imaginary — boss.
I was happy that I gave them a fake leverage, but that didn’t solve my overall somber mood. What they were doing in that warehouse was that they were willing to pay me another million just for me to distract the ordinary undercover agents of an unknown organization. Yes, it was technically a bribe for me, but still, the operation had to be worth it.
What they were doing there, and why they chose to pay me all that money rather than moving to another base. Even more, they had already tried to attack me twice, both methods suspiciously lethal.
My phone buzzed, breaking my thoughts. Emily had just sent me the first set of reports as I asked, including one on the ‘ordinary’ agent in question, all in an encrypted, password-protected file.
I unlocked the files and started reading. It didn’t take long for my eyes to widen. Not because of any immediate discovery, but the source of information itself.
They were marked with the watermarks of the Giant Force; the old national guild that had shattered and split … and Emily worked for one of the offshoots.
Someone was being naughty … and not the usual, revealing photos way.
I sighed even as I sent her a quick message of thanks, but said nothing else. I wanted to admonish her for the risk she took … but I was hardly the poster child of safety. Instead, I made a note to talk about her exact approach later face to face. Hopefully, the fact that the reports belonged to the now-defunct Giant Force rather than the current incarnation meant that the security wasn’t as tight, and she stole it successfully.
And, I could do nothing if she was caught. It was a problem for the future.
I turned my attention to the report she had prepared. As I read, my frustration with the risk she took lessened even more. The Giant Force reports might be a few years old, but every report they had on the national supers was shockingly detailed in a way public information she collected earlier could never match.
It wasn’t her fault. Internet might be a treasure trove for her to pick easily, but it was hard to find special recordings of a hero’s attack taken by cloaked drones, taken in infrared, magnetic mapping, x-ray, and a dozen other esoteric method that I didn’t even know existed, followed by analysis from experts.
It was shocking how much information a national guild could access. Though, I didn’t even want to imagine how much money they spent on those reports. Not a lot of organizations could afford it. For example, I doubted that the New Giant Force could achieve even a fraction of it … if they could, they would have already revealed my lies.
The only problem with the reports was that they were dated, which meant not only they didn’t include a lot of heroes and villains that had risen to prominence lately, but the ones that existed were significantly lacking. It was worst for the heroes that were tech-based, as their load out constantly evolved.
As for the target of my research, it wasn’t as bad. She was included, though, at that time, she was a local rookie who was identified as a potential target of interest, which limited the details of the reports. She didn’t have her dubious nickname back then.
Still, she wasn’t a tech-based hero, meaning the recordings of her power should hold … well, at least somewhat. My own experience suggested that other powers could change and get overpowered as needed, but it gave me some kind of basis.
Not that it helped much. Her power was strong enough to devastate a city block at once, but it wasn’t what made her scary. No, there were many such heroes and even more villains that could cause bigger devastation at will.
The biggest advantage she had was her ability to destroy the locations while keeping people safe. Even villains were afraid of using their powers fully, knowing that the higher the civilian kill count, the harder they would get targeted. A few accidental deaths were fine, but a few hundred was a good way to be hunted by more militant heroes. Go over a thousand, and even other villains might take a shot — for the inevitable bounty if nothing else.
It meant they couldn’t match her destructive output.
The assessment of her powers turned even grimmer as I continued to read the detailed report, which included combat footage, rating her offensive and defensive reaction speed, as well as her ability to handle the damage. The verdict, she could react to an attack quickly enough that even a sniper rifle didn’t have a chance. They theorized that she had some kind of transparent and intangible field that turned active against higher forces. Similarly, the laser cannon I had in my possession was meaningless. There were visuals of her shrugging even bigger attacks.
Of course, the more I read, the more curious I got. Why suddenly switch from being one of the most successful — if infamous — heroines that could fight to an undercover agent? It was a mystery, one that I needed to solve for my well-being.
So, I focused on the other public news compiled by Emily, refusing the temptation to overcharge my power to reach a quick conclusion. I didn’t know when I would need it, and there was no need to take such a risk.
Instead, I went through every news, report, and public appearance … until a pattern started to become clear. The frequency of her appearance started to fluctuate about two years ago, getting worse and worse until she disappeared almost completely. There was a lot of gossip and guesses about what drove it, but the general idea was about her inability to control her destruction.
A careful analysis of every appearance, the destruction she created, and other factors led me to another conclusion. It was a subtle pattern, one that I caught only because of the synergy between Emily’s power and mine, and even then, I would have missed it without the report she stole from her guild.
The pattern of destruction and her disappearances matched. It was a very subtle shift, but analyzing the events just before her disappearances showed her power functioning worse than the peak the Giant Force’s analysis had shown, only to replenish.
Yet, every time she disappeared, it lasted longer, and the cycle of weakening got tighter.
It was a shocking conclusion, because I didn’t even know such a thing was possible. Her power was weakening.
I couldn’t help but feel a chill. As much as I hated my power when I first realized I was a super, at this point, I was relying on it too much. The idea of it suddenly weakening was not a fun one.
Suddenly, I had another reason to dig into the situation of my errant spy. I needed to understand what was going on there. Not that I needed an additional reason, as solving the problem of her appearance was a literal life-and-death situation for me.
Still…
