Ferric Farrow, aka the Fencer. The greatest swordsman of the modern age.

  He wasn’t called the Fencer because of that skill however. No, the moniker stuck because he almost single-handedly kept the entire villain community of Victory – and possibly a few other cities – afloat by buying and selling their spoils. It was basically an understatement to say the black market ran because of him. The middleman of most crime had a million rumors about him, but the only truth anyone cared about was that if you needed to sell something you stole or you needed something sold to you to help you steal something in the first place, Fencer was the one to see.

  Actually getting face to face with him was something of a challenge unless you were in the know. One of the earliest purchases in Ferric’s career was a magic talisman that let any door it was attached to lead to another one, effectively allowing him to create a portal to a hidden home with an entrance that he could choose where it appeared. Then he bought or acquired another of those. And another. And so on.

  So Fencer owned a manor made up of dozens of disconnected rooms around the world, which he controlled the doors leading into and out of each through some unknown method. An impossible fortress to infiltrate and progress through. To even get in, you had to know where one of the entrances were currently located and manage to sneak in before that door suddenly didn’t lead in anymore. Once inside in order to proceed, Farrow had to let a different door connect you to another room.

  More than one hero had found themselves thrown across the world attempting to break in and rescue some artifact or relic that had made its way into the Fencer’s collection, having made their way inside a waiting room with nothing of value that sat in some run down cabin in the woods with every door out leading to a random street across the globe. And more than one crook had tried to fleece the master mover only to find that the next time they tried to open the way to an appointment with him, that back alley door just led into an active kitchen full of confused cooks wondering why a villain was walking in carrying a bunch of stolen loot. That was assuming he didn’t truly hold a grudge, in which case it would lead to room full of waiting villains who were promised a better deal if they took care of the problem for Farrow.

  The doors that led to Fencer’s parlors weren’t actually a closely guarded secret, but they were the type of thing you had to double check on regularly. That meant finding an information broker, being on Fencer’s exclusive mailing list and receiving one of his self destructing letters underneath your doorframe, hearing about them from other villains, or checking up on some obscure websites run by nerds who had a lot of time on their hands.

  Thank the gods for those fools, because Alex really didn’t love being out in the streets with a bag of museum goodies that the heroes were probably looking for. It hadn’t been a long flight from the alleyway he’d been chased into to this other dingy alleyway, but it had been tense, with Alex darting through the shadows using his protesting jet boots. He’d shut down his gauntlet entirely after it kept making an odd whining sound and was completely at the mercy of any hero or opportunistic villain who found him at the moment. Luckily he made it without incident, but his pulse was pounding in his ears as he propped up a seemingly discarded wooden door hidden in a pile of scrapped pallets against the brick wall, cringing as his gloved fingers brushed against a mystery liquid pooling in the darkness of the ground below.

  After wiping his hand against the rough brickwork, he knocked three times on the detached door, then tested the knob twice before knocking twice more. He waited a moment and was rewarded by a sigil of a sword glowing on the door. It opened on its own and Alex eagerly stepped through.

  He had been expecting to enter into one of the many “waiting rooms”, which could be anything from an abandoned warehouse to a posh upscale sitting room with couches and refreshments laid out. That was typical of showing up without making an appointment, and sometimes got a little awkward if you were dropped in with a group of other villains all clutching at their spoils and waiting their turn. Instead, he entered directly into one of Fencer’s exhibit rooms.

  That feeling of being in way over his head that had been suffocating him for over a week now… well if it had ever really left he might describe it as returning here, but in this situation Alex was just reminded that it still existed.

  The room looked like a massive dimly-lit archive bathed in silvery blue rays of moonlight from skylights above. Rectangular lights draped from long poles hanging onto the tall ceiling, bathing small patches of the room in weak yellowish light. Row after row of displays and shelves filled with all sorts of items lined the walls for five stories, framing a good number of cubbies holding a costume on a mannequin at their center. The ground floor was bisected by a row of plinths running straight down the center, each of various sizes with all sorts of artifacts on top of them, plaques proudly stating what they were.

  The shelves were packed with books, forming barriers around sections of the rows, creating small displays centered around the cubbies or a length of glass lined cabinents. Alex noted the books in question all seemed to relate to the displays. For example, there was biography about Chime Chaser, a textbook on resonance waves, and the most current version of a book detailing the history of supersonics in heroing and villainy sitting right next to an alcove that displayed the first outfit of the villain in question. The very next costume on display next to it was also one of the original Sir Avalon’s rogue gallery as was the one next to that. Sitting inside these displays that featured their outfits were some of their gadgets, and even examples of the loot they had stolen over their career. Between each of them were all sorts of books which seemed to dissect the villains, textbooks on subjects related to their powers, information on the museums and historical sites they menaced, even what looked like census collections of the regions they were from.

  After this collection of villains on display, the row seemed to shift subjects, appearing to become a series of glass cabinets displaying cursed medieval weaponry, a few of which Alex had been sure were supposed to be locked in vaults owned by the heroes or by some government or another. He wasn’t sure if Fencer had acquired those through the villains he paid or if Fencer’s exhibit rooms were the vaults. There were a lot of rumors that the man made more of his money working with the opposite side of the cape than off the villains he supported.

  “One moment,” Fencer’s voice called out to him from… somewhere. “If you would, please go up to the second floor and place everything on one of the tables.”

  Alex looked around but couldn’t find the man. Shrugging, he opted to follow the instructions, finding one of the stairways up against a nearby wall, hidden against the many displays jutting out, passing odds and ends of countless other villains along the way.

  Fencer’s collection was all about villains. Even though he might group sections by the heroes they fought, the man had no interest in most heroes. The few that flirted with the darker side of the cape might earn a small display here or there but truly, this place was a love letter to villainy.

  No one knew why Fencer focused so heavily on villains except for the man himself, but why he had a collection was no secret. He made it a point to tell anyone who would listen his story, and Alex was bracing himself to hear it again now that he was here as Tech Crash.

  Fencer had a perfect memory. The perfect memory. It was his super power. Anything he ever saw, heard, smelled, touched, or experienced in any way was etched into him permanently. Through careful training with those memories, that let him copy the moves of a thousand swordsmen and learn a million treatises on combat and physics to develop the perfect fighting styles himself. He could even copy the moves of any superpowered individual and use tech to perfectly imitate them. He knew countless invocations of magic and with the right preparations and assistance could even cast some of those spells himself even without a natural spark of magic in him – Alex tried not to let that bother him. He was a perfect marksman, a skilled spy and infiltrator, and a scholar of unmatched knowledge.

  All of this he’d inherited from his father, and his mother before him, and so on. Rumored to have once been part of the Librarians of the Multiversal Library Of True Knowledge And Enlightenment For The Betterment Of All, Fencer’s family had shaped history as advisors, assassins, and more before the era of superheroes and supervillains, and his family had managed to ride into the new age just as easily.

  Until Ferric’s father came down with early onset dementia, decades before the Revolutionary Six had helped develop better care practices that helped manage that ailment.

  Ferric watched his father’s perfect memory and mind get slowly stripped away by the uncaring disease, lucidity only returning when the young man brought objects from his past before him to trigger their memories. As a result, he became obsessed with gathering physical reminders of everything important to him, a compulsion he readily admitted to as he expounded to his guests. Fencer believed himself mad in the wake of his father’s decline and passing and gleefully threw himself into that madness, enjoying it as a quirk that his wealth allowed him to indulge.

  Alex wondered if Fencer played up that angle to make the villains feel as though they were exploiting the rich maniac whenever they came to him with their ill gotten loot, just to play into the power fantasy. He wasn’t quite sure if it was to keep them coming back, or if it was because Fencer’s true quirk was indulging in villainy and he loved to see his clients act the part of black-hearted rogues.

  Whatever the reason, Alex moved over to one of the well lit tables, most of the surface of it a glowing underlight. Mechanical tendrils coiled out from beneath it to hunch over top like clawed fingertips closing around the table, ending in lamps and magnifying glasses which further illuminated whatever was placed atop the table. Odd gadgets and implements that he supposed were important to preserving the artifacts were carefully arranged along the edges of the table, all of them resting in nooks carved into the underlight’s casing. He tried not to disturb them as he carefully placed everything in his bag on the table.

  Seeing it in this proper light made him wince again. The damage was more severe than he’d thought back at the museum. The Scroll of Silence was disintegrating at the end, with scorch marks along all of its edges. The pommel of the Sword of Morgash popped off in his hand. Several of the tech components had the solder melting into their boards. Captain Inevitable’s mask was charred completely on one side. The Scepter of Bat Master was noticeably bending and one of the wings was missing. And these were the ones in the best shape he noted as more and more fragments piled out onto the table.

  Gods, what a mess… he thought as he placed the shrapnel from his vambrace off to the side of the table, not seeing anything intact left at the bottom of the bag.

  “What a mess…” Fencer agreed as he dropped down from one of the levels above in a crouch, smoothly gathering himself up and strolling over to the table. The man was dressed in an archaic blue military uniform complete with plates of historical armor strapped to it. Long golden hair framed his gaunt face. His grey eyes peered over a sharp set of glasses which hung from the edge of his nose, analyzing everything in meticulous detail, his obsessive desires plain for the world to see.

  Alex held his tongue at Fencer’s echoing of his own thoughts. This was bad work. Really bad actually. The ash and dust from the explosion as well as his own disorientation had hidden a lot of the damage. He probably shouldn’t have come here. It was practically an insult to show up with this.

  Fencer leaned over the table, his foppish Francian knight outfit1 glowing in the table’s light as his white gloved hands danced over the injured artifacts.

  “I had seen the explosion, but I still had hoped for the best,” Fencer informed him as he carefully picked up the remains of the hilt of the sword off the table.

  Of course Fencer had eyes on a museum full of villain memorabilia. Well no use trying to deny what happened.

  “Sorry, things got out of hand,” he apologized.

  “Not the best foot forward for a rebrand, my dear Mr. Adams.”

  Alex froze. Before he could say anything, try to deny anything, Fencer shrugged.

  “Perfect memory, Mr. Adams. Your gait, your voice, your steel grey eyes with the tiniest speckle of blue in the upper right corner, complete with the subtle hints of Sianese heritage. Ugh, that sounds vaguely racist,” Fencer turned to him, shaking his head. “My apologies for that, I’m currently in an analytical mood. I’m trying to see how best to salvage and hopefully repair whatever can be saved here. I did not mean to make any untoward comments about your heritage. I am simply stating whatever I can glean.”

  “No offense taken,” Alex said, removing his damaged helmet and putting it next to the remains of his gauntlet.

  In truth, Alex didn’t think too much about his heritage. His family had, if only to cling to some ancient traditions that he didn’t measure up to, but they were dead to him, so whatever. It didn’t really matter too much to him that great, great, great grandma was probably from the far east outside of letting him joke that his appreciation for sushi was hard coded into his DNA – although he wasn’t really sure if he was Akitsun or Tianese to be honest, so didn’t make that joke around anyone who had visible Sianese roots. Except for Tom. Gods, Alex missed hanging out with Tom.

  It was still kind of creepy that Fencer could pick up on it though as Alex was fairly sure most people, including himself, just saw your average Ameran with Uropan ancestry when they looked at him.2 There was a sort of violating feeling to having more than that dug up at a glance.

  “Now then, I know how busy a night you’ve had, so let’s get to this,” Fencer returned his attention to the table, pressing up his spectacles as he got to work.

  Picking through the objects, Fencer began speak out loud, almost every word making Alex’s heart sink.

  “This will take three weeks to fix, two thousand. Almost completely destroyed, five hundred. Three thousand for this, and that’s being generous. Ugh, I had hoped to have the entire remains of this blade intact since I had a few fragments of it lined up for the display,” he pulled up the damaged hilt of the Sword of Morgash, another piece chipping off and falling to the table. Fencer’s eyes dragged along it and over to Alex. “Five thousand.”

  He counted along the spread of artifacts, each price listed cutting into Alex as he realized what the sum total was looking like.

  I won’t have the decks to cover replacing most of the gear that was damaged on this, the realization hollowed out his stomach and made him sick.

  Finally, Fencer got to the Scroll of Silence and gently lifted it up, tilting it against one of the lamps. Whatever he saw made him shake his head.

  “Unfortunately, it looks like the remnants of the magic inside of this are completely gone. With both that and the damage, its value is based purely on its authenticity alone. Without any worth to other collectors of such objects, I can only justify a grand and a quarter,” he looked over at Alex. “Usually I’d expect arguments from my clients for these numbers, even though I’m being fair. You do seem to understand though.”

  “It is fair,” Alex muttered, feeling numb, wondering what he was supposed to do now. He trudged forward to grab his damaged gear off the table, lost in a haze as his world was crumbling. Less than twenty five thousand for all of that, and his gear, assuming it had to be built from scratch, probably would cost eight times that just to get back to where he was before the night began. And that was assuming Starsilk would even work with him once the news broke and they saw the pitiful haul he managed.

  He was dead. There was no way he could recover from this before either the heroes or the League found him. Fuck, he had less to his name than he did as Iron Menace right now…

  Fencer grabbed his arm before he could pick up his helmet, jolting Alex out of his stupor.

  “Ten for those,” the man told him, nodding at the shard of his gauntlet and the cracked helmet.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Thousand?” Alex asked incredulously.

  “Of course not,” Fencer rolled his eyes.

  Oh, yeah… What was he-

  “Million.”

  It took Alex almost half a minute to process that. Even after his brain caught up, he couldn’t form a single word.

  “That would include the working one you still have of course,” Fencer continued, nonchalant like he hadn’t just offered ten million decks out of the blue.

  “The working one?” Alex managed to ask looking down at his still armored hand. His brain managed to form a single explanation and forced him to verify his suspicion, “Are you telling me to give up being a villain?”

  Fencer guffawed and gestured around, “Do I look like the kind of person that wants less villains in the world, Mr. Adams? Now, I do think you should retire ‘Tech Crash’ after this however. This new persona did not exactly work out, did it?”

  Alex shook his head as the eccentric collector continued, “No, I need this for another piece, although I’ll need to make some modifications. It won’t be perfect but I doubt the original works still survived all things considered.”

  “Another exhibit? On me?” Alex asked incredulously.

  “Not on Tech Crash, obviously, but the armor is close enough to stand in for something else and seems to have similar damage to what I’m looking for. Permit me a moment to explain,” the man turned about and started walking down the rows.

  Alex made to follow, unsure of what was happening.

  “Mr. Adams, if you would, please gather your armor and come with me,” Fencer directed him. “Assuming you want your ten million.”

  “Want” wasn’t the question. Alex needed this. He quickly scooped up the helmet and fragment and hurried after his host who strolled along quite a distance down the displays, pausing in front of one of the many doors in the room. The man fiddled with something in his hand that Alex couldn’t see and the door gave off a soft glow for a moment. Fencer opened it and stepped through, leaving it open for Alex to follow him through. The room beyond was dark, but Alex stepped through without hesitation, the door slamming shut on its own behind him.

  ---------------------------------

  It hit Alex as he strolled through this new wing of Fencer’s manor just how large it must be if the massive one he’d been standing in previously didn’t hold everything. This new set of rooms looked like it must also be a compound of its own. He wondered just how many wings Fencer had filled.

  While the previous multi level room had been long and rectangular, and while not exactly well lit, at least illuminated by ambient moonlight, this wing seemed to be made up of a series of connected circular rooms that were imposingly dark. The softly lit walls were absolutely covered in memorabilia and artifacts of countless villains, those being the only way to tell where the rooms ended. Plinths and freestanding displays seemed to rise from the floor, their bases illuminated to prevent you from tripping over them.

  Fencer lingered for a moment, and Alex wasn’t sure if it was to bask in his collection or to show it off and let Alex appreciate it. Within seconds he continued on, Alex barely managing to follow him through an opening that would’ve been invisible if the objects on walls of the next room hadn’t been softly backlit, seemingly sliding into existence as he spied them around the corner.

  As they passed through a couple of these circular chambers, Alex struggled to place the theme of what was around him. Unlike the previous wing, where it seemed each villain or concept or team had its own section with the individual pieces warranting their own display, this area was a collage of seemingly unrelated villains or artifacts of grand schemes.

  In the fourth room, a replica of a tyrannosaurus rex skull finally clued him into what this place was and he began to place the connections between the various displays as he looked up to see a framed photo of Arex the Unstoppable in the dead center of one of the walls.3 Alex began to recognize mercenaries and villains who had worked for him on a contract or two not to mention some construction plans around the room for famous bases which had hosted him in various plots and schemes of the shapeshifting villain. He glanced back and tried to piece together the previous rooms’ themes.

  As he pieced together the previous room was based around Life Tyrant, it hit him: this wing of Fencer’s complex was devoted to the League of Domination.

  “How-” he began.

  “Sadly, what should be the most impressive parts of this collection tend to be replicas,” Fencer explained, shaking his head at what had appeared to be the core of Arex’s Continent Rearranger.4 “The League tends to contact me whenever they find out that I’ve acquired something of theirs. They are often generous enough which helps to fund my endeavors.”

  He adjusted his glasses before continuing, “Though, this is something of a blessing in disguise. You might be aware but outside of Overlab and a few other divisions, membership to the League is not a strict hierarchy and members are often called on to assist various leaders on the ruling council. A villain might work for someone like NecrOver one day only to be embroiled in the plots of the Thunderer the next week. Worse yet, despite their claims about their internal politics, they constantly have their fingers in each other’s plots. I’ve had to rearrange these rooms at least five times in the past year alone. Could you imagine how that might damage an original work, that much time spent flitting to and fro between displays?”

  He paused and shook his head, “Actually don’t answer that right now. I’m sure you have an idea.”

  Alex knew to keep his mouth shut and simply continued to follow the curator through the next few rooms. He recognized a few of the council members along the way, surprised to see Brain Master was here. It should’ve been obvious but it still kind of threw him for a loop that this wing would feature former members of the League.

  “I apologize if my words were harsh,” Fencer surprised him by saying. “We both know that what happened at the museum was an accident. As a show of goodwill, I’m even prepared to offer you a job to hunt down something I’m looking for. Another artifact, one which has slipped out of everyone’s minds and shouldn’t involve fighting any more heroes if you’re careful.”

  Alex almost tripped over his feet. He quickly spoke up, “Uh, yeah. I can probably manage that no problem.”

  Fencer turned back and smiled, never stopping his stride as he led into the next room, “Perfect. Let’s get this put away so you can get a new set of armor started. I’ll explain what I’m looking for in a moment. Ah, here we are.”

  The room they entered into almost resembled an actual history museum. Stone tablets full of ancient writings in languages Alex couldn’t recognize covered the walls alongside preserved scrolls. A few more modern objects dotted the displays, very clearly belonging to lesser villains that had helped the true star of this room at one point or another.

  As for who that villain was, the suit of charred samurai armor sitting in the center of the room answered that. One of the many proxies of the Thunderer, who puppeteered suits like that from afar with their powers, or wore them as a part of their costume when they actually showed up in person. They’d never been publicly unmasked and like any masked villain high up in the League’s hierarchy there was a lot of speculation on who they were. Their puppets as well as the decorative plate they wore over the supersuits they wore into battle were made up of countless different types of historical and modern armors of various nationalities and origins, though they’d favored Sianese armors as of late as they’d been attempting to raid the land below Tian for something.

  Fencer followed his gaze and wore an extremely proud smile, “That one is actually an original. Apparently, as a fellow connoisseur of ancient relics, they thought it only appropriate that their display in my exhibits should be authentic. They even included the story of that particular armor along with the delivery.”

  It surely had nothing to do with trying to upstage other members of the League by making their exhibit better than everyone else’s, Alex thought. Then as he looked around, another thought hit him.

  “Wait, are you going to use my armor as a stand in for Power Coil?” Alex guffawed.

  That was morbid. The Thunderer had debuted fighting as many electricity heroes and villains as possible, presumably absorbing their powers upon their defeat given how powerful they became. Power Coil hadn’t been a big name until his fight with the rising villain and was mostly known as the first known death on the eventual council member’s rise to fame. He was also known for how large an explosion he set off with said death.

  Fencer shook his head, “No, if I wanted a relic of that I’d… One moment.”

  He pulled out a phone and began furiously texting, allowing Alex to look around the room more. Alex watched the progression of artifacts telling the story of this unknown villain taking on the world, battling all sorts of heroes and villains, several of whom had seemed unbeatable at the time. Then, like so many others, the League approached the Thunderer with an offer, shown in a grainy photo where the armored villain was shaking hands with Dorian Draven, the former business mogul who often served as the head of the ruling council of the League. From there, Thunderer’s story became largely about hunting for ancient artifacts and showing up to terrorize the world in some way or another.

  It was a classic villain story, and the type of thing that Alex dreamed about his whole life. He saw the mysterious villain’s pitfalls and couldn’t help but wonder if they’d ever had a day like today themselves. Not just losing, there were several battles depicted here where the heroes had won decisively, but something as thoroughly damaging to their rise to power as this disaster had been to his own. Not that even in his wildest dreams he could imagine going from a D-Lister punching up with some fancy toys to the world shaking presence that Thunderer had managed to become by powering up like they had.

  He looked over at a picture of the villain wreathed in red lightning, brighter and more violent than anything he’d managed, and pointedly not exploding themselves by accident. Life wasn’t fair.

  “Sorry about that,” Fencer broke him from his self-pity. “Good news is that you might have two jobs in the future. It sounds like the remains of Power Coil’s actual coils weren’t interred in the Hall of Peace’s memorial display and are on loan from the Avalonian Royal Museum in the Vandermoore.”

  Alex didn’t know if he was up for another museum job but the fact that Fencer was willing to let bygones be bygones spoke to something. Actually, Alex wasn’t clear on what that was. By all accounts he should be being blacklisted right now. He didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth but all of this was just not adding up. Almost every trip to Farrow’s he’d made before had been just dropping things off, negotiating a price and leaving the stolen goods wherever. What was with this tour?

  He glanced back at the portrait of Thunderer and eyed the lightning. Fencer had seen the footage of the museum. He had to have seen the discharge of Alex’s powers. But what did it mean?

  He turned back to see the man admiring the same portrait before meeting his eyes, “I didn’t answer your question though. In case you’re wondering, what I’m buying off you won’t stand in for any of the Thunderer’s victims. First off, the damage isn’t correct. I don’t care if both incidents involved a bit of red sparks, it’s not the same thing.”

  He wagged his finger and began walking over to another section of this large room, “No, your contribution won’t be as prestigious as to be related to the so-called ‘Lord of Electricity’,5 but rather it will fill in for an unfortunate soul who worked for one of the Thunderer’s many lackeys. Over this way please.”

  Alex once again followed, watching as the items on the wall shifted away from the central villain into memorabilia of those who had served, been manipulated by, or simply done a job for the Thunderer at one point or another. Leckter’s Energy Grid Heist, Hydra Helix’s storm machine, some unnamed mercenary group that had dressed up their tactical gear to make them look like knights to match the villain’s outfit on a job in Uropa. An ode to the gruntwork that the Thunderer stood atop of these days.

  “Due to their use of proxies, Thunderer typically only employs others for very specific jobs, as they are able to coordinate their crimes across the globe easily on their own,” Fencer narrated. “Compared to others in the League, you’ll see less typical minions, henchmen, or sidekicks for them, and despite using supersuits, they typically choose to forgo technology and other ‘mundane’ researches.”

  He gestured at photos of spellcasters assisting with magic circles around a suit of armor and a few tomes, “This is because their abilities seem to be magic, and its nature makes it… antagonistic to the type of advances that most members of the League enjoy from the scientists they can employ.”

  Yeah… ‘antagonistic’ is a word for it, Alex thought, a cruel part hoping that at least one member of the League might have experienced a magic induced mishap exactly like he had. He doubted Thunderer had ever been so unlucky. Maybe Arex, though the brute would probably barely notice if the whole of Overlab blew up in his face.

  “However, that’s not to say that they didn’t fund these endeavors from time to time, most often to spite their rivals,” Fencer drew to the end of his story as he stepped aside to let Alex take in the section he’d brought him to.

  As the villain looked over at the display on the wall, a chill ran down his spine. An ornate red and black suit straight out of the wardrobe of a 16th century Duchard noble hung there, an intricate silver masquerade mask vaguely shaped like a skull with gleaming red stones inlaid throughout it sitting where the head would be. A cane with a giant ruby gleaming at the top of it sat on a plinth before the outfit, behind the glass.

  Alex knew it well.

  “Marquis Blood,” Fencer said unnecessarily. “A minor footnote in the storied history of the Thunderer. Technically the second to bear the title, but his father managed even less than the poor Marquis, only really being one of the many Thelee’s Mr. Wonder punched in the face during the war and its aftermath. The junior Marquis hoped to make his mark on the League that superseded his father’s organization, and probably to help blacken the eyes of those who had robbed the former noble of what he saw as his birthright. In the end, all he managed to do was waste a sizable amount of the League’s budget under countless of his betters’ watch.”

  Alex’s eyes roamed around the Marquis’ outfit and saw the various evidence of the failures that had dotted the man’s career. Various serums, doomsday weapons that never were, and even a few giant robots and monsters, none of which had left a mark on the superpowered world. Alex had known him as a decrepit old man, hoping for one last chance to prove himself, but he saw the wasted years here, toiling in the shadow of Overlab to try to prove himself to one villain after the next.

  “Not all of the decks he spent were wasted. Quite a few mercenary and minion organizations flourished thanks the generous hiring that he would shell out for with every one of his assignments. It actually led to Henchhire and Gang Up to become staples of the villain community. It’s one of the reasons I bother to find space for him in my displays when I can.”

  Fencer turned to face Alex, “Who he hired ended up mattering more than what he did.”

  Damn. Perfect memory. Turns out being a faceless minion who worked for a bunch of forgotten villains wasn’t quite as “anonymous” a past as Alex thought it was with people like Fencer around.

  Fencer extended his hands to accept the broken armor as well as the remaining gauntlet, which Alex now understood the purpose of. Silently, he passed it over, trying to keep his face as straight as possible to not give away any secrets Farrow didn’t already know.

  Fencer turned around and tapped his foot six times in an odd beat, and the glass slid away. Gently, he deposited the armor on the ground next to Marquis Blood’s stupid vampire outfit and left the display, the glass sealing up behind him.

  “I’ll arrange that later. I need to get a recreation of the outfit done regardless,” he explained. “Anyways, the Marquis’s final job before he was incarcerated for good involved hiring an organization called Heavy Muscle. Not a very original name, but they offered a compelling package deal. Several trained guards with their own gear, and a few heavies.6 No one with any powers to really brag about, obviously but they were kitted out appropriately.”

  Jorge, the guy running it, had actually helped pay for a few iterations of what would eventually become Alex’s villain gear. At the time, it was mostly just a prototype of his gauntlet and some grey market body armor with a decent helmet. Still, on the books that made Alex a heavy hitter who made Heavy Muscle look more attractive on paper for villains who wanted mooks that could buy a little bit of time sparring with local heroes before a real cape showed up to tango.

  “By all accounts, Heavy Muscle was actually undervalued at the time. I’ve learned that most of the members who didn’t go down with the ship when the Marquis was arrested ended up having prestigious careers in other organizations, some even ended up in permanent contracts with the League. Still, the one I was most interested in was an unnamed one who happened to impress the Marquis enough to quintessentially become his second in command during his final project. One who apparently went above and beyond, which lead to his unfortunate disappearance on one final job.”

  Alex swallowed, looking to a conspicuously empty part of the display. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fencer’s smile.

  “Before I give you your payment for your armor, permit me a moment to tell you of the project that finally saw the end to Marquis Blood’s seemingly endless coffers under the League. An ambitious project like no other which was doomed to failure.”

  Alex met his eyes, knowing exactly what story he was about to hear.

  “Let me tell you of the story of the man who tried to kill a god.”

  1. The specific Francian knight outfit in question is probably that of an 18th century paladin of the order of Charlemagne, the order famous for the service under and subsequent revolution against Emperor Bonaparte. Modern Francian knights forgo wearing plate outside of ceremony but it was common to see up until the Great War.

  2. The early Amera Union’s post tribal social and technological revolution in the wake of Orion’s Great Journey led to a large amount of immigration which led to the nation’s status as a melting pot, with many choosing to seek new life in these lands as they opened their ports to them. Given the size of the super continent, what is considered “average” varies by region.

  3. Despite the name, Arex the Unstoppable, the Master of Dinosaurs, is far from having a perfect record of crimes. Most are content to let him keep the moniker as outside of a few obvious people such as Mr. Wonder, most tend not to try to halt the path of a charging dinosaur speeding towards them.

  4. An ill-fated attempt to recreate Pangaea in the modern era, stopped by the Protectors of the Globe

  5. Confusingly, this title refers to the Thunderer and not Lightning Lord. There was apparently bad blood between the two over this before Lord left the League.

  6. A shorthand term for henchmen with powers or technology that allows them to “punch up”.