Gloomwraith stood in his hotel looking out the window watching the small fight going on between the frozen hero Fractal and someone who thought having fire powers would be enough to fight someone who had just a few days earlier frozen lava.

  He wasn’t concerned with the ice super, however. She, while dangerous, wasn’t his target. What caught his attention was the echoes coming from his shadow every time the unnamed super used his powers.

  He wasn’t at this battle unfortunately; if he had been, Gloom may have tried to deal with him immediately.

  Luring out the hero types was about as easy as breathing at this point; trying to lure out the people who don’t want to work in the spotlight can be harder.

  Once Fractal had frozen all of her opponents and they were picked up by the proper authorities, she shot off into the sky on wings of frost, heading off to some other part of the city.

  Gloomwraith waited another hour before finally moving. He wanted whatever they used for detection and surveillance to be fully done before he started moving.

  An abyssal portal appeared in the window, and Gloomwraith walked through it, coming out the other side in the house he had bought for this job, where all of his men were staying. “I got the chance to survey Fractal today and Smoulder yesterday. Any word on the third?” He asked.

  His team looked around uncomfortably. “We’ve gotten some reports of the phaser,” Veil started out, having the unlucky position of being the spokesperson. “He’s mostly fighting underground. And stopping operations.”

  “Any word on what he did today? I’ve felt his power going off all night, though he’s stopped now.”

  “Not sure, sir. However, we know the fire kid was part of a gang, and we theorize that he had gone to the gang themselves, though we don’t know if he was just doing information gathering or if he fought them.”

  Gloom paced around the war room, his shadow spiking out of his control, though not leaving its two-dimensional plane of existence.

  “Send someone to check their base and see if they’re captured or if they’re currently unaccosted. Also, someone get me the number of our contact in the police department to see if they have any info on our three supers.” Gloomwraith commanded.

  Part of him hated that the boss did so little work beforehand, leaving it all to himself, though that was more the fault of Andromeda than anyone else.

  “Any word on our former associates or all of them lost?” Gloom asked, springing forth upon realization.

  Lucas was the one to step forward this time. “We’ve already made contact with Vortex and have Hen checking his conditioning to see if he’s good to join. Both Kurt and Vertiga have been found. We still have no word on Andromeda.”

  Gloomwraith put no effort in stopping himself from smiling at that one. Andromeda was a pain in the ass when she was fully stable. If she could be someone else’s problem, all the better. It’s not as if they could get anything out of her anyway.

  Gloomwraith tapped the map right where the clock tower would be if it were to show the city. “What about their base have we figured anything out about it?”

  “Besides the fact that if Fractal is anywhere, it would be better to handcuff ourselves instead of getting frozen? No, sir. We haven’t been able to get close.”

  He sighed at that answer. New supers sometimes didn’t know the value in defending their homes properly, but unfortunately, their being attacked made it so that they were already on edge.

  “Presuming I can stop the phaser,” Gloomwraith said, all of his men recoiling. This team was the best the organization could handle. Going off on their own, they dealt in absolutes. If the boss was talking like that, it meant this was far worse than they had originally projected. “Do we have any counters for the other two?”

  “We’re not sure. Fractal doesn’t seem to have any easily exploitable weaknesses, and she’s still growing even in comparison to what we saw two weeks ago. Smoulder, on the other hand, we don’t believe is being pushed to use their ability properly. They’re fighting like a brick.”

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  Gloomwraith nodded, chewing on the words. It wasn’t ideal, but he couldn’t be surprised.

  Elementalists were a pain to deal with, especially the ones at the higher ends, which Fractal seemed to be reaching. Gloomwraith remembered the donor for the ice powers. The irony of trying to make the strongest elementalist and the most successful case the labs have made to date being his opponent wasn’t lost on him.

  As for Smoulder, they really didn’t have any idea about what her powers even were. Strength, durability, cloning, heat blasts, explosions, gliding. Either she had many powers, or whatever she could do was incredibly versatile.

  “We can use Vortex as part of the team against Fractal. If he can constantly take away her ice, we might be able to tire her out eventually,” Gloom decided, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Veil, you’re going to be the start for the team to take down Smoulder.”

  “Understood.” Veil snapped off. “Boss, are we going to have anyone joining you for taking down the phaser?”

  “Probably.”

  Gloomwraith continued pouring over the documents and information available, coming to a conclusion he didn’t like.

  The slow jobs were not only harder, but they were the most prone to having a wrench thrown in.

  Even worse, if the team is needed for something else and they have to pull out fast and reveal all they had been preparing.

  But he remembered the videos of the three supers he needed to wrangle. They were all terrifying, and they had at least some sway to call in favors if old hats like Cannonball were any indication.

  The brass up top would tolerate them; they always had. But some of the superhero groups were actually trying to push forward instead of hold a steady pace, which made them a potential problem.

  No matter how he tried to look at it, the conclusion was inevitable.

  “We’re going to take this slow and quiet. Those of you already making contacts all of our communications with this city’s elite is going to be through you so we can burn if we have to.” Gloomwraith said, ignoring the groans.

  “Just how slow are you, boss?” Evan asked, piping up from his spot in the back.

  “I don’t want anyone moving for at least a month. They’ll drop their guard, and we can hit them hard and fast after that, but I want our roots strong.”

  A flurry of activity began to spin out of the room as an idea occurred to Gloom, his shadow quivering in excitement. The shadow was ever so hungry, and this plan had a chance to give it an opportunity to truly feed.

  It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to set up, but it would require picking one of their potential assets to sacrifice for a ruse that might not work.

  “Where’s the information from Andromeda? The one with everyone, they documented mutating. I want to know which gang had both the weakest supers made and the lowest amount.” Gloomwraith barked.

  Once the information was in hand, he began sifting through it quickly, settling on one that made a good scapegoat.

  The best option he was finding was a small gang that didn’t get many supers out of Andromeda’s plan. And to boot, their strongest one (an actually seemingly potent material mimic) had been captured already, leaving them more or less destitute.

  The only thing that kept the group safe was the seeming fact that nobody was interested in the small territory that they held onto doggedly.

  Even better was the fact that they had pictures. “Veil, I need masks made with the faces of some of these men,” he commanded as he handed the pictures to his subordinate.

  “What for, sir?” The super asked not against it but if they were going to use some of their power, they wanted to at least understand just what it was being used for.

  “A contingency. At least along those lines. It can be easier to break a group from the inside, so I figured we would offer them a Trojan horse, so to speak.”

  “I doubt a gang member has any interest in joining the heroes.” Veil laughed before pausing, their eyes going wide. “Sir, are you planning what I think you are?”

  “No, I don’t think anyone in the gang would be interested. But I think the heroes could have interest to a young super trying to strike out on their own and be a vigilante to make their home safe.” Gloomwraith said, his shadow peeling itself off the ground and shaping into a young adult clad in a homemade costume.

  The shadow waved.

  “If we don’t see a better option, I think the heroes might meet the city’s newest young gun hero, Gloom.”

  The villains in the room all laughed as the shadow dissolved back to its master.

  Even if this was the plan, though, like all the others, he was going to have to wait at least a month before springing it.

  By his projections, it was still too early for any of the new supers to decide to try to debut or join Fractal and the others.

  Most were still in hospitals. And he didn’t want ?their plan to be the first it would be? most suspicious of once their plans began to fail, as if an insider was leaking it.

  He could wait.

  After all, he had time. Besides, he couldn’t resist the urge to observe and learn more about his, so to speak, super brother.

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