“Not you…” Alex groaned as he aimed his gauntlet at the spider hero who was currently launching himself upwards at him.

  The gauntlet gave a mournful whine and failed to fire. Alex couldn’t tell if it was all the abuse from Spelljam, the effects of the explosion finally catching up with it, or using the wide beam at high power which had shorted it out. Regardless, that left him with basically just his jet boots, some smoke grenades, a single cable still loaded, and some sleep gas at his belt that mercifully hadn’t been blown to hell during the explosion. Unfortunately, he figured those grenades would be quite useless against whatever countermeasures were no doubt in ArachNed’s suit, if he could even keep the hero inside the cloud long enough for him to take a sniff during a midair battle. The remaining lasers couldn’t be activated without both gauntlets’ signals and even if they could, the targeting system in his helmet was likely kaput.

  This was not a fight he could handle.

  “Wow! I’ve got a bigger reputation than I thought,” the hero chirped as Alex dodged a flying kick. “If you’d like, you can call it quits now and I can toss in an autograph.”

  ArachNed twisted in midair a short distance away from Alex and shot out a hand. Remembering the move, the villain quickly brought up his gauntlet and fired off one of his smoke cans in the path of the globule of web sailing at him. The sticky ball of netting snapped around the simple device, causing both of them to halt in midair and begin plummeting before exploding into a cloud a second later.

  Alex took off as quick as possible, wanting to put as much distance between him and ArachNed. It wasn’t quite clear how the hero produced the webs he fired off, but they’d been the bane of so many escaping villains, which Alex knew well from their last encounter. He didn’t think Ned would be quite as willing to let Tech Crash go free after what happened in the museum as he had been to let the Iron Menace off though. The downsides of moving up in the world...

  As he retreated, pushing his protesting jet boots as much as he dared at this altitude, he caught sight of a length of what looked to be a rope made of fibrous silk suddenly appearing in the air beside him. Oh great, Ned was swinging. I thought he gave up doing that! Didn’t the city yell at him about it?

  From what Alex had heard, ArachNed’s webs were as much an annoyance to the city as they were to villains (and also birds), and despite much of his early career being known for him swinging around the city to swoop in and save the day, these days the hero relied on those creepy spider legs to quickly move around. In the villain community… well, okay actually just listening to former members of the Evil Eight bitching loudly to be honest, Ned was probably one of the heaviest weight heroes in Victory, having the toughness, strength, and reaction speed that basically let him be either a tank, brawler, or pseudospeedster in a fight.1 His two big weaknesses were that he lacked a dedicated support team from Amberheart and that he couldn’t get across Victory nearly as quickly as he used to with those mechanical legs. There were some “jokes” that if he could fly, there’d be a good chance he’d be this city’s Dark Knight.

  If Alex trusted his boots at the moment, he would’ve risked ascending as high as possible to try and see if he could fly up and away, but given the sounds they were making, he was fairly sure that his luck would ensure he would end up face diving 80 stories to the pavement if he tried that. Hell, he didn’t even want to try hitting their max speed at the moment, meaning he was definitely at a disadvantage when it came to speed if the spider hero was swinging around. He felt the buildings around him caging him in, like he was caught in a maze, the hero nipping at his heels.

  “Hey, come on! I just want some answers! Let’s start simple. My name’s Ned, what’s yours?” the hero, who no one believed was actually named Ned, asked in the most patronizing voice imaginable as he yanked himself forward along the web he’d shot like it was a bungee cord, almost overtaking Alex.

  Alex remembered his two categories for heroes good at banter and groaned, not knowing which one Ned fell into, but now understanding why Terrorantula told him that she hated heroes who bantered.

  “Tech Crash,” he snarled back loud enough to be heard as he attempted to dodge over a shorter rooftop that looked like it had enough obstacles scattered along it to buy him some time.

  ArachNed pirouetted off it in a single leap and flew towards Alex, “Sounds like you were living up to your name. Between whatever happened in that museum and the armored car from yesterday, I gotta ask, you going for a theme? Oh, you should put cymbals on your shoulders if you are!”

  Tech Crash didn’t bother to answer back. Honestly, he didn’t want to exchange too many words with a hero he’d spoken to previously just in case they recognized his voice. He was pretty sure Ned fought too many people in a single week to remember him but there was no point risking fate here. Just drop the name and try to shake him.

  “Seriously, nothing else? Come on! Surely you want to tell me about how you were just a mild mannered office worker who got one too many bluescreens and now wants to teach the world the importance of backing up their data? No? Okay well let’s talk the museum then.”

  ArachNed flew past him, propelled by his momentum into the side of a nearby building. The mechanical legs caught his body and sent him backwards like a spring, directly at the fleeing villain. Alex killed his jets so he could flip his body to point downwards before slamming them on. Thankfully, they actually responded in time to push him out of the way of two shots of webbing and a spinning kick.

  “You know, I haven’t been there in forever and I’m curious if they added anything new in the gift shop. I’d go myself but they have that whole weird ticket system that requires you to schedule what you want to go see exactly on the hour, and I just can’t guarantee the time for it, you know?”

  Alex pulled out of his high speed plummet to skim along the center of the street, checking that he had enough room ahead of him before returning his attention to the sky above, eyes scanning for the blue figure with glowing lights on his face against the blinding lights in the passing windows and the hazy grey of the night sky beyond them. He managed to clock the hero who was speeding like a bullet down towards him. Abruptly, Alex twisted in order to make a hard right turn at an intersection, almost colliding with a car idling at the light.

  “Plus the gift shop’s cool but it’s so expensive, you know? I get that admission’s free, but still. I guess they gotta make up for it with villains always wrecking things,” ArachNed’s voice chilled at the end, the one warning that another attack was incoming.

  After bleeding a lot of momentum on the turn, Alex was forced to blind fire his one loaded cable at the direction of the voice. He was rewarded with the sound of metal on metal and a loud *thump*. Risking a glance back, Alex was disappointed to find Ned had intercepted the shot with one of his mechanical legs. It had still caused the hero to fumble and take a moment to remove the cable before resuming the chase, but the distance gained between them wasn’t quite what Alex had hoped for.

  Clumsily he tried to grab another cable and reload it into the gauntlet, but found it too difficult to lock into place while maintaining speed and not slamming into any traffic this close to the ground. Biting his lip, he risked climbing in altitude, figuring that the chaos on the ground wasn’t slowing Ned nearly enough to be worth risking traveling through a windshield himself in this chase.

  He could hardly think, barely aware of where he was and where he was going. ArachNed kept the pressure up and wasn’t giving him room for it. He needed to break line of sight, needed to get far enough away, needed to-

  A blast of cold air slammed into him like a flying truck, sending him end over end. The momentum tossed him directly into a set of ducts on a nearby roof, caving them in as he bounced off. As he flipped through the air, he righted himself unsteadily and looked over at where he’d been hit.

  A man dressed head to toe in blue floated between the buildings, feathered blue wings holding him aloft. Definitely not ArachNed, but a different hero in blue which Alex thought he knew. As his brain stopped rattling around and the figure came into focus, he was able to place a name to the face.

  Ice Hawk’s arms were surrounded by clouds of condensation as his powers activated and he surged forward at the villain grinning.

  ---------------------------------

  Ned’s week had been full of action. As suspected, almost every villain in town felt it was the perfect time to go out and cause chaos.

  Five separate tech villains tried some sort of weather manipulation or earthquake machine, only two of them actually managing to get the thing running before being punched in the face. Tons of small team ups popping up, like Leckter and Cold Case going on a crime spree down a whole block, a reunion of the Feline Felons, or Watch Witch, Divider, and Killer Camel joining forces to fight the Street Saviors. Throw in oh so many bank robberies that Mayor Cinderoak was considering temporarily closing them to the public (and strongly leaning on Amberheart to push every hero that could to get out there and knock some heads together). Not to mention that Ned was still having to deal with the usual suspects, like Laser Badger digging through dumpsters and claiming that Ned was being species-ist against him when he was simply doing as badgers must.

  Ned was fairly sure that the villain was getting confused and that he was thinking of raccoons, but made a mental note to look that up later.

  Regardless, the spider hero had to admit that he should probably stop monitoring the hero broadcast already and let someone else take over for tonight. But he just couldn’t help himself. He didn’t use it himself because he knew that the villains had definitely tapped into it, not to mention that he’d have to actually work with Amberheart properly to do so and he liked keeping his solo streak going. He’d chime in if something big came up but there was no need to let everyone know which street corner he was on at any given moment.

  Tuning in did provide excellent news on what was going on in Victory though. Even though Amberheart was a far cry from Orion’s Central System based on everything Ned had gleaned, the real time updates from the other heroes that used it painted a great picture of the current happenings of the city, both what was being called in and what areas of the city people weren’t focusing on. Typically Ned focused on the latter, adjusting his patrols to make up for areas that probably didn’t have too many heroes in them.

  The museum fell under the former category, with Elemental Aegis reporting in that the villain from the armored car robbery from earlier this week had broken in and they were in pursuit. Ned didn’t want to steal this from them but had decided to move his patrol a little closer tonight. He was slightly possessive of this one after Stormdaughter had shown up there, and he wanted to make sure a Victory City hero was the one to nab this mysterious new villain.

  If Blazeshot and Spelljam managed it, he hoped to jump over and see if he could place a face to the guy for his own nosiness. And if they just drove him off, Ned wanted a crack at him. He was confident these two would be able to handle the guy from what he’d seen of the car job. Sure the guy might have a few tricks up his sleeves, but those two worked well together and had dealt with some threats that felt roughly at the same level as this new guy seemed to be.

  He had not been expecting the explosion he heard from four blocks over.

  Ned had rushed to the scene and been grateful to hear reports on the broadcast from Spelljam that he and Blazeshot were still alive. He’d almost ran inside himself regardless. Though given his powerset, it had felt more helpful to try and wait outside and intercept the one responsible while the firefighters, who had already been called in when the villain had been sighted, handled things (everyone trusted that Blazeshot had gotten over her old tendencies but wanted to be sure, especially since the museum didn’t want to have the fire suppression systems set to automatic with her on the scene).

  When the mystery villain, which he’d since verified was Tech Crash, burst from the roof, he’d leapt into action. It was clear the man hadn’t escaped the blast unscathed himself and Ned didn’t want to give him an opportunity to recover. Luckily for him, despite Tech Crash having jet boots, he wasn’t willing to shoot up into the sky and force Ned to call in someone else to track him down. So he’d been able to keep pressuring the escaping villain in a chase, letting Victory’s packed urban space box him in as he fled.

  He wasn’t a fan of how much of that chase had been spent so close to the ground, putting a lot of others and the villain himself at risk, but he’d verified that at the very least this one was playing by the “unspoken rules.” No intentional civilian endangerment, no hostage taking, and minimal property damage.

  Besides just seeing the man’s face through the cracked helmet and verifying it wasn’t dripping gross goo helped put to bed those stupid rumors that this was Ikor dressed up in a costume and trying to buy his way out of Victory. Seriously, that rumor was irresponsible and could help the toxic villain escape while everyone was focused in the wrong direction. Just because someone goes into hiding at the same time some new villain shows up doesn’t mean they’re the same person.

  You’d think the hero community would’ve learned that after the Steel Myrmidon incident where everyone believed the presumed deceased Johnny Jolt to have secretly swapped sides after faking his death when the new villain showed off some lightning powers. Okay yeah, Johnny had ended up being alive after all, complete with amnesia in South Amera of all places, but Myr had turned out to be someone else entirely in the end and it really put a damper on the reputation of the returning hero when he got medical help. It was probably why he’d eventually retired as early as he had.

  Putting that rumor to bed was just one of the pile of reasons why Ned was committed to at least pulling the mask off this Tech Crash.

  So when he saw the villain go spinning into the top of a nearby building and out of his sight, he almost lost his cool. Ha, ice pun! Appropriate given the hero that had come to “help”.

  ArachNed hadn’t worked too closely with Ice Hawk before, or any of the members of his team to be honest. Ned tried to remember what they called themselves. The Pack? No that was a different one. It had something to do with the fact that they all had an animal motif, but for the life of him, Ned couldn’t place it at the moment.2 Every one of them but Hawk was still benched at the moment, so he wasn’t surprised to see the hero all alone, but it still felt off.

  Ned worked hard to shove his annoyance at the other hero’s actions down. Despite being a team player, Ice Hawk wouldn’t have realized that his attack had actually made things harder for Ned by knocking the villain over the rooftop and onto the other street, and it wasn’t like the spider hero didn’t have experience with working around other heroes when it came to catching villains. Just gotta adapt.

  He watched Ice Hawk surge forward to pursue Tech Crash and followed by leaping over the rooftop himself, watching the villain flee as he crested the building. He sighed and launched off the building and began pursuing again. Given the speed Hawk could reach, ArachNed was sure this would be over soon, expecting the other hero to surge ahead and knock Tech Crash out of the air. Instead however, Ice Hawk slowed, looking back to Ned and lowered himself to reach roughly the same height as Ned’s swings were carrying him.

  “So?” he cheerfully asked. “How’s it going with Ikor?”

  For what felt like the first time in a week, Ned didn’t bother preventing the eye-roll animation. He had to have some outlet to his frustration right now.

  “Well first off, it’s definitely not Ikor.”

  “Oh?”

  “His mask is cracked open and considering nothing’s leaking out of it, kinda doubt it’s our slimy boy. Plus he’s too nice.”

  Ice Hawk shrugged, the movement somehow not disturbing his wings’ movement, “Yeah, I fought him a few days ago. Felt it was kinda strange that he was keeping this chase PG language-wise if it was the same guy.”

  “He’d also be using more of his powers by now,” Ned continued his analysis. “Ikor’s spent almost fifteen years depending on his abilities. This guy, Tech Crash, clearly doesn’t have much of his stuff still working and if it was someone like Ikor under that mask, I feel like he’d slip up and try to take a shot at me by now.”

  Ice Hawk chewed on that, “So you think he’s pure tech?”

  Ned thought on that for a moment, “Can’t really tell. Might not be able to get a strike off with any powers if he’s got them but keep an eye out.”

  He looked over at Ice Hawk, “Did you hear what happened at the museum?”

  The hero shook his head, “I heard there was an explosion. I was considering helping out, but it looked like they had things handled and seemed like my powers were of better use here.”

  Ned wasn’t sure the firefighters would’ve hated having an ice hero helping out, but figured Ice Hawk knew his own powerset better so he didn’t argue. Maybe his whole deal shut down if the thermostat was too high?

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The flying hero pointed ahead, “I’m gonna flank left, you keep gunning behind him.”

  Ned sighed. His swinging outpaced Tech Crash judging by how often he’d been able to close the distance, but Ice Hawk was probably right. Swinging around could get him up to crazy speeds but it depended on momentum which his aerial attacks pretty much drained. The quick strikes needed to actually knock the villain out of the air were probably better left to the flying hero. So in between swings, he gave a thumbs up before throwing out the next bit of web.

  “Oh, and let’s finish this quick. They’re probably going to get me to clean up these buildings after you, so I’d rather not have to deal with too many of those. Hold off on the webshots if you could until I give you a signal,” Ice Hawk laughed as he peeled away.

  And I’m remembering why I hate team ups now. Feels like every other hero is all too quick to assume they’re in charge and want me as a backup dancer.

  He decided to at least close the distance as much as he could, just to keep Tech Crash from getting too comfortable. He watched as the villain swerved to dodge an expected projectile that didn’t come, glancing back in confusion.

  That earned him a dropkick to his shoulder from Ice Hawk which he didn’t see coming, spiraling him down a different street before he could recover. Before Ice Hawk could capitalize on the attack, Tech Crash launched another smoke projectile up, exploding directly on the winged hero. Before the cloud even fully enveloped Ice Hawk, Ned already called up a rectangle of infrared on that segment of his built-in display to see through the cloud and saw the villain flying off down a side alley.

  “Go over!” he swung through the smoke to yank a confused Ice Hawk out of it and tossed him into the air before immediately leaping off his line right as the arc of it was beginning to move him upwards, sling-shotting him forward. He snapped his arms against his sides and pointed his legs forward, his body sailing straight through the narrow passage between the buildings like a bullet before immediately unfolding once the street opened up to him.

  Tech Crash was low to the ground again, almost four stories below where Ned’s jump had left him but was attempting to gain altitude. Ned fought the instinct to try and nail him with a webshot, not sure how quickly Ice Hawk had recovered and really not wanting to glue his impromptu partner to the ground just in case he was currently dive-bombing the villain himself, not to mention the possibility of missing and placing a tire trap on the middle of the road. He was already going to be in trouble for swinging again, he didn’t need a multicar pileup on… 38th street?

  Sadly, while Ned had kept focus on the fleeing villain, Ice Hawk hadn’t. Rather than immediately pursuing, he chose to link back up with ArachNed, which Ned had to pretend didn’t bother him. He couldn’t help but feel like the winged hero wasn’t taking this chase seriously.

  Calm down. You’re just tired and frustrated, he reminded himself.

  “Okay, he still has some smoke,” he helpfully reported. “And me without my goggles tonight.”

  Ned looked him over. The hero wore a classic formfitting spandex outfit with the blues and whites you’d expect from an ice themed hero, along with a little hawk logo on the chest. Seriously there were like a billion bird heroes and they all got to have an animal on their chest! Why was a spider such a big deal? Okay, focusing. Yeah, Ice Hawk was wearing that chinstrap that left most of his face exposed but didn’t have the goggles that Ned saw him wearing half the time.

  Thought he needed those for the wind while flying but I guess not. Still that means that I can’t really fault him for getting lost there.

  “Could you try to get past him and see if we can’t box him in?” Ned asked, politely asking the other hero to go along with the plan rather than just assuming he was in charge. You know, like it was normal to do.

  Ice Hawk nodded and pointed ahead, “We’ll do it once he’s passed that intersection ahead.”

  Ned saw the four way up ahead and understood. Just in case Tech Crash tried to shake them with another hard turn. No point in pushing for speed if it made you overshoot. Ned judged the distance as he watched Tech Crash accelerate upwards.

  “On three,” he called out. “One!”

  He watched the villain closely, trying to judge his body language. The man was drifting towards the left side of the street but seemed to be aggressively hitting the gauntlet on his right arm. He remembered the footage from the armored car.

  “Two!”

  It looked like the villain got a spark out of the gauntlet he was abusing. Ned remembered the footage of him firing at the guard and wondered if he was planning on using the recoil. Given the angle and how close to the left side of the street he was, if the villain got it working, Crash could potentially twist and fire it into the air to the left. If he used his boots as well, that might let him make an incredibly hard right turn, assuming the gauntlet produced enough force. He’d probably be scraping the walls if he managed it, but there was enough room to let him arc this just enough.

  Ned himself would have just enough time at his current velocity to adjust his swing to peel around if that happened, but he’d need to be closer to the center of the street to do so. He fired off a web towards the building on his right, right at the corner of the intersection, ready to peel around it at the corner should the villain manage this maneuver but also continue straight just in case.

  “Three!”

  Tech Crash twisted and shot his hand out down the left of the intersection as Ned had guessed he might. What he didn’t expect was another loud sound from the glove and the villain to be bodily yanked down that left street. The force required to do that probably came close to dislocating the man’s shoulder. He saw Hawk twirl around and immediately begin to give chase with a burst of condensation like a jet plume as Ned struggled to adjust his own angle. He opted to let himself ride to near the height of the arc he was swinging on to try and get himself a strong backswing when he fired a web backwards given he’d already overshot the turn and trying to over-correct now would practically stop him dead.

  As he was partway along the arc, just as he should’ve been moving upwards along the swing, he heard a loud crack and went spiraling before he realized what had happened. Somehow his line had snapped and he was flipping end over end as he was flung violently forward. Even with his suit optics working frantically, he struggled to find an angle to fix his spin after having exited the arc suddenly.

  He had to make a quick judgment call within half-seconds. Try to shoot a line out in this spin and risk, at minimum, a dislocated arm and probably a lot of broken bones as the resulting swing brought him directly into the side of a building at this speed, or try to straighten his forward roll and risk the mechanical legs by trying to use them to shield him from the worst of the crash?

  He chose the legs, immediately activating an emergency protocol that caused them to form a cage around himself and tucked himself into a ball, his stomach lurching as he felt gravity pulling him down while spinning end over end. The fall, or perhaps more accurately the downwards slingshot, only took a few moments.

  The impact was not fun.

  Even with the robotic legs bleeding a lot of the force off him by bending with the crash, and the tech hidden in his suit actually being made to eat a lot of what was left over after the legs snapped and buckled as he bounced into the street (not to mention the subtle armor plating preventing the pavement from shredding him as he ground along it), his roll ended inside the fender of a thankfully parked car sitting at an intersection.

  Well, the out of control rolling ended there. His momentum wasn’t done just yet. ArachNed himself was carried over that car even as the front of it crumpled. His body carved into the windshield and ripped a gash along the roof as he slipped past, crushing the hood of the car behind it, finally ended up resting atop that second car itself as he suffered one last flip off that battered hood.

  Unfortunately, even with all his armor and the legs attempting to shield him, he still felt every hit along the way, especially those last few ones, and could feel the bruises beginning to scatter along his body. He’d need a medpod by this point, which was never fun. He managed to extract himself off the caved in roof and almost managed to gently lower himself to the pavement.

  Despite it all, Ned was alive and as far as -ow- as far as he could tell, nothing was actually broken other than the more easily repairable robot legs, their remains dragging behind him as he slunk away from the poor abused car that had eventually been his final landing point. He was -oh gods, the pain- already pulling up his insurance information to hand out to the drivers who were themselves working through the emotions common to anyone who just had a hero drop out of the sky onto their vehicles. Mostly shock, bewilderment -oh it hurts to be upright... oh ow- and then the other emotions that come from knowing your vehicle has been in an accident like outrage and frustration. Thankfully they hadn’t gotten to that step yet so Ned was hoping to guide them to constructively -ahhhhhhhhhh! oh don’t move that yet!- processing things.

  He looked back at the street as he saw a few parts of his legs skidding to a halt towards him, wincing at the damage. As he looked down the street at the intersection, he knew he couldn’t catch up. Darn it! What in the heck had-

  A sparkle caught his eye as several drivers got out to check on him. He pushed forward past them towards the street ahead, a small part of him wondering if he was in shock. No alerts from his suit were critical, even if all of them were telling him that he really should be calling an ambulance for himself, so he let himself focus on that odd thing he saw across the street.

  His broken web line lay on the ground. Ordinarily it should take a little bit of time to float down, the strength of it belying how much a simple breeze could knock it around if there was no weight on the line. A weight like the ice crystals on the end of that line.

  Did… Did Ice Hawk…?

  Ned shook it off. He wasn’t used to team ups in general and Ice Hawk’s team didn’t have someone who flew around on grappling hooks. It had probably been a bad mix up, albeit one that had almost had deadly consequences. He’d talk with the flier later. For now he turned back to the civilians who seemed more worried about him than about the damage he’d caused to their cars.

  Still as he helped assure them he was alright and tried to make sure they got the help they needed, that suspicion ate away at him. He forced it down as best he could.

  I don’t like how I’m distrusting the heroes around me more than the villains now of all times.

  ---------------------------------

  Alex slammed a fist into the wall of the dark, miserable alleyway and clenched his teeth to keep from screaming. He didn’t know how he got away but he couldn’t even take the smallest pleasure in that small victory. He wanted to fling the bag, his helmet, something, in frustration. It was going so fucking well! It was going perfectly! Why the hell had it gone to shit?!

  Fuck… Fuck! FUCK!

  “FUCK!” he screamed, unable to stop himself. The rage ripped out of him needing to be released.

  Fucking changing the hero protection contract! This fucking magic bullshit! This whole- GRAAAHHH!!!

  He slammed his armored hand into the brickwork again and again, ignoring how much pain his arm was in. How much his whole body fucking hurt! Why the hell did it always end up like this?! Why-

  “Hey, let’s calm down for a second,” a voice called out to him from the entrance to the alleyway.

  Alex turned, raising his hand, wanting nothing more than kick on the gravitor generator (assuming it would manage to fire again tonight) and blast whoever it was. When the silhouette had a giant pair of wings, a wave of despair cut through all the rage, hollowing him out. The rage was muted but it felt distant as reality crashed down on him.

  Ice Hawk had found him.

  Which meant it was over. Damn it! Damn it…

  “Let’s just talk, okay?” the hero said as his wings disappeared, revealing him to be holding up both arms. “Just the two of us, alright?”

  Alex didn’t lower his arm. He knew the gravitor generator probably wouldn’t fire, but he hoped the hero didn’t. He knew that he was screwed. The wings might be gone but at this range without him able to zig and zag throughout the air, the hero could freeze him in his tracks.

  So, why did it feel like something else was happening…?

  “Look, I’m here alone,” Ice Hawk told him. “Ned’s out of the picture right now. I’m hoping you’ll hear me out.”

  ...What?

  “What do you want?” he managed to ask.

  “Stability,” the hero answered, his arms lowering slowly. “And you want that bag full of goodies on your back. I don’t think our goals are necessarily at odds tonight, if you catch my meaning.”

  This sounded like a deal. Odder, this sounded like the kind of deal that heroes didn’t make to villains. Sure, there was “being let off with a warning” or even having your kit confiscated and your loot taken with a slap on the wrist, but this wasn’t sounding like that. This was sounding like the kind of thing that that a lot of conspiracy theorists accused the superhero and villain community of doing, but experience had taught Alex never really happened.

  Alex tentatively raised his fist upwards, “Alright, I’ll hear you out.”

  He didn’t trust any of this. There were all sorts in the superhero community and more than once there’d been one caught trying to creatively boost their reputation by manufacturing crises but those types tended to be up-and-comers who didn’t realize how much they were risking.3 Ice Hawk had been around for a bit and had a whole team. He didn’t seem the type to try to cut deals in back alleyways with random villains, even if Alex had seen him chatting with Vandal Eyes about something. This stunk, but Alex had to know: of what?

  “Good, I like someone who’s reasonable,” Ice Hawk smiled. “You really aren’t Ikor under that mask.”

  “No. I’m not,” Alex grumbled.

  “That’s good,” Ice Hawk nodded. “That chase. You know your way around town. You’re not one of the League goons that Maniacal imported. That’s also good. Regardless, you’re still a villain and you just robbed a museum so it’s not the best idea for us to be seen chatting together here. You want to get out of here as soon as possible and I’ve got a reputation to keep.”

  The hero looked around making sure no one was nearby before continuing, “You want to walk away with all of this, I’m willing to do let you do it, but I’ll need you to contact someone afterwards. Do you know who Vandal Eyes is?”

  Alex shrugged, “Information broker?”

  He obviously knew a bit more but wanted to see if he could coax out more. Sadly it didn’t seem like Ice Hawk was going to be offering that up just yet.

  “That’s the one. Reach out to her in a few days. If she doesn’t hear from you in a week, there will be trouble,” he warned.

  Alex wasn’t sure if that meant trouble from the heroes or if that meant other villains were working with him. Regardless, this deal didn’t seem to be optional.

  “Fine,” he agreed.

  Ice Hawk smiled and gave a quick salute, his wings reappearing as he shot out of the alleyway, leaving the villain alone. Alex took a moment to think about what had happened. In truth, with the Broker out of the picture, Vandal Eyes was probably on his list to visit for some jobs in the near future. Now though, he wasn’t quite sure he was looking forward to it.

  The Broker had turned out to be cutting deals with the League, and now the woman that’s probably going to replace him is involved with the heroes? Alex gazed down at the battered remains of his armor and couldn’t help but feel like he was in over his head. He screwed his eyes shut and steadied himself as best he could.

  One thing at a time. He still needed to get this haul to Fencer and see where that left him. If it wasn’t enough to cover repairs then it didn’t matter what Ice Hawk or Vandal Eyes wanted because that would be the end of Tech Crash.

  And probably the end of Alex as well.

  1. ArachNed has actually undergone power analysis for insurance purposes, but did so through a third party agency which has not publicly announced the results. This means that the Amera Union government does have access to this data, but oddly the hero community does not.

  2. Ice Hawk’s team name was originally Zoo Keepers, but the team had been trying to change it for years. The current name is Wild Warriors.

  3. Several noticeable instances of villain manipulation have happened throughout the history of superheroes. Be it the Crimson Z incident where the hero Morning Gale pretended to be a villain to infiltrate the League or the infamous Wellwisher incident that was exposed by the Dark Knight which involved an attempt to control crime in Hallowguard by Wellwisher acting as the central kingpin himself.