The Gadget Forge was supposed to be a peaceful little shop. And it had been for about a week. That was how long it took before Lightforge once again found himself staring down Razorhawk, the villain who had led the merciless assault on the surrounding neighborhood. That assault had killed three civilians, and had left Lightforge cowed and fearful. While that was partly a ruse to protect himself, he also hated how much of it was true.
Razorhawk, on the other hand, was strutting toward him like she owned everything within sight. There was an air of absolute confidence that surrounded her. She knew that she stood at the top of the pile, and that she was well within her rights to look down on everyone else who might be in her way. And for the moment, that included Lightforge.
He kept his head down and nodded to her as she approached. He took a couple of slow breaths and said, “Welcome to the shop. What can I do for you?”
“You know, this is a much better look on you. Quiet, helpful, just like a good shopkeeper.”
“...Thank you.”
“It is a shame that you don’t have any of those fancy toys that you were making for a while. Whatever happened to them?”
“I broke them down for parts. It doesn’t pay to have items that only one or two people can use.”
“See? You’re finally starting to understand your role around here. Honestly, you should be thanking me for knocking some sense into you.”
She stared at him with a smug grin for a few seconds before it slipped into more of a sneer.
“Well? I said you should thank me.”
The silence was thick for a moment as Lightforge fought an internal battle between the peace of his shop and his pride. The villainess’s fury was poorly hidden as the moments stretched on and on. But before she could snap, one of her flunkies noisily cleared his throat.
“Ma’am, the others?”
Razorhawk waved at him dismissively but seemed to relax a bit. She finally took her eyes off of Lightforge to look casually around the shop.
“We’re looking for some people. Three villains who were running this way. Have you seen anyone like that?”
“No, I can’t say that I have. I’ve been focused on building more consumables, so I haven’t been paying much attention to the outside.”
“Is that so? That’s a shame. I would have been quite grateful if you could point us in the right direction.”
“Well, I wish I could help, but I can’t.”
“Oh? Then I guess you won’t mind if we take a look around, would you? After all, if you were so absorbed in your work then maybe someone could have slipped inside and hidden somewhere.”
“Be my guest. I would be just as shocked as you to find anyone hiding in here.”
She nodded and her little group set to work inspecting every corner of the shop. There weren’t many places to hide, so they made quick work of it. Lightforge’s breath caught as they spread into the back room, making a show of how there was most definitely nothing to see back there. They didn’t try to hide their annoyance that they didn’t find anything there.
Lightforge let out a sigh of relief as they abandoned their search and filed out of the shop at last. On her way out Razorhawk kicked over a shelf filled with consumable items and sneered back at him.
“Pick this up, your shop is a mess.”
Then they were gone and the tension that had been building in the gadgeteer’s chest finally began to dissipate. He had his drone track them from a distance to make sure that they didn’t double back or stick around to spy on him.
When it all seemed clear he headed into the back room and reluctantly stepped onto the lift that would take to the hidden level below. It was just as short a trip as always, but the sense of dread in the back of his head. It hadn’t truly processed until that moment what he’d done with the villains that he was harboring. There was only one truly hidden place to put them, and it was his formerly secret lab that he’d installed underground.
He forced his insecurities from his face as he stepped off the platform and found himself face to face with his guests. The leader, Silverflame, had been inspecting the space but snapped his attention to the shopkeeper as he arrived.
“Alright,” Lightforge said, “Razorhawk just left. Now I’m going to need an explanation. A thorough one, considering what the three of you have put me through in the past.”
Silverflame nodded and visibly gathered his thoughts for a few moments.
“Me and a friend of ours both hit level 10 within the last week. We were so excited that we immediately formed an Alliance for the four of us.”
“I’m guessing that your fourth is your escape plan. Teleporter?”
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“Portals, actually. We’ve been helping each other since we first got here, so it just felt like a perfect fit. We were even more excited when people started showing up to poach us.”
“People like Razorhawk?”
“Not her specifically, but yeah. We got invited to join with a couple of bigger alliances. Well, the two of us did. But we didn’t want to split up the group, so we rejected them.”
“How did they take that? The Alliances that I’ve dealt with have been more than a little pushy.”
“They actually took it great at first. That was about the time that Razorhawk showed up, actually. She was offering more of a partnership, having an official relationship between our Alliances. It sounded great until we got into the details. That’s when she started making really odd demands.”
“What kind of demands?”
“Like insisting that we clear all jobs with her before doing them, or promising to obey orders when needed. Those were the more normal ones, but they already made us feel more like servants than partners.”
“What about the really weird demands?”
“Things like reporting anytime an area felt too cold or too warm. Any interaction with other Alliances had to happen outside of Chancery Hills and Decker Row. And if we ever found a mission, we weren’t allowed to accept it. We would have to report it in for study.”
“Study?”
“Yeah. Apparently someone is trying to figure out how to get missions to be active again, so they’re looking for uncleared ones that they can study and get an idea from. But why bother in the lowest level areas? There’s no way any missions have been missed in a place like this.”
Lightforge stayed silent, schooling his face into not giving anything away. Having received and completed a mission that had gone undiscovered, he suspected that the people behind Razorhawk knew more than they were letting on to their minions. He didn’t trust himself to bring up the point without giving anything away, so he simply motioned for the other man to continue.
“We refused. We didn’t pick Villain just to be lackeys to someone else, especially with people who were obviously keeping secrets. That was when they stopped being nice.”
“Razorhawk attacked you?”
“Yeah. They killed all of us once, and posted guards outside our portal user’s base. Slugger died twice more trying to break through the guards.”
“And now they’re chasing you. They want to kill you for good?”
“That’s our best guess, though I don’t know why. Thank you for helping us, even though we don’t deserve it. We’ll go before you get into any more trouble because of us.”
Lightforge sighed. Once again, he knew that he shouldn’t help them. No matter what story they had to tell, they were still Villains, and that wasn’t likely to change. Of course, that didn’t make it impossible.
His thoughts flashed to Bloodwing, the psychopath that had turned him into little more than a quivering victim. The twisted villain’s Alliance was behind this, doing the same to these people. The circumstances were different, but there were enough similarities that it wasn’t hard to sympathize with them. He raised hand to stop them as they headed for the lift.
“Wait.”
He pulled the syringe from his inventory and injected himself before he could second guess himself. It felt like pure light rushing through his veins, chasing away the taint that he hadn’t even felt before that moment. He doubled over as lightning raced across his skin, carrying away the affliction and leaving him buzzing with energy in need of an outlet. He tossed the syringe deeper into the lab and grinned.
“Ok, let’s go. I’m going to help you.”
The villains were confused but were obviously uninterested in arguing about it. They nodded and followed him up into the shop and out through the back door. Lightforge had never gone that way except to familiarize himself with what was back there. Circe had installed it as the door for Villains, back when that had seemed like a viable plan. Now it was perfectly functional as an extra escape route.
He knew the route just well enough to have used it in a clever way. They passed through the self storage place behind the shop and out the other side, passing through a couple of weakened fences in the process. That landed them in an area that would take a much more convoluted path to reach from the front of the shop. And for that reason, it was where he had set up the portal to his base.
He opened the gate and ushered the Villains inside. They were hesitant, but they didn’t have a lot of good options. Once everyone was inside Lightforge followed, but only for a moment. He grabbed the Gate Controller and started to step back outside.
“You hold tight,” he called back. “I don’t know if you ever used this little exploit, but it was always a favorite of me and my friends.”
He dashed back outside and closed the gate. As it vanished he stuck out the Controller with precise timing. The shrinking edge of the portal passed through the middle of the controller and tried to push it out of the way. He resisted, holding the device in place. There was a momentary strain as these forces tried to balance.
Then the balance collapsed and the portal sliced the controller in half. But instead of holding onto just half a controller, the front remained as a sort of ghostly illusion of the real thing. That was the sign that he’d done it right.
This was a well-known exploit that he’d been using for years. Normally you couldn’t move the portal while people were inside the base, as that was far too easy to exploit. But cutting the controller with the portal caused a glitch that allowed it to happen anyway. In-game it had required frame perfect timing of specific animations. Now it was considerably easier. But, as with all glitches, there were drawbacks.
First and foremost was that the controller would reset if he put it into his inventory or opened the portal for any reason. He had to keep it out in his hand until he was ready to place the portal. There were also a wide variety of powers that would also break the exploit seemingly at random. And, finally, the most annoying downsides: once reset, the Gate Controller would be rendered completely inoperable unless he carried out a much more convoluted exploit to truly fix it. And he would need to fix it, because holding it while it was broken would slowly deal damage to him over time.
That damage was so small that his normal regeneration was enough to cover it, so long as it was working. That was why he’d needed to take the cure before setting out. He wasn’t willing to risk a dwindling health pool on top of everything else that could go wrong.
The downsides had never been much of a deterrent to many, himself included. He’d used the exploit more than once, often to pull pranks on his friends. He had only refrained so far because he wasn’t sure if he could pull off the repair exploit. If he screwed it up he would end up as a smear across the ground, and he had never been able to get it right on the first try.
With the controller in hand and many of his powers unavailable to him, he set off through the streets. While he might not know what to do about it, he knew who would. He would need the help of his friends, and particularly Circe.