"Who are you?" The men in the suit (the unarmed one) stared at Lawrence like some kind of circus freak (which, to be honest, he wasn't far from), a tinge of surprise, wariness and disbelief all mixed up on his face. Lawrence had to thank to his Facade feature he hadn't laughed of the face he was doing, though he was just barely managing to do so.
"That's a fine question. Who am I...?"
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, thinking of his alias. He definitively shouldn't call himself Lawrence, or else that would ruin the whole point of wearing such an extravagant outfit... And now that he stopped to think about that, what exactly did his suit do? Sure, it wasn't his usual clothes, and his face was a little hidden, but any good observer would recognize him. He would have to find something to cover his face. Maybe a carnival mask, a simple white one with round eyes...
But anyways. Back to his name. He was a background guy so, maybe something like that? Puppeteer? Nah, too lame... He did want to be the kind of villain move around all the pieces however... Pieces... like... Chess?
Why, yes! That did sound like a villain kind of thing. Of course, he would pick the side of the Blacks. He liked to act according to people's actions, instead of moving on his own. It was easier to decide what to do after you read the opponent's move. Both in and outside chess.
"We are the Blacks. You may address me as the King" he said at a lack of a better name. Of course, it was highly poofy, but not exaggeratedly so for a villain name, and it fit for now. He would improve his naming sense later.
"The lady over there" he said pointing at Mika, who hardly looked like a lady with her bloodied face (she hit the guy hard) and "keep calm and listen to the music" pullover with jeans and sneakers "Her name is Knight" he continued throwing up random names as he thought of them in a whim. Of a knight she had little to none, but since he was suddenly thinking of chess right now... And she did kind of appear out of nowhere, like a knight does. It wasn't that unfit.
"I didn't ask your puny villain wannabe names" he said. "I asked who you are and what you're doing here. This is Hellhound business, so unless you want to mess with our group... get the freaking hell out of here." Despite his menacing tone, Lawrence could note the man was still keeping his distance and wary of us.
He decided to lean on that.
"Rude." He dusted his coat in a not-too-but-pretty-quite noticeable manner. He would keep up his 'elegant villain' act for now, as it was pretty far from his personality and it would be much more difficult to match the dots. Not at all because he was enjoying it!
There was something else, though. This latent crave for blood. His anger was slowly returning. He remembered the image of his house partially destroyed, and clenched his fists in an almost unnoticeable way.
"I'd rather avoiding a bloodshed" he lied "but you are in my way. No... In fact, I presume you are our target. Say, do you happen to know the cause for the consecutive explosion chain?"
"Who knows. Now, as I said before: fuck off. You're not the only one who's got powers" he said as he tucked the sleeve of his shirt, showing his QR Code.
Lawrence though that was stupid. You didn't show the aces up on your sleeve (quite literally) until you had the battle won...
Unless you didn't.
"Please" he snorted. "Do you take me for a fool? That is as fake as the tuxedos you people are wearing right now" the tuxedo part was noticeable. The mark part a simple desperate try.
"W-Why you..." Line, hook and sinker. "Shit. Get them, Bob!" He yelled as he crouched. Lawrence gestured Mika to take down the other man. The twenty seconds cooldown had long since passed, so she phased in and out next to the guy holding a gun (a Colt model, old) she glared at it with a wicked face before raising her feet right up and kicking the men straight in the chin, making him fall to the ground. Lawrence didn't have time to be concerned out of the guy's survival, as the boss guy tucked a mini-gun (just a little gun, not a minigun) from his sock and pointed out at him.
His heart froze.
He had never been pointed with a gun. He knew he couldn't escape a bullet. If that man pulled the trigger...
So he didn't wait.
He was sure he acted mostly on instinct. He simply dropped himself to the ground, laying on all fours, then turned like a breakdancer and kicked the gun out of the suitman's hands. Using that impulse, he stood up again and brought a foot down to it's jaw.
Mika hurried over it and grabbed both of his arms, pulling them on his back and slamming him in a wall. She didn't speak a word this whole time, although Lawrence was happy with that. The less any future enemies had on them, the better.
But back to the man.
He aimed to kill. To fucking kill! What kind of sick person shoots an unarmed men?! Now he was pissed, really so...
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
There was someone even more pissed than him, though.
"Aaaagh!" The only conscious guy screamed as Mika pushed him harder against the wall, making his joints move a little out of place "H-Hey, crazy kid! Tell your minion to step off! Things~ Ahhh!" Lawrence looked at her. Her face was turning more and more grim. She looked like a ghost, and not the peaceful kind. It wasn't rage any more. It was hatred. And while Lawrence felt wrong, it wasn't to this point. Why she was like this he didn't know... Something he knew, though. If he didn't stop her, he would have no one to interrogate.
"That's enough. Thanks... Knight" he had to work a bit to remember her supposed nickname. "Please scout around and make sure there's no one around."
She looked at him with a strange expression, half surprised and half unsatisfied, but nodded nevertheless and released the other guy as she stepped aside and disappeared in shadows.
He looked back at the men pitifully wriggling in the floor, grabbing his arms in pain.
"Now, now, don't be so desperate. We have a lot of time to catch up..."
He hit the man on the head, knocking him out.
----------------------------------------
...
"This was a rather eventful day" he said as he leaned on a couch. It wasn't his couch, but it was fluffy enough.
He heard a now familiar ding-dong, the Root's way of warning him something had changed. He brought forward his eyes, questioning what that something was.
A new tasks has been assigned to you.
Hohoh? More tasks? Interesting. He decided to check them right now,
----------------------------------------
Lawrence Lakewood --- Villain
Meta-ability:
Criminal Mastermind --- Certain actions you make trigger a chain of coincidences that will eventually act on your favor. (Grade: C)
---
Features:
-Facade: While interacting with others, unless purposefully avoided, your thoughts will be unreadable. Affects language and body language as well.
-Silver Tongue: Become an excellent negotiator. Effect wears off after negotiations are done. Cooldown: 2 hours.
---
Pending Tasks:
-First Stain
-Grand Master
-Financial Fiasco
-Weight Beneath The Sewers
---
35 FP
----------------------------------------
That was a fun pun. Glad the Root knew of cool rock bands.
----------------------------------------
-Weight Beneath The Sewers-
Reputation is the mother of leading. Make an example of those who dared face against you.
Reward: +15 FP for each enemy defeated or terrorized. +20 FP for each enemy recruited.
Completed! Claim reward?
----------------------------------------
Alright, that was an even better pun. And a juicy source of Feature Points as well. Now he could come up with a new feature!
And then, he would rank up. Rank ups were supposedly the only way to improve an unlocked feature, and they didn't apply on the main meta-ability. The reason why they came in so handy was because they improved greatly a feature's effect. He hadn't been able before because the first task he (and all villains in fact) he had received was in fact a tutorial and didn't count for that.
In which feature should he invest this rank up? If he remembered correctly, the next wouldn't be until he completed five more tasks. Problem with meta-abilities was that you grew real fast at the beginning, but the price for everything became exponentially higher. Most people were stuck with four features and three rank-ups through their whole career.
But nevermind that. He world invest his feature points in a new ability first, then see what to do from here.
He would focus on his main ability, he decided. It looked promising to branch it as much as possible. And so, he got...
----------------------------------------
-Hawkeye: Targeted objectives will have their status displayed, in the case they are meta-humans
----------------------------------------
He pondered. That was very useful indeed. With this new feature, he could recognize powered people and those who weren't...
Worne YK's population was very, very big. To the point where it was called the capital of the U.R, despite that being Carwashingtown. And although new powerups were extremely rare, they did accumulate over the time. The LHU estimated a total of near two hundred metahumans in the whole Worne territory, though the veracity of such data changed from time to time. Being able to distinguish between normal and powered people would not only help with his future battles (which he was sure were about to come), but also to recruit new metahumans to his side. A powered villain army would certainly come in handy to take over the world, after all...
...
And, he would invest his powerup in the feature as well. It looked promising, even more so than the others. He could certainly imagine something like "dealing exhausting damage to enemies on sight" or something. Although that wasn't the main fact for him to make that decision. And it definitively wasn't that most cool anime characters had a cool eye power! Not at all!
Ahem.
----------------------------------------
Evileye: Targeted objectives will have their status displayed, in the case they are meta-humans. Observing a target for a long enough time gives you an insight on how they fight and how to fight them.
----------------------------------------
Ohoh...
Ohohahah...
Ahahahahahahah...!!!
"You're grinning. That's creepy" Mika stared at him blankly.
"I am certainly not!~"
Suddenly, he heard rattling noises.
"Looks like our guests woke up."
Lawrence looked to a side. There were three men wearing suits and chained to a chair. He wondered where Mika got the chains from, but they were very useful so he decided not to ask. He also decided not to ask how she knew of the empty building with a dungeon-like basement, and certainly didn't question how she had gotten a copy of the door's key...
He would have to give her a talk on privacy and basic morale later on.
"Hmph! Mphhmmhmph!"
"I'm sorry, but sadly I don't talk that language" he said as he took the strap of clothes out of one of the suitman's mouths.
"You fucked it up, twerp! Nobody messes with the Hellhounds! You hear me?! No one~" he shut up suddenly. Or rather, Mika's fist on his mouth shut him up.
"You shut your mouth and only talk when the chief asks a question if you don't want your teeth to get uglier than they are already" she said.
"Thank you, Knight. Now, gentle...? Men. We have a long talk ahead of us" he said as he gestured Mika to take the strap out of the other two's faces.
"Care for a beer?"
"Say what?"
"Are you deaf? I asked if you cared for a beer."
Three faces looke up at him in confusion.
"I... guess so?"
"Good. I don't care. Now... Let us get down to business, shall we?"
He felt like he was saying that a lot lately.