As I wandered towards my destination I decided to do a quick detour. Maybe I could pick up a job from another group. The walk was shorter, and I had run errands for them in the past, so why not?

The gang landscape had definitely changed from how it was pre-Empowered. According to textbooks, back then street gangs, much like prison gangs, were mostly race-based, but that couldn't be further from the truth nowadays. Now it was all about Power. But not every Power. In fact, while there were a lot of gangs, about 90ish% of them were one of two flavors: Hot and Cold.

Heat- and cold-based Powers made up the vast majority of the Empowered. About 2/3 to be a bit more exact, though no one really knew why. They came in a lot of different variations but at the end of the day they operated under the same principle. With these numbers, it was only a matter of time before they grouped up, and that's how we got the various "Temperature Gangs".

They quickly, and I mean very quickly, drove the old-world gangs off the streets. Lots of guns are great, but if your opponents can burn you to death from behind a wall or freeze your fingers off before you can pull the trigger there's just not a lot you can do.

I noticed that I was close when the cold set in. I shuddered as I trudged on towards the abandoned old elementary school my targets had set up shop in, and sure enough, as I rounded the next corner I came face to face with two guys dressed head to toe in different shades of blue. One of them wore brass knuckles on both fists, each knuckle tipped with sharp-looking, pointy studs in the design of snowflakes. Whoever got punched with that wouldn't just be able to walk it off. The other had a pair of sunglasses on, the lenses designed to look like they had frozen over. This was a particularly popular item among their crowd.

"What'cha want here, lady? There is nothing to see here. Turn around and.." Knuckles started when Glasses hit him softly on the back of the head.

"Shut up, bro. She is cool with us. I gave you a list of cool people yesterday. Should've known you'd ignore me. You always do."

"I skimmed it..." Knuckles grumbled and rubbed the place he'd been hit.

"You're MC, right? Good job with the Yellowbricks. Need anything? If you want someone iced we'll give you a special discount."

I raised my hands. "No, no. Just wanted to know if you need help with something or other."

He shook his head. "Nah, we're good. Midgardsummer is laying low so we have everything under control. Thanks for asking though."

"That's too bad. I'm going to split then. Tell the boss I said hi, and stay cool."

"Sure thing." he said and gave me a fistbump as I turned to leave.

The feud between hot and cold gangs was pretty much universal, but L.A. had a bit of a special case. For a period of about 15 years, there was only one gang active in the city. One gang made up of both heat- and coldbased Empowered. The Ragnarok Season. This was pretty much unheard of outside of L.A., but nothing lasts forever and they eventually split into Fimbulwinter and Midgardsummer. If you wanted to make it as a villain then having a good relationship with one of the gangs was a massive help, but that meant you had to pick a side. I didn't have to think too long to choose mine.

My body could finally begin to relax again when the frigid cold started to recede. Off to the BHF.

They had many smaller offices around town, but if you wanted to find a job you had to go to one of the four big ones. The upside here was that the big offices had hidden entrances all around town. I leisurely traipsed to the nearby Magnet train station. As someone unable to fly this thing had been a godsend to me back in college. Cheaper and faster than a car and stops all around L.A.. What I wasn't aware of then was how many stations hid a little something extra for people on the other side of the caped coin.

I squeezed myself through the crowd to the women's restroom. As usual, it was almost empty. Perfect. I hurried to the last stall and went in, closing and locking the door behind me. The wall was full of the usual graffiti, but I was looking for a specific one. It took me a few seconds before I spotted the "Save The Bee. Just the one though." tag. Above and below it were two other complimentary messages, though they didn't appear as such to the uninitiated eye. "Age is just a number." and "F*** THE WHITE CAPES!!!".

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

All three of these messages had very different styles and handwriting, and even appeared to be written at different points in time, one being slightly faded and the other two overlapping each other, but that was just a ruse. The hidden message was very simple. "Bee, Age, F***". When I first found out about it I had wondered how we never caught on to this as heroes, but who pays attention to random restroom stall graffiti? It was a great system.

I put my marked hand on the wall so that it covered the three letters and immediately felt it heating up. After a few seconds, the identifying magic had done its thing and I could finally proceed. With a yawn, I unlocked the door and pulled it open, but instead of leading back to the station restroom, I was looking at a nicely fitted, carpeted hallway. Before I entered I turned around and had a good look at myself, still standing next to the graffiti.

Both costumed and uncostumed villains visited these offices pretty regularly. People who showed up in full costume had to take the more out-of-the-way, obscure entrances to make sure no one caught them, while those in civilian clothing like myself were allowed to use the more easily available entry points that were hidden in public areas. But even these ones needed a bit of additional security. After all, people just walking into bathroom stalls and not coming out would eventually be noticed by someone. So to avoid detection the BHF added another pretty neat spell to the graffiti. When someone with the mark opens the door to the office, an illusion of them is created that stays behind. This illusion will leave the stall in about five more minutes, walk out of the station, and as soon as it is not being observed by anyone it will disappear. From what I could find spells like these are very complicated to cast and difficult to even just learn.

I watched my illusory self study the graffiti for a bit before I walked inside and the door closed itself behind me. The hallway was pretty short and led to another door. When I opened it I was met with a familiar sight. A large number of colorful individuals, some in costumes, and some without, were huddled together in different groups. Some were doing business, some were looking to join up with a group, some like myself were looking for jobs and some came in just to kick back and relax a bit.

I went past the other villains and walked up to the small reception desk. There were five in this office, three of them in this room, but the other two were currently occupied. An older woman greeted me as I walked. "Hello, Master Controller." She was looking at her PC. Whenever someone entered an office their file was immediately opened on all reception computers. "I see you are starting to make a name for yourself. Nice, nice."

I scratched the back of my head, a bit embarrassed. "Thanks, I guess."

"No problem. But from what I can read here you are currently living in one of our group hideouts?"

I nodded.

"Good, good. Well, our group hideouts are geared towards helping our lesser-known and growing children to nurture their talents." As useful as the BHF was, I hated how they called the marked villains their children. Creeps me out. But that was their shtick. The heavy familial theming permeated the entire organization, and let's just say I wasn't a big fan of that.

"Sure." I said hesitantly.

"Well, you don't have to worry, you still qualify." Oh, thank god. "But another run of that scale and we will have to let you go. Children need to learn to stand on their own two feet eventually, you know."

"Yeah, I get that."

The woman smiled. "Good, good. Please relay this message to your friend Witchling as well."

I gave her a curt nod. "I'll do that. But I was here because of something else. Do you have any small-time jobs you need to get done? I'm itching for some action. Less spotlighty action, more on the D.L.."

The receptionist turned to her PC for a minute or so before she looked back at me. "I'm sorry, there's nothing we need for someone at your level."

I sighed. "Great."

"Wait, wait. Maybe you can ask around here. I'm sure some of your colleagues are in need of a competent hireling. Just mingle a bit."

"Yeah....I guess I can do that. See you later." Before even waiting for her reply I turned around and looked at the crowd before me. No one seemed particularly inviting at first glance, so I was about to approach a random guy sitting at a table by himself when someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned around and found myself face to face with a strange-looking young man.

By strange I didn't mean his costume, in fact, the thing that seemed so strange to me was that I couldn't tell if he was wearing a costume at all. He had a thick layer of makeup on that seemed to be styled after a kind of Mardi Gras mask, golden skin and purple lipstick included. His clothes were no less bizarre. If you squinted it could be mistaken as a fairly casual, regular Joe kind of outfit. A jeans, a jacket, a shirt, etc. But on closer inspection, the dimensions of every article of clothing were just slightly off. He almost looked like someone told an alien who had never seen a human before about how humans dress themselves and then asked it to replicate it on memory.

When I saw that his armband had the word "Petite" engraved onto it, everything clicked for me.

He was most certainly part of the Petite Group. That was what we called it, but technically the full name was "A Petite Group of Nobodies Delighting in the Creation, Observation, Distribution, and Discussion of Fine yet Macabre, Thoroughly Unique Paranatural Art Pieces". These guys were Whackos with a capital W. They used their Powers not for money or influence or even fame, they used it to create art. The thing that separated them from other Empowered and magical artists, and what made them a villain group, was that they were of the opinion that true art had to leave a very real, non-metaphorical, and irreversible impact on the observer, and they went to great lengths to create that impact.

This could lead to a bit of harmless fun, like the time a French cell made the paintings in the Louvre come alive, read the minds of the people who looked at them, and savagely dressed them down for every mistake they made in their lives, making sure to hit on and target all of their insecurities. I say harmless, but there was at least one confirmed suicide because of this stunt. Harmless by their standards.

But it could also lead to something like The Lovely Venus, a marble statue that made anyone attracted to women who saw it fall deeply in love with it over time. The Venus would appear in their dreams, slowly but surely taking over their lives. More than 30 spousal homicides were a direct result of the statute, one man even drowning his two children because the Venus told him in a dream that she didn't take men with "Baggage".

"You are the Master Controller, yes? The one who crushed the Yellowbricks into dust and took care of L.A.'s little ant problem?" Before I could answer he continued. "I couldn't help but overhear that you want to get your hands dirty under the radar." His blinding white teeth came into view when he started grinning. "You are in luck. We have just the job for you."