Home Warranty

“Part of the sales pitch government’s give for why heroes should formally file with whatever agency or agencies are in charge of them, is basically insurance. There are special, governmentally organized insurances structured to repair any damage to private property caused by heroes in the pursuit of their self-appointed duties.”

“This is, ironically, why heroes are allowed to claim bounties on villains and criminals they capture, and why so many organizations employ such a system. The various governments claim some percentage of these bounties up front, as payment into the insurance system. It’s a lot like farm insurance, in a lot of ways. “

Andrew Fitzgerald, Analysis of Public Service and the Heroic Age

After lunch the group began to prepare a bit more thoroughly for the second part of their exploration. Carl added a backpack toolkit, while both Ryan and Emilia grabbed paramedic grade first aid kits. On top of that, the trio grabbed some other, more violent equipment.

Carl chose a simple, shorty pump action shotgun with no shoulder stock, which he slipped into a thigh holster. Emilia went with a wide, short sword on her back in a sheath under her pack, with some throwing knives on her belt. Lisa realized she’d been carrying them before, but she added a lot more.

Ryan strapped on a matched pair of Glock 17's in drop holsters. "I'm not sure if you're familiar with any kind of weapons, but we have a few stun blasters and more basic Tasers running around if you would like one. Or, if there’s something else you’d like, we can see if we have one."

Lisa shook her head. “I’ll take a taser. I’m not trained to fight in any way, and I don’t want to panic and hurt someone. I mean, I’ve had women’s self-defense classes, but that’s not really combat training.”

“It’s better than nothing.” Ryan said with a poorly concealed wince. They put her together a belt, with a pair of tasers and a canister of bear mace. “There’s not a lot on this Earth that’s going to take that stuff in the eye and shrug it off.” Ryan explained. “And spares are always good. I don't think we need them, but if we did and didn't take them, it'd be a lot worse than lugging around a little extra gear.”

“Like I said I am all about being over prepared.” She pulled her loaded, wheeled cooler to the door, Ryan helping her to lift it out of the bus as Chad filmed the group prepping.

“Hey Ryan, you want to do a monologue here before we start looking?”

"Yeah, probably a good idea. Outside, with the bus, walking to reveal the house?"

“A tried-and-true take.” Carl agreed. “I have plenty of footage of the initial go though I can edit in so yeah, opening monologue, then we can do a pickup when we start looking for the door.”

"Works for me. Let's shoot that now, since the lights good. With our luck if we put it off it’ll be raining later."

“That’s what you’re worried about our luck causing?”

“Very funny man, very funny.”

Ryan moved to the RV door and took a breath before starting to walk towards the back of the bus. "We were asked by a well-known real estate agency to look into this house. The reason? This is the former private home of Mister Lizard, aka Dr. Juan Hernandez, among other rumored names. Going in, we don't know if this is a lair, just a house, or something in between."

As he passed the end of the bus, he watched the lens on Carl’s camera spin as it adjusted to take both him and the house now visible behind him into frame. "Or it could be something more! What I do know is there's a lot of house and a lot of land to look at, and as you all know there's always some sort of surprise when dealing with Villians."

Emilia gave the camera a bright smile, Lisa having watched her run around Carl and get ahead of them as they filmed. Seamlessly, and for no reason that the realtor was aware, Ryan turned to the back of the bus and pulled out some totes, while the other woman began speaking.

“Mister Lizard was a beast splicer, someone who did genetic and surgical modifications to animals, and was a nemesis of the former Tailor Miss Manors and The Empire Statesman, the later whom he once attacked with a giant crocodile still known today as the Lake Superior Dragon, a class one Kaiju.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“He died in nineteen seventy-nine, and a lot of rumors at the time had it he was assassinated by Pablo Escobar, though we haven’t figured out what the enmity between the two men was, especially so early in the drug lords career. What’s really exciting about this exploration is this house has been locked up since his death, so it’s an untouched time capsule to the nineteen seventies, be that just long and unregretted forgotten style or a somewhat lost era of the super age.”

"It also means lots of yellow appliances." Carl wryly commented. “And ugly bathrooms.”

"Harvest Gold." Ryan called out, causing Emilia to laugh.

"At least it wasn't the Avocado Green that was also popular." Lisa shrugged.

“Bleh.” Carl agreed. “Okay Lisa, come here, we’ll do a quick interview with you… just tell us why you came to us, why you’re here. I’m assuming the whole death trap thing was public record.”

“Front page news, to my embarrassment, but might as well.

After a quick interview, retouching on why she hired the Lair Hunters, they headed back to the house. Emilia helped Lisa lift her cooler onto the porch, and soon they were back in the house, and the living room.

“We can get pick-ups of the other rooms when we are done with the secret stuff.”

“So now down to the basement? Lisa said her hand white on the coolers pull handle.

"Yeah, let’s do the basement, then we can do the library, and try to figure out the office bookcases." Ryan led the way to the back of the house. They'd left all the previously opened doors unlocked, so they moved easily through the home towards the kitchen, and stairs down to the basement.

Lisa cursed a bit at the heavy cooler and grill, Emilia chuckling as she continued helping her get it down. “Okay, maybe I should have put more food in the fridge. I didn’t think about hauling this thing up and down stairs.”

“Or get a backpack cooler. Granted that’d be more useful if you were doing this regularly. How often do you really have super villain houses come onto the market though?”

“Oh, all the time. Government seizures and auctions are a great way to get access to those weird houses they love. You’d be shocked how well they’ll sell. Just usually there’s damage from the hero or swat team that went in, and they had the bomb squad clear the place.”

For all the effort moving the cooler took, the basement was unfinished and consisted of an ancient HVAC system that was somehow holding on and a bit of insulation that looked troublingly like asbestos. “Great. That’s more of a pain than death traps.” Lisa groaned.

“Well, late night TV lawyer commercials has led me to believe Asbestos is a death trap.” Carl said helpfully.

“This basement isn’t big enough. .” Ryan said, measuring the space with a laser measure. “Yeah, it cuts out too early, it is about about ten feet too short. And that section of wall is a different color brick.”

“And that’s the wall the office is on. We have a winner.” Emilia agreed.

“So back upstairs. Yay.” Lisa deadpanned, glaring at the cooler. Ryan laughed and picked it up, carrying it up the stairs so the ladies wouldn’t have to fight with it.

Soon, they were at the office and looking over the bookshelves. “So, what do we do? Pull bucks at random and hope something happens?” Lisa asked.

"As a last ditch, we can. The way we start is looking for the book that either doesn't quite 'fit' or the one that feels like a joke. Easier with some villains than another. Splicers, for example, are really prone to using Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, and heroes love to use histories about other heroes, particularly the original Guardians. All of them are prone to finding ways to make a joke, but how clear that joke is may or may not be clear to outsiders who aren’t familiar with the cape, or who come along several decades later. Comedy is very time sensitive."

Lisa and the others began looking for a book key. Before long, Carl chuckled. “Hey guys, I think I see it. He pointed at the bottom of the bookcase where a cartoon crocodile grinned from a Disney era version of Peter Pan, a hook sticking out of the front of its mouth. “It’s the Tic-Tok Croc from Peter Pan. The one that ate Captain Hook's hand.”

"Yeah, that'd be it." Ryan shook his head. "Step back, let me pull it. Give me some space, just in case."

He waited for everyone to back up several steps, Lisa going so far to step just outside the room, before first tugging on the statue, then when that didn’t work pulling on the hook. The shelf hissed as it pushed out slightly, then slid to the side, revealing a five-foot-tall cylindrical elevator car with five seats inside. "Well, that's different." Ryan muttered, frowning at the odd elevator.

"Might have been actively minimizing the size to keep from altering the architecture of the house by any significant amount, beyond the basement." Carl suggested. "Though that is pretty small."

Ryan carefully climbed in, the unsettling shake of a suspended elevator car expected but still causing him to freeze for a moment. He looked and saw that one of the padded chairs was next to a control panel with an up button and a down button. "Well, that's straightforward."

Lisa swallowed. “How does it look; does it look safe to use?” Emilia and Carl started helping Ryan look it over.

“Seems like he kept it simple. Should be okay. What do you think?” the camera man asked Ryan.

“It seems solid, and I'm not hearing creaking or anything. Seems to be made out of aluminum, so not corroded like steel might have been. I mean, we can’t inspect the mechanisms, but we don’t know where the access is anyway."

“It likely only goes down a story or so. I doubt it’s a major issue either way.” Emilia pointed out.

“Good point, yeah. Let’s give it a try.”