Another song was starting and he couldn't help but glare. It was an insult, and indignity and he would have his... he paused, counted to twelve between slow, deep breaths and focused on his purpose. The song was not his purpose. The overpriced menu was not his purpose. The mocking displays of wealth and fake culture were not his purpose. His hands clenched into fists for a moment then loosened as he mastered himself and got up. His purpose was not here.

The tall, pole-thin man with the beard walked off the table with a slight stagger, his gait uneven and his stance not quite perfectly straight. His exquisitely tailored costume felt like it was two sizes too large over his sickly frame, making him look more like a scarecrow than a man. More indignities heaped upon him not by the world but by others; the accounts would be balanced in time. With that thought of a pleasant future in mind, he retreated from the salon quietly and slowly made his way to the unobtrusive staircase in the back. There he staggered some more. He entertained the thought of procuring a walking aid for a few moments but ultimately rejected the notion; he already stood out as it was. Adding such an item would make him too distinctive even for his erstwhile ally's powers to hide.

Unlike the room above, the winding staircase was annoyingly long and uncomfortably narrow. Twice he had to catch himself when he slipped, his fingers digging into the metal of the handlebar. Not his fault, he thought with a scoff. Whoever designed this part of the building should have been shot for their incompetence. Yet he persevered; his goal, his mission was too important to fail. Staggering onwards, fueled by dreams of that happy future when he would be whole once more and able to explain to the club owner's exactly why they shouldn't have put him through such badly designed access points, he finally reached the underground levels of the facility.

The doors to the men's and women's bathrooms stood to his left and right but he ignored them in favor of the instructions he had been given. He walked down the corridor at a steady pace, passing first storage rooms of various types, then the very busy kitchen and washing rooms, then the changing and rest rooms for the club's staff. He was further annoyed but not terribly surprised to see they had separate, much improved access points to the lounge and stage both. It could be no less than deliberate design meant to heap affronts upon himself by forcing him through the gauntlet of those stairs, by revealing then ridiculing his infirmity. He knew the owner, after all; such a deliberate slight was exactly the kind of thing she'd do.

Bolstered by his righteous anger and indignation he picked up speed, marching further into the depths of this monument to the owner's ego, past the doors to offices and hidden rooms for private meetings and shows, until he came to the blank wall at the far end of the underground corridor and the tiny service door to the side, almost hidden behind an oversized and gaudy water-cooler for the staff. Whoever heard of water coolers made of diamond, especially for glorified servants? No matter. He'd get rid of it along with the rest when the place belonged to him.

The service door led to a broom closet, full of useless clutter for the wastes of space and oxygen that called themselves a cleaning crew. He had to hunch down and strain to fit himself inside, the narrow confines of the place making his old injuries ache. Unfortunately, his instructions were very clear on this part so he grumbled, pushed, and broke some brooms until he was fully inside and had closed the door behind him. After a ten-count in the dark, cramped, annoyingly smelly place there was a loud, metallic click and a crack appeared in the seemingly solid back wall. The loud grinding of metal on metal and the turning of gear followed as two-inch-thick metal plating retracted into the ground, opening the path to the hidden underground chamber beyond.

With more pained grunts and oft-repeated vows of retribution towards all those responsible for his current state he had finally disentangled himself and crossed to the actually important part of the building located under the fake club and thus came all the closer to his goal. His aching bones tingled with anticipation and he had to rein in his impulse to smirk. He wasn't supposed to reveal how close he was to gaining all he desired. No, he was supposed to glower and snarl and behave exactly as his target expected of him, which wasn't exactly hard given the annoyingly mocking premises and witlessly blundering staff. His only consolation was that he'd only have to go through this charade once and with a little bit of luck his superior skill and ability would be both recognized and rewarded. With that happy thought in mind, he marched on as quickly as his old injuries allowed.

The hidden underground chamber was vastly different than the silly club and restaurant above. There were no faux silk cushions and draperies, no tableware of false gems or other mockeries of prosperity. The tables were fewer but far more heavily built of a gunmetal grey substance that quietly radiated both solidity and threat to his senses. The chairs were the same, more weapons than furniture; merely touching one brought a wince to his face as the power he was using to blunt the pain of his old injuries began to flicker and fail at the point of contact. The glassware were simple affairs of steel but their contents were anything but; all were filled with hard alcohol mixed with the strongest poisons and drugs modern chemistry could produce so they could actually affect the robust physiology of up to mid-tier supers.

All the patrons here were exactly that sort of beings. A dozen hard-faced men built almost as large as he used to be before his injuries sat in silence and enjoyed being able to feel a buzz they would not find at any other club. Like him most of them hadn't wasted any power on looks... except for enhancing the intimidation factor of their appearance. He knew their type; criminals and lowlifes that had developed powers in the sudden boom of magic right after the Invasion, who had discovered said powers fed on violence and instead of flinching away from that simple truth or trying to find alternatives to pander to their pathetic morality, they had embraced the source of their strength and been tempered by it. The US had seen the rate of murders and disappearances rise several times over in the past year and these were a few of those responsible for it. The handy, reliable, useful sort... as long as you could meet the price and favors they demanded. They were the first part about this club he wholeheartedly approved of.

There were women sitting about the place, too. Here, a tall Latina wreathed in dancing shadows. There a brunette as scantily clad as any whore but with a dangerous gleam to her blood-red eyes and with pointed teeth poking between her mockingly smiling lips. Across the room a tower of muscle that had to be over eight feet tall, with green-tinted skin and more than a few curves but not a single bit of softness and an expression as murderous as his own. A little slip of a girl with ebony hair caught in twin braids that couldn't be a day over fourteen... but with the cold, dispassionate look of a killer that was somehow looking at seven directions at the same time and gave the impression that nothing slipped her watch in this or any other day. They were pretty, all right, women were wont to be wasteful with both money and power on petty things... but in his expert opinion they were on average more powerful than the men. They had to be in this line of business and unlike many idiots in the streets he knew not to underestimate them. It was such a mistake that had landed him in his current situation after all.

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None among the criminals and killers gathered in this secret place threw him more than a casual glance except for the little girl with the seven-fold gaze that seemed to be looking at everything at all times. All their attention was in the stage beyond and he did not blame them for here there were no idiotic musical numbers or pandering to people with too much money and too little power to really matter in the grand scheme of things. No, the stage was actually a dueling ring and upon it a match was taking place; three men in black fatigues and face-concealing helmets wielding swords of that power-resistant metal against a scantily clad brunette wielding a staff.

The woman was almost as abnormally, supernaturally gorgeous as she was supremely skilled, her staff a blur shifting between forty or fifty strikes, parries, deflections or blocks each and every second. There was no superhuman speed powers or time dilation; he had first-hand experience with both and could tell none of the combatants were using such at all. There was also some sort of resistance, or dampening. He did not know if it was something built into the ring itself or the cumulative effect of so much power-resistant metal built into the walls of the building, but none of the combatants moved with superhuman speed and strength. To the absolute limit the human body was theoretically capable of, yes. Outright superhuman, no. The swordsmen - wielding a traditional katana, a High Middle Ages knightly sword and a Spanish rapier respectively - were exceptionally skilled, perhaps more skilled than any human had been before the advent of powers. They were also losing, the brunette woman's fluid, lightning-fast offense and defense maneuvering them steadily but inevitably towards defeat. They coordinated abnormally well, timing their actions perfectly to exploit even the slightest openings presenting themselves but there just weren't any. The woman was somehow performing two or three simultaneous defenses and attacks by using both the ends and the middle of her staff with the kind of perfection that looked like an over-choreographed action scene in some Hollywood grand production... except the audience here knew better.

He stood and waited for the inevitable conclusion. The men would have been served better by staying on the defensive or even retreating in sequence to achieve victory through attrition but this obviously wasn't the goal of the exercise. Thirty seconds later they were all down and the woman was bowing and smiling to the audience exactly as the singer was doing in the stage above, which didn't come as much of a surprise. She did, after all, appear to be the singer's identical twin... though appearances could be deceiving. Performance complete, the warrior retreated to her private rooms in the back, but not before fixing her eyes straight at him for a moment then signaling for him to follow. Finally, he'd soon be done with this charade.

The back room sported a minimalist, almost brutal style, as if the interior designers had lavished all their attention to the facade of a club above and had nothing left to spare when it came to this final room. It fit both him and the woman just fine. She threw her weapon at a basket of similar armaments in the corner, walked around the metal desk and retrieved a bottle of liquor and just one glass. She sat down, poured herself a glass of the glowing green, obviously magical drink and started sipping it in silence while staring at him over the rim of the glass. He just waited with forced patience, his rage at further disrespect churning in his gut until-

"Get rid of that ridiculous thing," she demanded as if something about his presence, conduct or attire offended her by its mere existence.

"What?" Instead of explaining she flicked her fingers and with a sudden searing pain in his chin, his beard fell off and shrunk into a sorry-looking tuft of salt and pepper hair.

"A fake beard? Really?" she laughed derisively. "Who do you think you are fooling? Certainly not your enemies; were they able to look through these walls they'd recognize you instantly."

"That is my business, Gemini, not yours," he couldn't help but retort angrily. Oh, the time would come when he'd no longer need to pretend, when he'd be restored and made even greater than he'd once been. And then there would be a reckoning.

"Oh you poor, crippled thing. Not feeling so good now that you can't have others do your dirty work, that you have to beg and grovel at mere scraps from the tables of the high and mighty?" She laughed like rung crystal as if it was the greatest joke in the world and she hated her all the more for her pretense at perfection. "But you didn't come here to banter about the good old days, did you? What is your business in my not-so-humble abode?"

"I come with an offer of collaboration at-"

"No, thank you," she interrupted before he'd even finished, talking over him before he'd even finished. He couldn't even protest for momentarily his voice had faded to a mere whisper. "I am feeling rather content with my current projects. You know how it is; entertaining the rich and self-important, making connections in the criminal underworld. Those things take time, even with double the days and bodies as anybody else." He felt his voice return to him and it grated on his pride that he was allowed to answer or not at her whim.

"It would be wise not to discount this proposal," he said darkly, allowing a sliver of his rage to show in his expression and color his voice. "It would be useful to my allies. And useless things have a way of quietly disappearing."

There was a pregnant pause in their discussion, a heavy silence hanging between them heavy with meaning and menace. Then something in his right hand exploded, splashing minute amounts of blood and gore all over the place. Not even a single drop landed on the brunette, who merely tsked in annoyance while he stared at... his grotesquely bulging thumb? What?

"Oh, you deluded fool," said one half of the supervillain known in certain circles as Gemini, as she reached across the desk with a dainty-seeming arm and nearly pulled his arm out of its socket as she forced it closer to her eyes over all his attempts to resist. She forced his fingers open with as much ease as a grown man doing the same to a baby and fished out the oversized bloody bones that had appeared there. "Amazing isn't it? No matter the super's physical toughness, their thumb phalanges and metacarpal suddenly doubling in size will explosively tear through their flesh."

She let the rest of his hand go, allowing him to fall back into his chair with a pained grunt as she carefully took the bloody digits away, turned around and opened a large drawer built into the wall behind the desk. The drawer was almost full but there still were several open spots so she picked one and deposited his bones there after letting them return to their normal size. The spot even had a neat little label where she wrote only two words. His eyes were wet and unfocused from the pain, but he was pretty certain it was his name. Then she pushed the drawer closed and turned around with a small smile as if she'd done nothing more notable than adding another line to a ledger... instead of adding a trophy she'd literally ripped off him in a repository of hundreds of similarly bloody trophies, each neatly named and catalogued for future perusal.

"Now that you were made better aware of the situation, explain it to me," she said with that same knowing, infuriatingly smug smile she'd had ever since they were unpowered children. "Why shouldn't I repeat that particular application of my power on the sorry, degenerate, rarely-used excuse of a brain in that head of yours and double its dimensions? You might even experience average-level intelligence for a brief moment before it violently explodes out of your skull."

"Because the proposal came from the Red Dragon," he quickly explained, mouth dry. When she did not show any reaction he gulped and added, to his shame... "And because exploding brains are messy."

"That is why my office is so spartan, you idiot; ease of cleaning." She laughed again. "It is good that you finally grasp the vast gulf in our relative position... as much as someone as dim-witted as you ever could. But a proposal from the Red Dragon? Color me intrigued." She waved a hand and the blood and gore from his recent maiming sizzled and hissed and went up in smoke almost instantly, only to be sucked in by the ventilation shaft overhead, leaving no evidence of what had happened behind. Then amber eyes met his own with a dangerous gleam.

"Tell me more," he was ordered and hastily complied.