“Tribes,” Dealer sniffed, obviously having an ear everywhere, with thirty of her Sims scattered around. My new Sims were also catching up on everything and sending it over as they heard it. “He’s a big hero there. Wanders around stumbling into disastrous shit all the time, fixes or helps fix it as it blows up, and they celebrate that it didn’t go off when he wasn’t around. He’s pretty happy there, by all accounts.”

“No shit?” Well, if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me. “I had a busy day.”

“Saw it all! Looks like Mr. Hill is delaying anything interesting until tomorrow,” she said, snagging a couple of my fajitas.

“Hey, Dealer, can we work here when we’re off-challenge?” Gwen piped up, looking around in interest.

“Half your pay is going to come in Galactic Credits, but sure!” Dealer replied easily. “I petitioned for a formal dining area, so I’ll need a new kitchen area and formal servers! There’s a lot of deals of various kinds getting done here.”

“What kind of money?” Cindy asked alertly.

“To be totally honest, it depends on your hipswing. The best tippers here are the warriors, and they are very loose with the money if you are loose with your hips.”

“No sex?” Jessica spoke up urgently, while MJ looked on in interest.

“That’s totally up to you, but if you turn them down and they press, you just refer them to me.” Dealer’s smile was very wide. “I memorized the codes of conduct, and the fines. They are exceptionally generous in certain ways!” Her laugh was low and sinister.

“How are you getting supplied for a formal eatery?” I had to ask.

“Oh, Sunny called up and asked about it. I swear she knows half the five-star chefs in Europe already, and they all want to come here and show off their high cuisine. I just need approval and I can set up inside twelve hours! The Tribes are being very generous on the supply side of things, if expensive,” Dealer said.

“I think we’re making enough to afford it,” I mused.

“Oh my gawd.” Jessica stared at her phone, jaw dropped. “They have stealing competitions here!”

“What?” Peter spoke up, leaning back impossibly far in his neighboring chair, and was shown a list. “Who’s Felicia?” he had to ask.

I almost smacked my head. Oh, sweet Mithar...

“Outright theft is prohibited on the ship, and carries, um, a challenge sentence to those you rob, so probably terminal. There’s been a few dozen Terrans who were carved up for pocketing stuff, which seems to have amused the aliens to no end. But they have actual competitions for pocket-picking, con artists, treasures hidden and secured here and there, and a whole bunch of rules and regulations. As long as you turn in everything you’ve stolen, you can actually earn some big money if you’ve got style!”

I looked at Dealer, who rolled her eyes. “And the Black Cat is here why?” I asked the air, and they all suddenly got it.

“Oh, she’s not here to fight,” Peter blurted out. “She’s here to rob the place blind!”

“Black Cat... Felicia...” Gwen pointed out, tapping the list.

“She’s finding time to steal in between her fights?” Even Peter was finding that one hard to believe.

“I imagine those she is robbing are thinking the same damn thing,” I scoffed. “Why don’t you run around after her and figure out how she’s doing it, Webhead!”

“Uh, thanks, but no thanks!” He decided it was a delicate subject and un-inverted himself back with the boys.

“Cindy, how’s the betting revenue for everyone?” I asked. Competitors automatically got a percentage of the money bet on them, win or lose. Since the students of Champion here were the most frequent competitors normally, it meant they made regular bank.

She flashed up our accounts, and read off the numbers. Mine was a couple zeroes past everyone else’s, and to their surprise, MJ had the second-highest tier at our table. She just smiled knowingly. “Someone is observant,” Red noted as everyone else hissed at her.

“Everyone getting multiple challenges?” I asked, and they confirmed that they were, both from Terrans and aliens. All of it was going onto the ranking system for the eventual true competition to start in another day or two. Ideally, everyone would have at least ten matches in by then, so the rings were going at all hours, and the Colosseum was humming with activity all the time.

I brought up my challenges, about to schedule them, and lifted an eyebrow. “Aurora? WTH?” I muttered, seeing the request.

Five heads were promptly craning at my Vaccine. “Isn’t she a speedster?” Dealer asked, curious.

“She’s hooked up with Sasquatch,” Gwen pointed out for me with a sniff, and I rolled my eyes as everyone else nodded understanding.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“Is she a total idiot?” MJ had to ask. “I’m not up on all the heroes, sorry, but... seriously?” She gave me an assessing look, then raised her eyebrows at everyone else.

“Hey, the speedsters are doing good at the lower levels. Quicksilver ran through his ten ranker opponents pretty easily, they didn’t have a good way to deal with his speed,” Cindy pointed out, nodding over at the white-haired speedster sitting with the boys. His sister was somewhere with the mystics and brains in the booths reserved for them, talking to alien magi with Dr. Strange and stuff.

“But... Dynamo,” MJ pointed at me. “Everyone should know how fast she is. Does this Aurora think Dyna slowed down just because she’s half a head taller right now?”

=============

It's totally true that bigger people are slow and stupid, right? Speaking of dumb...

If you're not reading this on Royal Road, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! You get the foreword and afterword, author comments, and comments from people with questions! I have not given permission for this story to be posted ANYWHERE ELSE.

=============

“She’s something of a ditz,” Jessica spoke up after watching a couple of Aurora’s fight-vids. “Total speed show-off, not taking the fights very seriously, just maxing her speed advantage. I doubt she has any idea that in normal circumstances landing a punch on Dyna would get her shocked unconscious instantly.”

I approved the challenge as they watched, shaking my head, and then lined up the next batches.

“Not gonna challenge Namor?” Gwen prodded me, watching the names get set up and the system start allocating times and the location. I noted it was giving me priority for some reason, imagine that.

“I have many egos to trample underneath my boots before there’s enough there to lift me up to equal his,” I replied, and everyone erupted in giggles at the reply.

“Total man-whore,” Cindy sniffed.

“Total HAWT man-whore,” Jessica corrected her, to nods all around. Even if he was an old fart.

“He certainly has the classic Atlantean lack of clothing style down,” MJ agreed, eying the holos of his rather skin-heavy formal garb while springing up and grabbing one of the incoming nacho trays for the table. There was a general dive on hot cheese and fixings, and some protests and whimpering at the spiciness seconds later.

“So, how’re Stark and Doc Richards doing?” Dealer asked in a low voice, and everyone leaned in as they looked at Cindy.

She Repelled cheese from her hands and tapped ten keys a second in a blur.

The two accounts for Terrans looked pretty impressive, and they were growing by the second. By general agreement, all the betting revenue for everyone was being made available for whatever those two were doing, to be returned at the end of the tournament... assuming they didn’t lose their shirts.

“Are they gambling or stock trading?” Gwen asked, wrinkling her nose.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “They’re trying math models against galactic players, just to see what happens... and of course cheating by knowing more about Terra’s competitors. I helped them set up a bunch of the models, while warning them there are literally planets devoted to this stuff, and have been for millennia...”

“Did Stark toss off something about Chaos Math and quantum economics and somesuch daft mangled brainmush?” Dealer sniffed.

“Worse. Chronal backsplash causality reversal flux photon-static tachyon dipping.” Everyone looked at me in disbelief. “I shit you not. Very proud of that one, he was.”

Everyone groaned at once. “Tell me you shot him full of zingers!” Gwen demanded.

“Nah. I just asked him if he wanted to try timesighting the LA Commodities Exchange, and if he thought the rest of the universe also had no defenses against timejumpers.”

Everyone considered the idea of trying to pull temporal tricks under the nose of the Hag... and how the rest of the universe had even better tech.

“Intellect I’m-So-Beyond-You-Plebes, Wisdom 6,” Jessica muttered, and everyone smirked agreement. “At least he didn’t go parading around in power armor and getting chain-EMP’d by the annoyed aliens,” she snarked, and everyone here laughed softly at the thought.

“That would be bad for his image,” Dealer pointed out helpfully. “Twitching on the ground all the time is not a good look for a businessman.”

“Hey, Dyna,” Cindy said softly, eyes on her Vaccine. “I don’t mean to pry, but... where the heck did he get the capital for his account? I, uh, just did some matches on the commodities exchanges for Isotopes, and he and Doc Richards have a LOT of money to work with...”

“I think he may have negotiated an inadvertent investment by Midas by way of the Larceny List.”

“What?!” they basically all exclaimed together.

“There was a huge kerfluffle in the commodities markets for some very high-end metals and stuff Midas stockpiles in that warehouse of his up in Boston. Someone spent a LOT of man-hours looking for anyone selling off large amounts of that stuff off, and Midas actually defaulted on two volturium contracts and had to pay some substantial penalties because of it,” I hinted for them.

“Someone robbed his warehouse?” MJ clarified intently.

“That’s pretty much the consensus,” I nodded. “And a certain someone with too much hair gel might have made a point of asking if I was watching the commodities markets... and he dumped five tons of volturium on Electro to be refined out of nowhere.”

I made a casual gesture over my shoulder, and their eyes went over to the massive set of criminals at their own table drinking over there, telling crude jokes and shouting and fanning their mouths in disbelief at some of the special dishes Dealer had sent over there, who was staying holo-active and managing the place even now. “Mr. Hill says there’s a very lucrative mercenary contract outstanding for any information about the sale of certain high-value Isotopes. If the amounts are to be believed, we’re looking at somewhere between nine and ten digits in value.”

MJ leaned forwards. “So, you think Tony Stark paid... the Black Cat... to rip off Midas? For this?” She gestured quietly all around them.

“Oh, not for this. He needed the stuff, Midas hoards it and overprices it because he doesn’t report the true amounts he keeps, so Tony decided to take advantage of the fact that none of the stuff legally exists, and that Midas is a total prick.” A fresh tray of munchies descended upon us, and ravening sharks destroyed it all, complete with protests about how damn hot the spices were and damn, why couldn’t we stop eating them?

“But you’ve no proof,” Gwen persisted around her nachos and fire on her tongue.

“Not a shred of it. Everything he dumped on Dillon has already been processed and any markers wiped by the process.”

Eyes rolled. “What a coincidence...” Cindy said, around the milk she was urgently swallowing. Milk, the universal spice solvent!