April 25th, 2011, Saturday, 2:28 PM.

It was two days after the meeting when I finally got the call from Coil.

Everybody had been split up into teams and he told me where the rest of our slapdash team was meeting, and the location of our first target. I sent Kayden a message as soon as I got off the phone with Coil, asking her to meet me later on at our usual spot.

When the time for the raid approached we met up before we made our way across the city, doing our best to keep a low profile, which meant no flying for Kayden, at least for now. It took sometimes to work our way there, but eventually we stepped into an alleyway and spotted the members of our temporary team of villains.

One member of the group immediately broke off from her spot on the wall, shuffling over to us while looking like they were in dire need of a shower and probably some new clothes. Squealer came to a stop in front of us, with her hands shoved into the deep pockets of her filthy jeans.

Kayden glanced at me, now glowing brightly, but I just waved her on and she strode off without another word heading towards an unknown woman that was leaning against alleyway wall. Kayden must have known who the woman was because they started talking to each other quietly.

I dragged my attention back to Squealer, curious about what she wanted, was she going to try and beat me up or something?

"Why did you let Skidmark sit at the table at the meeting?" Squealer asked suddenly.

I noted that her voice was pitched quite high, and it distracted me from what she had actually said for a moment. I frowned behind my mask, I hadn't 'let' anyone sit at the table, it’s not like it was my table, or my meeting, besides it was Skidmark’s seat as far as I knew, I just told him to hurry the fuck up. I scratched the back of my head, wondering if I had accidently started some kind of feud with the Merchants.

"Why wouldn't I let him?" I asked confused, while I tried to figure out her angle.

Squealer looked annoyed by my answer as she pulled one hand out of her pocket and jammed it over her shoulder, thumb first. I looked at where she was pointing, slightly to the left of Grue, Gregor the Snail and a couple of armour men.

"They told us to fuck off, before you got there." Squealer said plainly, before stuffing her hand back into her pocket.

I stared at the group in wonder, trying to figure out who she was talking about. Grue, despite being quite rude to his teammates had seemed rather mild mannered at the meeting, so it probably wasn’t him. Did Gregor the Snail have some beef with the Merchants? As far as I knew his power was to produce chemicals in his body, was he cutting in on their drug business? Why would they care what Gregor the Snail told them to do at the meeting?

It made no fucking sense at all, but then again most villains were idiots.

"Gregor the Snail told you to fuck off?" I asked bemused, wondering why it was suddenly my problem. "I would have still told him to sit at the table anyway.

Squealer was looking at me strangely now, which just made me even more confused.

“What does Gregor- the-Fucking-Snail have to do with this?” Squealer said suspiciously, before looking over her shoulder with a paranoid look on her face.

I stared at her in without understanding before I found myself starting to get annoyed, I opened my mouth to tell her to explain what the hell she meant, but she spoke first.

"Why did you want us at the table?" Squealer asked obnoxiously, punctuating each word with a point of her grease-covered finger.

I looked at her incredulously, she was actually kind of annoying. Is this what it felt like for people when they spoke to me?

I stepped forward aggressively to establish dominance and it failed completely because Squealer didn’t even move backwards at all. Now I was stuck standing awkwardly close to her, and she smelled absolutely awful. I considered abducting her for a quick bath into the ocean, before realizing what a terrible idea that would be.

Seriously, fuck the ocean.

"Skidmark is the leader of a gang,” I said slowly as if she was a child. "At a meeting for the gang leaders to talk to each other."

I expected her to accept that, but somehow she still wasn't satisfied, in fact, she looked confused now as well. Usually, I would love to shoot the shit with someone, but Squealer smelled seriously bad, and it was almost enough for me to overcome my fear of the ocean, I felt my stomach twist at the thought, almost.

"Yeah, but none of them think of us as equals in there." Squealer said annoyed, staring up at my mask. "They treat us like shit because you know."

Squealer jerked her head to the side as if I might somehow understand, but I absolutely didn’t know.

I didn't really keep up with any of the gang fightings. I was above all that crap, all I knew was that if anyone brought their fighting near my apartment I was going to start kicking everybody’s ass. So far nobody had tried anything, well nobody since String Theory anyway.

Fuck, I flinched at the thought that managed to sneak below my guard before I shook my head and plastered a shit-eating grin on my face, immediately falling back into old habits to bury the pain.

"Don't worry, Sweetheart," I said lecherously, leering at her through my mask. "Nobody at that table was my equal."

I puffed my chest out and strolled off like I was top shit.

“Get fucked, idiot.” Squealer laughed, before following after me.

Grue was still talking with Gregor the Snail and the two armored men, which were probably Coil's men. Aural and an albino dude that I have never seen before had joined their huddle now. Squealer caught up to me and was walking beside me as I approached the group. Purity was still talking to the other woman against the wall, but when I was level with the two of them, they peeled themselves off the wall and fell in step beside me.

We strode up to the main group with all of us walking in a line, looking like the bargain bin Avengers. The two armored men noticed our approach before they turned to partially face us, no doubt having read the same comic and struggling not to piss their pants.

"Squealer, Urchin, Purity, Night," Grue said calmly, darkness flaring around his helmet. "Any problems?"

Well, that explained who the unknown woman was. Coil had been the once to choose the team leaders for all of the other teams, and for whatever reason, everybody had listened to him. Although Kaiser had immediately proclaimed himself the leader of ‘Team 1’, but there seemed to be some dissent in the ranks over his leadership.

Faultline was the leader of ‘Team 2’, Grue was the assigned leader for our lovely little ‘Team 3’ while Hookwolf was the leader of Team 4. I wondered if this many villains had ever worked together outside of Endbringer attacks before, it was actually pretty cool.

"Nah," I said cheerfully. "Where do you want us, buddy?"

Grue relaxed a bit after that, I wondered if he thought I would try and contest his leadership? I wasn't that much of a dick, as long as the plan wasn't terrible I was content with following along. Purity turned towards me and seemed to hesitate, I looked down at her curiously but after a moment she just turned back to Grue and nodded without comment.

I noticed that the all-white guy was watching her quietly with a frown on his face.

Grue motioned everybody towards him and we all had a little huddle, the teamwork almost brought a tear to my eye.

"Our target is a warehouse two streets that way," Grue said calmly, pointing in the direction. "We don't know who is there, or what they are storing inside, just that it is one of the ABB's storehouses."

I had a look in the direction he was pointing, but there was a bunch of buildings in the way. I glanced up at the rooftop of the building in front of us before one of the soldiers spoke up. The man was almost as tall as me, which was pretty cool, however, he didn’t look like a stick figure, he had at least forty kilograms on me, he was an absolute mountain of muscle. The guy was covered head to toe in dark blue military gear, with a full helmet, a face mask, an armored vest with covered in pockets and a strange-looking rifle slung over his shoulder.

I immediately nicknamed him Tallboy in my head.

"The warehouse has three entrances, with two guys at each; carrying knives, and machete's but no guns visible." Tallboy rattled off calmly, "Plenty of windows, second story and above, they will see us coming from this side, the bottom floor has no windows at all."

The other soldier picked up where he left off, and I took a moment to study him as well. He was dressed much the same as Tallboy but was nowhere near as tall, he was, however, extremely stocky, like someone had dragged the wide slider all the way to max during character customization, he had a fire ax resting on his shoulder and a shotgun strapped in a holster on his leg.

I dubbed him Wideboy.

"Two Asian women at the corner of the next street; working girls, probably doubling as lookouts for the warehouse." Wideboy said cheerfully, "I suspect that if we came in from another direction, we'd run into more of them there as well."

Everyone mulled over the information for a bit, before Grue spoke up.

"We aren't going to bother with stealth, but we will be going non-lethal," Grue said firmly, making sure to meet everyone’s eyes. "Here's what we’re going to do."

Grue laid out the plan quickly and concisely, he definitely knew what he was doing, obviously having had some experience with planning out an offensive prior. It made me wonder who had come up with the stupid ‘rob the bank in broad daylight while right down the road from the Wards HQ’ plan.

It must have been one of the others that had thought up that little shit-show.

I wandered away from the group when Grue finished giving us our orders and prepared myself for the mission. Not that there was much to prepare though, so I smashed out some quick stretches and a couple of squats. I windmilled my arms like I was fighting a ten-year-old in glorious hand-to-hand combat, trying to loosen up my shoulders. We would be pairing up apparently, Grue would be working alongside Night, the formerly-but-recently-re-recruited member of the Empire Eighty-Eight. I wasn’t certain but I thought that Kayden might be trying to yoink her from Kaiser, I would have to ask her later.

While I hadn’t known who she was on sight alone, I had heard of Night before, and she had a very strange power. A conditional monster form, as long as no one was observing her, she could instantly turn into some crazy Cthulhu-looking-motherfucker.

My respect for Grue’s competence jumped up again, he was clearly trying to work some power synergy into the pairings. Grue's darkness, combined with Night's own tentacle-hentai form seemed as if they were almost made for each other, honestly, the two of them could probably solo anything short of Lung himself on their own.

The all-white guy was apparently called Alabaster, and also a part of the Empire, he was something approaching immortal, he would passively reset back to perfect health every 3 seconds, but apart from that, he was just a normal guy, albeit massively racist. Alabaster would be going in with Gregor the Snail, whose power was to create a variety of chemicals in his body and then shoot them at things, they would make a good team as Alabaster was essentially free to move through the big guy's attacks with impunity.

Purity would be working with Aural, which didn't really have any power synergy that I could see. Purity blew shit up with her kinetic light blasts while Aural was just an unstoppable, untouchable melee beast. Oh, I saw it now, it was a range/melee team.

I watched Grue for a minute, wondering if he played any video games.

The two soldiers were here as Coil's contribution to the war effort and would be acting out his orders via ear-piece radio’s. I was kind of annoyed that Coil didn't actually have to be here in person, I was kind of looking forward to hanging out with the dude, I guess he wasn't much of a fighter. I ended up spending a few minutes wondering what Coil’s power was, and I came no closer to answering the question this time than I had the other million times.

He was a Thinker of some sort, but that was all I knew.

The way the teams had been split left me dealing with Squealer, and that bath in the ocean was looking more appealing by the second. I was on stuck on babysitting duty I guess, Squealer was a tinker, with a specialization on making vehicles. Squealers own neurosis lent her to creating big ass ugly things, like her big ass truck that she couldn’t bring with her, not without alerting everyone in the god damned city to our location. Besides, most of the streets had roadblocks set up, which meant she had pretty much fuck-all combat potential for the mission.

I eyed her for a moment in thought, I wonder if she could make me a hover-board like Kid Wins? Or a pair of motorized rollerblades like that one anime? I slapped my fist down into my palm, getting excited by the idea. I could be zooming up fucking walls and shit, it would be amazing. I stared at her intently, wondering how I could get her to make me something.

I wonder if she would take money, or if I would have to threaten to beat the merchants up.

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I ran that thought over in my head for a moment, I was already stealing members from the other gangs, I could always poach her from the Merchants. I imagined a scale in my mind; with my super-powerful rollerblades on one side and the Merchants on the other. Squealer noticed me watching her and stared back in silent challenge.

I nodded in decision as the rollerblades won out.

“What?” Squealer demanded after I kept on staring.

"Do you have like, a gun or a taser or something?" I asked curiously, not giving the game away.

Surprisingly enough, she nodded.

"Yeah, I made a taser before I rocked up." Squealer said happily before she pulled it out of her filthy pants pocket.

A small black cylinder, prongs at the end with a surprisingly clean and stylish design.

"Looks pretty snazzy, I thought all your stuff looked like shit," I said thoughtfully.

Squealer crossed her arms and blew a breath out of her nose.

"My stuff doesn't look like shit, asshole." Squealer said annoyed. "I didn't have the time to make this look better."

I stared at her without comprehension, didn’t have time to make it look better? Did Squealer have rocks in her head? It looked fine the way it was, anything she did to it now would ruin it entirely.

"You make everything look like shit on purpose?" I said bemused. "Are you retarded?"

Squealer waved the taser in my direction threateningly, and I moved back out of range with a startled laugh.

"It doesn't look like shit," Squealer defended furiously, "Dickhead!"

"No, you," I said obnoxiously, before poking my tongue out at her.

I spun on my heel, heading further into the alleyway, Squealer stomped after me muttering under her breath.

I took the long way onto the roof, trying to think about how to best convince her to do my bidding. I had to yank hard on the fire escape ladder in order to get it to unfurl, but I managed, and Squealer followed me up to the roof without issue. I stuck a finger under my mask and scratched my chin as I walked over to the edge of the roof. I had a look around and quickly spotted the warehouse, we would have to cross another street to get to it, it wasn’t really an obstacle with my power. Squealer stepped up beside me and I shuffled out of her tasers reach, just in case.

I nodded to myself as I figured out a workable plan and turned to face Squealer.

"Make me a hoverboard," I demanded.

Squealer turned to face me eyebrows narrowed together in annoyance.

"Why would I make you anything, dickhead?" Squealer said mockingly.

I frowned, my plan hadn’t covered this impossible turn of events, the negotiations seemed to have taken a turn for the worst.

"Because I asked you too!" I said obviously.

I was already dreaming of boosting around the city like a maniac. Squealer huffed before stuffing her hands back into her pockets, her expression was a mixture of annoyance and amusement, I spoke before she could respond.

"When you make it, don't make it look shit." I insisted quickly. "Make it look cool like the taser, you know?"

Squealer's amusement quickly turned to fury and she took an aggressive step forward. She yanked the taser out of her pocket and took a swipe at me with it that I had to hop back to avoid.

"Fuck you!” Squealer snarled, “How about I make you a taser and then shove it up your fucking ass!"

"I bet you don't even know how to make a hoverboard!" I taunted, doing my best to add fuel to the dumpster fire that was her temper. "You're just scared!"

Squealer scowled at me.

"Which is it dickhead? I'm scared or I don't know how to make it?" Squealer said nastily, ripping my argument apart without mercy. "I'm not falling for that crap!"

Shit. My arguments were being defeated by a druggie, I was better than this dammit! I would have to step up my game and hit her with something really special.

"Make me a hoverboard or I’ll kick your ass!" I said triumphantly, "How about that you fuck-knuckle!"

Squealer tried to punch me in the face with her other hand, but I ducked backward away from it. I started making aggressive Kung-Fu poses at her from a few feet away, but she wasn't intimidated at all, not even when I added sound effects.

"You're the fuck-knuckle!" Squealer howled angrily, "You fuck-knuckle!"

I gaped at her, unable to believe she would just steal my word.

“Good job!” I said mockingly, “You took my joke and said it back to me!”

Squealer made an incoherent noise of frustration and swung the taser at me again. I snatched up her forearm with a wire and then quickly disarmed her. Squealer backed up in a panic as I started to jab the taser at her like it was a spear, she tried to leap back out of my range but tripped on the edge of the roof instead.

I had to catch her with more wires before she fell off entirely

"Nice one, idiot!" I laughed.

Squealer thrashed in rage for a moment before she abruptly gave up, and then she gave me the finger. How childish.

I started to say something, but my phone suddenly dinged, it was time to go. I dropped off the roof immediately and brought Squealer with me, catching us both in the air before flashing over the street to the top of the next building. We passed over it and then dove straight down to the ground on the other side. Squealer's name suddenly made a lot of sense, I put us both gently on the ground and retracted the wires keeping her tied up. I tossed her back the taser and Squealer looked angry when she took it, but she didn’t make any move to attack.

I strode forward towards the warehouse, ready to begin.

"Hey! Why are we just walking straight up!" Squealer said worriedly but kept following after me. "What if they have guns or some-shit!"

I tilted my head at her tone of voice, I guess guns could be pretty scary when you didn’t have superpowers related to actual combat, I could understand where she was coming from.

"Imagine being scared by a gun." I teased, instead. "You call yourself a villain, Squealer. Maybe you should go get a job in retail instead."

Squealers unease vanished and her face turned furious once more, she was scared anymore at least, so I considered it a job well done. I made sure to stay out of her range though, just in case she did try and zap me. I had sent a bunch of microwires ahead of us and they came down around the guards that were blocking our entrance to the warehouse.

The two men spotted us, one immediately pulled out a knife just as my wires suddenly grew thick, multiplying a thousand-fold around them. I tied them up and left them on the ground by the door, I kind of felt bad for them, but life was unfair.

Squealer rushed forward to zap one of the guys with her taser and I had to break my connection to the wire to avoid getting shocked as well

"I'm shocked," I said sadly, “Truly shocked that you would do this to me."

Squealer just huffed before leaning down and zapping the other guy as well. The sound of gunfire and shouting came from the other side of the building, which was a decent indicator that everyone else had started the assault. I snuck a bunch of wires underneath the door and more into the gaps around the sides before tearing it clean out of the wall.

I sent the door through the opening ahead of me before stepping over the guys on the ground and over the threshold. A guy to the left of the door immediately tried to stab me in the face so I whacked him in the face with the door, he fell back onto his ass and I pinned him to the ground with the door, he thrashed around in panic as Squealer ran over to zap him too.

It was absolute chaos inside the warehouse, gang-members were running away from a spreading cloud of darkness that was slowly rolling across the width of the building. I could see a patch of the wall across from us sizzling and melting, Alabaster and Gregor the Snail stepped through the new hole a moment later. I turned my attention back to the guy that was coming at us from the right, idly tripping him over, Squealer bent down dutifully to give him a zap.

I frowned in thought.

"Hey, that's not lethal right?" I asked seriously.

"Of course it isn’t, I don’t want to kill anyone!" Squealer said defensively, looking rather upset at the accusation.

"Sorry, sorry," I said honestly, as I snatched up another guy that was running across the scaffolding above us.

I dropped him next to her and Squealer poked him obligingly, accepting the apology.

I looked around the room, vaguely disappointed. This kind of sucked, it was just a bunch of normies, and they were all getting destroyed easily. There was no Lung, Bakuda, or Oni Lee in sight, hell I would have settled for a crack at Uber and Leet. I wonder if any of the other teams had done any better.

I tripped a guy who was trying to get out of the darkness, and the dude screamed as he desperately crawled away from it, he looked back in horror as the cloud covered one of his legs, and then he was suddenly yanked back into it.

Yikes, I started moving away from the cloud, Night was fucking scary.

I spotted Aural and Purity eventually. Purity had been blowing up the upper floors and terrorizing everyone inside, forcing them to go down into the bottom floor to get away from her, and I could see her brightly glowing form lighting up the stairwell.

Aural walked down the stairs casually stepping under a guy’s machete swing with ease, she reached down and stabbed him in the foot, causing the guy to immediately dropped his weapon in pain. Aural took another two steps past him as another guy suddenly pulled out a gun and shot at her three times.

Aural moved suddenly slicing the air in front of her three times with blurring speed and sparks flashed in the air as she deflected them away from her. I had reacted as soon I saw the gun and lashed a wire around the man’s arm before snapping it ruthlessly, the gun dropped from his hand with a shout of pain.

Aural smiled down at us pleasantly before she continued on unhindered, I stared after her with my heart racing in my chest, that was both the coolest and scariest thing I had ever seen. I turned to Squealer to see her reaction, but she wasn't even looking in that direction.

I swallowed and tried to tamp down on the adrenaline that spiked through me at the sight of the gun.

The last remaining gang-member up on the catwalk took off running away from Aural yelling at the top of his lungs, the man reached the railing and leaped straight off before landing on the ground with a crunch. The man’s yelling cut off a few moments later when Squealer walked over and zapped him.

All the gang members had been subdued, there were no hostages, no bombs, and no capes, how disappointing, I had barely got to do anything at all. Grue strode out of his cloud of darkness before tasking everybody with dragging all of the unconscious people into a pile and securing them.

Once they were tied up we searched through the warehouse for any valuables, there were a bunch of crates on Gregor's side of the warehouse, all nailed shut. I tore a lid off one and had a look inside, it was filled with clear plastic bags the contents of the bags were all green. I didn't know fuck all about drugs, but this was probably weed. I cracked open a few more crates, but they were all the same.

"We get to keep this right?" Squealer asked with wide eyes.

I shrugged, if she staked a claim on some, I doubt anybody would fight her too hard over it.

"I would guess we are splitting whatever we find with everyone here," I said uncaring.

I had never used drugs before and I had never really felt like trying. I would probably just give my portion to Kayden or something, she might be able to sell it.

Wait a fucking minute.

"I'll give you my share if you make me a hoverboard!" I declared victoriously. "or a pair fucking motorized roller-blades like that one anime!"

Squealer hesitated for a moment, looking very torn.

"I’ll even go find anything you need to make them." I offered, trying to sweeten the deal.

Squealer still held her silence.

What the hell man? Why was she so against making me something, it was pissing me off, to be honest, she clearly wanted my share of the loot so why couldn’t she? Maybe she couldn't make it after all?

“No.” Squealer said finally, before turning away.

"Are you kidding me?" I said annoyed, "Why the hell not?"

I never got to hear her response, because Grue strode over to take a look in the crate.

"That is a lot of weed," Grue said surprised, before calling everyone over.

The others started to reappear, bringing whatever valuables they had found, and our pile of stolen loot slowly grew higher.

"How are we going to split it?" Alabaster said seriously.

We debated it for a while, discussing who wanted what and how it could be divided to allow everyone a roughly equal share, no one was really happy in the end, but nobody felt slighted either. Everyone got something, including the two soldiers, Squealer got the two crates of drugs that she wanted, I also picked two up, I was going to keep on trying to bribe her. Purity took another crate along with some of the cash, I didn't bother tracking what everyone else got. I offered to help ferry people’s hordes wherever they wanted, but surprisingly nobody wanted my help.

Ungrateful bastards.

Once we had all the loot out and ready for transport, we called in the warehouse's location to the authorities so they could come to clean up after us. We told them we had taken down an ABB base and to come to arrest all the asshole's tied up inside before we high tailed it out of there before the police arrived.