Merely a few hours later once they crushed the final remaining group of pirates (some of them still fled, but those were now scattered, leaderless and disorganized) and could officially consider themselves to be in control of a reasonable base of operations, Decay found Something.
Something incredibly important. Something beyond the worldly term of ‘valuable’. Something that could as well change their future.
Commodore Veenstra’s surprisingly big alcohol cabinet.
Revenant says ‘cabinet’ but it was more of a personal alcohol cellar. A variety of alcohols, most of them reasonably valuable. Someone clearly liked to drink big (but not too big, so no ‘alcohol so valuable that you could buy a combat vehicle for its price’).
He then announced ‘the mandatory alcohol-fueled party bonding experience’. Revenant initially wanted to say ‘no’, but Onslaught immediately announced that she never got drunk in her life and she is changing that right now. Or fucking else.
Revenant fears Onslaught’s ‘or else’.
Not literally of course, he just thinks that it’s nice when she isn’t angry at him (not like she could be seriously angry at him, but even when she pretends to be, he prefers it to be as short as possible).
This sudden development led to the entire group gathering around a square table in the central hall of what used to be Ball Python’s officers quarters, filled with a substantial amount of alcohol.
When prompted, Humility hacked the intercom in the room to play a selection of music from the ship’s entertainment database. Not loud enough to interrupt the talk, but just loud enough to set up a nicer atmosphere. How very nice of the AI.
On one edge of the table sat Revenant and, of course, Onslaught. There was no prying her off him, and he wasn’t even going to try. Besides, that offered him an option to put alcohol away from her grasp once it became clear that she had enough of it.
To his left sat Decay and, behind him, Singularity. Decay, like the ultimate heretic he was, has brought them all a bunch of expensive alcohol just to put several six-packs of beer he stole from the ship’s mess hall right in front of him. Singularity was, apparently, into beer herself.
Nice of her to have something resembling preferences that don’t sum up to ‘whatever you tell me to be into’.
Behind them, Virtue and - to the surprise of absolutely everyone, Thorn. Although to be honest, Thorn turned out to be an even bigger heretic than Decay and showed up with carbonated drinks.
And, finally, to his left side, Clockmaker and Humility. This, naturally, begets a question.
“Wait, you can drink alcohol?” Clockmaker asks immediately once Humility sits down. Naturally, she wants to know more about her robofriend’s body.
“Technically, yes.” Humility replies. “But through a straw, which I personally consider to be a heretical form of alcohol consumption in a party setting. Like with sex, this body simulates an appropriate feedback, although I could technically achieve the same without consuming actual alcohol.”
Their AI had more of a clue about social cues than Decay, who would have thought? Or, more like, was there anyone who was actually surprised by it?
“Okay, so now that we’re all sitting down, there is a correct order of business to it.” Onslaught announces. “Namely, gimme. I wanna get drunk sooo much.”
“Decay, sharing is caring.” Revenant announces while gesturing at him to give something to him. Decay understands him without any further word and throws one of his beer cans at him.
Revenant then puts it in Onslaught’s hand.
“... that’s beer.” His girlfriend then says, on her face a clear shock born out of betrayal of unimaginable magnitude. “You put several bottles of expensive alcohol on the table and then you give me beer?! And just one, too?!”
Revenant would have given her one of Thorn’s carbonated drinks, but she would realize the deception.
“You weigh about 50 kilograms, you’ve never drunk alcohol before and this beer has apparently a 15% alcohol content.” Revenant replies. “You’ll probably get royally drunk just with that one can, so drink it slowly, please.”
“No fair!” She says before pouting at him. It doesn’t provoke any reaction, so she stops pouting at him after a few seconds. “C’mon, we’re celebrating a victory! I deserve to let loose a little. And besides, you’re not my dad.”
“Yes, I’m not Destro.” Revenant admits. Seriously, what sort of SSS-Rank supervillain gets his villain name out of some old toy brand? Sure, it also had some fairly popular comic books to make it more recognizable, but… “But I do remember him almost crying out of joy when I asked him officially for permission to date and, eventually, marry his daughter and telling me that he’s happy to relay the ‘job’ of being there for you to someone as dutiful, kind and helpful as I am. So, I’m invoking this right now and thus am officially your provisional dad for the duration of this party.”
“Mmmm, forgive me daddy…” Onslaught says, immediately proving his dawning suspicions correct. On her face, a shit-eating grin. “... for I’m going to be naughty.”
Revenant sighs. Painfully. She is a spoiled little princess, but this is actually something that he likes. It’s heartwarming. And, besides, it’s actually rather funny, even if he isn’t showing it outwardly.
“Awww, aren’t you two adorable!” Surprisingly enough, it’s Clockmaker who says that, the woman lying over the table, supporting her head with her arms and looking at them with a smile.
“Mm-hmm.” Virtue adds from her seat. Her eyes are on the large glass in her hand, and the small amount of reddish liquid in it. She is moving it around, obviously appraising the wine’s consistency and color.
Wait.
“When did you get the wine out?” Revenant asks. Because, Onslaught’s antics aside, he just didn’t notice it happening.
“A moment ago, under my Invisibility Cloak.” Virtue replies, her eyes still on the wine. “This is actually good wine, and knowing you and your barbarian ways, you would just chug it down as if it was, god save us all, beer.” She decides to finally drink the admittedly minuscule amount of wine from her glass, while clearly savoring the taste. “Oh. A really good one. Looks like the winemaking industry is doing well.”
“There are at least several thousands inhabited Earth-like planets in the Human Space.” Humility replies. “If you count ‘breathable atmosphere but not exactly Earth-like’, the number goes up several times. Most of them had anywhere from one popular form of alcohol to about as many as Earth used to have in your times. Lots of that is wine. ‘Doing well’ is one way of referring to ‘nigh-endless bountifulness’.”
Virtue actually whistles loudly at that. If Decay found his personal heaven in modern videogames, she just found her personal heaven in the world of expensive alcohol. Good for her.
Revenant sighs, and checks the nearest bottle.
Vodka. Polish one. The distributor didn’t bother to write anything in languages that weren’t Polish, thankfully he is a bit of a polyglot. He has no idea who ‘Józef Dunecki’ is/was, but it seems that the penchant for a lot of slavic high-percentage alcohol to be named after historical figures is still on.
Truly, a minor detail to see that something from their old world survived the passage of time.
He opens it up and pours himself some of it. Decay decides to address the subject, the man giving him an odd look over the opened can of beer.
“Vodka?” He asks. “Not whiskey?” Right, there was a bottle of whiskey right next to a one-liter bottle of Józef Dunecki’s.
“Do you see any ice around us?” Revenant replies dryly. “I don’t drink whiskey without it.”
He empties the small glass in one go, before rinsing his throat with some fruit juice. Why did Decay think to prepare it, but not about ice? What a betrayal.
The vodka burns nicely. Quality alcohol, no doubt. Say what you want about Commodore Veenstra - she had a decent taste in alcohol. That or, well, she pillaged the expensive looking one to appear as if she had a decent taste.
“Oh, right.” Decay facepalms. “I forgot what a goddamn snob you were. You remember Black Knight and the infamous party? You know, the one after New Orleans?”
Sigh, he’s really going to bring it up?
“I was at that party, but I don't remember anything particularly weird about it.” Virtue comments, squinting at Decay over the table. “What did I miss?”
“Yeah, it was before the party itself.” Decay replies with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Revenant grabbed me and Black Knight for a visit in some gourmet fucking shop with one million brands of whiskey, we were picking the alcohol for the party. All of us in our civilian identities. Black Knight asked a shop worker for advice. That person was like going on and on about all the types of whiskey, how to pick the best type of it, what sort of food it goes best with… and then Revenant’s head just pops up from behind a shelf and with eyes of the dead man he says, and I quote: ‘don’t waste your time, he drinks whiskey with coca cola’.”
Virtue almost spits some wine out, in a burst of unexpected laughter. Decay tries to simultaneously speak while cackling loudly.
“You-you have never…pfft… saw a man this betrayed!” He manages to say, somehow making Virtue laugh even harder. By now even Onslaught is giggling. “He just went ‘oh’ and left Black Knight there.”
Revenant sighs, before drinking some more vodka. He was just trying to stop an actually good whiskey from being wasted on a heathen, and that’s what he gets. Even Thorn has a smirk of barely restrained laughter on her face.
“I have a feeling that I should retaliate appropriately.” He then replies, once the laughter dies down a little. “Because I don’t enjoy being the butt…”
“I do.” Onslaught comments from the side, with a perfectly straight face.
“... of the joke.” He ignores the interruption entirely. “But I have a problem finding something to drag into the light to have fun about Decay, because there are just too many things to choose from.”
“Fuck you, boss.” Decay grumbles back. “First I don’t get my waifu, and now this?! My friendship with you has ended, now Onslaught’s my best friend.”
“No quoting old memes on me.” Revenant points his finger at him. “Also…”
“I’ve heard her being referred to so many times, that I’m actually curious about it.” Humility decides to interrupt. “He actually has a wife? As in, a 3D wife? Not a highly convincing electronic personality ersatz to visit in Full Immersion VR?”
“Shocking, am I right?” Revenant replies calmly, Decay flipping him the bird over the table. “But no, he has a wife. Goes by the villain name of Steelfang. An actual, living wife. And…”
“And she is the kindest, nicest, cutest and most beautiful girl in the whole world.” Decay announces with dreamy eyes. “So innocent, and patient, and kind and romantic and…”
…
“Wait, are we talking about the same girl whose reaction to one of Littlebit’s elite mooks threatening you was to gouge his eye out with a spoon?” Thorn decides to interrupt the strain of compliments.
“Yes?” Decay replies, clearly confused why she was saying it in a way suggesting that it wasn’t perfectly compatible with his list of compliments.
Oh!
“Actually, I think I know how to retaliate now.” Revenant announces with a wry smile on his face. “Let me tell you a story about the day when I discovered that Decay has a massive crush on Steelfang.”
“Boss, no!” Decay tries to stop the inevitable. Fool.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“It was soon after Archvile’s death.” Revenant ignores him. “Everyone was trying to locate and pillage Villain Academy’s facilities, it was like dungeon crawling except other dungeon crawlers were the biggest threat… typically. We were a part of it, namely me, Judgment and Nemesis and the handful of people that were going to form the backbone of our villain organizations. We had an advantage over most of the crawlers thanks to Nemesis stealing the full list of VA’s facilities, bank accounts and so on from Archvile right before his death.”
Archvile was keeping it on a pendrive that he kept on a necklace hanging off his neck at all times. He even made the pendrive waterproof to avoid having to take it off while he showered. A backup database in case of his natural memory failing him.
How exactly did Nemesis do it? Revenant never found out. Then again, that man quickly became the most infamous thief in the United States, stealing the empire from the demon lord himself was just par for the course.
“We ended up assaulting the secret facility of the Doctor, the infamous mad scientist and pretty much Archvile’s left hand.” Revenant continues. “Only to discover that Starscream, his right hand, was there too. Trying to regroup after their boss’ death, to save as much from his collapsing organization as possible. So, Judgment was fighting Starscream in the background, Nemesis was busy being the sort of semi-hilarious murder clown that would make Aeldari harlequins from Warhammer 40k think ‘one of us’, all while chasing Doctor through his laboratory with clear intent to murder him. I, in the meantime, was dealing with the enemy reinforcements.”
Decay is visibly shrinking in his seat. Good. Suffer.
“It’s going quite nice, we were holding them back and waiting for Judgment or Nemesis to finish up and help us.” Revenant continues the tale. “Steelfang got into a melee with some elite mook that tackled her down, but she managed to kick his gun and the knife out of his hands and got him into a rear triangle choke on the ground. So you know, holding his arm with her arms while choking him with her legs and thighs.”
Everyone’s listening to him intently. It’s… nice. Perhaps especially because it makes Decay suffer some more.
“I’m shooting at some elite mooks, then Decay runs past me towards them, notices Steelfang and then just freezes there.” Revenant is almost at the punchline. He takes a deeper breath to be sure that he can deliver properly. “And then, in the middle of a fierce firefight, he says the words. ‘God I wish that was me.’”
Explosion of laughter throughout the table. Especially from Onslaught and Clockmaker, although Virtue - and even Thorn - are barely quieter. Decay looks horrified by being so exposed.
“How could you do that to me?!” He wails. “I thought we were like brothers!”
“Counterargument.” Revenant glances at him. “I got shot while pushing your lovestruck ass behind the cover because one of the enemy mooks was about to shoot you dead. Which is why being a dumbass in the middle of a fight is typically a bad idea.”
“Oh.” Decay scratches his head, suddenly much calmer. “Okay, you know what, fine. That’s a valid reason to betray me like that. But weren’t you, like, used to it? I mean, you got shot so many times that Overhaul of all people developed a sense of humor and made you a custom loyalty card for their underground hospital.”
Oh, right. That happened.
“Yeah, I think that it was just the Author trying to artificially inflate the tension by making it clear that it was so damn close this time by having me get shot.” Revenant replies. “Until it started to get repetitive, so it stopped. And I instead started to get near-death moments with individualities.”
“Either way, you’re just salty that you didn’t get any action.” Decay decides to strike back. “And I, your nerdy asocial brother, did.”
“Yeah, right, keep dreaming.” Revenant shoots back. “I have absolutely no issue with that, and I’m actually happy for you. I…”
Onslaught suddenly throws her arms around his head, before looking towards his face with a bright smile. Her skin is slightly red now. Uh-oh.
He grabs her now abandoned beer with his free hand. Half-empty. Uh-oh. When did that happen?
“You know, I don’t want to sound pushy, Revy…” She says with her smile suddenly growing wider. Thus, she immediately made him realize that whatever’s coming, it’s going to be very pushy. And intentionally so. “... but if you press me against the wall and pound me until your legs give in, Decay will no longer have an advantage over you on that field. You know, just saying.”
Should he be surprised that Virtue almost choked on her wine when the words came? Probably not.
“Your subtlety has been an inspiration to us all, Oni.” Revenant replies, while patting her head with his left hand… while grabbing her beer with his right hand. “But that’s enough alcohol for you.”
She realized what was happening a bit too late, her desperate lunge after her beer ending with the table shaking and three bottles overturned. Thankfully, none of them were opened, a great stroke of luck.
“Hey!” She is clearly angry now. “Give me back my new best friend!”
“Absolutely not.” Revenant replies steadfastly. “You’ve gotten drunk with half of the can, if you drink the rest of it you’re going to be so drunk that you’ll end up not remembering most of this evening. You want that?”
Now, she reconsiders.
“Alright, fine.” She pouts a little. “Thorn, can I get some of your fizzy drinks?” Virtue quickly delivers two cans to her with one of her floating platforms. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.” Thorn nods. Her attempts to get drunk with clearly non-alcoholic drinks aren’t working well, but she’s at least trying.
Not the most social out of them. Typically avoided parties like a plague. The fact that she’s actually with them, even if in the background, says a lot.
Onslaught was being a bit… childish. Somewhat innocent, just not in that particular way (then again, she was all bark no bite in terms of sex, even if she wanted to change that as soon as possible). It was… refreshing?
“So, excuse me for asking, since I can’t help but suspect that it will sour a mood a bit, but I’m curious.” Humility decides to speak then. “But what exactly was the Villain Academy? I heard it mentioned a few times, just without any details.”
Revenant’s face stays perfectly still. So perfectly still that even for someone like him, it’s… out-of-character. Decay, in the meantime, growls.
“That’s what happens when you try to drink with a genocidal AI, I guess.” He then adds. “It doesn’t get the memo about being sensitive.” That’s one way of saying it. Humility is clearly unfazed by it, or just good at hiding that.
“Exactly what it says on the tin, Humility.” Revenant replies. “Villain Academy was exactly what the name implies. Archvile’s powerful villain production scheme. He grabbed young and prospective villains from numerous sources, then gave them training. Combat skills, individuality training, a lot of other things, pretty much a customized curriculum taking your talents and individuality into an account. Once they graduated, they were allowed to join one of the many villainous organizations of the United States, that in turn were paying Archvile for his… services, in order to maintain access to the steady flow of young but extremely well-trained villain lieutenants.”
“Facilities that most hero schools would kill for.” Decay grumbles. “Lots of specialized classrooms for all the specialized classes. Like, say, the White Room.”
“Don’t.” Revenant cuts back. The atmosphere has already changed a lot, everyone’s now listening intently. Even people from their world. Aside from Decay and Singularity, no one here was a Villain Academy graduate, and the government buried the whole thing after Archvile’s death.
“What was…“ Onslaught asks after a few seconds of silence. “... the White Room?” Because of course she was curious about it. Judging from the look on her face, she knows that she won’t like the answer, but… he was involved with it. So she wants to know.
“One of those ‘specialized classrooms’ in one of the Villain Academy facilities.” Revenant replies while pouring himself another dose of vodka. He is going to need it. “The one holding the ‘Pain Tolerance’ classes.” One of the many euphemisms that Archvile loved so much.
“Pain Tol…” Onslaught stares at him (well, in his direction) in horror now. “You mean they…”
“They gave you two or three paragraphs of a random text to memorize, then had you recite it during the beating.” Revenant replies. “Later on, things got more creative. And practical. Covered both being able to fight while injured and resisting tortures. He also had someone with an individuality that could save one’s physical state and then load it back afterwards, meaning that they could do everything aside from killing you, and you would still be able to walk out of the room on your own, uninjured. Aside from, you know, the injuries in the head. “He sighs painfully. “I really don’t want to talk about this, and I don’t think that Decay has a different opinion on it.”
Decay nods his agreement.
“Why didn’t you tell us?!” Onslaught is… horrified. Her daddy kept her sheltered from the nasty things and, to be fully honest, even her dad had no clue about any of that. “We would have… we would have tried to help you more, I mean, like…”
He hugs her back, letting his chin rest on the top of her head. She hugs him too, with all the strength she has. Without her individuality on, it’s not much, but it’s the thought that counts.
“You’ve helped me enough, Oni.” He replies. For a moment, he doesn’t exactly remember that they have a company. “Your dad helped me get away from Archvile in body, you helped me get away from him in mind. I just didn’t want to soil your smile by telling you about all of that.”
Having nightmares about Archvile showing up in his bedroom in New Liberty to tell him that now that he is out of it, he is here to take Onslaught to take his place was bad enough. And no, he isn’t telling her about it. She would just be horrified even more about missing all of that.
No wonder he broke so much after losing them all, didn’t he?
“That son of a…” Virtue ends up speaking in the background, reminding him that he has company. Even Clockmaker looks like she wasn’t exactly comfortable with the subject. Thorn in the meantime is just downright pale. “Why the hell was this kept secret?! Why didn't the Government…”
She seems to have broken the glass by squeezing it too strongly with her hand. Revenant isn’t sure if she has yet noticed it. Yeah. Heroes. Even the former ones.
“Because then the heroes would start kicking the bucket due to seeing the Villain Academy graduates as tragic victims instead of monsters to be stopped at all costs.” Revenant cuts in. He actually agrees with the Government’s logic there. “The VA typically recruited people that already were villains. People that were asked if they wanted to become a much more dangerous villain, regardless of what it takes, and said yes. Aside from outliers like Singularity, those people weren’t poor victims that you seem to see them as. Even if you count in edge cases like me and Decay, most of them actively wanted to be there.”
Even he said yes. Though Archvile forgot to mention a lot of the things that were written in a fine print.
Getting consent was probably not necessary (just ask Singularity). But it sure as hell made it easier to gaslight the students into believing that they agreed to all of what was happening to them.
“All the ‘increasingly autocratic and tyrannical measures’ that the Government was introducing, the ones that made the Liberty Party and the PLF stage the First Villain War?” Revenant continues. “It was all because Archvile was producing so many villains that the Government realized that they’ll either find a way to kill him as soon as possible or the country’s done for. And they even nuked New Liberty because that asshole tricked Destro into an alliance with him, once again omitting all the fine print. And since the war was over and the PLF practically won against the heroes, they panicked that it meant Archvile winning and dropped a nuke in a desperate hope that Archvile was actually there at the time or that they’d at least tilt the war in their favor.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Onslaught is now clearly torn between so many conflicting emotions that she doesn’t know how to process them all. She actually pulls back a little from the hug. “Are you… defending the asshole that killed me and almost my entire family save for you and Hypothermia, and probably got reelected out of it?”
“He wasn’t.” Revenant replies, the vodka temporarily forgotten. “Less than five minutes after the nuke fell, President Henderson took a gun from one of the Secret Service agents and shot himself in the head. Right in the middle of the Oval Office.” He sighs. “Apparently, no American politician should be allowed to live after nuking American citizens, no matter the reason, no matter how necessary it was. First Villain War, in the end, was just Archvile manipulating two groups of decent people into killing each other and leaving the world worse off.”
She did it, didn’t she? Her persistence paid off. His ‘this all wasn’t real’ idea is… just no longer there. He has no idea how to feel about thinking that in some way it did happen.
“What happened to him?” Onslaught asks. There is something rather terrifying on her face, and he doesn’t like seeing it there.
“Managed to survive for about six hours after that.” Revenant replies. “Then Invincible staged an assault against his facility, while getting it under teleportation lockdown so that he couldn’t escape. Apparently, it was all done in such perfect secrecy to avoid leaks that were plaguing anti-Archvile operations that even the Government didn’t know how close he was to cornering it.”
Irony. If the president waited for six more hours, none of that would have happened. Is it surprising that Revenant hates the Author sooo much?
“Archvile wanted to confront the Invincible with Judgment and Nemesis, his two children.” Revenant continues narrating the story. “I say children, but they were more like pet projects for him. And yes, he had them graduate from his little Academy. But he failed to realize that we were pretty close, and… I managed to persuade them that they are being used, so they left their father to die.”
There was more to that, but… he just doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Invincible might have been our world’s little Superman Archetype, but it didn’t stop him from snapping Archvile’s neck without saying a single word to him.” Revenant continues. “The fact that he took his wife and child away from him probably not helping Archvile’s chances. Invincible then had his identity confirmed beyond any doubt, had the corpse actually exorcised just in case all that evil of his was out of demonic possession, and yes I love the little personal touch, and then had it incinerated, the ashes packed up, send into orbit and dispersed somewhere in the void between Earth and Mars.” He chuckles bitterly. “He really learned the lesson from all the superhero comic books where the bad guys keep coming back.”
“And what was his individuality?” Humility asks. Ah, it noticed that he was omitting this subject. Well, it’s not like he can keep hiding it, especially if their numbers keep growing. There were enough people who knew about it, and he couldn't keep them all in line.
“Bestowal.” Revenant replies with its name. “Ability to grant individualities to other people.”
Using such a power to find potential school shooters (yes, that actually happened, and more than once) on the internet, and then give them the individuality to actually kill their classmates so that they would burn the bridges behind them… before offering them to join the Villain Academy? And practically changing that into a business? While calling yourself ‘Archvile’? And your sole villainous motivation being ‘I figured out that using it to achieve world peace would be just so damn booring, so I decided to spice the world up a little’ (yes, Revenant asked)?
Yeah, no wonder Invincible had his corpse exorcized just in case. Revenant would have suspicions of this nature too.
Humility doesn’t reply, instead it shoves a straw into the nearest bottle of vodka and starts chugging it down. Imagining the results of transhumans getting Archvile out for themselves? Yeah, he would probably have nightmares about it too.
“Let’s just get back to drinking, please.” Revenant says, while raising his own glass of vodka. “And, hopefully, change the subject to something brighter. We want that party to be nice, right?”
Thorn just sighs and has Virtue pour her some of the wine, to the former superhero’s clear surprise. Looks like fizzy drinks don’t cut it after revelations of this nature.