Super Sales on Super heroes 4 -CH9 (Patreon)

Chapter 9 - Under the Radar -

Yawning, Felix gave himself a small shake. Even though he’d woke up ten minutes ago, he still felt like he was asleep.

“You only got two hours of sleep. It’s no surprise,” murmured Goldie from his side. She was learning how to clean and dress an animal from Faith.

She’d brought in a rather large deer for everyone. Apparently she wasn’t quite pleased with them eating all the preserved food they’d taken from the camping store.

That they needed “fresh, red meat” to truly operate at full efficiency.

Felix couldn’t argue the logic considering that Humans had evolved from omnivores. They had the teeth required to take care of whatever they found.

Eat anything and everything.

“Feels like I only got like… ten minutes,” Felix grumbled, peering at the distant horizon. The sun hadn’t risen yet but it was starting to push out rays of light ahead of itself.

Miu and Andrea were currently working at breakfast. The former cooking some of the deer that Faith had hacked off expertly.

The latter was of course, doing what she would always if given the chance.

“Mmmm! Pancakes!” declared Andrea, chewing energetically on a pancake even as she made more. As always, it was a wonder to watch her work.

The two Other Andreas with her were on watch right now. Moving about through the woods surrounding their camp.

“Pan-Cakes. Pan-Cakes. Pan-Cakes,” emphasized Andrea, bouncing her hips from side to side with each broken word. Then she suddenly looked up and smiled at him.

She lifted the hand that held her spatula and gave him a little wave with it.

“I love you, Dearlove!” stated Andrea around a mouthful of pancake. Only to immediately go back to chanting what might as well have been her theme song while watching her cooking.

Dearlove? That’s a new one.

Must be an Allison thing.

Still haven’t seen her or an Other of her yet. She must still be consolidating inside of Andrea for now. That’d make sense.

“Love you too, Andrea, Allison,” mumbled Felix, followed by another yawn. “Ergh. Alright… shall we start this? We need to talk about where we are, where we’re going, then get moving to tasks.”

“Nn! So exciting!” replied Andrea, flipping over the pancake she’d been working on and setting down her spatula. It looked like she was about to judge it finished. “You know, I never thought I’d say it, but I missed being in these meetings. I feel like pulling back from you as far as I did was the wrong thing to do.

“I just let Felicity in by doing that and didn’t see you as much. I was so terrified of losing what I had, that I practically gave it all way.”

Well. That… that’s far more insightful from her than I expected.

Maybe it really is Allison and—

“Pancake!” screeched Andrea happily and then flicked the skillet up with her right hand. With her left hand she slapped the breakfast food out of the air with a plate, then held it over to Miu.

Who promptly took it and dumped a portion of the sizzling deer meat onto it, then brought it over to Felix with a plastic knife and fork.

Before Miu had even made it to him, Andrea had already started on another pancake.

No. No.

That’s… that’s Andrea.

“Glad to hear it. Thank you, Miu,” thanked Felix, making sure to make firm and steady eye contact with Miu. He’d rewarded her by taking control, just as he promised, despite the fact that she technically didn’t need it now. It seemed she enjoyed it as it’s own thing now.

A shivering smile blossomed on Miu’s face as she held his gaze for several seconds. Her eyes skittering away from him only to shoot back to him and remain.

Giving her a smile he slowly pulled his eyes off Miu. Giving her a chance to retreat from the attention.

“Ready,” Goldie said, coming over to stand beside him. “Thank you, Faith. That was very informative. I usually just ate everything raw. Human, deer, cow, it didn’t matter.”

“Of course, not a problem. And I’m ready as well,” murmured Faith as she leaned down over Felix’s shoulder and kissed his cheek, before taking a seat in the grass.

Felix tore the pancake in half and then took a bite out of it. He wasn’t going to waste time and try to talk between bites. These were all women who’d been through hell and back in their own way.

He didn’t need to stand on etiquette with them, thankfully.

“We’re moving ahead with the dealers. We have four that will work with us. The fifth decided he’d rather go it alone,” started Felix as he chewed. “We won’t worry about him and he doesn’t concern us.

“The others will be fine for our starting point. We’ll use them to get our funding and points for other things. When we can break away, we will.

“I’d much rather get into money laundering, corporate criminal enterprises, and honestly theft. Those are all much less destructive. We’re doing what we can to limit the damage with our dealers as well.”

“Nn! Yes!” Andrea piped in, still cooking away next to Miu. “That’s good. I… that… I grew up in an area like… kinda… err… I grew up poor. Very poor.

“I saw what drugs did to people. It’s one thing to sell it responsibly, it’d be almost too much to do it without regard for those who are addicted. They can’t control it after they reach a certain point.

“They get to it and there’s just… it’s all whoosh, with a loud bang and splat without any ability to go ‘wait, stop’. You know?”

Felix didn’t know.

What he did know was that he loved Andrea.

“I don’t, but I know I’ll do what I can to make sure you’re happy. I’ll do all I can to keep the drug side of things clean, safe, and fair,” promised Felix.

“That’s more than enough, nn. Thank you, Dearlove. Thank you. Oh, and I won’t be moving into that mobile home. Been there, done that, got the trauma, I’ll stay here in the field,” said Andrea with a pent up breath. She didn’t look up from her pancake making but he imagined she was smiling.

“It’s likely we’ll all stay here in the field, Andie. So that’s not really a concern. I’d rather trust Faith and the trees than the neighbors over there.

“As to the rest, we’ll start getting funding from the dealers relatively soon. Probably a week or so. We can slowly start pushing further with them for a while as well. Take over more dealers and start generating more,” Felix expanded on the previous points. “I get the impression that there’s other dealers in the area. Is that accurate Goldie?”

“It is. I got a couple thoughts from Jay especially. They’re apparently rather violent and haven’t been very careful with their mixes. They’ve left a few bodies behind,” affirmed Goldie.

“We’ll eliminate them and take their territory. Have our own dealers expand. We can bring it together into a cohesive thing,” planned Felix after a second to think. “We’ll just keep bringing in more and more. We can become our own supplier so long as we have a base to work with.

“Maybe use Jay for that. His were the least expensive to modify. We could always find out who his dealer is and go to them, too. They might be more than willing to get us in on whatever they’re making to expand their own profits.”

“They all had a different supplier,” Goldie put in before he could continue. “We’ll have to check in with them and see if they share a source. If they do, then it’s the dealers who made the bad mixes and Jay’s better at it. If they don’t, then it’s the supplier. We’d go for Jay’s. Right?”

“Exactly,” agreed Felix. Then he made a hand motion of rolling his hand forward. “That’s enough of that though. We’ll need to wait a bit before we can move further. Start with the dealers, see how we do. Supplier will notice they’re not buying as much and get curious.

“This and that will line up if we just wait a little bit. Maybe a month or so. In the meantime for that, we’ll keep pushing with Brandonville and Hardysburg.”

Felix had finished the pancake by now and had eyed the slab of deer meat. That would be a lot harder to get into while talking.

“Faith, Miu, how’d the drop point go yesterday? Anything of interest?” he asked and then started cutting into the meat.

He’d noticed there were a number of small electronics, power tools, and odd items he couldn’t quite identify in the field behind them. Somehow, at some point, they’d brought everything to the field and put them out onto one of the stolen tarps.

Miu had stopped in her work and looked to Faith, then gave the other woman a small nod of her head. Then went back to work, cooking more of the deer.

“It went really well,” started Faith somewhat nervously. Felix couldn’t remember her ever being in a meeting like this before. Or at least where she had to talk about how things went. “We had a lot of people come by with just trash. A lot of trash. It was rather impressive how much people had.

“I got the impression they just let it pile up then bring it over for this pickup. The normal weekly trash wasn’t enough.”

Felix nodded his head. From the sheer amount of trash that he’d made into points it felt like there was far more being generated than expected. It also likely provided him with another avenue of approach for another time.

“Other than that, a lot of people just came to… uhm… see me, I guess,” Faith theorized with a small shake of her head. “I’ve never been stared at so much. Not even back home, in Legion, or your world. There were people literally just sitting and watching me.

“I don’t mind the attention of course, but it was also distracting and rather annoying. I was doing my best to get work done for Legion.”

“You did fine. I scared off the ones that lingered,” Miu added without stopping in what she was doing. She’d just handed a plate of food off to Goldie and was returning to her station.

“I… yes, thank you, Miu. But it went well otherwise. I put all the small electronics and tool things that we could repair and sell in a pawn shop off to the side. Or at least, all the ones that looked like you could probably fix them without too much of an issue,” elaborated Faith. She was actually starting to sound somewhat confident the longer she spoke. “As well as anything that uhm… how to say it… ah… it escapes me but anything old that people like to keep.”

“Collectibles!” cheered Andrea handing another pancake to Miu.

“Yes! Those. I kept anything like that as well. You said you wished to avoid selling gold or silver,” Faith said with a grin, her eyes darting to Andrea and then back to Felix. “These are all things that aren’t gold and silver and could sell in a pawnshop. I talked to Andrea and Miu about it to make sure I was thinking correctly. I’m still getting used to all these modern things.

“I mean, not that long ago, I hadn’t even seen a working light-bulb. It’s a lot for me to work through. I’m not Felicity. She’s far more intelligent than I.”

“You’re doing amazing, Faith. I had to remind myself the other day of that very fact and how well you’re doing,” Felix said after a hard swallow. He gave her a wide smile and a nod of her head. “In fact, I’d say you’re doing incredibly well. As to your idea, I think I’ll do just that. I’ll go see what’s fixable, what isn’t, then drive it out to Hardysburg and sell it there. I wouldn’t want a resident to see their own stuff in a pawn shop. That’d be awkward.

“Is there anything else you need to add or say for your side of it? Sounds like it really went extremely well.”

“I think I’d like to get a library card or to go to a used book-store. Someone made a passing comment about how I looked like a felony,” Faith said with an odd look on her face. Felix would certainly agree that Faith inspired terrible thoughts. “I took it as a cat-call but wanted to make sure. I might as well start looking into the legal system here as… well… as we have no one to provide us with counsel.”

Lily… if only you were here. I bet you’d already have us a house through some silly magical legal loophole.

“Ah! There was one more thing. The mayor came by,” Faith blurted out, clearly trying to push his mind off Lily. “He wants to meet you. I told him it was certainly possible but that I couldn’t speak to your calendar.

“He said he’d want to meet with you sometime after it was all over and to schedule something with him. Though he did mention that he’d have to be out of town for a month or two right after that. Apparently he has to go to the capital and work out something with the state government.”

“Apparently Alassippi isn’t doing so well with the budget they’ve been allocated. He mentioned they were deeply overspent. That would likely mean they need more aid if I had to guess,” Miu clarified even as she brought yet another steak and pancake set over. This one went to Faith with a smile for the Dryad before she went back to likely finish and get her own breakfast together.

Oh? Oh.

Well.

Maybe I can use that to my advantage.

We just need to get all of our identification paperwork together before my meeting with the mayor. I’ll need all the certifications people take for granted when they were born in a country.

Hm.

I’ll have to think on that. I’m not sure how to approach it just yet but… I’m sure I can solve it.

“He’s contemplating that he needs to get our paperwork together. Proof that we exist and are part of the country,” stated Goldie while gnawing at the meat she held in her bare hand. “That we can use the mayor, and the budget, to our advantage if we can move fast enough.”

One could forget she was a Dragon most of the time.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to get caught up in my head all the time,” apologized Felix with a small shake of his head.

“It’s fine. Goldie helps us keep pace with you,” Andrea said and then slammed her rear end down on the grass next to him. She had a plate filled with pancakes and nothing else. “She does Kit’s old job and helps us understand where you are.”

Ah. That makes sense.

I suppose with me being shut into myself so often that practically becomes a need.

“By the way,” whispered Andrea in her not-so-secret way. “I had no idea you wanted to grab my ears and rough’em up a bit. Goldie said you do the same with her horns.

“If you’d told Ana she would have let you, you know. Ria, too, maybe. Not me or any of my Others though. We like it soft.

“But… but if you’re especially nice with Allie the first time she comes out, she’ll say yes. But you have to pretend like I didn’t tell you that, or that she got way more of Ana in that department than we expected. She’s bashful but very curious.”

The silence afterward was heavy and had no viable way out for Felix.

Except he didn’t care.

Life with the Elex women was an adventure in every possible way. All you could do was just go along with it.

“Okay,” Felix said instead with a grin. “I’ll do that. Make sure you don’t tell Allie about it either. Thanks, Andie. Love you.”

“Nn!” grunted the Beastkin around a massive mouthful of pancake. Looking a lot like a cartoon chipmunk, though she was smiling at him.

***

Felix pulled up to the pawnshop and wasn’t really sure how to go about this. He had a bunch of junk in the bed of the truck and he had no idea how to make this happen.

Turning, he looked to his passenger.

Goldie was quickly becoming his go-to adviser. The fact that she could read minds in a world that thought such a thing was make-believe gave him incredible leverage.

Miu, Andrea, and Faith would all play their part he imagined, but right now he needed Goldie. Needed her intelligence, ability, and compassion toward him.

He needed his Golden One.

“Oh… well that’s rather flattering,” Goldie said huskily and leaning toward him. “I do like the possessive edge to it, too. And yes, they’re all aware that they can’t help as much as they want right now, but know that’ll come later.

“Don’t fret over them. I’m keeping them suitably involved. As to what to do in there… well, that’s more up to you. I’m not sure which way to go with this.

“I can read minds, but I’m not you, nor am I Felicity. I’ll support you, but you’re the lead.”

Grinning, Felix realized that was exactly what he needed to hear.

He was the reason Legion rose and fell. He’d be the reason it rose again.

“Thanks,” he murmured then leaned over and kissed Goldie while reaching up to pat her cheek with his left hand. Holding that kiss for a handful of seconds he eventually moved away from her. “My Golden One, I really appreciate that you were willing to come with me.”

“Of course,” she replied in a warm whisper. “Just remember that when I want a vault of gold to nest in and that you no longer get a say in the matter.”

Laughing, Felix nodded his head, opened the door, and got out. He’d long since come to the realization that he couldn’t get rid of Goldie. Even if he wanted to.

Faith was the same way now.

He just had to play goalie against everyone else. There was no more room in his heart.

Closing the door to the truck he went into the pawn shop and had a good look around. It was more or less exactly what he expected.

From what was on sale, to people trying to sell their own stuff.

Felix was suddenly lost in memories of starting out in a store just like this one. Where he, Kit, Ioana, Lily, Miu, Felicia, and Andrea had bled, sweat, and nearly died for.

It’d been fun. Hadn’t it?

This’ll be just as fun. Just as interesting if not more so.

I just need to make sure Legion doesn’t become a target. Soon I can start hiring. Start expanding. Making things happen.

Goldie is my Kit. My Felicity.

Miu is of course Miu, but also my Ioana.

Faith is aiming to be my Lily.

Andrea is… Andrea and so much more now.

I can do this. I can make this work.

I have the people to start, now I just need some tools. Starting with money. Because money makes the world go round and—

Felix’s thoughts came to a sudden halt.

Off to one side of the pawnshop was a display. It was deeper into the store and had a camera over it and the display cases around it.

Laid out along the hooks were what appeared to be pre-paid gift cards.

Walking over to them Felix found that they were exactly what he’d suspected. Gift cards with pre-paid amounts and backed by a credit card company.

Next to them, was something more exciting than even that.

Cards that stated they were prepaid minutes for a celluar service.

One that didn’t require contracts, but only to purchase the phone.

Perfect.

Felix grinned and then moved over to the counter where someone was standing. They had been watching Felix with a store-front smile on

“Good morning, sir. How can I help you?” asked the sales-man.

“Oh. Well. First I’d like to sell you some items I need to get rid of. I won an auction for a storage shed in the area and it had a bunch of things in it that don’t do me any good. I have a few more to get to later this week as well,” lied Felix with a warm and convincing smile. “Have it all in my truck bed. Can I get you to take a look?

“Also, I think I’d like to get store credit instead of cash, so maybe you can cut me a better deal than normal? I would love to start a decent working relationship with you and this store.”

“Yeah! Let’s see what we can do,” agreed the man.

Hook… line… and sinker.