Super Sales on Super Heroes 5 -ch14- (Patreon)

Felix stepped into the home and paused.

It’d been a day since he’d built the prison for the Guild and the Government.

Since then he’d been on the move with Goldie.

Flying here, there, then crossing international waters, swinging far to the north, east, and slowly back to the home at the Landfill.

He needed to make sure that Lucian, or whoever else might be following them, was lost. That no one would be on their tail, even if he couldn’t see them.

Goldie thankfully had responded to all of this with a laugh. The idea of flying endlessly sounded quite fun to her. All it’d take is for him to recharge her stamina with a few points here and there and they could continue indefinitely.

“Well, that was fun. I haven’t been on a fly like that in a really long time. There was quite a few interesting sights to see as well,” said the naked Gold Dragon moving past him. She entered the living room, looked around, and then made a clucking noise.

Walking further into the home she began to critically look at the hardwood floor with a slow shake of her head.

“Oh those girls! They knew I warned them about tracking in grass and dirt,” grumbled Goldie even as her eyes picked back and forth across something Felix honestly couldn’t see. “Hmph. I’ll make sure they clean it up themselves. Good thing I taught them how to mop a floor a little bit ago.”

Nodding her head, the beautiful and naked Dragon went into the back of the home. Presumably to get some clothes he imagined.

Felix needed to take care of something else entirely. Pulling his helmet off his head he set it down on the entry-way “key drop” table that’d been put there.

Leaving the living room he moved into his “work room” that was in the back of the home. He needed to do some quick factoring on how to prevent people he couldn’t see from getting into his facilities.

People that might as well be ghosts if they didn’t even have a heat signature they could check against. Someone like Lucian who could be around him even now.

Entering his workroom Felix paused.

He found Edmund and Ryker there. The former sitting at a desk off to one side that he’d often sat at as Felix droned on about business, and the latter working at what looked to be a circuit board with a soldering gun.

“Oh, hey boss,” Edmund said with a grin and a wave of his hand as he looked up from his laptop. “I was just going through the five phases with Ryker. It… honestly feels weird going through stuff like this.

“Things I already knew, or that I had an idea about, being formed into solid concepts and stuck down. Kinda strange but… it works.

“Though I’m amused that you seem to live permanently in phase one or phase four. Everything else seems to fall to everyone else.”

Felix blinked, his mind flickering backward to see if he had any memory of what the young man was talking about. He’d never gotten very deep into project management and didn’t have that many memories of it.

“You start concepts or determine performance,” Ryker muttered as he touched the soldering gun to the circuit board. There was a soft click as the instrument touched the wire. “Rarely do you really dig into the scope, tracking, or post morerm.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s about right. Not my area of expertise. If I was a part of all of those, wouldn’t I be in project management?” Felix asked with a chuckle. He came over to glance at Edmund’s laptop and saw he was actively going through an online course. Nodding his head he walked over to where Ryker was working and sat down in the chair next to it. “Been a bit.”

Ryker looked up from his work and gave him a smile that was more a smirk.

His dark brown eyes were brighter than normal given the light. His straight black hair was falling down to either side right now and he had beads of sweat on his brow.

Apparently he’d been head down over this circuit board for a while.

“A bit,” agreed Ryker. “Had some time. Decided to drop in. Just happened to coincide with Edmund and you being here. It’s a wonder how things are coincidentally happening so perfectly like this.”

“Uh huh,” Felix said with a chuckle and leaned further back in his chair. He was quite tired. Spending hours upon hours on the back of Goldie without rest or sleep had drained him. “Am I starting to get on your good side yet? I fix more than I break yet?”

“Somewhat,” admitted Ryker, turning his gaze back to the board. From what Felix could see it was a commercial grade product. Ryker had deliberately burned out a circuit and then made a wire span a gap from one section to another. There was a single chip that needed to be re-soldered to the board nearby as well. “Definitely making things a bit easier for me as of late.

“A lot less having to force things to where they should be. Then again, I removed a lot of the roadblocks you kept slamming into anyways. Works out a bit better that way.”

Felix’s mind wandered off back to his conversations with Ryker. They’d often left him feeling like he was missing a key piece to things. That something was incredibly wrong and he was only a step away from figuring it out.

Except that he didn’t want to know. Felix didn’t want to know the secrets of the world. Didn’t want anything to do with him.

He had people he cared about and work to do. Those things were the entirety of his existence and he didn’t need to create an issue for himself by learning more than he could handle.

“Smart,” Ryker mumbled as he picked up the chip with a pair of tweezers and pushed it into a spot that it looked like it belonged. “Better off that way, honestly. There’s certainly more to the world and you’ve grasped the edges of it. Some people can handle it, some can’t.

“I almost ended my entire existence when I figured it out. Almost. Know a few people who went crazy when they figured it out.

“Your choice is a logical and smart one. Hold to it. As long as you do, you’ll never have to worry about discovering the secret. It’s somewhat of a choice in the end.

“Now… let’s change the subject so you don’t get a headadche. Shall we? We’ll turn it to this. What I’m working on.”

The head ache that’d been instantly growing behind his eyes faded to nothing. Almost as if he’d imagined it.

“This is an electrical board that’ll let you operate any train you purchase on your custom software. It has a few basic programs and things on it that it needed to bypass security and company lockouts,” Ryker said as he adjusted the clamps to shift the board around to the other side. He then began to quickly solder the pins of the chip into place. “It’ll end up attached to the master console when you end up building it. For now you can just leave it on the desk till you need it. Should save you a great deal of points in the future.

“Cost me all of a few minutes to pick it up, and ten minutes to do this work. Not so bad and I did it willingly. So don’t call it a debt or anything like that.”

“Okay… then why’d you stop by? You feel like the type to maximize his efficiency where possible,” Felix redirected.

“Give you some information, mostly. Vince is doing well. He’s off on an adventure like you are, but still on his home planet. He already jumped my plans and did an end run on me. The bastard,” Ryker said with a chuckle. He didn’t sound upset at all. “Did meet his mother-in-law. She uh… we have plans to go to dinner tonight.

“Anyways. Other than that, I wouldn’t worry too much about people like Lucian. There’s a handful of them but you’re not likely going to run across them. Not to mention the changes you’re probably going to make in the near future will prevent them from being a problem.

“Don’t focus on it, you’ll solve it without solving it. Save the points. I promise. That’s all I’ve got. Well, that and I made a few nudges here and there. Things you wouldn’t notice but if you knew you’d agree they’re helpful.”

Felix looked down to his boots and contemplated the situation.

Everything about this situation, about his life, felt off. Like he was listening to a symphony, but had just noticed someone was quietly playing a triangle throughout.

A single shining note here and there that you’d easily overlook and miss. Drowned out by everyone and everything else and something the vast majority of people would never even realize was there.

“How long have you been… poking around. Nudging things here and there. In my life, that is,” Felix asked quietly. “Because I’m starting to think that maybe… maybe a lot of my life isn’t by mistake or chance.

“That none of this was accidental. From the moment I met the Overgod I’ve suspected that maybe there was more to me than I’d considered. The idea of being as mundane as anyone else but managing to meet you and him seemed less likely as time went on.

“It being far more likely that I was already special to begin with stands out as the more likely scenario. One that is a lot more likely than being a nobody who suddenly got a lot of attention.”

Ryker didn’t say anything.

He kept working at the circuit board. Soldering the chip into place. Upon completion he flipped it back over and then pushed a finger against it.

The chip remained quite firmly seated.

Setting the board down on the desk Ryker flicked a switch on the soldering iron’s control base, and then turned to face Felix directly. His eyes were searching back and forth across Felix’s face for several seconds.

“Hm. You’ve been thinking on that one for a while. Buried it deep in your thoughts and hid it away. Far, far, from the surface,” remarked Ryker. “Even now it’s hard to see how far down it goes. You’ve suspected it for a long time.

“Though… I can’t seem to find the original cause for it. There’s no inciting event that this all came from.”

“Wish I could tell you. As far as I can tell there wasn’t one,” Felix admitted, looking up to Ryker. “Just a collecting of feelings and thoughts that slowly built up.

“My mom kinda put a magnifying glass on it in some ways. Her power is so similar to mine that it’s not even funny. The fact that my father isn’t here is a bit of an oddity but it seemed almost plausible. I’d imagine my uncle Miles doesn’t exist either though, and if he does, he most certainly wouldn’t have a kid named Vince.

“As to hiding it… not really. Just part of the other thoughts that I try not to have. Lot of those, unfortunately. I suppose it comes with having a darker nature than most.”

Ryker sucked on his teeth for a second than clicked his tongue. He made a vague swish with his hand and the world became grayscale.

Felix and Ryker were the only things that had any color to them.

Any life.

“You’re breaking things again, Felix,” complained Ryker.

Felix laughed at that and held his hands up at his sides.

“I’m not doing it on purpose. At least, not this time. I’m just trying to figure things out, live my life, get what I need to go get done, and move forward. It’s obvious though if you think about it,” argued Felix. “Why would an Overgod need favors from me? Why would you need things from me?

“Neither one of you are lacking in power or resources. You’re creators of this world as far as I can tell. Many worlds considering I’ve now seen… four? Five? I’ve lost track anymore. There’s certainly a wide array of… things… out there for you to pick from.

“It’s like going to a bar full of incredibly beautiful women, but you ignored all of them and went for the semi-cute one in the corner of the bar who was clearly trying to be alone. The action is so far outside of the expectation that it creates it’s own obviousness to it.”

“I get it,” Ryker confessed with a sigh and a nod of his head. He slowly looked away and seemed to be considering nothing. “How much of an answer do you want? Because… well, I can tell you everything, if you want.

“We’re in a place and time where things are spinning faster and faster outside of my expectations. No matter how much I rush off to fix… fix my Rube Goldberg machine, more of it starts to shiver and shake.

“Things go off early or not at all, only for the whole thing to sputter to life in a completely unrelated way. It’s all on track as far as I can tell, just not in the way I’d been expecting it to.

“So… right now… at this moment… I’m a bit freer than I expected to be.”

“In how many worlds do I exist?” Felix asked.

“One,” Ryker confirmed with a slow exhale. “One world. Out of countless billions of worlds that I tried, only one world. Your cousin, or brother as you call him, also exists in exactly one world.

“Only in this one… strange… world… did you come into being, Felix. You are quite literally one of maybe… four people that are unique to the existence that they’re in.”

“Edmund is another,” Felix declared, his eyes jumping across to the motionless young man at the computer.

“He is,” agreed Ryker. “He exists in one world and one only. You’ve been around another, but never met him. His name’s Rene. He ah… he’s acted as a bodyguard of sorts for you at times.”

“You said billions of worlds you tried,” Felix murmured, changing the focus of the conversation a bit.

Looking up to Ryker’s face he waited for a second.

When the other man looked at him, Felix saw the infinite and never-ending expanse of time pass through the man’s eyes. An unending sprawl of nothingness that’d been witnessed.

Endlessly.

Felix mentally shuddered away but didn’t break eye contact.

“Billions. Yes. I’ve watched… so many worlds. Eons of human history and civilizations,” whispered Ryker in a way that felt damaged. “That’s assuming there was ever life to begin with. There’s so many false-starts that I can’t even truly explain it to you.”

“In other words… you just… hit the reset button until you found me,” summarized Felix.

“Not so much, but not too far off. I did all that I could without ending lives. Thankfully for each of those worlds I watched birthed I was able to gently set them aside. Each of them living their lives and spinning away through the darkness of their cosmos.

“Living and existing until their end arrives. In whatever way that may be, but they’ll all reach it.”

“Then if that was just to get me started, how many times did you have to intercede just to get me to this point?”

“Me? Once, really. Runner popped in here and there. Mostly to make sure you got a proper chance when things were getting too far out of hand. We couldn’t interfere too much or you wouldn’t be you.”

“Why didn’t you save my parents?” asked Felix in a deathly whisper.

Ryker grimaced at that and finally broke eye contact.

“Couldn’t. Same reason I couldn’t… keep Miles here,” confessed Ryker with pain in his voice. “You wouldn’t have been you without them being removed from your life. They’ve both been watching over you from the afterlife by the way.

“I’ve allowed them to keep an eye on you whenever they wished. They watch almost constantly.”

The more Felix heard, the more he wanted to be angry. To rage at this man who’d watched his life more like a movie than someone he was trying to protect.

Except in those thoughts, Felix realized that protecting Felix was counter to the goal. They needed Felix to be who he was at this moment.

Without the experiences of his life, both the good and the bad, he wouldn’t be who he was, without them. He was actually quite happy with who he was as well.

Who he was today, was greater than the sum of all the parts of his history, good and bad. Felix Campbell was better for all of it.

“Got it. That means that you or Runner were responsible for the biggest changes in my life. There’s two that I can think off right off the top of my head,” Felix continued, his mind working quite quickly now. “Skipper-city is the first one. Who… set up Skipper?”

“Neither of us. She always occurred in that world no matter what we did. She used it as a recruiting world. That all ended when they ended up angering the deities of that world and they decided to blow everything up, rather than let Zeus take control of the world.

“Makes no sense to me. Armageddon makes the world kind of impossible to have worshipers on. A world controlled by Zeus still allows for worshipers.

“That’s religion for you. Doesn’t make a damn lick of sense to me and never has. Never understand any of it.

“Realistically you were supposed to stay on that world for a really long time. A really long time. So long that you’d die of old age on it. You’d have come to this one only because you’d have the luxury of time on your original one.

“I couldn’t account for… couldn’t account for what you encountered. She outplayed us all. Especially me.”

Ryker looked like a mix of pride and anger at his own words.

“Right. Then… Zeus is our mutual enemy. That’s who Skipper worked for and who tried to kill me and everyone I love.

“Shirley was just a mastermind making a plan. She wasn’t doing any of it with actual malice, just a need to get to a set ending. Skipper was the one who had it in for me.”

“Mmhmm. Damn right on both of those, actually. Shirley goes by Bianca, now, by the way.”

“Err… alright. Right… then… was it you, or Runner, who was No-Name?” Felix asked with a chuckle, looking up to Ryker. “Actually, I guess that answers my question already. You told him what to do, he did it. He seems the more likely culprit rather than you.”

Ryker laughed and looked like he was going to deny it.

“Just admit it. There’s no way anyone would have mistaken an order of Bismuth for a person. It’s so obvious that it’s painful. Not to mention why Skipper would have gotten rid of those Heroes without knowing who they went to,” Felix countered before Ryker could even voice a negative. “It was one of you two.”

Blinking, Ryker had a no forming on his face.

“It was Runner,” he said in a sudden rush. “My plan, but Runner did it. He checked in on you more than he should have. Always with the, ‘but he might need it’ excuse. Constantly pushing things towards you thinking maybe you’d want it.

“Do you have any idea how hard I had to slap his damn hand every time he tried to put more in front of you than you needed? It’s a lot like raising a child with an irresponsible parent. How was I supposed to keep you hungry and moving if everything was handed to you?

“Bad enough that we had to constantly knock Zeus’ people off and prevent them from just coming to kill you. Sometimes it felt like I spent days just killing assassins that’d been dispatched for you.”

I… err… I guess that makes sense.

Almost too much sense.

They were watching over me in what way they could, all while trying to preserve whatever rules they have to work by as gods, yet doing all that they could for me.

“— thirteenth birthday, like you actually needed it. There were so many damn futures in that one with you knocking up some random girl that I couldn’t let it happen,” growled Ryker with heat in his voice.

“Whelp,” Felix said, getting Ryker’s attention back on him. “Does that make you my over-protective mom, or my discipline strict dad? Since Runner would be my over-indulgent mom or doting dad.”

Ryker blinked slowly while staring at Felix.