SSV3 Chapter 25 (Patreon)

We stepped into the club as it thumped with base and lights danced around us. Occasionally a ray of light would touch my Void mask, and I enjoyed letting it play with the faint star pattern.

The commotion from outside didn’t follow us inside, and I enjoyed the moment of peace with two beautiful ladies in my arms.

The throng of dancers undulated against each other to the music around us. The dance floor was a mass of people trying to get each other’s attention in a strange mating dance that involved too much alcohol and perfume.

The club maintained about a three women to each men ratio, and the women were taking their turns grinding on guys on the dance floor as if letting the men try them out to see which they liked more.

A number of the women had face paint or sparkles that caught the black light and made them stand out more. They were each trying to attract attention and get noticed by the few men.

But the club seemed nice enough. Few would sacrifice their drink profits to keep the ratios so low. I had a feeling that men drank free just so the club could pull more in.

Melody and Obsidian lingered on my arms, letting me observe the place for a moment.

As I scanned the place, my attention was pulled to the upper level next. I spotted multiple people who had shifted their position to get a better view of us.

The separation of them and the people below spoke of arrogance and status. I knew instantly that they were some of the more powerful villains. And they looked cocky as shit.

One villain crooked a finger at a guard, who then pushed her way through the crowd and caught a man by the shoulder. He was being grinded on by two different women.

There was a brief exchange, and then the man happily was pulled from the crowd and brought up to the second level.

“They get the pick of the litter.” I spoke and pushed my voice straight to the women’s ears rather than scream over the music.

“The guys who come here know exactly who they are dancing for.” Melody shouted over the music. “Come on. Let’s go see what trouble we can get up to.”

We climbed the stairs amid a hungry host of villains watching us.

Like the bouncer out front, many recognized Melody and Obsidian, but then when their eyes found me, their body language shifted.

They recognized me too, but they didn’t know what to expect. But they did know that they were lower on the food chain than I was. I’d taken down a titan.

Based on the few puffed up villains around us, I knew some of their egos would blot out good sense.

Murmurs rose around us as we walked through, with one group catching my attention.

A large red woman who was covered in wrinkles sat to the side. She certainly wasn’t winning any beauty awards, but what really made her ugly was the malice in her eyes as she watched me.

She whispered to one of the other women in their group while a pair of men ground themselves into their laps.

There were six women in the group, but the rest were doing their best to not pay attention to the conversation next to them.

The red and wrinkly one was clearly the leader.

The other woman she had been talking to stood up, wearing nothing but jewelry chains like lacy underwear. She was attractive, but she was clearly missing something between her ears.

“Oh look. A Void wannabee.” She shouted across the club, getting everyone’s attention.

I watched her saunter over. I wondered just how noisy each step she took would be if the music wasn’t booming through the room.

The leader of the group hung back, watching our interaction with interest.

I felt a little bad for the woman approaching us; she was either being used as a test or as bait.

TestBait, whose name was about to be irrelevant, walked up to me and smirked. “I bet you think you are so tough, faking Void. I wonder what the real one would say in response. You should be worried.” She whispered it to me, her words slurring slightly. She’d clearly been in the club a little longer than she should have.

“I’m not.” I replied simply as I snapped my fingers.

TestBait was there one second and gone the next, replaced by a spray of fine red mist that stretched from where she had stood to the couch. I made sure to spray a bit on the red and wrinkly woman.

“I guess my dark clothing is going to come in handy when we go out together.” Obsidian commented as if she had been talking about the weather, looking at her hands to see if she had gotten any on her.

The music thumped, and I put on a bit more of the show.

I removed the sound from the second floor so it was nice and quiet for when I spoke.

It took some of the men grinding or people whispering to suddenly realize the music was gone. It had a sensory impact, disorienting them.

And it also led to having everybody’s attention.

“This will need to be cleaned up.” I spoke to the leader. “Have somebody take care of this.” My voice carried clearly over the group, warped just slightly so it couldn’t be tied back to me as Miles.

“Excuse me?” The villain stood up. “I’m the fucking Bloody Hag. I’m the head enforcer for Mickey Hill. If you don’t give me god damned respect, you won’t survive long in this town.”

“Wrong.” I snapped my fingers again, and she became a red mist. I made sure to keep the couch clean with that spray. After all, I needed a place to sit, and hers seemed nice.

“Shame. Do they not teach manners and respect anymore? Back when I was more active, things were at least respectful.” I looked past the red mist in the air to the goons on the couch. “Now, would you all mind helping clean this up?”

The rest of what I now assumed were Mickey’s enforcers scrambled off the couch and hustled the workers for brooms and brushes.

They looked absolutely ridiculous as they cleaned in their clubwear.

Obsidian didn’t hold back, laughing her ass off as she sat down on the couch beside me.

One man who had been dancing on the previous couch sitter’s lap seemed unsure what to do next, settling in the end on Obsidian’s lap.

“Sorry.” Obsidian had several tendrils of shadow come up and block him. “But if you don’t want to die a horrible death, you probably don’t want to touch me or her.” She pointed over at Melody. “We are his, and only his. No exceptions.”

I smiled, satisfied at her words. I didn’t want to share them with anybody.

“This is nice, but a little quiet. No need to listen to them scrub the floor.” I snapped my fingers, noticing that more than a few of the nearby patrons winced, waiting to see who would be pasted. But this time, I was just making a show as I let the sound return to the second floor.

The thumping returned, but it seemed distant now.

The villains up on the second floor were hesitant, being more careful not to do anything that might offend me. They finally realized there was a bigger fish in their pond.

“Drinks.” I looked longingly over the railing down to the two bars below; they didn’t have one up on the second floor.

“I can go get us some.” Melody offered.

“No need.” I lifted my hand before twisting my wrist.

I plucked a bartender who didn’t currently have their hands full, along with everything from the nearby bar. 

It took more focus than I would have liked to manage all the different pieces, but I made sure that it all arrived intact. I didn’t want to show any weakness with the other villains around; I’d spend the rest of the night having to kill them off as they tried to prove themselves against me if I did.

“I’ll take an old-fashioned, what about you girls?” I leaned back, enjoying the moment. A bottle of top shelf bourbon floated down to nudge the bartender into action for my drink.

The bartender was clearly in shock. She stood there with wide eyes, her feet braced on either side of her like she expected to topple over at any moment.

Thankfully, Obsidian broke the silence. “Aren’t you going to start?”

The poor woman’s mouth twitched, and she jumped to it, quickly realizing I’d made an invisible copy of the bar top and went to work with the mechanical efficiency of a seasoned bartender.

“I’ll take a dirty martini.” Obsidian ordered.

Melody just shrugged. “Make it two old-fashioneds.”

“Didn’t think you were much of a bourbon girl.” I nudged her.

“Feeling dangerous tonight.” She smiled back, a delightfully dangerous glint in her blue eyes.

“Uh.” The bartender hesitated with my finished drink, not quite sure what to say or do. And it didn’t seem to help when she looked behind and noticed the patrons cleaning up blood.

I lifted the drink over to my hand and took a twenty out of my wallet, tucking it into her hand. “Please. Continue with the drinks.”

The fact that everything had gone fine so far seemed to embolden her. “Am I your personal bartender for the night, or…” she trailed off, not sure what to say.

“I can put you back down there after this and just let you know, as I want more drinks, if that’s easier.” I offered.

She nodded and found comfort in something she knew how to do as she worked on the other two drinks.

It didn’t take long before she finished, and I lifted everything up and set it back down at the bar without breaking anything.

It was definitely for show, and more effort than was worth keeping up. But I got some satisfaction from the shock and awe on everybody’s face.

“So, I hope I didn’t just squish the lead you two had on Daeva?” I pushed my voice directly into their ears and relayed their own voices to myself. It was just easier that way.

I took my first sip of the drink, and it immediately sent liquid relaxation through my body. I wanted to relax more on the couch and just enjoy the time with my women, but I also had a job to do.

“No. The girl we think is connected to New Haven is a pipsqueak with big ears.” Melody mumbled, taking another sip of her drink.

“By that, she just means she’s short. I think she is very proportional.” Obsidian had a smile lingering that told me this woman would at least be attractive.

As we sipped our drinks, we were getting plenty of attention.

It wasn’t long before a woman rose, ending up much taller than I’d been expecting. It was like she was hiding something under her long dress that was making her tower over us as she approached.

To make things more comfortable, I made a bubble around us, softening the music to the point someone could talk normally.

The woman crossed the boundary and turned her head slightly as she listened. “Well, this is a lovely trick.” Her body lowered, and now I could see that trailing out of the back of her dress was a snake tail. I had a feeling it was currently curling under her as she settled in front of us. “I’m Viper.” She held out a hand to me.

“Void. I’m afraid I’ve been away from the villain scene for a while. People must have forgotten me.”

She smiled, showing that she had two huge fangs in her mouth. “If you were ever a villain, I doubt you would have been scrubbed from history so easily. But your history of killing Fortress still echoes. I wanted to introduce myself and ask if there was anything you needed around the city.”

I paused; I hadn’t been expecting a follower so quickly.

Melody and Obsidian stayed quiet at my sides, letting me control the conversation and showing that they referred to me.

“I can’t say I need much help. Long ago I was a thief of fairly high renown. Even if people rarely had a face to put to a name.” I kept smiling under my mask and realized it didn’t come through. But I also enjoyed the anonymity it brought for me.

If Viper was unsettled by my mask, she didn’t show it. She gave a grunt of affirmation. “Ah. That makes more sense. I wanted to ask what brought you back to the business then, and in such a public way?”

“You probably didn’t hear. BSH doesn’t like for their dirty laundry to see the light of day. Omnigirl tried to kidnap some men off the street for a sex trafficking ring. Unfortunately, she caught a bigger fish than she realized.”

Viper’s eyes went wide enough that her gold slitted eyes caught the scant light in the club. “She didn’t.”

Melody laughed. “The bitch did. Then she fucking ran back to the bureau, but that didn’t stop Void.”

Viper was nodding, but the surprise wasn’t leaving her face. “There were rumors of an attack at the BSH and Omnigirl’s death. We assumed… well, we didn’t know what to assume. There were mostly wild guesses. Am I to understand that you killed Omnigirl at the BSH’s hospital?”

“It wasn’t too hard. I put her in a coma the first time around. Really, it was just like a smash and grab at a bank, just a really well fortified one.” I took a sip of my drink. This time, I let myself relax. “So, what is it that you can do, Viper?”

She hissed a little, but it wasn’t threatening. I took it for the serpentine equivalent of a sigh. “I am mostly a fixer. Problems come up, and I make them disappear.” She let out a sibilant hiss. But the second the sound escaped her mouth, she made a small frown.

I wondered if she worked to keep some of her serpentine nature out of her speech. My presence had clearly unnerved her enough to make her falter.

“What kind of problems?” I asked, wanting to know more.

“People, things, inconvenient truths or anything really.” She smiled. “Most people can guess at least most of my power. Want to take a stab at it?”

I looked her over and realized it was a feint. People always got it wrong, but she let them. A trick more than one assassin has used to stay alive.

She clearly had some sort of snake mutation. Letting my sense of the energy take over, I could feel that she even had two venom sacks in her jaw.

That would be one hell of a nasty kiss.

“Venom, but that’s biological. The snake tail I bet is crazy strong, but do you have a power to back that up too?” I continued to probe her body with my powers, and I realized her ribs were also collapsable.

She would likely be amazing at sneaking into small spaces, but it was all physical. They’d be easily mistaken for powers, but were based on her body.

“Just strength proportional to my body, but I strike fast enough to make some think I have super speed.” She teased me with another smile.

I had been practicing with Wells on understanding how to interpret powers.

This time when I looked at her powers, I tried to understand them more deeply, like a blind man feeling an object for the first time.

There was no instant knowledge or way for me to identify powers, but I just let my instincts speak. I had touched so many by that point, there might be more I could infer. Going with my intuition, I made a guess. “Illusions?”

Viper’s eyes went wide, and I saw the twitch that would likely have had a poisoned implement racing towards my head if she didn’t suppress the motion. “How?”

“A good guess. I’m sure not many people learn of a power like that and live around you. How about you guess mine?” I didn’t think there was much chance she’d be able to guess mine, and I wanted to buy some time.

If Viper could create illusions and likely fought with her poison, she was extraordinarily lethal. Even if her power didn’t put her as some sort of city demolishing brawler, it didn’t need to. She was an incredible assassin. She could kill someone while they were sleeping or out for a jog.

Then there was her second power, which could open a lot of doors for her, but I wasn’t about to start guessing at that one, too. She was already sensitive about my first guess.

“You are just a god, descended down to play with us mere mortals.” Viper had a lascivious smile on her face. “I hope the stories from the Greeks had it right. Do gods come down just to lie with pretty women?”

Viper had a sinuous beauty; her body was all curves with a sleek neckline and a face of dangerous beauty.

I tried to let her down easily for the moment. She was certainly skilled, and those skills might come in handy in the future. “I’m afraid I’m the type to see problems fixed myself, but if you have a business card, leave it with Obsidian.”

The replicator had a clone pop out and hold out its hand.

Viper only grinned, handing off the card. Her mission done. She just wanted to put her name in.

“She’s a killer. Hard to reform those into something better.” Melody said offhandedly as Viper left the bubble. “But she was sexy in a very dangerous way.”

“Making connections won’t hurt me, even if I never see her again.” I added. “Isn’t that what we came here to do?”

Melody blushed, nodding. I had a feeling she’d gotten wrapped up in the fun of being out together as villains and forgotten what we were trying to accomplish.

AN - Btw the book ends at ch 33. Sorry, but if I went further then I'd have to go well past 40 :p