Accidental Villainy 59 (Patreon)

When I returned to the bar, Tara greeted me. “Everything is as usual, sir. There’s nothing out of order. While there had been a few henchmen that drifted close, none of them got closer than two blocks.” 

“Excellent work,” I said as I caressed her cheek, her blush beautiful as the compliment triggered her kink excellently. “Now, while I’m here, I want you to go and rest. You deserve a nap,” I said. I wanted to reward her more viscerally, but I could see that she was tired mentally. Leaving her alone at the bar and asking her to be responsible was taking a toll on her. 

I needed to get a better security method. I had the cash for it, but the problem, I didn’t trust any high-end security provider to sell me something without a backdoor. 

I immediately started checking the national news, trying to find where Daria had gone, but I failed to find any news … but as I had been searching, one of the keywords brought a brand new article. 

Blue Princess was floating in the middle of the ocean, helping the evacuation after an oil rig explosion. She wasn’t the only hero doing so, but she was clearly the most high-profile one. The oil rig was burning intensely while she evacuated it … but there was something that was wrong with that oil rig. 

Unfortunately, the grainy news footage was not the best way to identify that. I was tempted to overdrive my power, but after a momentary consideration, I decided against it. I couldn’t let my early success blind me to the fact that the day was still long. 

That, and since discovering that function, I was starting to act lazy, relying on it at first rather than focusing more. Instead, I saved the videos to my hard drive in case they were removed — it wouldn’t be the first superhero footage that had been censored — before I started searching for other oil rig and ship accidents, trying to see what exactly was different between them that I felt something was wrong. 

It turned out there was plenty, but as I compared them, I was quick to catch what had triggered me first. It was the actions of the rig employees. They were too professional as they evacuated. At first, I assumed that it was that they were well-trained, but as I went through the other disasters, none of the tanker and rig personnel had such amazing performance. 

The closest to it was the military ship accidents, with everyone knowing exactly what to do when facing a great emergency … but even they weren’t as good as the rig employees. The efficiency they moved was incredible. 

It didn’t take long for me to get to a conclusion. They were performing like a group that not only trained well, but also expected a disaster like that to happen. There was no shock, just the competency from weekly drills. 

I didn’t know what they were doing there, but they were certainly not looking for oil.

Once I reached that conclusion, the rest of the events were easier to connect. I already knew that Daria had worked together with Rosa, chasing the person responsible for the weapons the Syndicate had been selling, and they had been doing so for the services of the super rather than to stop the trade. Therefore, it wasn’t hard to guess that the oil rig belonged to one of their allies — or at least, someone they were trying to turn into an ally. 

Considering the limits they were operating under, both in terms of money and other support, I was more inclined to believe that it was the second option. Still, for the moment, that was all I could dig around. I had already learned all I could from that video without Emily’s assistance, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to involve her immediately. 

While the reports from the now-defunct Giant Force had been very useful, they also showed that she was getting reckless as she discovered the new facets of her power. I was afraid that she would poke the wrong source and bring even bigger trouble for me. 

No, the oil rig disaster could wait. 

Instead, I turned my attention to my next objective. The toy I had picked from the Valley Mall, one with the puzzle that had been leading to whatever secret stash was supposed to be under the junkyard. And more importantly, showing where that supposed hero was.

At the headquarters of the New Giant Force. 

Knowing Dalia and her ally were looking for the same hero was both a relief, and a source of stress. It was a source of relief, as I was rather fascinated by a hero who could create high-tech weaponry, and particularly what they could do for me. 

So-called Chrome Defender was a good example. Clearly a spoiled kid with next to no training, and even worse combat instincts, yet he put a credible threat against Tara. In the end, she took him down easily, but only because we had two big advantages. My power allowed me to pinpoint weaknesses in his weapons and style that even he wasn’t aware of…

And, he was extremely reluctant to damage the warehouse — though learning that they had some kind of teleporter there explained their extreme reluctance — which allowed Tara to restrict his more destructive abilities as she closed in and dealt with him. 

That was with a reckless, overconfident moron controlling it. Even without my power, I would have done much better… 

Assuming, of course, I was able to get help from the mysterious tinker in the first place to create a similar armor for me.

Of course, when I had discovered the mystery of the puzzle, I had promptly ignored it after checking the safe house under the junkyard and discovering it was under observation. I wanted a power armor, but not at the cost of angering both the New Giant Force and the Syndicate to a degree that they might decide to target me even with the mysterious organization targeting me. 

Daria and her ally’s interest gave me another chance. Even with her powers potentially weakening, Daria was more than capable of confronting them, especially since the New Blue Giants had valued their veneer of legitimacy too much to openly coordinate with the Syndicate and target her. 

Maybe I could feed Daria information carefully about the situation, controlling where she was targeting. And, since the Syndicate had no reason to link the sexy redhead that visited my bar to Blue Princess, I should be able to do that relatively safely. 

I was already planning on how to target her toward the junkyard in a way that not only kept me safe, but also managed to escalate the situation step by step. 

With a sigh, I turned on the city map, trying to come up with a reason to make her act while leaving the equipment in the safe house to me … assuming, of course, the Syndicate left the equipment there untouched. It was worth a try… once I went and detected exactly where the mysterious hero genius was being hidden. 

 I needed Emily’s help for that, and unlike the previous times, I needed her help in a controlled, directed way. A way that was definitely illegal. 

More importantly, deadly. 

Legally speaking, guilds weren’t exactly consulates with total legal immunity, but in practice, it wasn’t too different. No one would question why someone had tried to infiltrate their building had ‘mysteriously disappeared’. Not the government, not the other heroes; and certainly not the villains, whose implied alliance against heroes did not extend to such behaviors. 

It would take a lot of effort to convince Emily to help me. Luckily, I actually needed to train her in infiltration, and it could be started subtly to achieve that aim. But, I needed an excuse for it …

I looked at the security cameras, and an idea flashed. Why not bring Emily here so that she could use her power to rewrite the software of the security cams and customize the security in a way that would mesh well with my power. 

Not to mention, it would give me a chance to pay Emily generously, softly linking her with me. Developing a taste for luxuries was a good way to slowly link her deeper to my schemes without scaring her. I just needed to buy some good cameras with poor software and see how well she could do with her touch. 

If it worked as well as I hoped, I might actually have a chance of victory in my little game… 

“I was supposed to be a fake villain, but it doesn’t feel that way,” I muttered, followed by a self-deprecating chuckle. 

Still, that idea wasn’t as scary as it had been just days ago…