Accidental Villainy 31 (Patreon)

I immediately went down to the basement, not even talking with Tara to make sure I could catch whatever cargo they were moving. 

While I had a camera there, it was not exactly a top-of-the-line device, making it hard for it to catch things. And, my superpower was related to observation, allowing men to measure things better. 

I had been hoping to pick something more than a momentary glimpse. 

My hurry was only enhanced by the view I had seen before I had arrived at the bar. Two groups of armed guards passed through the tunnel, carrying automatic weapons while they checked to make sure everything was in order. 

Luckily, while they were careful, their attention was more focused on making sure there was no one in the tunnel than discovering a spy camera … their care suggested that the Syndicate wasn’t the one using the tunnels. 

A good point to remember. 

When I arrived at the tunnel, I carefully dug the thin earth layer, allowing me to both watch and listen to what was going on, ready to retreat in case of an emergency. But, my presence went unnoticed as I watched carefully, watching as another group passed.

Eight people, pushing some kind of hand cart filled with boxes, the kind that could be found in an airport, but two details were particularly important for me. First, two of the eight people that had been escorting the cart had been wearing costumes, marking them as supers — and their confidence as they walked confirmed that they were not fakes. 

Second, the boxes they had been pushing had a mark that had been scratched out. It had been cleaned well enough that I wasn’t able to catch up with my Observation without overcharging it. I overcharged it, curious exactly what I would find. 

A stylized drawing of a large man. 

The logo of the New Giant force. 

Frozen by the realization, I stayed still until the force moved away, not wanting to risk alerting them.  

I had no idea exactly what those boxes contained, but it was not good news. On the surface, the warehouse had looked like an ordinary drug-dealing operation, but what I had seen reversed it. For such an operation, even assigning a super to constant protection was excessive. 

Two supers, just to escort a shipment…

I waited a while more before I sealed the crack I used to observe, making sure to adjust the camera to make it even more unnoticeable. Whatever that was going on, it was far above my capabilities. The best thing I could do was stay away from the tunnel. I couldn’t afford to anger them. I was tempted to remove the camera, but ultimately, I decided to leave it there. 

Knowing what was going on was worth the risk. 

Still, I couldn’t help but sigh once I climbed the stairs, checking my phone to see another notification from Emily, sharing another picture from the locker room. It was a beautiful picture … but one of the bigger reasons I had dared to show my presence around the biggest Guild in town was to give Elite Syndicate a fake reason for my presence. 

Now that it looked like their operation was linked to the Guild, that plan was out. However, I didn’t even consider ignoring Emily, typing a quick message. The rational excuse for my decision was Emily’s power. Technically, if I actually retreated, she might have used her powers to take revenge. 

But the real reason was different. I simply didn’t want to do it. Why should I stop recruiting a super sexy super with a power that fits with mine just to keep Syndicate happy? I might have found it an acceptable trade-off if it guaranteed a lack of conflict for eternity — though hated it — but it wasn’t the case. 

Thinking about it, it was even the opposite. Her power helped me to gather actual information about the targets, far faster than I could achieve on my own. 

Even without her access to the Guild — which she had as a receptionist, and enhanced by using her powers — she was a valuable contact. With it, she could actually help me discover exactly what the Syndicate was stealing from the Guild. 

Or, at least I hoped that they were stealing it. At least, that way, all the cloak-and-dagger activities around the operation would make sense. The situation would have been even worse if they were actually buying something. 

It would put the intense security around the boxes to a whole new level. 

I sighed even as I typed a lengthy compliment for Emily, followed by a heated, erotic text. My initial plan was to slowly seduce Emily over a few weeks while cluing her about the fact that I wasn’t just a bartender. 

I decided to shorten the timeline intensely. First, I started answering her text with far more passion, and even responded to a few excellent poses of my own, pushing her hot and bothered during work. And, she had shared enough photos to show just how hot she was. I was trying to bring her into the correct mode for recruitment, but that didn’t mean the show was not enjoyable. 

Some photos were relatively mild, just fully clothed on her desk, showing her face, though some of them had a few buttons open momentarily. 

In some other photos, she was actually naked once more, shared from the archive rooms and other places, though those didn’t show her body fully, the angles chosen carefully to hide her body. Only because I could read her sexy expression I knew that she was fully naked rather than just shirtless. 

Scandalous, especially when considering the location. I suspected the only reason she dared was her control over the digital security system, giving her confidence that she wouldn’t get caught. 

Fascinating. And, the more she escalated, the more I encouraged her, her arousal working like addiction. Of course, under any other circumstances, pushing her to indulge her feelings would have backfired,, even if she was the one that was taking the lead. All she needed was to have a few hours of calm, maybe a nice sleep, to realize just how extreme her behavior would have gotten and pull back. 

Too bad I had a much bigger surprise for her. And, just as she left the work, I had already left the bar, once again disguised. Just as she started dropping hints about a date, I reversed direction. 

‘Oh my god. I have a big problem, and I need your help,’ I wrote. ‘We need to meet.’

That naturally was enough to trigger her panic even if it wasn’t for the intense crush she was developing. ‘Where are you,’ she said, I answered, which was when she realized I was near her. ‘Lucky. I’m near, let’s meet here,’ she said, followed by the location of a nearby coffee shop. 

I was nearer than her, so I picked a concealed spot. 

“What happened?” she asked as she tried to sit across me, but I just hugged her, tight enough to show my desperation. She froze at first, but then tightened her arms around me. I wasn’t a bad actor, and reading her reaction in real-time only made it better. 

The fact that my acting was mostly the truth made it much easier. Ultimately, what had been happening to me was dangerous enough to scare me, and I was just misleading her about the immediacy of the issue. 

“I … I’m in trouble,” I said. “And, you’re the only person I can talk—” I started, before freezing. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bother you with it. I have just panicked,” I started, making a move to stand up. Only for her to push me back down. 

“No, I’m not going to let you go before you leave,” she said. 

I sighed in defeat, and stayed passively for a while, enjoying her hug before I started speaking. “You remember the bar I had been working for,” I said, and she nodded. “Today, I needed to fake being a villain just to save the life of a coworker,” I said. 

Her scared gasp was beautiful. “No. Maybe—” she started. 

“Please, let me finish. Apparently, she had been hiding her power. I was able to bluff them and act like I had some kind of superpower that could pull information out of the air, but it was just a mere guess,” I said … a subtle trick, one that both refused the existence of my power and undersell it in the case she discovered it. 

After all, the existence of the power could be tested through the blood, but not the effectiveness, and I wouldn’t be the first one to miss the existence of a significant power. 

“Then, what?” she asked. 

“I managed to convince them that I’m working for a bigger villain, which will keep them away for a while, but then, I don’t know what to do. I need to somehow keep them believing that I can pull information out of the air, or they will realize that I’m not a villain. Worse, they might think that I’m a spy for the guild just because of you…” I said, giving a believable yet distorted version of the truth, while also prematurely removing her from offering the Guild’s help.