Stupor Villainy Annual #1

Power Players! (Ltd.) was a Michigan-based venture, founded by the first son of family from a long line of Artisanal Balloon crafters. It was founded with a simple task: Bilking as much money as possible from the meta community. This wasn't as easy as it first appeared.

Metas had the advantage of being blessed by the universe to possess powers that most people could only dream of. Unsurprisingly, folk who were able to flick a cannonball through a skyscraper were not exactly lacking on self-worth, and knew that they could always go somewhere that wouldn't charge them through the (figurative and literal) gills to get high-profile work.

So, Power Players! (Ltd.) became far more selective on who they targeted. Not everyone could have a superpower set that made them invincible, or summon shadows, or turn invisible. Some metas had somehow rolled bad on an almost universal benefit, and their powers just straight-up sucked. The heroes made of vegetable matter and were equally about as charismatic as a carrot, or the metas whose powers only activated on every second Sunday. When the moon was waxing. And they hadn't had any dairy.

These people were set apart from the living gods and the every-day folk alike. Too plain to be freaks, too mild to be worthy of fixing up. They would sometimes burst onto the public scene with an eccentric costume and gimmick that would inevitably fail to make an impression, and burn out when they figured out the lifestyle wouldn't work or didn't suit them. Power Players! (Ltd.) used this social tension to push them into the lowest tier of hero and villain work. High-risk, low reward stuff. And while it wasn't as lucrative as representing the highest tier of meta, it was still a decent earner, and a necessary one, since the population of metas was only growing worldwide.

Mark Braddock, along with the receptionist, Mary, were the longest serving members of the Royal Woods location of Power Players! (Ltd.). Mark and Mary had both come in as bright, enthusiastic early-twenty somethings, ready to make a difference in people's lives. But the revolving door of clients and other employees who had worked themselves to the bone, only to come away without anything to show from it but broken pride and ambitions. It certainly had an… effect on the two of them.

Mark had used to be a very outgoing and contentious person. He had a particular interest in the healing power of crystals. There was a course at the Royal Woods Community college that he had set his sights on. But due to a lack of interest, tuition needed to come up front before the assigned tutor would settle a concrete timetable for the lessons, so Mark had gotten a fulltime job in order to begin saving, hoping that only a year or so doing it would be enough to give him enough money to make the change.

Several months in, the aforementioned tutor of the course had died. He was a hero himself, called Crystal Clear. At first Mark was bummed about it, but he figured, since he had already learned far more about the usual meta lifestyles than he had ever wanted to, that his prospective would likely be resurrected within a year or two. Three, tops. And since he had nothing better to do, he'd stay at the job and save up some more. Maybe get the lease on a nicer place.

Nowadays, he tried to remember what had drawn him to crystals in the first place. For the life of him, he couldn't remember. Probably something childish.

Mary had also been very kind and talkative initially. To both clients, and to the other employees. But after time passed, she spent more and more time fixed to the computer, eventually only speaking in terse, blunt phrases to everyone. Mark had once speculated that she had gotten in too deep with fanfiction. But now, with the ever-changing roster of employees who were constantly either sick or doing errands outside the office, the burning curiousity he had once felt for Mary's business had long turned to ashes.

It was a Monday. Once more, Mary and Mark were both there an hour early to open up. They didn't need to arrive so early, as nobody else did, but once upon a time, they had spent the first half an hour of every day chatting, gossiping, speculating on the meta scene and who would make it or not. That had largely burnt out in the present. Mark didn't even make coffee in the office kitchen anymore, preferring to make coffee from his eighteen-hundred-dollar coffee-maker. He could not recall if it tasted any better than the dry-frozen stuff in the office-kitchen's shelf.

He went through the usual routine, making a brief noise of welcome to Mary, which was echoed back at him, before she cloistered herself behind her desk, switching on her desktop. The lights were turned on, as were the checks for old plates or cups on desks (everyone was out of the office so much that it was a real danger that some form of mould or growth would colonise the little desk-space available).

Finally, Mark was able to get to his desk. He started his day off by putting on the sounds of a babbling brook to calm himself down, while sipping at his four-sugar, double-shot coffee. Next, he checked the intra-company email. They still didn't have any takers for the Brotherhood of the Obsidian Eye job, and the head office was pushing them pretty aggressively. Which was a sign that a hell of a lot of cash had changed hands on the deal. Mark was with a majority of the top of Villain Liaisons in the state that felt that cults were a poison pill. No matter how much money you got on commission for them, there was a good chance that you were going to get your client brainwashed, and when they were in the wind for weeks or months, quotas didn't get made, and then you had a target on your back with management. That wouldn't stop him from pushing it of course, but that didn't mean he would push particularly hard.

He saw another client, Road Rage, had sent an email saying he was quitting the job to become a mechanic, citing his blood-pressure issues. Mark supposed that made sense, when someone's powers came from them flying into a blood frenzy when they got miffed. He sent a reply cordially congratulating him, and telling him to remain in touch if he changed his mind. A majority of ex-clients never looked back.

Mark had just put on some soothing jungle-sounds, when he felt a low rumble coming from the base of the building. Normally, this wasn't a cause for concern: Their building neighboured a super-team, The Movers and Shakers, who were constantly rocking the foundations of the building (and occasionally space-time). But there was a closeness and texture to the feeling of impact that ran through the floor that made it seem closer. He tried to concentrate on the sound of monkeys chattering at one another through a dense canopy.

But the odd noises continued. He heard the sounds of a series of muffled yells in the reception area, and then he winced as he began to feel the vibrations of what felt like a mob of people begin to come down the corridor towards his office. There was the sound of a breaking door, and the definite words "No! The one at the end!" echoed down through his door.

Mark had only one thought. They were coming for him.

There was always the risk that whenever you dealt with villains, and then forced them into menial, low-paid labor, that they'd eventually have enough, and snap like a dry twig. It had never personally happened to Mark, but he knew others that had been kidnapped by unhinged villains finally turning criminal, and there were of course cases of Liaisons or other unfortunate workers who crossed them being obliterated into atoms.

But Mark had taken precautions. He wasn't about to be squashed into jelly without a fight.

He fished through the bottom draw on his desk, reaching his hand to the very back of it, before he pulled out a clear, sapphire-blue gun with a long barrel. A Milford-Gummerson, Model 46. The Mercedes of laser beam weaponry. It was said you could shave a gorilla with it at three hundred yards, though Mark was unfamiliar whether that had been put to the test or not.

Mark pointed it at the door, his hand shaking with a steady tremor that no amount of concentration could still.

The noises thundered just outside his door, before they went still. Mark's finger twitched on the trigger.

The door burst open, and a large, hairy, horned being appeared in Mark's vision. He dived to the side of his desk, squeezing the trigger rapidly, as multicolour bursts of light shot towards the doorway. At some point he must've squeezed his eyes shut, but he kept on shooting blindly until the weapon in his hand made a forlorn dooting sound, that signalled that it needed to be recharged.

He opened his eyes hesitantly, and saw, to his horror, that while he had shot maybe twenty shots at the burly figure, all but one of them seemed to have missed their mark, leaving small scorch marks in the wall of his office. The one shott that seemed to have found its mark seemed to have hit the figure dead-centre in the chest, but instead of leaving a smoking hole, it seemed to have only burned a hole in the figure's (excessive) chest hair, where a small, pink patch of skin showing.

"Ow." The figure said, mildly, in the manner of someone bitten by a mosquito.

"Mary! Call the police!" Mark shouted, before a sudden thought made him gasp in horror. "Oh my god! You've killed her, haven't you?"

The beast-man stared down at Mark, who grovelled on the ground like a worm. To the Villain liaison, the look he was given seemed to comprise of an almost crushing pity.

"No! No! No! We haven't killed anyone! Everyone's okay! Nobody's going to hurt anybody!" Said a slightly whiny teenage boy's voice, pleadingly. "Bolhofner, please don't hurt anybody, okay?"

"I wasn't gonna." The beast-man said, unconvincingly. "But if this chucklehead doesn't apologise for giving me the impromptu laser hair-removal…"

He let the implicit threat linger for a second, before Mark dropped the weapon in his hand, and clasped both of his hands together in prayer.

"I'm very sorry! More than you could possibly imagine!" He said in a panic. The look of terror on his face must've pleased the beast-man, since he took a few steps to the side, moving away from Mark, and leaving the rest of the doorway open to the others behind him.

Mark took a look at the figures, and saw three familiar faces. He knew The Thespian, in full villain regalia, despite the more casual wear of the other three she had came with, Aunty Pam, the owner of the local ice-cream franchise that had been around since he was a teenager, and one rotund teenager that he had known for several months.

"Simon?" He said, bewildered.

"I came to hand in the forms, remember?" The blonde boy said nervously. "And the rest of my team came to support me…" He said, visually cringing.

"Well, not all of us." Aunty Pam said. "We had to put Bea to bed after she stayed up all night working, the poor darling…"

"And we caught Chandler sneaking back in like a wraith, and he said he needed his rest from the night that he'd had." The Thespian said, waving a cloaked arm either dismissively, or otherwise flourishing it elaborately without a real reason. It still looked rather impressive, regardless.

"Well, you saw how he was limping, and he did look exhausted when he came in… He must've had a tussle." Pam said, sympathetically.

"Then why, dearest Pamela, was he smiling like an idiot when he came in?" The Thespian asked reproachfully. Aunty Pam only shrugged.

"And when I asked if she wanted to come, Lacey just slammed the door in my face." Simon said, a little distantly, before mustering a little enthusiasm. "But anyway! We're here to hand in the forms, and answer any extra questions, and otherwise just show off our stuff."

Mark had picked himself up by that point, and delicately placed his weapon back in his desk. He still stared warily at the behemoth of a man beside him.

"Look, none of this is really necessary at all, you know." Mark said, suddenly finding a modicum of spine to be irritated at the group of virtual strangers in front of him. "In fact, all you need to do is…" He cut himself off. He felt that any form of explanation would simply be a waste of energy. "…Forget it. Just hand me the forms, already."

Simon bounded over, handing a manila file stuffed with papers. Mark gave a cursory look at all of the papers, and didn't see any glaring errors, so he began to take the individual forms out, and placed them in the scanner that took up one corner of his desk. However, there was one thing that he saw that he felt compelled to ask.

"The Commiseration Committee?" He said, shooting a curious look at Simon.

"Err… We couldn't agree on anything else in time." The teen said, embarrassed.

"No, no." Mark said neutrally. "It's maybe not quite as punchy as it could be, but I've heard worse."

The room fell into an awkward silence as Mark dutifully scanned each page, while soothing rainforest sounds filled the room. For a moment, it wasn't clear who would break it first, but a loud click suddenly sounded from the side of the room.

"The Emperor Tamarin!" The horned man shouted from the side of the room; his face lit up in recognition. "I'd know that baby from anywhere."

"Excuse me?" Mark said, momentarily taking his eyes from the task at hand.

"The monkey in the rainforest sounds you have going. I used to love those little guys when I was stationed in the Amazon. Good eatin' too." The large man said with a large grin that was, frankly, terrifying.

"Right." Mark said, turning his attention back to the scanning. The pile was almost done.

"So… Anything interesting coming up?" Simon said to Mark, rocking back and forth on his heels. The swaying reminded Mark of a tottering tower set up by a child, far too top-heavy, and bound for collapse.

"No." Mark said bluntly. "Just the position with the Brotherhood of the Obsidian Eye that you rejected—"

"Hmmm." Said a lilting voice, and Mark looked over to see it was coming from The Thespian. "Would you mind perhaps explaining a little more about this Brotherhood? My interest is piqued…"

"No, Elena." Simon interrupted. "It's full-time, and it's a cult."

"Oh." She replied, and even under the mask, he could see her face curdle into distaste.

"What else did you expect with a name like that?" The beast-man chastised her.

"I've never had a job with a cult…" Aunty Pam said idly. "What exactly makes them so bad?"

"Summoning dark entities from beyond time and space." The beast-man uttered.

"Making you dress in the gaudiest of robes." The Thespian said with a shudder.

"Tricking you into being the sacrificial virgin on their altar." Simon said, grimacing.

"The pay's usually good, though." The beat-man added.

"Those extra made-up holy-days means more paid time off." The Thespian said, reluctantly.

"…They only occasionally try and use you as a sacrificial virgin." Simon admitted, though it seemed as though he had struggled to find anything of merit to say.

"Just… Do some research into them before you go for it." Simon continued. "Make sure they haven't gone under any other names, or if its another villain's vanity project."

"Yeah, you'd be surprised how half of them are shells for some dumb scheme or another." The beast-man said. "I remember there was one I joined up with four or so years ago… A pyramid scheme for vitamin gummies. Said they were 'energy vessels' that we needed to ingest for 'spiritual immunity'. The cherry ones were pretty good, though."

"I recall having to take the part of a demonic being for some ceremony or another." The Thespian continued. "Eight hours in the make-up chair, and then the latex claws caught fire when they didn't test the pyrotechnics properly. Shoddy business practices."

"And there was one time—" Simon began to speak, before he was cut off.

"It's done."

The four members of the team turned to Mark, who was sitting back behind his computer, and looking at them impatiently.

"I beg your pardon?" The Thespian asked, perplexed.

"It's done. Submitted and approved. You can go now." Mark said, raising a hand and making a shoo-ing motion.

"Just like that?" Aunty Pam asked, not taking the hint, and standing in place.

"Yes. I tried to tell you before. It's not complicated. The whole process is essentially automated." Mark said, exasperated. He turned his monitor around to point it to them, and they saw a page on the DOMA's official website, with a large green tick and the word "Accepted" in bold green letters.

"Well, that's just anticlimactic." Simon commented, frowning.

"I suppose it might be for all of you. But unless there's anything else you need from Simon, I think you and your… Team-mates should leave."

"We actually managed to rehearse an impromptu demonstration of our particular dynamic while we were on the bus here—" The Thespian

"—And that was completely unnecessary." Mark said, raising a hand and placing it on his forehead to try and massage a growing headache that had started forming as soon as the group had burst through his door. "Please leave."

Simon seemed to finally get the hint before any of the others, and subtly led the two women away from the doorway, before grabbing the beast-man by the arm and leading him along out of the door too.

Mark watched them walk down the hallway and turn the corner through the reception. When he was satisfied that they were gone, he carefully closed the door and went back to his desk. The sounds of jungle ambience no longer managed to calm his frayed nerves after the beast-man's comments, and he turned them off, preferring to sit in silence.

It was a terrible start to the morning, and he had an impulse to strike Simo from everything but the dirtiest, poorly paying jobs. His mouse went to close the DOMA website he was in when he paused.

While he had experienced a few moments of mortal terror, and then several more of extreme annoyance, he contemplated the idiots that he had the displeasure to endure and, for a split-second, he felt a pang of… Affection.

They were crude, loud, pushy, and more than a little irritating, but the group, even with half their roster missing, had managed to briefly sunder the usual dull routine that he had had for as long as he could remember.

Maybe, just maybe they could bring that spark to others. He would keep an eye on the events of the end of the week closely, anyway.

He got up from his desk and went down the hall to see Mary sitting at her computer, though she was sallow-faced and looked like she had suffered a shock.

"Hey." Mark said, his voice feeling raspy from the forced attempt at casual conversation that he likely hadn't exercised in months.

"Hi, Mark." Mary said quietly, tearing her head away from the screen. Mark realised it must've caused her considerable effort, and recognition of the act gave him the resolve to continue.

"What a bunch of nutjobs, huh?" He said, tripping over his own tongue as he spoke.

She gave a small nod, joined with the twitch of a smile.

"Maybe we can go for lunch later to help forget about it. My treat." He said.

The hint of a smile that she had threatened to show before became fully apparent, and for the first time in what felt like years, Mark felt like he had done something to make someone's day brighter in a real way.

Several things have been remarked to never sleep: Justice, certain cities, the devil, some French guy once even said clouds never slept. For Agent Stanley Eagleton of The Department of Meta Affairs, however, he literally never slept.

He was one of a plethora of metahumans that were employed by the government agency, who were able to take better use of their skills. He had ingested some dubious java one day several years before that had been cursed somewhere in the production process (with the number of disgruntled workers at in the industry, it could've happened at virtually every level), and as a result, he was completely incapable of falling asleep and he also lacked the ability to feel any fatigue whatsoever. But as a straight-laced, hyper-focused college student aiming for government work, this had only enabled him to outperform every other grad-school hopeful trying to get a decent placement.

He was, more-or-less, the perfect agent. Far more sober than a priest, far more reliable than clockwork (with its messy gears that gum up every few months), he also had a deep-abiding patriotism that made him start shedding tears at the sight of Old Glory flapping in the breeze.

However, that didn't mean he had any complaints. Despite society's best efforts, he was still human. And being human meant that he had some hang-ups.

For instance, while he lived for work, and, in fact, after being hired, he'd requested to be permanently on the job, OSHA guidelines (which largely precluded metas, because even the most labyrinthine bureaucratic orders have to call it quits on overcomplication somewhere) still required that workers had at least ten hours of time for recuperation a day, so he was sent off on his own. Since his early drive to excel scholastically led him bereft of hobbies or a social life, Stanley had attempted to do model-making and get into Jigsaw puzzles, but despite having a personality drier than the Sahara, the monotony of the projects was too much even for him. He was presently trying out bird-watching, but was getting increasingly irritated at the lack of bald eagles (an animal with which he felt an odd, almost totemic connection with, probably due to his name) he had seen so far, which film, television, and government seals had led him to believe were far more plentiful than they actually were.

And there were also some features of the job, despite the station he had and the satisfaction he took for keeping the peace, that left him feeling sour.

While the DOMA liked to have agents constantly out in the field, at the site of every battle and every conflict, ready to call in a clean-up crew or phone in a blimpcraft-carrier, that meant that it either needed a truly massive behind-the-scenes staff, or else a chaotic, barely functioning mess of an organisation, where agents were forced to take on several barely related cases at a time. The former would've cost a vast order of magnitude to bring into reality, so the latter was, of course, what ended up being implemented. Understandably, this caused problems down the line.

For instance: Just two days before, he'd been called to deal with an unregistered meta-event between two parties of registered and unregistered combatants. That was further complicated when it turned out that one of the combatants was an unregistered shapeshifter who had used their powers to register under a civilian's identity. A citizen who then just so happened to turn up at the combat site. If the citizen had been any less agreeable, then they would've certainly had a massive public relations nightmare.

And then, it turned out that one of the super-criminals that had been apprehended were either cousins or siblings with the governor of Georgia (knowing Georgia, it could've possibly been both), and the entire family had been allowed to be transferred back to the state, where Stanley was sure that they wouldn't receive more than a slap on the wrist. As one of the arresting officers, on the scene he'd had to suffer a long talk with their attorney, who was sickeningly smug as he successfully weaselling them out of imprisonment.

And now Stanley was being called in by his boss, no doubt for some other screw-up that could've occurred up or down the chain of command. If it wasn't for the grim satisfaction he got when he served a verbal beat-down to a muscle-bound monster that could otherwise pound him into dust, or give out a ticket on a mutant cyborg from the future for not parking their time machine properly, he'd probably have gone into the private service.

He walked through the wasp-nest of office space, that contained a myriad of colourful characters mixing with government agents. He caught snatches of conversation as he ambled through to the private office-space at the back.

"—I'm sorry, but the name "Rampage" is just too common. You'll have to find another one." A DOMA agent said to a latex-clad red-head.

"I keep telling you, Its spelt differently! R-A-M-P-A-I-G-E. You see, it's a pun—"

At another desk, a cantankerous old man with a snow-white handlebar moustache, sounded like he was issuing a complaint, which was complicated by him waving what looked like a glowing ball of metal with various geometric shapes attached to it, in one hand.

"—Thought I was done with all the ding-dang trouble once those girls left home, and then this ding-dang meteorite comes out of the sky at three in the dang morning, and ruins my begonias! I marched right into the mayor's office the next day, and they me that you're the one's to talk about with all this space-junk malarkey."

"Sir, what would you like us to actually do?" An incredibly fed-up senior agent said, lips drawn in a tight line.

"I want you to launch it back up there! Give those ding-dang space creeps a taste of their own medicine for once!"

Stanley tutted. While he likely would've traded his place with them, it didn't mean he didn't sympathise with his fellow agents. Whether it was the public or Metas making unreasonable demands, everyone wanted them to solve their problems, no matter how disproportionately complicated or simple those problems were.

He knocked on the amber door of his department manager. A small metallic sign showed her name: Alexis Alces.

Among the type of women that Stanley admired, there were strong women, and then there were women who held up the world effortlessly. Alexis was physically the former, and spiritually the latter. She was only an inch or two taller than average, but she was broad-chested, thick-thighed, and had arms like boa-constrictors. While she had never confirmed that she had any powers, inter-office gossip said she had Valkyrie ancestry, and from what he had seen of her in the field, he knew she could deliver a haymaker that could stun a heavy-hitting meta.

But she was also the most severe person he had ever met. She fired and transferred insubordinate agents with a zeal that had even gotten the national head-quarters questioning her. She never smiled, unless she was an interrogation room with a bad-guy, and that definitely wasn't the kind of smile you wanted to be on the other side of, as it was an omen of truly terrible things in your future. Once, the office had gotten her a cake for her birthday. She saw a discoloured piece of chocolate amongst the fondant, and immediately had the health department shut down the bakery for health-code violations, with the cake being shipped away as evidence.

She was quite serious. And Stanley normally got along with her because of that. But not when he was in her sights for reprimand.

The door swung open, and Stanley was face to face with Alexis. Her thick brows were knitted in a truly fearsome scowl. Stanley briefly looked up a few inches. Not many women could pull off a crew cut, but damn if his boss didn't make it work.

He marched into the middle of the room, and waited for her to sit back down at her desk. When she was sitting comfortably, he stood to attention and saluted.

"Ma'am, I just want to mention what an honor it is to serve here under you every day."

"Agent Eagleton. At ease." Alces said, tiredly. "And quit brown-nosing. Or else you'll be counting tumbleweeds in Wyoming with the last agent who tried."

"Yes ma'am." Eagleton said tersely. "I simply wished to let you know that regardless of whatever disciplinary action I might face, it does not make me respect you or your authority any less."

"Eagleton, what the hell are you talking about?"

Stanley saw her face, and the familiar scowl directed towards him, and he was suddenly put even further on edge.

"I presume I'm here due to sub-par work on this week's caseload. I had to take over Agent Ramirez's work on the mummy swarm—"

"I know, agent." Alces said with a grunt. "Agent Ramirez already filled me in. And all of your paperwork, including the ones you took voluntarily to substitute for other agents, are all exemplary."

Stanley was confused.

"It must be because I haven't been adhering to the uniform policy. I knew that Hawaiian-print tie was a mistake—"

"It's not about a dress-code violation." Ales said, and her mouth split into a pearly grimace. "You are not being punished for any sort of infraction, real or imagined, Agent Eagleton. You're here because you're the most capable agent I have who can take on extra hours. I need the help, and I've even written into head-office to give you overtime extensions."

Stanley Eagleton went dewy-eyed. It had been years, but he was finally getting the chance to use his powers efficiently and effectively for the Department. Best of all, it meant no more thousand-piece jigsaw sets or staring through binoculars for hours at a blank patch of sky to try and alleviate his boredom.

"Yes, ma'am! I relish this opportunity ma'am!" He said saluting again, before remembering what he had been told earlier, whacking the erect hand back down. "May I ask what these duties will entail, ma'am?"

"Fallout from the Null Point breakout." Alces said sourly.

Agent Eagleton's mood immediately dropped. The first mass-breakout of prisoners from the most technologically advanced and remote prison ever designed. They were still figuring out the precise specifics with how it happened, but snafus with privacy, classified information, and wild rumours amongst the criminal element of the meta-scene, made it next to impossible to determine how it had actually happened. The only thing they could do was drag the escapees back there, and hope that they didn't do the exact same thing again.

"Isn't that more under the national office's jurisdiction?"

"The national office is only good for giving out funding and orders. And it doesn't even do those right. They're leaving it up to the states to clean up the mess."

"Then why haven't the Great Lakes City department taken charge?"

Alces looked at him grimly.

"If you hadn't noticed, Agent Eagleton, lately we've got something of a horde of super criminals descending on the Royal Woods area and surrounds." Alces said.

"A "Horde" seems like a bit of an over-exaggeration, ma'am." Stanley mumbled in response.

"Oh really? Besides the trio of Georgian peach fanciers that you picked up the other day, there's reliable chatter from the scanners that there are at least three others, all escapees from Null Point, who are laying low in the tri-county area at this moment. I wouldn't describe that as an insignificant number by any means, agent."

Eagleton was shocked, though he didn't show it. While the Michigan branches of DOMA were oddly busy compared to several other states, normally it was on the lighter side in terms of super-criminal activity. A few A-listers stationed there kept things running to official specifications, while all the flashy and homicidal types tended to go to the coasts to make trouble, leaving the inner-states embroiled in some of the more obscure criminals.

He tried to think about who would be most likely to be there based on the list. One came to mind instantly, since he was a regular in the area.

"Let me guess. Mr. C is one of them."

"That one's so obvious, I would've demoted you down to baby-cape wrangling if you hadn't guessed him." Alces said dismissively. "He's the most predictable of the three, unfortunately. It's likely he'll huddle up somewhere, pranking his crew into bodily trauma until some plot is amusing enough to make him come up for air, or else some crony of his turns snitch after one too many trips to the ER. Either way, we wait for the right opportunity before we move on him. It's the other two that have got the national office concerned."

Eagleton scrunched his face up as he began to think some more on possible candidates, before Alces waved him off.

"You're not going to guess the other two. One of them isn't a local, and the other is simply too out of left field." She explained. "Super-criminal number two is Mike Rendell, also known as Killing Machine."

"Never heard of him." Eagleton admitted, frankly.

"And there's no reason for you to have. There's nothing particularly notable about him aside from how unhinged he is." She picked out a file from the printer tray of the machine next to her desktop and handed a brief file over to Eagleton. "Guy was a drifter and career criminal with a list of addictions as long as your arm, before he got hit by a gas truck while he was on his way to hock his mom's burial urn at a pawn shop. Guy was more mangled and twisted than a cargo container full of curly-fries. It turns out that an ambulance-chaser found footage showing that the fuel company was undeniably in the wrong, so they decided to settle out of court by covering his medical costs, and fixing him up a bunch of state-of-the-art cybernetics.

"Let me guess. They were experimental prototypes that ended up giving the user meta-human level abilities." Stanley said.

"Again, Agent, you've been around long enough to know that you don't even have to guess. Rendell ended up doing the super-mercenary thing for some years in the mid-west, before he finally got into a fight that ended with a body-count. Ended up accidentally crushing three kindergartners who were on a tour in an anvil factory. While the courts have been figuring out culpability between him, the arresting hero, the company, and the schoolboard, he was put up in Null Point."

"Well, can't we just post a merc job in the usual places and reel him in?" Stanley asked.

"Normally, that would be the move." Alces agreed with him. "But from some of the personnel reports about that have come back from Null Point, heavily redacted of course, have shown a gradual decline in his state of mind. He needed to be heavily medicated to stop him from injuring himself and others."

"They didn't let him keep his prostheses, did they?" Stanley asked, worried.

"No. However, the guards were apparently very surprised that someone with only a torso could throw themselves as hard, or as far, as he managed to." Alces said, completely neutrally. "He managed to steal some mobility equipment stored in the infirmary, but fortunately, he doesn't have access to his prostheses. Unless he somehow manages to track down spares, of course."

In the course of your average battle between metas, the amount of leftover residual debris doesn't merely include rubble or miscellaneous wreckage. More often than not, metas had a tendency to go a little harder than anticipated. The average scrounger of a battle-site might find all manner of technology, ancient artifacts, and even body-parts (that were generally handily regrown or replaced with the right insurance claims) wedged between rock and a hard place. The spoils were often very lucrative, with battle-scroungers able to sell what they found to collectors, wannabe heroes and villains, or even back to the metas who had lost their stuff.

Flip Fillipini indeed did the occasional scrounging. But recently he had found an even more profitable line of resale, concerning meta paraphernalia: Bidding at auctions, and flipping the bids afterwards.

The fortunes of heroes and villains were fickle things. While a good run of employment or corporate sponsorship kept some in the green for a long time, the majority of metas were statistically likely to go bankrupt at least once in their lifetimes. When that happened, banks were willing to take whatever fungible assets were on the table, as well as the table itself a majority of the time, to get some return on their investment. Where your average battlefield was occasionally strewn with the odd goodie, a hero's base, or a villain's lair were often filled to the brim with strange mementos and tech collected in their careers. And banks were more than willing to offload them for a song, rather than getting authorities involved in properly appraising them, which ran the risk of having them confiscated for "public safety" or "the good of all sentient life".

As much as Flip had a reflexive revulsion to handing money over to someone else, he was able to, on rare occasions, swallow his pride and try and scoop a bargain. One of his favourite places to get one was storage lockers. Down and out metas usually hid their more valuable personal items in there once the bank started knocking at their home address. When Flip got a hot tip (usually by the owners of the lockers) that a sale was going down, he'd be the first one there, loudly fretting about dangerous levels of radiation, or the dangerous side-effects of monster-serum, to scare off the less experienced bidders. He even travelled out of state on deals that looked too good to pass up.

After that, it was a matter of posting ads online on the right sites, and hiking up the prices based on the buyer's need for an item in question.

Take earlier that day for example:

When the man had wheeled his way over to the front of his store, Flip had heard the sound, and had almost confused him with Scoots, and told him to buzz off. It was pure happenstance that the fold-out he was staring at (A particularly sumptuous looking Cheese Dog from Saucy Side-Dish Weekly), happened to blow aside, revealing the half-melted face of the man before him.

After taking a small moment to recompose himself from the initial shock, Flip's demeanour turned extra smooth. Flip had learned early on in his career as a huckster that it didn't matter what a customer looked like, only that their money was good. He politely asked what the man's business was, and after some initial confusion, Flip found that his customer was interested in some specific items from his "special collection".

Flip took the man down to his "bunker" (basement), where he stored meta items alongside bulk containers of nacho cheese. He found that both appreciated in value the longer they stayed down there.

After a small amount of searching, Flip came back with the items: A set of cybernetic prosthetics, carbon filament black, with some green glowing lights inset at various intervals. It certainly made a change from the usual chrome, overly-muscular models that had flooded the market in recent years. Flip had enough understanding of aesthetics to know that this particular model looked pretty fly, and that meant that he could probably squeeze a few extra dimes out of a sale for it.

"Now, champ, as you can see since these items are prime collector's material, so it's gonna cost youze a pretty penny. But since Flip's also such a nice guy, and I can see that you're in need of a hand or two, heh… Let's put the price at an even Fifty K."

It was a genuinely valuable set of items, but his shameless gouging was also used to weed out the hucksters, fakers and penny-pinchers who wanted to flip the items as soon as they went out of Flips filthy hands. And nobody but nobody out-flipped Flip.

"Ah, can't do it? That's too bad." Flip said, starting up his usual bait-and-reel technique. "Maybe you can come back in a couple of weeks, that is, if someone else hasn't put in a higher bid by the—"

His speech was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a large amount of cash hitting the ground. Flip looked down at the ground to see a thick wad of money sitting there, ripe for the taking. Dropping the protheses immediately, he dived to the liberate the poor cash from the filthy bunker (basement) ground, but as soon as he placed a hand on the ground, he felt a wheel roll over his grasping fingers, causing him to give a high-pitched yelp.

He looked up to see the badly deformed man look down at him with a deadly contempt.

"Heh. I get it, chief. Cash on delivery." Flip said, a bead of sweat forming on his wrinkled forehead. "And since Flip's such a swell guy, I'll even help ya with getting fit into them."

Over fifteen excruciating minutes, Flip attempted to fit the prosthetics onto the limbless man with likely broken fingers, while also keeping eye-contact with the slab of cash sitting on the ground. After a little straining and struggling on his part, Flip pressed a series of pressure-seal buttons that lined the exterior at the base of the prosthetic leg. With a hiss, the final limb fitted perfectly to the flesh of the formerly limbless man.

The man shifted in his seat, rocking and fidgeting with a new-found energy that he had lacked moments before. With a sudden motion, he rose up onto his two new legs, leaving the mobility aid he was bound to moments before abandoned, and stood towering above Flip.

Flip hadn't noticed before, but the man who had been interred in a wheelchair only moments before was actually quite large. Bordering on seven feet, in fact. And a quick glance at the arm-rests of the chair showed deep indentations left by the super-powered limbs.

A desperate, an almost unthinkable thought occurred to Flip in the moment where he still lay kneeling before the newly empowered freak: Perhaps he didn't need the money as much as he needed that guy to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

"Y-You know what? Flip's a generous kinda guy." Flip stammered, backing up against the wall behind him. "I just love to help somebody walk on their own two feet, or any pair of feet, when they need it. So how about you keep the merchandise. Free of charge." His throat almost closed with anaphylaxis from saying the F-word, but it was that or risk cheesing off someone who could squish even Flip's hardy body like a rotten grape.

The monstrous figure stooped down to collect the money that he had earlier dropped, then, standing tall once more, stepped forward towards Flip, each footfall as deliberate as an act of murder, before finally he stood directly above a cowering Flip.

"Nonsense."

What Flip had thought was a gargling, rambling voice ion the store's surface suddenly sounded sinister and laden with menace. Like the sound of glass being crushed underfoot.

A metallic hand tucked the wad of bills into Flip's trembling ones.

"All those who bring about his will, are blessed with rich reward."

Flip looked down at the wad of cash, and quickly flicked through it. All fifty-dollar bills. Based on sheer mass alone, there was a lot more than Fifty K in there.

"Heh, sounds like the kinda guy that I wouldn't mind helping out again…" Flip said, his physical contact with money acting better than a hit of morphine to calm his mood.

"Your time serving his will has passed." The man with metal limbs replied in a level tone. "But do not fear. Soon his works will be known to all. He is the final point. The end of all stories. His will and deeds will soon be felt here most of all. And then, no more suffering. No more pain. No more mother." Then, the man man raised his head away from Flip, and turned, beginning to walk towards the bunker (basement) door.

Then, with a series of heavy clunks that echoed as they hit the wooden stairway, the man was as gone as suddenly as he had appeared.

Flip had met with plenty of crazy people before, possibly (but never substantiated in a court of law) from the high levels of mercury he had in his fish tacos, but he was never so glad to see one getting out of his store than the one that had just handed-him a fortune.

Picking himself up off the ground, Flip tucked his new-found earnings into his pants, before taking a look at the one thing left by the mysterious, likely-insane, stranger: His wheelchair.

Flip was no expert on how mobility aids were priced, but he figured with a little spit shine on the wheels, and maybe a spray with air-freshener, that he could get one of the geezers from Sunset Canyon interested in it.

"And so who does that leave? You did say there were three super-criminals, right?" Agent Eagleton asked keenly, eager to begin work co-ordinating investigations into the escaped criminals as soon as he was out of the office.

He was surprised to see that Alces looked back at him… Nervously, was the only way he could describe it. Though he had never seen a more ill-fitting expression on a person's face. Alexis Alces was as cool as a flash-frozen cucumber, and twice as hard to bend.

"What's your clearance level, Eagleton?" She asked.

"… Level Three. Beta Blue." Stanley replied. While he wasn't the highest-ranking agent, he was still considered dependable and capable of keeping secrets over many in the office. He was absolutely sure that Alces already knew, because she had to sign off on his advancement to that clearance level.

"Can you please show me, agent?" She asked, holding out a hand.

Stanley was mildly wary, but brought out his ID card from his pocket, and walked over to hand it over to Alces.

As he drew within a few steps, Alces grabbed his hand with her outstretched hand, and with her other, she whipped out a small metal tube, which she stabbed into his arm, to which Stanley felt a small pich.

"Ouch! What the hell!" He said, jumping back, and applying pressure on the back of his hand.

"Sorry, Eagleton. I need to do a genetic clearance first." She said, looking intently at the opposite end of the tube that stabbed him. "Oh, by the way. That was a sloppy, unvigilant performance there, Eagleton. You're supposed to be tracking a shapeshifter at the moment, aren't you? Never give them an opportunity to get close, even if they're the President. Maybe I need to get HR to give another training seminar."

Stanley gave an anguished grunt. Not only for his messy behaviour from his boss, but the fact that the HR Seminars sucked. They were the only things he considered more boring than any of his hobbies. And he had once earnestly tried scrapbooking for a number of months.

"Okay, you're clear." Said Alces, showing Stanley a green light that had lit up on the stab-tube. "Though I'm going to have to test you again before you leave the office. Just to be safe."

Stanley nodded. It unfortunately wasn't outside the realm of possibility that you could be replaced partway through the meeting.

"What do you know about the super-criminal known as Fugitive Ninety-Nine?" Alces asked. The anxious look that she had had before she tested him had reappeared.

"Some sort of Interdimensional criminal, right? He went about performing heists and assassinations, then escaping to alternate realities to escape prosecution. Until we got a tip-off before he came to ours."

"That's what was released to the public, as well as those with a low clearance level. The truth is far more… disturbing." Alces flinched as she said the final word, and took a deep breath before she continued.

"Agent, have you considered a world where the incidence of metas was lower in certain areas, and higher in others? That is to say… Have you imagined a world where The United States didn't have the most metas per capita?"

Stanley wrinkled his brow. While he knew there was a multiverse out there, he generally felt it was populated with universes where there were evil doubles that had moustaches, or everyone was apes. Nothing so… Politically specific.

"Well, in our surveillance of alternate dimensions, we came across a particular one where at the outset of the metahuman emergence, the number of metas that emerge was higher if one went slightly… North."

"You mean… Canada?" Stanley replied.

"Yes." Alces said, deathly serious. "While there were some areas that were unaffected in the United States, within a few years, it seems that our great white cousin gained a majority of metas. And when there weren't enough heroes to keep meta-crime in check here… Things seem to have gone quite badly for our country in that dimension. There doesn't even seem to be an existing DOMA or equivalent there."

"Didn't the Canadians help?" Stanley asked, concerned.

"They did. In a fashion. As the country began to disintegrate, The Canadians sent their heroes… Along with their military to help with aid efforts. They managed to capture a good deal of territory bloodlessly, until the American heroes fought back… Our probes only had a very general observation of events, but once the dust settled, there wasn't even a United States of America left."

Stanley felt nauseated. A universe where there was no United States? It was like something out of a nightmare. A hell that he hadn't considered before.

"We kept it under observation, marking it as a cautionary tale of what might be… But almost two years ago, someone appeared in a high-energy research facility that existed in both dimensions. An envoy from that dimension."

"Fugitive Ninety-Nine."

Alces gave a solemn nod.

"He said that their dimension sent him to help construct a permanent bridge between the dimensions, so that that both sides could prosper and learn mutually from one another. Naturally, he was immediately arrested, and sent to Null Point, in lieu of anywhere more secure to put him."

"What do we know about him?"

"Almost nothing. He clammed up as soon as he was placed under arrest. He has no powers, but he has an extraordinary degree of physical training and discipline. No fingerprints, and he seems to have been injected with a nanite solution which scrambles attempts to chart his genome. Reports of… Advanced interrogation tactics that Null Point staff performed came up with nothing. He even seems to have had training to resist telepaths. Proof enough that his reason for being here wasn't as benevolent as it appeared. As you can see, his recapture is our department's highest priority. Their dimension already leveraged a war between metahumans to gain territory. We can't let him gain allies or sow dissent here. As we suspect he will."

"And why do you think he's in the Royal Woods area?" Stanley asked.

"Some security footage from a local Pizzeria. Gus's Games and Grub. We think it might be related to this dimension's counterpart, whoever it is." Alces handed him a stack of greasy security images that nonetheless gave some adequate images of their target.

Stanley looked down at the image. The target was certainly physically impressive. A little over six-feet tall, Stanley could still see the subtle definition of intense musculature underneath the thick coat that the target wore. His face was young, maybe early twenties at the latest, but he had a thin beard which disguised the presence or absence of lines or wrinkles. If he was really as well trained as they suspected he was, it might be the last image they ever got of him.

Still. As long as he didn't dye that distinctive white hair of his, Stanley felt they still had a decent shot of catching him.

AN: Hey, sorry for the wait. I wanted to try and do something a little different with this one, introducing some aspects of things that'll be important in the future, while also serving as an aside to the regular action. The usual comic book format of an annual as a place with a bit of extra story that doesn't necessarily fit in with the main story, felt like a natural point of inspiration.