Fitted suits were surprisingly comfy. Moving around in the one I'd obtained had felt a lot more natural than the suits I remembered from my past. I guess it was a matter of 'you get what you pay for' in action.

I looked normal from the outside, relying on a domino mask for a disguise. On the inside though, I was closer to the Goblin. I'd figured out how to transform my insides without changing my appearance. It gave me a decent safety net, although it took a lot of concentration.

'-where fashion sits, Putting on a ritz~'

It also had weird side effects.

My Goblin persona was singing away in my head and making random comments. It was weird, and just a teeny bit upsetting. I already knew I was crazy, but hearing voices made it more official somehow. that was stupid; hearing voices wasn't any worse than any other major symptom of mental illness. It just had been arbitrarily chosen as the poster child for evidence of insanity.

'Hey, we're headed to a supervillain bar. This just means we'll fit in better!'

I wasn't sure whether returning to a normal 'either/or' state would get rid of the Goblin's voice. This might be permanent, or it could just be an extension of my normal craziness.

'Do you think turning into the Goblin but keeping our insides all normal and squishy would swap our voices around?'

...That was a good question. It made me wonder whether I would be able to express my emotions like that as well. I couldn't like this, but that was more of a bonus considering my current goal.

Finding the bar had been surprisingly difficult. That made sense though; supervillains weren't going to let everyone know about their favorite hangouts. Even if they were used as neutral meeting places, letting the average joe know about them was just asking for a headache.

The Stacked Deck would have been easy to miss if it wasn't for the neon sign over the door displaying a hand holding a quartet of aces. It flashed every couple of seconds, displaying a fifth ace 'up' the hand's sleeve. A large man, nearly the size of Rhino, stood in front of the door with a sour, forbidding look that he'd probably practiced. He glared at me like he was hoping I keeled over dead. It was pretty obvious that he was a bouncer, although I would bet that he wasn't just turning away minors.

This bar catered exclusively to supervillains, their minions, and anyone who associated with them. They wouldn't want random drunks and thrill-seekers disturbing their regulars.

"Get lost kid."

The bouncer grunted the three words, glaring even harder than usual. I stared blandly at him, watching the way a scar on the underside of his chin flexed. I waited for three seconds before replying.

"I have business in the bar, if you don't mind."

"Look brat, wearing a mask doesn't make you a villain, and even if you were, you're still a minor."

"Do you prevent Ace from entering?"

The bouncer's glare deepened. He was starting to personally dislike me, instead of only disliking me because I was there and it was his job to. He started cracking his knuckles in a way that sounded way too much like someone pumping a shotgun. I could tell that the noise was a final warning, not a threat.

"...She's a real supervillain. This is a place for real villains. Now, you've got three seconds to get out of my sight."

'Welcome to the Salty Spittoon, how tough are ya?'

'Goblin's' voice echoed in my head quietly. Part of me was glad I couldn't make expressions anymore, since snickering at this point would not help matters.

"If you don't mind, I brought two forms of ID that should satisfy you."

The bouncer raised an eyebrow slightly, but didn't say anything. I reached into my jacket and pulled out a small stack of bills, fanning them open to attract his attention. Before he could say anything, I nodded down to my other hand which was holding a silenced pistol pointed at his waist. His eyes bugged out slightly, but otherwise he didn't react. He just nodded slowly and let me through. I put the gun away and slid the money into his pocket, walking in without a word.

I'd practiced that sleight of hand for over an hour yesterday, just so I could do it perfectly. It wouldn't trick anyone in the big leagues, but it was perfect for dealing with hired muscle. Plus, there was something innately satisfying in weaponizing what was basically a magic trick.

The bar inside was pretty average looking. The colors were dull, the lights dim, and the furniture solid but worn. Really, the only thing odd about this bar were the prices and the clientele. It was full of thugs, many in subdued costumes surrounding whichever supervillain employed them. The rest dressed more normally, but the atmosphere around them definitely wasn't that of men with nine to five jobs. All of them eyed me, partially because I didn't look like I belonged, and partially because there wasn't much on the TV.

I walked up to the bar, purchased a ten dollar root beer and ignored the stares while scanning the room for the Trickster. I caught sight of him in the far corner, his technicolor outfit sticking out even among the other eccentric dressers of the criminal underworld.

'Sweet threads.'

The Trickster's outfits was a mishmash of bright colors in random patterns. There wasn't any rhyme or reason to the way the pattern was sewn either. The overall design had a jester aesthetic, and it toed the line between amusingly whimsical and eye-wateringly obnoxious. From what I knew about The Trickster, that fits pretty well.

I was about a third of the way there when a hand reached out and a yellow-ish gas sprayed me in the face.

My lungs and airways had been partially converted into their biomechanical form long before I arrived. That should have made me immune to gas attacks. The cloying fear pumping through my veins made it all too clear that Scarecrow's gas was able to circumvent my protections somehow.

I turned and stared at the supervillain blandly. It was hard to tell with the burlap mask he wore, but he looked surprised. The room was silent as everyone watched us stare at each other. I heard a muffled noise as Scarecrow started to speak, but I cut him off by grabbing his arm and twisting it, forcing his face into the polished cement floor.

"Ho- Gurk!?"

It might have been the fear stealing away my restraint, but I almost reflexively pressed at just the right spot to dislocate Scarecrow's arm. A good chunk of the audience failed to hide their winces at the visceral popping noise. The rest either didn't react or eyed me approvingly. Of course, they wouldn't have reacted any differently if it was me on the floor either.

'Kill him.'

I placed a foot onto his back and took a sip of my drink. Scarecrow avoided moving, in case I decided to injure him more. He did turn his head enough to look up and grunted.

"...Why aren't you afraid?"

'Kill him.'

I snorted calmly. It was frustrating, but even being dosed with fear gas and feeling terrified didn't change my expression at all. It was nice not to be screaming and running in fear though. The indignant rage coursing through me was probably bad, although I was enjoying it in a sadistic sort of way.

"Oh, I'm scared. I'm just not scared of you. Why would I be? You're just a bully with a vape pen full of fear juice."

'Kill him. He may have been the first supervillain to attack you, but he won't be the last. Make an example of him. kill him.'

Before he could respond I bent down and pressed a thumb into his shoulder blade. He hissed in pain.

'Not good enough! Hurry up! Let everyone know you aren't someone to be messed with! They are all too dangerous to be passive, so KILL HIM!'

Having my thoughts split like this was actually helpful in some ways. It let me partition my thoughts, keeping me from acting on the very strong urge to reach down and rip Scarecrow's head from his shoulders. It wouldn't help the fear running through my mind right now anyways. I stopped torturing him, although I made sure not to let him up yet.

"Almost everyone else here has had life shit on them somehow. But they didn't give up. They got up and slugged life right in the face. Even better, they decided to do it in style. It's what makes them supervillains. But guys like you? You dress up, use your gimmicks, and pretend to be supervillains. You don't have style, you don't have class… You just have an ugly costume and an M.O. that involves frightening people. And even that requires you to drug them first."

I stood up and brushed myself off dismissively, not even looking at him. Scarecrow pulled himself to his feet and I could see him reaching for something, but I had my pistol out and the silencer pressed up against his temple before he could pull it out. I spoke slowly and carefully.

"If you do something that proves you don't have brains I'm going to pop your head open to check. I'm not a supervillain or a superhero. I'm Normalman, and the laws of self-defense make shooting you perfectly legal if you start shit. So, try anything like that and it's 'off to see the wizard' for you, understand?"

'Kill… no, sorry about that. I think I'm better now.'

The fear slowly drained from my veins as we stood there. Scarecrow forced himself to stop reaching for the weapon and backed off. I walked away, but I could feel him glaring at me through the rip-like eye holes in his mask. I had definitely made an enemy today. I couldn't bring myself to care though; I was perfectly willing to shoot him in self-defense. I hadn't been joking when I said that I didn't like him. In fact, considering how scared and pissed I was since he dosed me up with fear gas, I was actually surprised I managed to hold back, partitioned mind or not.

'Maybe it's because you aren't dumb enough to be the idiot who starts shooting in a bar full of supervillains?'

Yeah, that was probably it. I didn't want to 'scare' off The Trickster either. He wouldn't want to deal with someone who committed murder right in front of him. Flash's rogue's gallery were pretty stand up guys after all.

I strolled up to The Trickster's booth and nodded at him as he stared back warily.

"May I talk to you?"

The Trickster nodded back. He had been hunched over a bit, eyeing me cautiously. My request didn't exactly make him relax, but he did realize that I wasn't planning on attacking him.

"And why did 'Normal-man' come here to visit? I doubt you're here just to beat the stuffing out of Scarecrow."

'Ha! Scarecrow puns!'

"Actually, I was hoping to meet you. I have a business proposition for you."

The trickster's odd-looking domino mask shifted as he raised an eyebrow. I reached into my suit and pulled out a small stack of papers, ignoring the way he stiffened.

"I would like to buy your air walking shoe design. The technology behind it should prove very useful and I would like it for a number of projects I'm working on."

The Trickster paused and gave me an odd look. Part of me noted that the people in the adjacent booths were listening in. I didn't really care though. The Trickster scratched the back of his neck and stared suspiciously at me.

"I don't think it'll be as useful as you think it will. There's a reason why I only got it to let me walk on air."

I shook my head, wishing I could give him a reassuring look.

"Don't sell yourself short. You managed that much with something that could fit in a pair of shoes. I have a few theories on how you managed it, but I decided it would be cheaper and easier to pay you, rather than try to reinvent the wheel."

"Oh?"

"My first theory is that you figured out how to utilize flux pinning on specially designed plates in your shoes. I think that somehow you managed to create some alloy or metamaterial that has the properties needed to function using the earth's magnetic field when a charge is run through it."

'Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?'

'...really? Insane Clown Posse?'

I shook away the thought and looked at the Trickster. He stared at me with his jaw hanging open. I blinked slightly.

"Was that it? Because my other theories are a lot more far fetched."

"Y-yeah, that's how I managed it."

"Wonderful. That means it will be perfect for what I wanted. Plus, my other theories weren't much more plausible than 'uses pixie dust and positive psionic energy as fuel' if I'm going to be honest."

"Can I ask what you would do if I did sell the technology to you?"

"Use it to create safer and more fuel-efficient airplanes. Flux pinning wouldn't be as useful for that, but the Meissner effect would let planes glide, even with their wings broken off."

The Trickster shook his head.

"The size requirements mean that you get diminishing returns the larger the load. Eventually, you would need plates that weighed more than whatever it was carrying to keep it floating stably. You can't just add more power to compensate either. A higher current doesn't increase the effectiveness of the effect. I'm pretty the completed device to hold a fully loaded 747 would be a third of the total weight."

"That's actually still fine. It doesn't need to hold the whole thing aloft. The plane just needs to fall slower and it will make things safer. Only needing a small charge to do so means the plane will still be more fuel-efficient too. The planes would still have to rely on wings for generating lift either way. The diminishing returns just mean that take-offs will take a bit more energy."

The Trickster leaned back and took a long sip of his drink. He stared off at some point in the distance, thinking carefully. I waited patiently, finishing my cola.

"I'm not sure. There's a reason we don't sell our inventions…"

"Actually, I think that has more to do with people stealing supervillain's inventions. From what I've studied, the idea of using supervillain technology became a taboo thanks to a number of independent incidents in the past. For instance, a few years back some moron nabbed one of Mr. Freeze's guns and reverse engineered part of it to use in his company's refrigeration units."

"Oh yeah, I heard about that."

The Trickster paused and shivered slightly. The only reason Mr. Freeze hadn't killed dozens of people was because of Batman's quick reactions and the fact that Mr. Freeze created his guns using designs cribbed from his cryogenics tech. His guns are literally designed using his research into keeping his wife alive.

I shook my head and cleared my throat.

"Supervillains do occasionally deal with big businesses, it's just that it is usually limited to rights to toys and action figures. The only reason they don't sell inventions is simple. Normal people don't like dealing with morally bankrupt scum of the earth if they don't have to. And the morally bankrupt scum of the earth would rather try to steal the inventions anyway."

We ignored the sound of someone snorting behind me. I coughed lightly and pushed the papers towards the Trickster.

"Anyway, I'm not expecting you to make a decision immediately. Go ahead and have a lawyer look it over and get back to me later. Anyways, I need to go, it was a pleasure to meet you."

"Ah, yeah..."

I walked out the door, ignoring the stares of the people following me. If the Trickster agreed, this would be huge. Not just the invention, but getting my foot in the door. Supervillains only sold action figures and posters, if they were willing to sell their technology to me…

I wanted to change the world, but I couldn't do it alone. I could get a degree in basically anything I wanted in around a month, even if I had been cheating a bit by using my biomechanical brain. I was just short of a billionaire, and if everything went well I would reach that level of wealth by the end of the year. But all of that wasn't enough.

Now, I just needed help.

Ugh... Sorry this took a while, but for some reason, it just wouldn't come out. I still don't really like it too. Something big is coming up in the story soon though, so look forward to it!