The tinker awoke with a mild headache, and cottonmouth.
"Should have had more water." He grunted to himself, rolling over on the cot he most often slept in and allowing the paper wrappers, bag of chips, and empty cans he had been sleeping under to roll off of him to land on the floor.
He glanced around himself, taking note of the mess. His composting tub needed to be vented - it had reached a maximum build up of the byproduct gas his process produced at some point in the night, and the machine had shut down in order to prevent itself from rupturing. The gatherer's gestating in a the row of tubes on the other side of the room had finished growing, but one of them had turned out to be non viable because of the sudden shutdown of the compost tub so he would have to flush it.
Also, he was pretty sure he had to collect rent today.
"Ugh." He grunted, bending over to sift around in the detritus on the floor for his pants.
"They're over there, you ignoramus." One of the two lab rats he kept in the lab - mostly for ambience reasons, if he was being honest, given that he rarely worked with live animals - grumbled at him. Rey grunted at the talking animal, giving up on his bleary searching and instead opting to pick up the fingernail thin remains of what he had been smoking the night previous.
"This shit lasts way too long." He grumbled irately, flicking the stub of a rolled blunt at the wastebin and mentally resolving not to use this particular strain unless he had two to three days of guaranteed freedom from obligations to enjoy it.
Talking mice was cool and all, and certainly not the weirdest thing he'd ever hallucinated, but he generally preferred to be able to sleep off his high.
He had things to do today after all.
Grunting irately, Rey gave up on pants, and instead quickly moved over to do the required maintenance on his lab equipment.
"I don't think he can hear us, sir."
"Of course he can hear us, he's just such a mediocre scientist that he has chosen to go with his first - incorrect - assumption as to our origins and has summarily chosen to ignore us."
"That seems mean though!"
"Yes Minnie. Yes, it is."
"Oi! I've got a headache, so keep it the hell down! I'm not above dumping two rats in the composter to make a hallucination stop!" Rey snapped at them, feeling briefly very foolish for arguing with a hallucination.
He stared balefully at the rats in their cage - both of which seemed larger than they should be - until the skinnier of the two rats slowly lowered itself back onto all fours.
"S-squeak?" It said slowly.
Rey nodded, then turned to glare at the one with an oversized mutated cranium for a moment, before finishing his business.
He could find yesterday's pants later. The elevator went straight to his apartment on the top floor anyway.
"Morning, Mister Andino!" One of those positively terrifying women who worked next door called to him as he made the rounds of the apartment building he had purchased all those months ago.
It was one of his better investments, if he did say so himself. Not only did he not get bothered at all by his 'peers' in the supervillain community, heroes didn't bother him either. As long as he didn't do anything too crazy he was pretty much perfectly safe from all sides. Even better, since he didn't really need the money from rent, he was able to earn a ton of goodwill with the amazonian women who seemed to lay claim to the area by offering borderline criminal rental fees. He was one of very few men that never earned a glare or suspicious look from the local community, and even better, they actually defended him if someone did give him a hard time.
If he had known that all it took to make loyal gang minions was affordable housing, then he would have gotten into the real estate game ages ago.
"Morning, Miss Kim! How are we today? What's going on in magical castle land?" He asked pleasantly. His tone was joking, but his intent was very clear.
'Please tell me what Nexus is doing today so I can avoid it'
"Not much, Mister Andino. I think the boss is learning to drive today though. She seemed pretty excited about it." The petit but extremely dangerous woman said to him.
"Well, good for her. Hopefully she crashes fewer cars than I did while learning!" He joked, taking some amusement in the microscopic cringe he saw at his horrible sense of humour.
"Yup. Off to see Mister Hebert?" She asked politely.
"Us old guys gotta stick together for our morning coffee. Never know when something crazy might happen. Besides, he still hasn't told me how he stays in shape. I swear the man is aging backwards!" Rey exclaimed, genuinely excited to think about it. He had never seen anything like it before. Clearly Daniel Hebert had been subject to some kind of rejuvenation treatment. Only an idiot would miss that.
But Rey's interest was in examining that treatment.
He wasn't one for clandestine operations, but getting coffee with the older man in the mornings and then stealthily stealing his cup to examine the contents of his saliva was easily one of the highlights of his day.
He wasn't that bad as a friend either. Even if he was painfully dense.
Rey continued to make his way from the elevator to the front door of the building with Miss Kim, where he froze in place. His companion - not noticing him stop - kept going for a few seconds before belatedly realizing he was no longer next to her. She shot a glance at him, then followed his line of sight to where it inevitably rested on the stranger standing just outside the door with a stormy expression on her face.
"Problem, Mister Andino?" Miss Kim asked chipperly.
"No, just uh... Just someone I didn't think I'd see again." he offered without explanation, quickly stepping over to the front desk and pressing the mechanism that unlocked the door for visitors.
"Old friend?" Kim asked, body relaxing imperceptibly at his lack of fear. He had no doubt that if he phrased it right, the woman would get rid of Lauren with extreme prejudice.
But for all they hadn't parted on the best of terms, he still had a soft spot in his heart for Lauren. He'd even considered marrying her once. Sort of.
A string of failures had made it hard to prioritize at the time, and then they had split up again.
"An ex." He explained woodenly as the dark haired woman noticed the click of the door unlocking then quickly walked into the building, nervously glancing around the area and then at the wall past which the Heap lay.
He knew Lauren well enough to know that she hated working with the 'big time' players. She was content to stick to the middle of the pack when it came to the cape game, so coming anywhere near Nexus' base of operations must have been giving her conniptions.
"Lauren! How have you been?" He asked tensely, not sure why she was here. He wasn't concerned that she would attack him - they were too close for that - but he also hadn't been expecting her to show up on his door step either.
Which was worrisome.
"Traveling. Do me a favour and answer your damn phone Rey. I've been standing outside for an hour!" She hissed at him.
He quickly darted a glance towards Kim to let her know she could go on without him, to which she nodded and slowly departed, shooting only a single look over her shoulder as she went.
He didn't doubt that one or more of his tenants would manifest in the lobby shortly. 'Just in case'.
The dojo ladies were protective that way.
"I- I was busy." He offered hastily, before quickly adding; "Sorry."
"You were high, weren't you." Lauren stated archly, crossing her arms in front of herself and shooting a suspicious glance at Miss Kim as she went.
"...yes. To be fair, usually you don't call someone to tell them you're visiting and then show up the same day. Some warning would have been nice. Are you in trouble?" He asked surreptitiously.
His once lover had a penchant for misadventures. She carefully curated who she worked with, being more of a career villain than a take over the world type, but she was always pushing the limit of what could be considered 'mediocre' villainy. It wasn't uncommon for her to piss off a group of heroes or even other villains, then have to lay low and change her name for a while.
Not that she ever changed her name to anything genuinely unrecognizable. He briefly considered asking her what variation of 'Something Apple' she was going with right now, but realized that it would be incredibly suspicious to do so in public.
And also would just plain piss her off.
"No. Maybe." She quickly rattled off before sighing. "Honestly, it's not a big deal. I just thought I'd come see how you were doing."
Rey tried not to read too much into her tone of voice, but it was hard. He wasn't one for relationships, but he did genuinely miss Lauren. And sometimes he wondered if she felt the same. And her voice had held a trace of… vulnerability in it, almost as she had spoken.
"I'm going to meet a friend for coffee right now but… do you want to come?" He asked carefully.
Lauren opened her mouth briefly as though to answer, but paused when a new voice cut into the tension between them.
"Hey Mister Andino! Everything okay over here?" One of the larger of the many women who lived here asked as she jogged over wearing nothing but tight fitted yoga pants and a sports bra, while several smaller specimen of the species trailed behind her in similar garb.
It'd be easy to misinterpret this as work out clothing, but Rey was uncomfortably reminded of a time when one of them had absent mindedly told him that blood was a lot easier to wash out of skin than clothes.
Lauren, of course, took no notice of the sheer amount of danger she was in, and instead opted to take a second to eye the statuesque gaggle of women up and down before turning to glare at Rey.
"Just an old friend!" Rey quickly rushed to explain, weathering the glare admirably.
"Cool. We'll be jogging around the building if you need us, Mister Andino, just yell." the interloper responded with a nod before leading her group out the door.
When they finally left line of sight, Lauren decided to speak again.
"...Do any men live here, Rey?" She asked acerbically.
The answer to that question was, of course, 'no' - but he felt like he probably shouldn't say that out loud.
It wasn't like he chose who moved in.
"And I'm saying that I didn't have any choice! They're ultra violent ex-prostitutes, Lauren - you're either with them or against them!" He tried to explain for the umpteenth time.
"I saw tons of big muscly guys running around out there, Rey!" Lauren countered pointedly.
"Those are dockworkers! They already had houses because they already had jobs. Besides, half of them live in the god damn castle! I can't compete with a magic castle! I don't even want to!" He frustratedly explained as they pushed open the door to the coffee shop he and Danny frequented.
"Yeah, well maybe I should buy a building and house nothing but big burly men Rey, how would you like that?" She growled at him.
He wouldn't like it at all, which was why he was trying to explain to Lauren that he hadn't done it intentionally in the first place. It was a fact that she seemed to understand intellectually, but still didn't like which he found infinitely frustrating.
Unfortunately, he ran out of time to argue the point as they arrived at the table Daniel was at. He was unsurprised when he looked out the window and saw half a dozen pigeons staring directly at him as he slid into the booth seat either.
Those damn things were the bane of his existence. He'd already had to program his minions to completely ignore them. Somehow, the devil creatures were aware of his sewer trawling expeditions and had begun to attack his creations en masse. He'd been forced to find alternative means to collect materials.
Not because he couldn't deal with the pests, but because said pests were Nexus' pets - which meant that flooding the sewers with flying rat poison probably wouldn't do well for his long term odds of survival. In that sense, it was definitely easier to sacrifice a patrol here or there to the things that it was to fight them.
"Rey! Who's your friend?" Danny asked curiously as he and Lauren finished getting situated. A coffee for Rey was already present at the table, along with a healthy sized BLT - the same thing Rey always ordered - but as he realized Lauren was present the man was already waving for a waitress to come take her order.
"My-" Rey began, not sure if he was going to say girlfriend or ex yet. He and Lauren had a tendency to fall in and out of love with eachother like that, getting together again almost without explanation or prompting.
He was sort of hoping this was going to be one of those times.
"I'm an old friend." She said rapidly, shooting a nasty smile at Rey as she leaned over the table towards Danny with a flirty expression on her face.
He knew she was just doing it to mess with him. He did. Truly.
But this woman was going to get them both fucking killed and she had no idea.
Glancing out the window Rey was unsurprised yet again to see a portion of the pigeon flock peel off to report back to the damn castle.
He was equally unsurprised when fifteen minutes and tons of veiled questions about Danny's muscles later, a blond woman stepped through the door of the shop and immediately power walked to their table.
"J-Jess." Rey nervously greeted her as she aggressively sat down so close to Danny she was practically in his lap.
"Rey. Who's this?" She asked without preamble - sounding neither rude nor particularly friendly.
"A…friend. She was having some… trouble… and has come to stay with me for a while." He said in a strained tone.
"Abusive employer." Lauren put forth tentatively, on the back foot because of the woman's sudden arrival.
"How terrible! I know a good lawyer if you need assistance. Will you be in the city for long?" Jess asked - the bluntness with which she said it sounded less like a question and more like a demand, but Danny didn't notice, and Rey was too survival oriented to point it out.
"M-maybe. Depends on how long Rey will let me stay with him." Lauren offered, sliding slightly closer to him as she unconsciously sought safety from the blond.
"As long as you need, Lauren." Rey answered without thinking about it.
Her head jerked around to stare at him, perhaps taken aback by the speed and ease with which he had offered, and Jess relaxed imperceptibly as she watched the two interact.
Things got better after that - Jess being much more friendly once it became obvious that Lauren wasn't seriously flirting with the unreasonably healthy looking older man - and Rey was just beginning to think he had finally made a good choice in life by the time they tiredly made their way back to his apartment and - hopefully - the bedroom.
However, instead of following him towards their amorous destination, Lauren paused in the living room to stare worriedly at him.
"Lauren?" He asked carefully, kicking off his shoes and pushing them to one side.
"I fucked up Rey." She responded forlornly, her facade cracking as she showed him how truly out of her depth she felt.
Alarm bells started ringing in Rey's head as her otherwise annoyed expression started to tear up.
"...how?" He asked slowly, moving towards her to draw her into a hug.
"I bailed on a job." She explained, squeezing him tightly.
"So? You do that all the time. I don't see-"
"The job was for the Elite." She said, cutting him off.
Oh. Well.
Shit.
A/N: The usual disclaimers apply, me dumb, Gooey smart. Beta good.
With this done we can return to seeing what the main cast is doing - and I'm going to put a pause on Omake Shop purchases until I can get a few main chapters out, just so we arent violently flooded with sidestories again.
In other news, go check out Haven Quest, another superhero story thats just getting going. It should be updating in a few hours probably (maybe).