"Okay, but how does that matter to
me? Not like
I can sell it."
"No, it turns out that the police actually
like it when career criminals earn money
legitimately.
To be fair, when you develop a vibratory-based energy projection weapon, it
does seem a bit foolish to use it to rob banks. Unless he
enjoys that...
The Bar With No Name isn't actually the only bar with that name, a name which causes me to metaphorically bite my tongue whenever I hear it due to the inherent contradiction. But in both locales I know about, it serves as a join drinking den and labour exchange for low to mid-tier supervillains. And it does breakfast, which is nice, because I skipped breakfast in my pre-wedding related… Confusion.
And none of the kitchens in the Genoshia resort were open, for obvious reasons.
Heh. Been quite the
busy day, hasn't it.
"Heh."
On the other side of Mr. Schultz,
Mr. Myers smirks at his colleague's discombobulation. Mr. Schultz jerks his head around, trying to work out if he actually heard the now innocent-looking Mr. Myers say something that he might feel the need to remonstrate about. Best keep things polite.
Ah, one of
many minor villains that get dragged out to show how badass the new hero or super-bad-guy is during their debut... By beating the ass of a guy who throws
boomerangs...
"You wouldn't even need to show up in person. You designed your gauntlets yourself, didn't you?"
He jerks his head back around. "Yes."
...He feels a
lot like Marvel's counterpart to Captain Cold, doesn't he? Older brother turned parental figure, multiple loser who built a super-tech weapon in prison, something of a punch-clock villain, surprisingly popular despite being a career criminal...
"Well… Honestly, you could just apply for a patent and wait patiently. Once you've got the patent, anyone can use it if they pay you a percentage. You don't need any further investment so you don't need to negotiate up front investment. On the other hand, if you want me to show your designs to people I know who might be interested, I can do that."
"I don't know. This sounds suspicious."
Plus, he has a criminal record which kind of puts him at a disadvantage in the US...
"Shocker, if I was doing something suspicious, I'd just scan the gauntlets you're wearing now and replicate them myself. I'm suggesting this because I… Think that your talents are wasted in supervillainy when you could make more money legitimately."
"I don't think that's… Plausible."
Plus, if Shocker found other people using his tech, he might not be as
likely to come after them as some, but he wouldn't be
happy.
"Nah, mate." Mr. Myers nudges him with his elbow. "
You can do it. I believe in-"
The door
bangs open-
Well,
someone's in a mood...
"Two steaks, raw and bloody!"
"-you."
...And has worked up an
appetite.
-and a man in an orange leotard storms in and doesn't get laughed out of the place, because he would quite cheerfully kill all of them. Most of the criminals here aren't murderers. To be fair, I'm not sure how many of the people he's killed were murder-victims, in the sense that it's not a crime if the government does it.
The barman fishes a plate out from the back shelf and puts it on the bar in front of Mr. Creed Senior. Then he opens a grease proof paper package and uses metal tongs to move the fresh steaks onto his plate.
Oh, yes. Early-Nineties
Sabretooth wasn't exactly the
best-dressed supervillain in the place. But it's still a step up on his
debut outfit...
Mr. Creed doesn't bother with utensils, and I'm not sure how much of that is an act.
I take out a card with my contact details on it and slide it over to Mr. Schultz. "Give me a call if you're interested, alright?"
Well, sometimes he's a lot more
feral than others. Especially if he's been healing up a lot lately.
He just shrugs, but takes the card and slides it into one of his costume's pockets. I swallow the last of my bacon, put my knife and fork in the at rest position, pick up my briefcase and walk-. I ignore the frantic head-shaking of Mr. Myers and walk over to the stool next to Mr. Creed.
"Mister Creed."
Ah, poking the tiger while he's eating. I expect a lot of the guys here are thinking he's either suicidally brave, suicidally stupid, or really, really
powerful.
He stops… 'Eating'.
"You don't smell of anything. No heartbeat. I don't like robots." He turns his face towards me, blood and meat juice covering his mouth and chin. "And it's Sabretooth."
Then where are your
tusks?
Besides, there are far
scarier mammals than sabertooth tigers...
I nod politely. "I apologise. Sabretooth. And I'm not a robot; my force field prevents scent and sound escaping."
He turns his face back to his meal, opting to watch me from the corner of his eye.
No doubt tempted to test the limits of said force-field. And contemplating whether Lantern will be
tastier than the steaks he's gobbling down.
"What d'ya-" He bites a chunk out of the meat and I hear bone crunch. "-want?"
"I want to-" I lift up my briefcase and put it on the counter. "-give you ten thousand dollars in non-sequential bills."
And that's a
decent amount of cash in Nineties money, too.
"Oh yeah? Who and when?"
"What?"
...I mean, it
does come off as you hiring him to kill someone. Though I suspect he'd do Grayden Creed for
free. ("Hello,
Junior. Give your pappy a hug...")
He smiles. "Oh yeah. 'What?' Like you just wandered up to me with no idea? Just stick the dossier on the bar and get lost."
"I'm not trying to hire you as a hitman. It would be far easier for me to just kill them myself. This is an anti-invitation."
Ha! That might be one way to prevent wedding-crashers. Pay off the least psychotic offenders to
not show up.
"What?"
"I want you to not be in a certain place at a certain time, and I'm offering you ten thousand dollars to agree. You can be literally anywhere else in the world, just not there."
Of course, if his interest is piqued, he may well stop by to take a look
anyway...
"Did Wolverine put you up to this?"
"No. But I know that you hate him, and might decide to turn up to try and get the drop on him while he's distracted. Thus…"
...'Hate' is an
insufficient term for their relationship, I think.
I tape the case with my right forefinger.
"What's the occasion?"
Oh, nothing
you'd enjoy,
fluffy.
"My wedding."
"Hah! You're one of the X-Brats?!"
A surprisingly astute deduction, given his talk of Wolverine. People tend to forget that Creed is no
idiot. It takes a devious mind to find new ways to
fuck with Logan every year, after all...
"No, no X-gene. I'm just a student. So? How about it?"
He chomps down the last of that steak, and then turns fully around to face me.
I mean... If someone paid him better to show up...
"And what happens if I say 'no'?"
I take a sharpened iron oval four inches long out of subspace. "Then I shoot you."
"Do take note of your
real name, inscribed on this bullet."
"Suuure."
I wiggle it towards his right eye.
Seriously, it would be the last thing you see, Creed...
"Right through the socket of your right eye. Where there's no adamantium protecting you. It will then go through your brain to the back of your skull, where it will rebound off the adamantium plating and go back through your brain at a new angle. And because adamantium doesn't really bend, it'll keep doing that until your brain is reduced to mush and dribbles out of your empty eye socket. Now, I don't know that you couldn't regenerate from that, but I'm pretty sure that it would completely destroy your short and long term memory. You would have to relearn how to speak. How to control your bowels and bladder."
Presumably a quick scan told Lantern about the crunchy Adamantium lining, eh? Not
every Sabretooth has Adamantium bones. Sometimes it's
just his claws.
"And how exactly are you going to do that?"
Ring? Railgun.
The
true great equaliser.
The barrel forms over my left shoulder, and keeps forming. I reach up and slide the oval into the end of the barrel and there's a quiet hum as the magnetic field draws it in.
Mr. Creed's eyes fix on the end of the barrel as a cluster of supervillains behind me move out of the way of the now six metre long barrel.
Good plan. A railgun that big has
quite the splash zone.
"To be fair, if I hit bone with a gun this big, it would probably liquefy your flesh with the shockwaves alone."
I smile.
"So how about you just take the cash?"
Honestly, the adamantium bones would be a
bonus for cleanup. If not for them, they'd need a mop and a
small bucket to clean up the remains.
