WilliamDArand
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Super sales on Super heroes 5 -Ch13-
🕑 Added 2022-06-22 02:45:47 +0000 UTCFelix was rather surprised as they flew over the landfill.
It wasn’t what he could actually see that interested him.
All that was visible was what looked like a couple acres worth of trash that had been dumped, spread out, and mashed down.
Forming a layer of trash across the entirety of the surface.
No, what was fascinating to him was that it was a rather large mountain that sat below all that trash. With red dirt coming up the sides of it right to where all that trash was.
It was quite literally a dirt pyramid with a trash top sticking out.
His interest was entirely on the inside of that pyramid.
Everything inside of it was extremely compacted trash that’d been smashed, spread out, and then pushed down with more. Endlessly until they were now where they were operating.
As the helicopter came around to move across the airspace above Felix now noticed that there was a large number of trucks, equipment, and people all at the bottom of that massive garbage mountain.
“They’ve cleared out,” reported the government agent in the co-pilot seat. Once more it was someone Felix hadn’t met before. They were as of yet to send him someone he’d met previously. It was a young man this time who looked like he was in his late twenties. “You’re free to take the materials you need.
“And uh… before you get worried or anything, Legate, Sir. The dump is paying us for this. Any trash you can eliminate from the mount just gives them more room to work with. They’ll be paying us on a sliding scale by what you remove.”
“Oh?” asked Felix with a grin.
Maybe Legion should get into the ‘unfilling landfills’ business. I take a small fee to absolutely empty it of everything in there.
Even toxic ones or radioactive ones.
“It might be worth mentioning that in doing this for building materials, I could effectively do this with any landfill, dump site, or toxic hole. So long as I have permission to salvage materials to build with, I can clean it out entirely,” Felix stated. “Not sure if the government has any… places… they’d really like cleaned out, but it might be worth relaying it to your boss.
“Could probably turn around and use it to build anything else. So long as I own the blueprints for it and the technology, I can construct it. Limitations on the power but… they’re not so bad.
“That and having building materials available makes everything else easier. Especially for spontaneous needs.”
“Oh I’m definitely going to relay all of that up. I know of a few that they’ll probably take you up on almost immediately. Any chance you can use that power to take out only certain things?” asked the agent. He had his phone out and was rapidly tapping something into it.
Hm.
They might ask me to refine atomic materials or something like that. We’ll have to take it slow.
“Depends on what it is. I haven’t experimented with many things but it gets a lot harder if I’m not just processing it into specific parts for a blueprint,” Felix relayed and then looked back down to the dump.
“Makes sense. Makes sense,” muttered the agent.
Yes, and you’ll move to the conclusion that I have to understand the blueprint to a degree to build it. Which means many things I don’t understand, like… atomic theory… are simply not available to me.
I’m more useful than I am dangerous.
Ever the goal.
“You’re clear. Go ahead,” said the agent.
“They care about the dirt? Or the mountain?” Felix asked.
“Ah… no?”
“Great.”
Felix reached out with his power to the mountain of trash. From the base of it, to the top. He’d been granted ownership of all that junk to use as he saw fit.
He wanted to convert every bit of it to points. To leave none of it behind except the bare layer of dirt where the whole thing had begun.
Goldie flew by not far away. Casually moving through the sky and looking around as she did so.
Since he’d alerted the government to the fact that she was now in his custody, she no longer felt the need to hide. Wherever Legate went, the Gold Dragon came with.
Along with a number of news clips of every time she’d been spotted, came a lot of new footage. Cell phone recordings mostly from people watching her fly through the air above.
The mountain simply ceased to exist in the next moment.
Gone, with nothing left behind.
“Alright, let’s head to the site for the prison,” Felix stated and looked to the agent. The man was staring down at the now vanished landfill. “I know it’s only been a week since I sent you all the Guild of Heroes information.
“Are they really to start managing it? I feel like this is perhaps being rushed ahead because the foreign supers are becoming problems.”
“I… uh… its… all gone,” mumbled the agent, his head moving this way and that. As if he might see the trash mountain if he caught it from a better angle.
“Focus, agent. Prison? Heroes Guild?” prompted Felix.
“Prison? Heroes Guild?” asked the man in a robotic parrot like way. “Oh! Yes! Sorry. Yes.
“Pilot, move to the next location. Err… the… yeah, Legate. Yeah. We’re rushing it a bit but the Heroes Guild is already established.”
The agent had turned to face him now.
“They’re assigned as a military force. They report directly to the president. We’ve already established all the precedents we’ll need for them,” the agent continued. “Insurances, protocol, benefits for death or injury, all of it. The legislation for it was pushed through quickly as well.
“There’s… anyone who isn’t part of the Guild and acting as a hero will be legally responsible for anything that happens due to their actions. Anyone who acts in the country in the capacity of a vigilante will be deemed as a terrorist.”
“Wonderful. I assume anyone in the Association will of course be absent from that rule. That or you’re going to tell me I’m going to be setting myself up for a felony here in a moment when I build that prison,” pointed out Felix.
“Association members are all exempt from that rule. It exists in a separate legal structure, as was promised in the agreement with you,” the agent assured him.
“Perfect. Then… excuse me, but I’ll follow along behind you. Try to go quickly though, the Dragon gets bored easily,” Felix requested.
Opening the door to the helicopter he removed the headset that he’d been wearing over his own helmet. It’d been more to communicate with the agent than anything else.
Undoing the restraints he stepped out of the helicopter and began to immediately fall.
Goldie had apparently been monitoring the situation or reading the agents mind. She’d already swung in low as Felix stepped out of the aircraft.
There was an unmistakable smirk on Goldie’s face as she moved in below him as he began to fall. She casually snatched him out of the air with one rear claw and began flapping her wings hard. Carrying herself upward and away from the helicopter.
Gaining some height she slowed herself till she was merely flying in place. Her wings generating enough force only to keep her relatively in the same space.
She passed Felix to a front paw, then deposited him on her neck.
“Did you get tired of them, Nest-mate?” she asked and then rolled off to one side. She moved in behind the helicopter and then slowed down once again.
“They probably wanted to talk to me about something that wouldn’t do us any good,” he said, expecting that the helmet would transmit the words loud enough to Goldie. “That and I’d rather just… ride you?”
Goldie laughed at that though he did hear an edge to it. A hungry one.
***
Standing in front of the open field Felix was reminded of how the Association location had been. There’d been some distant shrub there, some trees, even some depressions in the plains.
Where he was now though, had none of that.
It was flat.
Flat, empty, and had nothing at all in any direction but short grass.
Given the plans he’d worked out with the agents, government, and the Heroes, this was going to be a prison surrounded by a demilitarized zone. With several walls and weapons pointing inward, and outward.
Thankfully Felix was only responsible for the prison itself.
Mentally forcing himself to do it, and to not sigh, or whine, he pulled up his point window.
Pushing out with his powers, he wanted to know how much it would cost to build the prison. What he mentally called Hero Prison v1 from the blueprints he’d put together for it.
Felix let out a soft wheeze at the price listed. He’d seen it several times when he’d been testing the plants, but it still made him wince at the sheer amount needed.
Next he wanted to know what’d be the cost once all the materials he’d requisitioned, personnel, and equipment, arrived. To see what it would all cost once everything arrived.
Nice. I mean, that’s about what it was last time but… nice. That means I’ll have nine-million points left-over.
Point value must be shifting due to the ground beneath now that we’re here.
Slightly different deposits I suppose but… this is great.
It’s fan-fucking-tastic.
Absolutely terrific.
This has been worth… everything.
And that even includes the new Legion base beneath the prison.
Grinning, Felix started to feel out the build. Where it’d be on the field.
“You’re excited,” rumbled Goldie. She was looming over him like a protective wall.
“Of course. The more bases we have like this, the better off we are. In the future we just connect the two with an underground rail and suddenly everything is even better,” Felix gushed. He could see a high-speed train in his mind rushing from one location to another, then another. “For all the land we own, we can dig down indefinitely. For where we don’t… we just employ drills that’ll do the work for us.
“Just load up a few carts with Andreas and the promise of rewards and we’re all set. A continuous workforce that’ll endlessly dig. Hell, I could convince her to do it if I promised her more Others for a set amount of distance.”
“I… she… yes… yes that’d work,” Goldie murmured. “You really do like burrowing into the earth.”
“People can’t see me there. Can’t watch what I’m doing from above,” Felix explained, shifting things in his head about just a bit. “Much harder for them to peek and see what’s going on.
“We’ll just keep adding bases like this deep below places we’re asked to build. Then put train station at the lowest point so we can access them later. Won’t be too hard.
“That and once we get them all hooked up, Tribune will be able to function much more clearly. She’s somewhat limited by having to exist where we put her.
“It’s a good thing she can be in two places at the same time by copying herself, but it’d be better if she were everywhere at the same time.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Goldie admitted. Then she sniffed once and turned her head to one side. “They’re all coming. Though I think everything is being driven in this time.”
“It’s a lot more materials this time,” muttered Felix. “Just have them line everything up nearby. I’m going to be focusing on this until everything’s unloaded. I want this placement perfect.
“Just direct them on my behalf for now. I’m sure they’ll just want to stand here and watch when it happens anyways.”
Felix engrossed himself in moving the whole thing around, checking the cost, then doing it again. Making small changes here and there and checking, then rechecking.
There was a prod in the middle of his back that wasn’t something he could ignore. As if a strong hand had landed in the middle of his back and bumped him a bit.
“Legate, it’s time,” Goldie announced.
Looking up he found that indeed everyone was present.
Kit, Lily, Mikki, a number of super’s he vaguely recognized. There was a number of agents with them and spread out as well.
Beyond all that were a lot of people with weapons and in uniforms he didn’t recognize. They were all in a similar fashion and had the look of either security or military as far as the design went.
“Right,” he said, forcing himself to move past Kit and Lily as if they’d only just met. Since he’d used Kit’s own powers to wipe her mind after Lily’s, he hadn’t seen them.
They’d been put back to where they’d been as if nothing had changed.
The current model Legionnaire rings were stamped with the Legion Helm and provided something different this time.
They didn’t block telepathy.
In fact if anything it made it appear easier to the telepath.
It put out a generic stream of surface thoughts that most anyone would have, using the person wearing the ring as the source of information. All while cloaking their actual thoughts and hiding everything else.
He wanted it to work in the same way that he was attempting to move Legion into the world.
Benign, boring, expected, and overlooked.
Healing Lucian had cost him some points but it’d been quite simple this time. He’d just created a beacon that his soul would find and be drawn back to.
For Kit, the helmet was very similar to a Legionnaire helmet, it just allowed her to focus things like a magnifying glass, or turn everything off outright.
“Any concerns?” Felix asked, looking around to the audience. He had no idea if they’d said anything and he didn’t really care. He was the builder in this scenario so his work would be secondary to everything they’d have to do.
“Quite a few, actually,” Kit observed. Her helmet was fully on but she’d retracted the visor. He could see her eyes but that was bout it. “But… none that I can fault you for given the stipulations you’ve put into the contracts. I understand I’m to thank you for this helmet?”
“Sure did. There a problem with it?” he asked, curious. He’d built it after he’d wiped her mind but he didn’t think there’d be an issue.
“No. No problem. At all. Which is somewhat of a problem. It fits me in a way that feels like it could only be possible if you measured my head,” Kit stated in a flat tone.
“Yes. Technology is a wonder,” Felix agreed. “Anything else at all? Otherwise it’d be best if we got moving.
“No reason to linger here and… well… my suit’s great and all, but I’m not really built for combat. With Clichés tending to be founded in reality, this’d be a great time for someone to attack us.”
“Can you please demonstrate one of the super cells?” asked Lily. There was a warm smile on her face that left him somewhat at a loss. “Just… for my own sake, if you don’t mind… Legate.”
Blinking several times Felix didn’t know how to respond to that at first. In fact he felt like there was a problem here that he couldn’t put his finger on, in fact.
Clicking his tongue he nodded his head once, instead.
“Alright. That’s not a problem. I can do that,” allowed Felix. “Any particular super type you want to test out? I’ve created an entire series of cells for any type of super.
“We’ll eventually encounter a vast number of them, best we have a way to lock them away so that they can’t get out any time soon.”
“For me. Make a prison for me,” Lily asked.
Chewing at his lip he felt like this was a trick.
A trap.
Something that’d get him boiled alive when the day was done.
Lily had a look on her face he’d never once mistaken for anything else in the past as amusement. Amusement and wanting to play.
To toy with him and his feelings. Poke, prod, and push at him until she got what she wanted.
“Sure,” Felix mumbled. He called forth a simple cell that would hold a magician without an issue. It was as simple as having magical spells engraved into the cell.
A glass cube came into existence in front of them. It was roughly nine foot by nine foot and was empty. All of the glass panels were inscribed with spell warding on the outside of the glass of the cell. The layer of glass next to that was also warded with spellwork, though this one on both sides.
It was all invisible to the eye unless they were activated. Otherwise it just looked like a big class cube.
“Oh,” Lily said with some surprise. She walked in through the open and door less entrance. Entering and then coming to a stop in the middle.
She lifted a hand and began to work a spell.
That collapsed on itself instantly as soon as it gained a shape. The magic bleeding away and charging the cell .
“The longer the cell is on, the stronger it gets,” Felix explained and waved a hand at it. “It can only be deactivated by someone from Legion.”
“Deactivate it for me?” Lily asked, tilting her head and watching him.
Shrugging his shoulders, Felix did as he was instructed.
In the moment he did so, he saw Lucian standing near Lily. Very near her, in fact.
Beside her.
He was grinning, ear to ear, watching Lily. Clapping his hands together noiselessly as it all happened..
Then his incorporeal form was gone. In fact, Felix was sure that he wasn’t even supposed to see him there.
A trick of the way the cell deactivated.
The spell Lily had been working at flickered to life briefly and then died away. It’d been made strongly enough that it lingered even without power.
Fluttering way into nothing even as Felix considered a problem he’d over looked.
People like Lucian would be able to go where Felix had no ability to stop them. He needed to fix everything so that there’d be no possible trespass.
He’d overlooked a firm possibility of how someone could easily infiltrate, spy, or assist. Becauase believing Lucian was the only one who could probably do something such as this was a foolish hope.
Comments
Yissnakk
I love the way the rings work now! Pure genius!
Drew Risch
I imagine that in a world where there are so many unique super powers, where even similar ones have different tweeks and bonuses, it would be a fucking nightmare to try and make any place secure. Yikes. Double yikes.
