“Okay,” I stated as I walked to the head of the table to stand by the whiteboard – a recent addition I was only a little excited to use as a prop, considering the situation. “We have a supervillain meeting in a few hours. We need a plan.”

  “Can it be ‘don’t go’?” Amy asked sarcastically. “Walking into a room filled with Supervillains sounds like a bad idea.”

  I looked back at her. “Depends, has the PRT decided to reach out or work with us at all?”

  She mumbled a bit before saying out loud, “No. Or at least nothing Vicky, Crystal, or Erik heard about.”

  “Right, and that’s a problem. Because it sounds like even the gangs are fed up with the ABB making a mess everywhere and are coming together to do something about it. We need to cooperate somewhere or we’re just going to stumble into things if we keep going after Bakuda. And stumbling when explosives are involved sounds like a really bad idea. And the villains were the ones to ask.” I wasn’t particularly thrilled at the idea of working beside Nazis and drug dealers/addicts either but we weren’t getting much of a choice here.

  “Besides, when are we gonna get the chance to see every villain in the city without a major fight going on?” Alex commented, which got Clover to give her a high five and a cheerful ‘right?!’

  Gloria and Carl looked much less excited about the whole thing.

  “I’ve got two questions.” Carl started, pointing at me. “First, why are you wearing glasses?”

  I huffed at the question, crossing my arms under my bust and pushing the fake clear rimmed glasses further up my nose with one hand. “They make me feel smart.”

  Carl’s mouth twitched like he really wanted to comment on that part, but he was the one member of my Peerage that was least likely to get distracted by any antics I pulled – which made the whole thing funnier to me – and continued on to his second question. “That– okay, second, what are we expecting to get out of a meeting?”

  That was a question I had been expecting, but honestly? I didn’t have a strong plan going into this.

  There were going to be a lot of ‘big’ personalities at this meeting. Kaiser, Hookwolf, Skidmark, Coil…possibly Wily…

  And those were only the people I know were in the city. There could be more like me or even people that migrated in because of the chaos across the world the other contestants had kicked up.

  And all of them would be demanding to get what they want. The ABB dealt with and whatever little deals they could slip in that would benefit them.

  Ideally, we would just agree to put aside everything irrelevant until they were dealt with but like I mentioned. Nazis and drug addicts. And while my Peerage was a match for nearly any one of the groups going to the meeting and I was more or less a league above them, the difference wasn’t great enough that I could just sit down and start demanding things. That would just have them all teaming up against us.

  Of course everyone else should know that too, which meant compromise was going to be the word of the day. And – bleh – compromising with literal nazis.

  I shook my head and refocused. “This meeting is probably going to be about organizing everyone against the ABB so one of the easy things to expect is a formalized non-aggression agreement,” I said writing it on the whiteboard under a section labeled ‘Goals’. “Amy has a point about working with most of them being a bad idea. I wouldn’t put it past Kaiser or Coil trying to engineer things to work against the other groups if they could. The thing is everyone else will know that too. So something like an agreement that would have everyone target the aggressor would be nice but I doubt most groups will agree.”

  “Why not?” Alex asked and it was actually Sam that answered.

  “It’s too easy to take advantage of.” My fellow redhead replied. “Someone could accuse the smaller groups of intentionally attacking them to get everyone else to target them and there wouldn’t be enough time to investigate. We’d need to either trust them and attack on their word or ignore it and accept a blow to our reputation. And for most villain groups their rep is incredibly important.”

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  “Exactly,” I nodded. “So while actual consequences would be nice, the most we are likely to get is just an agreement to not attack each other without anything really backing it up. Still, better to have it than not.

  “The other thing is likely to be setting up communications between groups. Easy enough with our communication spell, and we might be able to wring some concessions for using it.” I added ‘Communication’ under goals. “And the final thing is hopefully going to be ‘Targets’.” I added a third item. “That’s been our biggest issue so far because we can’t exactly go around breaking into random buildings hoping to run into looking for the ABB capes even with Dinah’s help. They could just lay low until we left, but with this many people hunting for them we should be able to flush them out much easier.”

  “Huh, that’s not a lot.” Clover mused. “I thought there’d be more to it.”

  “They’re villains.” Amy said darkly. “Of course they’d barely be able to work together.”

  “Um, Amy, technically we’re villains too, you know?” Alex hesitantly pointed out.

  “Oh please, you know that’s not the same thing.”

  Well, it seemed like Amy’s villain hangups were still a thing. Not exactly a surprise considering who raised her and things like that rarely just went away overnight. Definitely something to keep an eye on though. I’d thought she’d mellowed out more but I guess it was because despite the Peerage being ‘Villains’ she already knew some of us and we didn’t exactly go around committing crimes. It seemed other villains didn’t get the same consideration just yet.

  Though to be fair the only group going to be at this meeting I didn’t have an inherent dislike for were the Undersiders and maybe Fautline’s Crew.

  We’d have to socialize her with some more acceptable villains later…you know, when I could find some.

  Speaking of villains though, “The next thing we should go over are the groups and what we think they are going to want.” I said adding the groups to the board. “We might not be able to do anything about what they want at the meeting, but it will help us keep track of issues for the future.”

  “The Empire’s going to want territory.” This time it was Gloria’s turn to mutter darkly. “They’ve been trying to push the ABB out for years. No way a bunch of Nazis are going to leave a bunch of ‘undesirables’ alone once the gang is gone.”

  “Same with the Merchants.” I added, writing the relevant info on the board. “They’re a bunch of bottomfeeders but that just means they won’t hesitate to move in and try getting as many people hooked on their poison as possible before the white hats can organize enough to suppress them.”

  “What about Coil?” Clover asked. “He’s the one that’s been around the longest after those two right? What would he want?”

  Besides Dinah and control of the city? I couldn’t say.

  Literally couldn’t say, it turned out, as my jaw locked up under the geass so there would be no hints from my side about this which the others either missed or took as me not having any ideas.

  “Maybe the ABB’s money? He has a bunch of mercenaries, right? That has to be expensive.”

  “They wouldn’t have that just lying around though.”

  “Maybe Lung’s gold stash?”

  “Oh please, he’s not an actual dragon. Besides, where would he have gotten it?”

  “Bakuda transmutation bomb?”

  “If she were that smart we wouldn’t be dealing with her bombing the city.”

  “Well what about…”

  Everyone continued throwing ideas about what Coil would want even though things quickly went off the rails. It was actually pretty fun.

  But unfortunately we didn’t have an unlimited amount of time to mess around so we had to move on by just putting ‘Money(?)’ under Coil’s name and the same for Faultline’s Crew. As a mercenary group that primarily operated outside the city, there simply wasn’t much else the Crew could realistically want without changing how they operated significantly.

  And as for everyone else…

  “Aren’t they too small-time to want anything?” Carl frowned at the Undersiders’ name. “They’re around Gloria’s age too so it’s not like they’d be after territory or the businesses in the area. It’d just be money again, right?”

  “I dunno, I’ve always thought I could run the city better than the people in charge now. The Undersiders could totally demand territory for themselves. Maybe Hellhound will open a dog park!”

  A part of me was laughing in metaknowledge while the rest went through the motions of adding things to the board.

  This was turning out to be mostly useless since no one other than me had any deeper insight into the gangs than what most people in the city had and I was apparently banned from sharing. Still, it was turning into a fun exercise as the board slowly filled up with more and more nonsense.

  It was relaxing though. And after our interrupted day out, it was something I felt we all needed. So instead of trying to wrestle the meeting into a more serious track, I just let things happen. Even if that meant we basically wasted time until it was time to leave for the meeting.

  -o-

  “Jeez, this place is kinda a dump, huh?” Clover muttered as we walked up to the bar the meeting was supposed to be at.

  “Yeah, it helps keep normal people from wandering into these kinds of meetings.” Sam explained. “Plus it makes sense to do this at a place nobody attending the meeting would normally hang out at so it's neutral ground. Theoretically anyway.”

  I gave her a look. “That’s…right, actually. How did you know?”

  She puffed out her chest. “I’ve read a lot of spy thriller books. Meetings like this are pretty common in those!”

  “...” Everyone couldn’t help but stare at her a bit.

  “I don’t know what I expected.”

  Thanks to that, though, we were about as relaxed as we could be when walking into a room filled with criminals and murderers.

  Opening the door to Somer’s Rock I saw we were actually a little late to the party.

  Kaiser from the Empire 88, Grue from the Undersiders, Coil, Faultline, and some Baron Sabadi looking guy in a black costume, red mask and a tophat were seated in a center table while their teams were sitting in surrounding booths except for Coil who had apparently come alone. I also noticed three Merchant capes in the room including their leader Skidmark, but they had retreated to a booth instead of the table.

  Looks like we missed some drama already.

  Notably, I didn’t see any independents around though. I didn’t know if they simply hadn’t been invited or chose not to attend but the biggest surprise was I didn’t see Wily in the building at all. I thought for sure he would have at least sent a Robot Master or body double but apparently not.

  Was he going to leave dealing with the ABB to the rest of the villains or was he planning on making a move on his own?

  “And the Peerage makes the last group.” Coil spoke in an annoyingly smooth tone as if he had been continuing a conversation that had begun before we entered.

  After being called out like that we couldn’t exactly loiter in the doorway anymore so I headed towards the table while Alex, Sam, and Clover went to claim one of the empty booths. We had decided against bringing more people for a variety of reasons which meant I only had my original three Pawns with me. Which would be plenty considering we hadn’t planned on a fight.

  “Apologies for being late,” I replied carelessly as I sank into an empty seat, my tone indicating I wasn’t actually sorry. “Shall we begin then?”