SV Chapter 53 (Patreon)

Who would have thought: making Villainous house calls was a bad idea? Tiff had the regrets. Extra large, with a side of fries, hold the mayo.

The sad part was, Tiff wasn’t actually surprised. Things were bound to go poorly eventually, and it wasn’t like they’d been visited by a luck fairy in their previous encounters either. But seeing a huge rat turn even bigger was a whole lot of nope for Tiff’s twiggy arms to carry. She swore next time she’d stay home where it was safe and rat-free, where she didn’t have to take the fight to Karen’s domain, and where she could let the people actually suited for close-quarters engagement do their jobs.

Or maybe she needed to enlist some of her thugs. Now that she had a gang, she had thugs, right? Though it might be difficult to get them to do her exact bidding right away. She needed more time to acclimate them, though they were doing splendidly on that front. They’d obviously taken a liking to their upgraded break room, so maybe Tiff would have to upgrade more of their stuff to keep winning them over.

Perhaps the worst part about raiding the demon-rat basement was the lecture she got from her dad once they got home. It wasn’t the expected you’re grounded for eternity punishment suitable for stupidly putting herself in danger. It was the do you have any idea how worried I was? While not quite as bad as the dreaded I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed, it was a serious blow. Though Tiff had to admit, Rick’s admonishment was warranted.

Especially after they got home and Rick made them sit through a mission debrief.

“Tiff, if you’re going to live in the world of Heroes and Villains, you can’t skate by with merely dabbling in it. If you go on a mission, take the time to review. What went right, what went wrong; what constitutes an acceptable loss. Variables are important to understand and plan for, even when they don’t happen every time. You have resources; make sure to use them.”

They started by listening to Victoria’s audio from before she put on her armor. Rick looked decently pleased; at the very least, he seemed to approve of how she initially handled seeking entrance to the basement. From a Greyscale point of view, somebody on the lighter side should have given up once the woman denied them entry. That’s when things decidedly moved into the dark side, and Rick’s anxiety skyrocketed.

Watching Tiff try to maneuver in the dress was always amusing, but his mirth stopped the moment his daughters reached the front door. Aura didn’t translate perfectly when not in person…though the fact that it did at all surprised Tiff. She supposed it made sense if she really thought about it, because Heroes were always giving speeches and posing in front of cameras, and Tiff always felt better when they reassured her on the news.

She just never considered it from the opposite angle.

Antagonizing a Karen was cathartic, even if it was technically frowned upon, and if anybody asked Rick from a professional standpoint, he didn't condone it. He couldn’t deny the effectiveness of “not giving a crap” when it came to getting one’s way, though perhaps Tiff was a little too ham-fisted with the over-the-top entitlement. Rick even gave Victoria medium (but passing) marks for busting into the hidden stairwell, as if he was grading her performance.

What set him off was when the two went downstairs.

The first flag was the spiral staircase. While it probably wasn’t installed as a security measure, the girls couldn't see beyond the bend and were essentially entering the basement blind. Even with foresight telling them they shouldn’t expect any company, walking in blind was bad form. And, as the rat demonstrated, just because there weren’t people in the basement didn’t mean it was empty. They didn’t see where it came from in the moment, but upon inspection back at home, it likely came through the small crawl hole leading into the sewers. That begged the question: why was there a crawl hole in the first place? Originally it looked like the only way into the basement (besides the wall Victoria busted down), but now they weren’t so sure.

The brief look Rick got through Victoria’s cameras when she entered the basement set off more flags. That operation table was more for experimentation than for healing or curing people. Rick didn’t think it was for torture, because there were infinitely easier and more accessible ways to inflict pain on people without resorting to a convoluted basement-hideout, and the serum likely wasn’t something they wanted to waste, either.

As for what it actually did…they were hoping to find out. Rick planned to send it through the [Troubleshooters] to a private analysis lab he trusted to give verifiable results. For now, they were calling it a “Super Serum,” judging by the way it bulked up a common rat to insane degrees. Was this what was causing the influx of [Enforcers]?

Probably not.

Was it related?

Almost assuredly.

The samples they found in the basement were potent and unstable. That rat likely wouldn’t have lived very much longer after it wore off, though there was no telling how long that would be. Rick’s best guess was anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours, though admittedly, “speculation” was doing a lot of heavy lifting. But judging from how the rat was desperate to consume the strange substance, it was likely rats had been experimented on before, and most certainly had to be insanely addictive.

The time it took to transform a normal rat into a mutated monster was, frankly, alarming. Rick had no idea how strong it really was, but it managed to scratch Victoria’s otherwise invulnerable armor and start regenerating parts of its body from a completely brain-dead state.

That made Rick pull the trigger. As much as he didn’t want to expose his children to law enforcement and whatever Metas they might bring with them, this wasn’t a situation he could allow to get out of control. For instance…what would happen if, lord forbid, it somehow managed to incapacitate Victoria? Or worse? Or simply escape? What would it do to the outside world if it broke free? Regular Citizens didn’t have Victoria’s toughness, let alone her armor. If it didn’t kill whatever poor soul it managed to maul, was it contagious? How fast was transmission? Would it also turn the infected into mutated monstrosities blinded by rage?

Sidekick response training teaches to assume the worst and prepare accordingly.

They could be looking at ground zero for an outbreak-level epidemic.

Rick had an important decision to make, and not much time to do it. He sounded the alert for “escaped Rift monster / Wilderness Beast” at the guild while making a direct call to the Major Crimes Unit. Whatever heavy weapons they brought were up to them.

Rick then had to watch powerlessly as Tiff and Victoria were on a clock he set for them. Thankfully, the antique safe was more than a match for a rat, enhanced or not, and fortunately Victoria was able to lift the thing and squash the rodent. He watched the clock anxiously, counting down the seconds until the authorities arrived. With hardly any time to spare, Victoria pulled her sister out of the house and beat a hasty retreat.

As soon as they got home, Rick pulled Tiff into a crushing hug. He didn’t let her go, no matter how much the dress wanted to push them apart, and carried her all the way into her room. That’s where she realized she hadn’t given enough thought to how her actions affected her parents, who were still technically opposed to her on the Greyscale, even though all they showed her was love and respect. Tiff changed out of the dress, took a nice warm shower, and fully intended to cool her expeditious jets for at least an entire week.

Which just left a single question (of the many unasked questions) begging to be answered.

“What’ll you do with the serum?”

Tiff watched her dad pull out a small safe from his office closet a million times more secure than Haxus’ high-tech whosemiwhatsit he kept the creepy pink Sentientech in. This thing had fingerprint scanners, retina scanners, something that might have been a breathalyzer, and an honest-to-goodness Rubik’s Cube built into the door. And still Rick treated the serum like it was a bomb that could go off at any moment, handling it with multiple layers of rubber gloves, and locking the remaining syringes safely away.

“I’m taking them into the office first thing in the morning,” Rick said with zero hesitation. “I called the consulting lab for a pharmaceutical company the [Troubleshooters] sometimes collaborate with in the case of toxic spills and hazardous waste…well, the real point is we take this sort of thing seriously and they’re picking it up at 6 am. They’ll run all the tests they can on it…and let me tell you, they’re thorough. It could be weeks until they’re finished, but I suspect they’ll give me a heads up in a day or two with an estimate of how dangerous this stuff actually is.”

Tiff stared at the safe as Rick slid it back into the alcove, then eventually hung her head.

“Dad…I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. To his credit, Rick didn’t interrupt her or treat her apology lightly. “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and I shouldn’t have rushed in there. I…can’t honestly say if I wouldn’t do it again, but I hope if there is a next time, we find a way to do it better. I still think it’s important to keep our streets safe.”

“And you’re not wrong,” Rick said with a sigh. “But it’s good to know your limits. Know your strengths and play up to them. Tiff, in this case, you’re a lot more like me while Tori is like your mother. Let her pound the pavement while you sit back. You’ve got your TAS; use it. So long as you understand that you’re contributing where you can, I think it’ll work out just fine.”

Tiff pulled her tablet out and stared at the serum in the safe. It still gave her the [???]s, but it had an addendum of (super serum). Because she didn’t have anything constructive to add to their deconstruction of the video, Tiff looked back at the house they broke into.

Even now, hours later, the cops were still there. The owners had been evicted (hopefully only temporarily), and a bunch of guys wearing hazmat suits were scrubbing the basement. Tiff assumed the crew that looked like they worked for one of those CSI shows had already photographed everything they needed, and everything had been collected as evidence.

And she did mean everything.

Tiff saw the giant rat tail being carried out on a stretcher, and the safe was meticulously lit by at least a dozen UV lights. In the back of one of the large black vans, a small beaker of dimly glowing goop was all they managed to secure of the spilled serum and broken syringes, and Tiff was surprised to see they treated it with just as much caution as her dad did. Or maybe surprised wasn’t the right word…more like she was relieved that she could trust her dad to hold himself to the same level of professionalism as actual crime scene investigators.

Still, the most interesting thing to stick out to Tiff while spying on the house, out of all the law enforcement, [Officers], and [Technicians], was a single male in his late 40s or early 50s who could be nothing other than a [Detective]. Tiff had to read the Maltese Falcon for English, and if that guy wasn’t a cross between Sam Spade and Columbo, she didn’t know who he was.

Not that she actually did know.

But he fascinated her because he took nothing for granted. He questioned everything, and not in the way toddlers ask why repeatedly for hours on end, but because it all held meaning. Some of it was likely shallow, but there were also pieces of deeper meaning that Tiff would never think to extrapolate, and she’d have made a snap judgment long ago. It honestly raised her respect for the man, even though he was the closest thing she had to an enemy number 1 at the moment. If anyone were going to bring a Supervillain to justice, it would be a [Detective] from the Major Crimes Unit.

Make no mistake: Superheros were dangerous.

But while they were strong, obnoxious, and could foil any number of devious plans, they were like a flash in the pan. Strike hard and move to the next target. Yes, they could absolutely ruin Tiff’s day if they roughed her up, but typically, Villains caught this way didn’t do hard time.

Relative to the crime, of course.

But a [Detective]? A real homeboy setting out to detect? They might not punch through brick walls, but they did the job right. And everybody knows the real killer of crime comes when they fail to do their taxes.

Tiff really needed to start thinking about that, or at the very least, think about setting Candice up with a tax advisor mentor.

But that sounded like a whole bunch of Villain-work, which Tiff was decidedly not getting into at the moment! Even if the first thing she thought of as a non-Villain activity happened to be going down to the corner shop for some ice cream, and as soon as she did, her brain immediately diverted to wondering how they enjoyed their upgrades.

Tiff took a look at the TAS and saw a remarkable increase in customer count, bringing concurrent shoppers up to a whopping 4 whole people! At this rate, they might have to staff an entire new employee! Tiff wasn’t one to brag, but she was pretty sure her upgrades were responsible for at least 50% of that traffic. Hmm. That might be something worth investigating.

Tiff pulled out her phone and started to text Candice her new idea. But the longer she thought about it, the more she felt it needed to be official, since it was coming from “the boss,” and she ended up staring at her phone for a solid 10 minutes, typing and erasing and retyping, never satisfied with the result.

She ended up composing something closer to an HR-mandated public relations email than a quick text asking Candice to mock up a customer feedback survey. In fact, Tiff quickly got a response saying U wot? and she figured she’d need to hash out the details at school tomorrow. For the rest of the day, she had nothing to do except relax, eat dinner, and maybe watch some television with the family.

​

Tiff was naive.

“What do you mean we have a history test?” Tiff hissed at Candice during Homeroom. Although she didn’t have the same period, they shared the same teacher, and all his classes shared the same curriculum.

“I mean, it’s been on the schedule for the past week?” Candice asked, popping her gum. “Don’t tell me you forgot?”

“I absolutely forgot,” Tiff groaned. “I thought it was next week! Didn’t he say it was next Thursday?”

“Well, I mean, that totally depends on your definition of ‘next’,” Candice answered coolly. Tiff gave her friend a strange look.

“How do you have more than one definition of next?”

“Well, like, it’s Thursday right now,” Candice continued, “So obviously next week’s Thursday is ‘next Thursday.’ But what about on Monday? Was this Thursday next Thursday 3 days ago? Or is it next Thursday now because it hasn’t happened yet? And I suppose that means we need to figure out if we’re asking that question last Monday or this Monday…”

Tiff slowly face-planted into her desk.

“Candice,” she groaned, “I don’t need existential crises this early in the morning. It’s bad enough that I’m going to do horrible on the test! I have history next period! At least you get to study during lunch!”

“Let’s be real,” Candice sighed. “How badly do you think you’re really going to do?” She gave Tiff the ol’ quirked eyebrow. “Isn’t history one of your better subjects?”

“I mean, I’ll probably still get a B, but I was really hoping for an A….”

“My girl,” Candice said patronizingly, patting Tiff on the head. “If you’re going to mope about failing a surprise test you forgot to study for, make sure you’re actually failing. That serves you right for inflicting mental damage on me with your text yesterday. What the actual F was that all about?”

“Ah,” Tiff said, smiling weakly as she raised her head. “My new plan to roll out a customer satisfaction survey? Perfect timing. Candice, as my dedicated people-person, I’m going to need you to help me make something…fetching.”

“Ooookay,” Candice nodded slowly. “Number 1? Don’t try to make fetch happen. It isn’t gonna work. Number 2? Can we just…not? Throw it away and call it good?”

“No,” Tiff groaned seriously. “I really think we need a way for our businesses to contact us without going there in person. It’d be great if we could have a suggestion box or something, but we all know those suck butts and nobody uses them. I remember a fast food place tried putting in a suggestion box, but people kept cramming napkins into the little slot, and we don’t want that.”

“You know, I kind of hate it that you have a point. I’ve seen the ice cream machine you put into the 24-Heaven and I want one. Not to mention the super chill break room with the comfy sofas? If people aren’t appreciating those, they aren’t our people.”

“Right?!” Tiff sat up. “Our people! Exactly! I knew you were on board!”

“Oh, I’m on board,” Candice said, crossing her arms. “Which means you totally should have told me you were going to raid somebody’s house! I need to be there for these things!”

“No, you don’t,” Tiff said somberly, mellowing out. “I shouldn’t have been there, either.”

“But you’re at least going to tell me about it, right?” Candice pressed.

There was no escaping the girl’s tenacity and persistence, so Tiff eventually relented. She was planning on telling her anyway, when she inevitably got dragged into more Dark Queen shenanigans.

“Is it so much to ask that people follow the rules?” Tiff asked dramatically. “All I want is a place my thugs can grow in peace without drugs making a mess of things. Maybe a little con here or there to bring in some petty cash, but there’s no need for violence!”

“Tiff, you have got to be the weirdest mob boss in the history of ever, but I’m not complaining. But since we’re in, ah, work mode, I do have a couple of things to report. We need to meet with Sugar Rush, and it’d probably be better if we do it somewhere on our turf. Maybe not the break room– we need a good name for that. The Dark Queen’s Den? DQD? Doesn’t roll off the tongue, shelve it for now. But I was thinking instead of going to her ice cream parlor, we can make her come to ours.”

“I don’t know if I’d consider the 24-Heaven an ice cream parlor, Candice,” Tiff said with a frown. “Though I might be able to upgrade it some more, I’ll have to check. Depending on how much it costs, it might be a worthy investment.”

“Well, you’ll need to think on it quick, because we should try to schedule for Saturday. I can’t do Friday since there’s a game that we’re likely going to lose and really I can’t wait for the season to be over so I don’t have to stare at Ryan flinching every time he looks at me, which is honestly still funny but I’m over him so there.”

Tiff nodded along like she actually understood more than the first two seconds of that sentence while Candice took a deep breath.

“So like I said. Saturday. See if you can get your big sister, you know, just in case, but I don’t think she’s gonna need the armor right away. Her transformation sequence is instantaneous, right? So there’s no need. We give Sugar Rush the time, but we go there early, we don’t need her finding out it’s so close to your place. Then we can bribe her with the fro-yo and find out what she knows. See if she’s had any more luck hunting down the [Enforcers].”

“Ugh, I almost hope she hasn’t,” Tiff sighed. At Candice’s burning gaze, Tiff relented. “Okay, so, we looked up drugs in the area, right?” Tiff said in a low whisper, making sure none of her classmates that were trickling in overheard them. “We found that suspicious-looking marker in the basement?”

“The one next to the torture device bed?” Candice confirmed. Tiff nodded enthusiastically. “I can't believe you broke into a house. Did you do it all spymaster style with sneaking around and hiding in the shadows? Or did you bust down the doors, guns blazin'? Err, maybe without the guns?”

“Well, not really,” Tiff frowned, waggling her hand. “We tried knocking first.”

“What?” Candice said flatly. “You knocked on the door? Look, I know we joke about how pale you are, but you don't actually need to get permission to enter a stranger's home, right?”

“No," Tiff said with a roll of her eyes, “And that’s beside the point! That stuff down there was dangerous! Like, super, ultra, mega dangerous!”

“Combo value extreme?!” Candice perked up, causing Tiff to blink.

“...what?”

“You know, if we’re going to add all the modifiers to it, might as well chuck a couple of those on, too.”

“You’re derailing,” Tiff moped. “This is serious.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, I’ll forgive you this time,” Tiff said graciously, making sure her smirk was very obvious so Candice knew she was kidding. “But seriously. A rat got into the mysterious item.”

“Ugh,” Candice shuddered. “Rats.”

“I agree,” Tiff shuddered, commiserating. “But it gets worse. They’re calling it the super serum for right now, and it turned a plain ol’ rat into a were-rat. A bear-rat? I’m bad with names. No joke, Candice, but the thing got all grody and huge, covered in pus-filled boils, and half its hair fell out as it grew to the size of a large dog. It tried to eat us, but thankfully Tori wins against giant rats and she beat it to death…only it wouldn’t die. Even with its head caved in, it started regrowing a skull. She eventually dropped a safe on it…and that was that.”

Candice just stared at Tiff for several seconds before nodding slowly.

“I think I’m going to have nightmares,” she said conversationally. “Thanks for that.”

“Well, if I have to live with it, so do you,” Tiff decided. “Though I don’t want to imagine what would happen if a real person injected themself with that serum. It came in a syringe, right? So it’s probably meant to be fast-acting, going straight into the bloodstream. I think we’d be dealing with something a lot worse than [Enforcers] if they did; we’d have a modern case of Dr. Jekyll on our hands…until, I don’t know, their body explodes.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Candice hastily nodded. “But since we’re on the topic, I think it’s the perfect time to bring it up.”

“Oh?” Tiff said. She was slightly nervous; Candice’s ideas were always…high octane. Something very hard for an introvert like Tiff.

“Relax,” Candice said, seeing through Tiff’s calm facade. “It’s for me, not you. You see, you’ve got your big sister who can pretty much protect you no matter where you are in the entire city. Unless we get into serious trouble, I think you’re good. But that doesn’t extend to me, and if we’re going to keep visiting gang dens and shady businesses to collect their money, I want somebody who can cover for me in a pinch. Not that I plan to start none, you hear? But I think it would be nice to have a little extra help so I can concentrate on doing my job. The less time I have to spend watching my back, the more time I can spend shmoozing our customers…giving them your satisfaction surveys.”

“But they’ll have to be part of the team,” Tiff said, frowning. “That’s not a decision we should make lightly. For one, the System will absolutely require them to join the Dark Court or whatever silly name it has for us.”

“Hey, it fits, right?” Candice grinned. “And don’t worry. It won’t be sudden. I’ve got somebody in mind; I just need a bit more time to scout him out and I wanted to run it by you first. Even though I made light of it, I know this is a big deal.”

“You’ve thought this through,” Tiff mused. “‘He’?” She asked. “Does he have a name?”

“Sure does,” Candice replied instantly with a shrug. “But does the name David Grant mean anything to you?”

Honestly? Not one bit. Tiff was fairly certain she’d never heard of a guy with that name in her life, or if she had, he was in no way connected to her.

“Though so,” Candice smirked. “I’ll bring him to the Dark Table once I decide if he’ll be a good fit and you can go over his resume.”

“Okay, first, we’re not calling it the Dark Table,” Tiff hissed. “It’s just a table I eat lunch at. What’s so wrong about that?”

“I dunno?” Candice batted her eyelashes innocently. “Maybe the fact that it should seat 8 but you’re the only one who sits there?”

“You sit there now, too,” Tiff grumbled.

“And I’m eternally grateful to you, Your Majesty,” Candice said with an over-the-top bow. “It lets me get away from those hacks on the cheer squad. You can tell them I said this, but they’re afraid of you.”

“Candice,” Tiff groaned, “Isn't the saying, ‘Don’t tell them I said this?’ How would I even tell them if they won’t get near me at lunch? You’re using me as a buffer.”

“Hey, Dark Queen bosses are good for tons of things!” Candice cheered. “Zoning out the cheap ho’s and free soft serve. What more could a girl need?”

Tiff rolled her eyes. What more indeed.