Chapter 163 Board.

Chapter 163: 163 Board.

As good as a Villain as Zero is, he’s an even better real estate owner.

Sure, forcibly extracting the deed from him had been an absolute fucking nightmare, but the reward hadn’t just been his lethally gorgeous daughter coming to learn the art of professional villainy from me. It was also inheriting his custom-built local headquarters.

And what did that mean?

World domination room, baby.

I’d loved that room from the moment I cracked the biometric locks. It was buried deep in the absolute center of the chalet, completely windowless, and reinforced with enough lead and concrete that you would probably need a bunker-buster missile to even dent the drywall.

True, as a freelance contractor, I had absolutely no practical operational use for the massive, glowing holographic world map projected on the back wall, but the aesthetic of the thing was just flawless.

It reminded me of the tense mob meetings from my past life. Except back then, I was never the guy sitting at the top. I was the hired muscle standing quietly by the fire exit, bored out of my skull, never even imagining I’d ever run my own crew.

It even beat out the looming, wall-to-wall monitor on the opposite side of the room, ostensibly installed so you could video-call the UN and threaten them with the Octoporian or a plague of weaponized radioactive frogs. But best of all, the room had the Big Table.

Every self-respecting evil organization needed the Big Table. It was an absolute industry requirement.

The sort of table you could sit at with your fellow psychopaths, go around the circle to introduce yourselves, and present your latest quarterly synergy for conquering the globe.

Zero’s Big Table was a masterpiece. Crafted from heavy, black-tinted mahogany and polished steel, it looked exactly like someone had stolen it directly off the set of Dr. Strangelove.

It even featured a hidden panel of physical buttons designed to dump whoever had just failed you into an incinerator pit located directly beneath their chairs.

Naturally, I had immediately disconnected the trapdoors. I paid my crew a competitive living wage; I wasn’t going to vaporize them for missing a deadline. But the overall look of the thing was just peak supervillain.

I leaned back in the massive, high-backed leather executive chair, just enjoying the subtle cushioning.

With a grand exercise of willpower, I physically stopped myself from steepling my fingers and gazing menacingly over them at the girls.

It was all hands on deck for this briefing, of course. My only genuine regret was that the giant doomsday monitor wasn’t touch-enabled, so I’d been forced to wheel a cheap office whiteboard into the room for the meeting.

Glacia sat at my right hand, sitting as stiff, prim, and proper as ever. Her striking white hair was tucked neatly behind her ear, and her hands were clasped politely atop the mahogany.

On my left was Rhea, grinning widely as she snuggled deep into her plush lab coat. Her hands rested casually on the armrests, and beside her was Psyren.

The pink-haired psychic had Nibbles sprawled out on her lap, and she was happily scratching the round, fleshy monster under the chin, baby-talking to the horrifying creature.

It was a formidable-looking group, I had to admit. It hit all the necessary demographic bases required for a high-tier villainous league. And it was time to talk some serious shop.

"Ladies," I said, opening the meeting with a grand gesture. "First off, thank you all for being here. I’m glad we could finally convene officially, because we have some major operational shifts to discuss. But first, I’d like to state for the record how glad I am to see all of you in such good health. We’ve had some... difficulties lately."

"That’s the understatement of the century," Rhea giggled, leaning over to rest against my arm, looking up at me as her wolf tail wagged furiously behind her chair. "By the way, did I officially mention how grateful I am that you completely pulverized Delirium for me, Miles? It’s been ages since I’ve been able to actually go outside and get my own groceries. Delivery is fine and all, but sometimes a girl just wants to eat out without looking over her shoulder, ya know?"

"Glad to facilitate," I said smoothly.

"Now, as for the actual business of villainy, we have a few major logistical issues we need to address. Top of the agenda: the official reveal of our new syndicate to the world at large."

"Sir," Glacia spoke up seamlessly. "Might I suggest we ransom the United Nations? Their primary assembly building would be relatively simple to barricade and take control of, and the resulting broadcast would be extremely high-profile."

"Ha!" Psyren snorted, barely glancing up from scrolling on her phone. "That is so eighties. Who gives a shit about the UN these days? But we should totally do something big! How about kidnapping some A-list celebrities? Huh? The pop-culture news outlets would be all over that shit. And I could tooootally leverage that for some insane social media engagement."

"Wouldn’t I, Nibbles? Yes I would! Oh, yes I would!" she cooed, rubbing the monster’s belly.

Nibbles chattered happily and slobbered a thick drop of drool onto the table. The highly acidic saliva instantly hissed, burning a small, smoking crater into the varnished mahogany. Lovely.

"How about more of a tiered heist structure?" Rhea offered, looking around the table with a sharp, analytical glint in her eyes. "Like, we systematically steal a bunch of highly guarded, disparate pieces of tech to construct a doomsday device. We build the narrative tension up a bit so the public and the capes can follow the breadcrumbs, and then we cap it all off with one massive, cinematic bang. Huh?"

"Now, that is actually a fantastic idea," I said, genuinely impressed.

Rhea smirked. "Well, what can I say?" she purred, crossing her arms behind her head and leaning back in her chair with absolute smugness. "I am a certified genius."

"Right," I said. "Good pitches, girls. Let’s map this out."

I stood up, though I was incredibly reluctant to leave the sheer comfort of my imposing villain chair.

Oh well. Grabbing the edge of the cheap, wheeled whiteboard, I dragged it over to the head of the table and uncapped a dry-erase marker.

"So, we’re looking at a tiered, narrative heist," I said, writing the words out. "And I want us to keep in mind that this has to be a realistic, highly controlled job for us. We need a corporate hero faction willing to unofficially play ball with the collateral, so targeting massive international organizations like the UN is off the table. Logistical nightmare. And kidnapping a celebrity lacks the necessary industrial oomph. But let’s keep brainstorming. What else have we got?"

"Sir!" Glacia said, raising a slender hand quickly. "I believe an elemental-themed heist would be ideal for our current composition. A similar structural outline to my debut in the museum, but scaled up."

"Alright. Elemental theme," I said, scribbling it down on the whiteboard. "Okay, solid. Anyone else?"

"Oh! Oh!" Psyren gasped, thrusting her arm eagerly into the air, practically bouncing in her leather seat. "I know! Brainwashing a massive corporate business conference! I’m totally the sound girl. I can go in undercover as, like, the headline DJ and completely mind-control all the billionaire tech-bros!"

"Good. Great. Music Theme," I said, adding it to the board. "Perfect. And if we’re leaning toward sound, I seem to recall the Metropolis Arts Conservatory is holding a massive gala presentation on the Stradivarius this weekend. They actually have one of the surviving violins on display, so we could definitely work an angle with that."

"Stradi-who-vius?" Psyren asked, tilting her head.

"Stradivarius," Glacia corrected her serenely, not missing a beat. "A meticulously crafted stringed instrument made by the Stradivari family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are universally reputed to be the absolute finest stringed instruments ever created, and are astronomically valuable collector’s items."

She folded her hands neatly on the table. "It is claimed that their acoustic resonance is unequaled in the modern world, with historians theorizing the specific density of the wood is impossible to replicate today due to the Little Ice Age that gripped the European continent at the time of their creation."

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised Glacia had that chambered. Captain Zero had undoubtedly provided her with the finest, most expensive private tutors in the world, even if he’d had to violently kidnap them to do it.

"Right, exactly," I said, pointing the marker at Glacia. "So, potentially, we could go in loud and steal the violin. Naturally," I added quickly, before anyone got the wrong idea, "we wouldn’t take the actual Stradivarius. We’d swap it for a replica during the chaos. We couldn’t risk damaging a genuine historical artifact in a super-brawl, but there’s a number of high-tier heroes who would be highly motivated to stop an acoustically-themed robbery. We frame it like we’re building some sort of sonar-based doomsday device. So, we’ve got elemental, and we’ve got music..."

"I say we build a weather dominator," Rhea chimed in effortlessly.