Chapter 176 Shills.

Chapter 176: 176 Shills.

I really didn’t want to do this dinner meeting, but I didn’t have much of a choice at this stage of the game, and that was the damn truth.

That said, I was a bit shocked at how... normal the venue was.

Scan Da Navya was an old-school family restaurant, tucked away on one of the smaller, quieter streets off Metropolis’s east side.

There were a lot of tight-knit communities around here from back when people were immigrating to America after the Second World War. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place you expected S-class heroes to frequent.

I came dressed casually, and more importantly, alone.

Psyren and Glacia had practically begged to come as backup, and I’d been sorely tempted to bring them, but I was dealing with the upper echelons of the Bureau here.

The girls were brave, and Glacia was a heavy hitter in her own right, but I didn’t need the added pressure of managing my proxies while I tried to explain multiple homicides to reality-warping heroes.

After agonizing over my wardrobe for an embarrassing amount of time, I’d decided to show up wearing a tailored charcoal suit.

It made me look like a bit of a corporate tool, but it was always better to dress up rather than down for a high-stakes interrogation.

"Polaris! Over here!"

Oh, great.

I turned toward the voice to see Mister Invincible waving me over to a secluded corner booth.

Rick was dressed completely nondescriptly, in civilian style, and I had to admit I was impressed.

A lot of heroes who got as globally famous as him tended to forget how to look like regular human beings, and I had a better eye for disguises than most.

To the casual observer, he likely looked like just another guy—one who clearly looked after his health and would certainly turn some heads in a bar, but was more likely married by now and hung around places called ’smoking rooms.’

He wore a casual vest and jacket. Honestly, he looked entirely different without the spandex and cape.

Mystic was a different story.

She was dressed in a smart, conservative crimson blouse and a dark tailored skirt, looking like she’d just stepped out of a high-end board meeting. She was far too stunning to ever truly vanish in a crowd, but she at least looked somewhat ’normal.’

Or at least, she would have, if it weren’t for the oppressive, heavy telekinetic weight hanging in the air around her booth.

Even in civilian clothes, her eyes still held that faint, unnatural glow, and a subtle, pulsing red aura seemed to cling to her fingertips resting on the wooden table.

She was watching my approach with the intense, unblinking tired focus.

"Hey," I said, sliding into the booth opposite them, not exactly sure what I should expect from this whole setup.

"Your... women are not here?" Mystic noted smoothly, her glowing eyes peering past my shoulder toward the entrance.

"No," I said, letting a bit of a challenge bleed into my voice. "They don’t need to be."

Mystic met my eyes for a second, her mouth opened but before she could speak Rick boomed.

"Hey, hey! No need for that. We’ve all been a bit in the wrong lately. Right?" Rick interrupted, holding out his massive hands placatingly. "First off, Miles, I wanted to personally apologize for what John did in trying to recruit you for that Superstars job. It hadn’t been cleared with the core ranks of the Bureau, and I’m genuinely sorry he put you in that position."

I raised a brow. An actual apology? That was a genuine surprise.

"It’s fine," I said cautiously. "No harm done."

"No, no! I’m really sorry about it. And honestly, I won’t feel better until you take me out to the alley out back and work me over with these spiked knuckles," Mister Invincible said, suddenly laying a heavy, wicked-looking pair of steel brass knuckles onto the tablecloth.

I stared blankly at the spikes, then awkwardly reached out and pushed them back across the table toward him.

"Uh, no. Really. It’s completely fine."

"Oh, come on! Just a few good hits to the jaw," Rick pleaded, a weirdly intense look in his eye. "Maybe drive a couple of masonry nails into my feet? Really make me regret what we did. I can take it."

I was really not liking the slight, excited flush he was sporting right now.

"No, really. It’s fine," I repeated, leaning back in my chair.

"He is satisfied, Rick," Mystic said, her voice cutting through the awkwardness.

Rick sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping as he reluctantly slid the spiked knuckles off the table and into his jacket pocket. "Oh, fine. But you really have to forgive John. He was only looking out for the greater good of the brand."

"Is that right?" I said noncommittally.

"We have apologized," Mystic said, her voice dropping its polite veneer as she glared at me. "Now, I believe it would be in your best interest to explain these... incidents you have been orchestrating."

I really didn’t want to, but there wasn’t much weaseling out of it with a telepathic magician sitting three feet away.

I told them exactly what I felt they needed to know. Not how I initially learned of the Brain Trust, but what I had discovered and when.

I explained what Green and the Mind were after, how they operated, their overarching evil plan, and everything else I’d managed to piece together from the ruins.

I briefly debated revealing that I was planning to aggressively brainwash the Trust to make them leave me alone, but decided firmly against it.

There wasn’t exactly any evidence for it anymore, and telling a hero you were actively utilizing mind control was a great way to get thrown in a black site.

Instead, I just talked about how... convincing I could be under the right circumstances.

As we talked, the waitress came and took our orders, returning with the food right around the time I finished explaining the collapse of the Mind’s subterranean lair and my explosive escape.

Mystic’s face remained completely impassive, but Rick’s expression grew more and more indignant as I went on.

"What!" Rick barked, nearly snapping his fork in half. "How? How could such a massive, insidious plan almost come to fruition right under our noses? You should have told us about this immediately!"

I shrugged, slicing into my steak.

"And what?" I asked dryly. "You’d arrest them? Drag them off to some high-tech prison? And then, in six months when they inevitably break out, they come right back after me? Or worse, they get their hidden minions to carry on the plot while they sit in a cell? I can’t afford that kind of risk."

"I... we would... um..." Rick stammered, trailing off as his lips pursed with anxious thought.

"It was foolish to act alone, nonetheless," Mystic noted, elegantly taking a sip of her wine.

I shrugged again.

"Heroes can’t solve every problem," I said bluntly. "The Bureau is busy enough these days posing for sponsorships. And I wasn’t going to feed this massive threat to some corporate hero looking to get some exposure on a live stream. Odds are, they’d monologue for the cameras and just let Green or the Mind escape in the chaos of the fighting. I couldn’t afford to let them walk away."

Rick grimaced deeply, then let out a long, heavy sigh.

"You may be right," he said sadly, his massive shoulders slumping. "Heroing isn’t like it used to be..."

I glanced over at Mystic, but her lips were pressed into a thin line, her glowing eyes riveted on the rim of her wine glass, unreadable. But the less we talked about my specific methodology with the Mind, the better, in my opinion.

"It’s not?" I asked, genuinely grateful for the change in subject. "I’m pretty sure you guys are still out there, fighting the good fight and all that."

Rick shook his head remorsefully, using his thick index finger to idly sketch something in the condensation ring left by his water glass.

"It seems that way to the public, but it’s become so... complicated behind closed doors. We need principled heroes," he said, his voice thick with frustration. "Courageous ones. Heroes who are incorruptible despite all the menaces and money thrown at them. Heroes to be looked up to. Heroes whose actual job is to inspire others. Not... shills."