Chapter 98: The Underwriter

***Tafford B. Beans***

“Greg,” Taff said, his voice muffled through the mask. “Greg.”

Greg, his cubicle buddy across the way didn’t respond, his imposing featureless minion mask seemed to be blocking his ability to hear.

“Goddamnit – GREG!” Taff said, slipping his mask above his mouth so his voice actually carried.

Greg jolted in place. The faintly overweight middle-aged man turned in his swivel chair. “Tafford? You’re not supposed to take off the mask. If he finds out…”

“I didn’t take it off, I moved it out of the way,” Taff said, settling the mask back on his face. “But forget that, come check this out.”

Greg grunted assent and rolled his chair across the aisle to sit beside Taff.

“Check out this chart.”

“A big red line going up.” Greg said in monotone. “Good or bad?”

“Good, I think.” Tafford said, bringing up the window on his monitor with Paradox’s bio and location of business on it.

“Since Paradox bought Oberon scrapyard, they’ve begun to produce recycled concrete, and get this: it’s better than the regular stuff, according to a few concrete experts.”

“Loud people on internet forums are not necessarily experts.” Greg said.

“I know, which is why I called one I know personally to check it out. There’s a fair amount in this town for obvious reasons.”

Franklin city involved a lot of concrete and concrete repair.

“Anyway, they’ve begun undercutting clean-up operations around the city and re-selling the concrete – which is better than the regular stuff - at a fraction of the price, along with recycled steel, rebar and glass.”

“What’s the line, then?”

“That’s Oberon Scrapyard’s projected output of building materials, based on the current trend.”

“Why is it exponential?” Greg asked, pointing at the graph.

“That’s just what the numbers said,” Tafford shrugged. “I haven’t factored in demand and competition, which will probably cap this graph right around here, about a year from now.”

“You think the boss will be happy about this?” Greg asked.

“I mean, reducing the material cost so dramatically will drop our claim expenses by at least a third. I can’t see why that would be a bad thing.”

“Can I- Can I show it to him?” Greg asked.

Tafford raised a brow under his mask, but realized it couldn’t be seen, so chose to cock his head.

“I been gunning for middle-management for a couple years now. This could be what I need to put myself over the top. The Boss likes knowing things in advance. And besides, do you wanna do it?”

Tafford shuddered. The Boss creeped him out.

“Nah, you do it. I’m fine being beneath his notice.”

“Email it to me,” Greg said, standing up and dragging his chair back over to his desk, overweight body jiggling.

Tafford did so and thought no more of the issue.

***Greg Larker***

“So as you can see, if this continues, our expenses will drop drastically by this time next year, widening our profit margin by a huge percentage,” Greg said, giddy as a schoolgirl as Neuron stared at the large charts he’d printed out specifically to impress. Obviously The Boss of the Big Brain Energy insurance company was impressed.

“Why is the graph exponential?” Neuron asked, his tone…colder than Greg expected.

“Um, because that’s what the numbers indicated. It should taper off right around here, as supply dwindles. There’s a lot of property destruction, in Franklin City, but it couldn’t supply the entire city, obviously.

“Additionally, the concrete is going to be tougher than normal, according to my experts, which should reduce incidental damage and reduce our total amount of claims filed going into the future.”

“If we can get a direct line to this Paradox guy and arrange a deal where we purchase the majority of his product, we should be able to increase our profit at leas seven-fol-“

“Its not going to happen,” Neuron’s emotionless voice emanated from the floating tank his brain was housed in.

Greg’s heart sank.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I’m disappointed at the sheer stupidity my staff is demonstrating right now,” Neuron said, wobbling in place. “Let me explain to you as if you were a child: We keep roughly three percent of the premiums we charge our customers, and the rest gets paid out to claims. Now, if the cost of reconstruction drops by thirty percent, that means our claims shrink by thirty percent, and our profit margin increases tenfold, or thereabouts.”

“That’s good, righ-“

“Shut up and listen. We are not the only insurance company in the game. Insurance is one of those business models where if one company lowers its prices, the others must follow suit or lose all their business. We do not sell Rolexes.”

“When it becomes common knowledge that expenses have dropped dramatically, a smaller, scrappier company than mine will decide that if they can poach a certain amount of business away from mine, they will be able to increase their profit substantially, even if they reduce their premiums.”

“This will begin a premium arms war, which will end when the premiums have caught up to the new expense ratio.”

“But-“

“We service a hundred and sixteen thousand buildings throughout the city, with an average premium of eight thousand dollars a month. Three percent of that is twenty-seven million eight hundred and forty thousand dollars. Per month.”

Greg stood there silently. The Boss obviously didn’t want to be interrupted.

“Now, let’s say Paradox does makes rebuilding significantly cheaper, and some upstart insurance company is the first to drop their prices to an average of five thousand dollars in an attempt to scalp our customers.”

“Let’s say, because of this advance notice, we are the first to respond, retaining all of our customers and even taking a few away from other companies. Let’s say…five thousand contracts.”

“So now we have one hundred and twenty-one thousand contracts paying us an average of five thousand dollars a month, and as normal, we keep three percent. That nets us a gross of eighteen million one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month. Or a net loss of nine million six hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Per month.”

“But if we get an exclusive deal worked out with Paradox, we could increase our profit seven…fold…” Greg trailed off, swallowing nervously at Neuron’s intense stare.

Neuron began to laugh, and the manic, tinny sound emanating from the speakers on the front of the brain’s tank sent chills down Greg’s spine.

“I see that you’re ignorant of the politics at play here. Paradox was born my enemy. There will be no deals with our company, and in order to ensure there are no deals struck with another company, he must be eliminated.”

“I’m…just gonna go back to my cubicle,” Greg stammered, pointing over his shoulder. All thoughts of middle management, job security and pay-raises had long since flown out of his head. Now he just wanted to get home and hug Linda.

“Gregory.” Neuron said, halting Greg in his tracks.

“Yessir?” Greg straightened.

“I have assigned you a five percent pay-raise for your willingness to bring me critical information. It would’ve been higher if you’d understood what you were bringing to me, but nevertheless, keep up the good work. Your friend, Tafford has been reassigned to the data analysis team, and will receive further training, as he is quite observant. He will also be subjected to a beating for removing his mask in-office. Rules are meant to be followed.”

“Yessir,” Greg said stiffly.

“Dismissed.”

Greg walked out of the room, feeling Neuron’s eyes burning into his back. He barely restrained himself from jamming the elevator button multiple times with all his strength. If he broke the button and got killed…that wouldn’t be surprising.

When he got back to his cubicle, Tafford was already gone. Most likely getting lightly beat up somewhere before his promotion.

You know what? I don’t think I want middle management anymore. Screw the pay-raise.

******

“Just me and the gang, kicking ass and taking names,” Perry said as they patrolled through the city, filling the free day he had until Dave’s hippie van full of ingredients showed up.

‘The gang’ being Perry’s team of Paradox, Wraith, Hardcase, Plagius (needs hero name) and Breaker.

Perry was a fast bruiser with tricks, as far as team composition, similar to Hardcase, who was a bruiser with higher long-range capability. Heather was the infiltration expert and assassin, boating relatively high damage and speed along with the ability to sneak like crazy.

Plagius was…another bruiser with tricks.

And Breaker was a wildcard sandbagger.

This party composition is whack. My team composition needs a sensor and a speedster, not three bruisers.

Not Manic, though.

To be fair, they’d be a bitch in a fight, but not as flexible as they could be, which might result in some missed opportunities.

Maybe I can find a ritual that enhances the senses in some way. Perry’s senses were superhuman, on account of his Nerve, but just barely. He wasn’t up to the point of tracking people down by smell or anything like that.

One possible solution was to grant himself abilities through magic that could allow him to swiftly assume the sensor or speedster role when necessary then drop it again. Nine times out of ten a sensor super was completely useless anyway.

People only kept them around because that tenth time, they either secured a clutch victory or saved your life.

“It’s actually weird to have everyone in one place like this,” Heather muttered. “Usually Paradox is holed up in his room playing with himself.”

Plagius snickered.

“Is that what you’re calling it?” Perry asked. The laws of ribbing determined that if he tried to defend himself, he would validate her statement. No, he had to fire back. “How would you know? You can barely keep your eyes off a mirror long enough to see where you’re going.”

“At least I didn’t dress up in toilet paper for Halloween as a ‘mummy’ with my dick hanging out.”

“…Did that actually happen?” Nat asked, flying on the left wing of their patrol formation.

“I was six. I figured toilet paper would make great mummy wrapping, the kind you see on cartoons. I was wrong. Toilet paper does not make good clothes.”

Heather chuckled, shaking her head, obviously reminiscing. Perry would be tempted to smack the memory out of her head, were it not for the accompanying brain damage.

“Hey guys,” Breaker said over the comms from where he was sitting on Hardcases’ cockpit. He was the only team member incapable of superhuman transportation, something Perry intended to fix.

He was wearing a full helmet and some of Perry’s custom hyperweave from head to toe. Given that he had human-level durability, Perry wasn’t taking any chances.

Lightshow had quoted him a sixty million dollar fee, and two months of labor for Breaker’s hardlight belt, so Perry had to put that idea on the backburner.

The staggering amount of that fee had served to remind him again that he’d vastly undercharged Locust.

“Over there,” Breaker said, pointing off to the left, where there was a smudge of smoke on the horizon.

“Looks promising,” Perry said, turning his suit that way.

Plagius huffed and puffed as he craned his neck at the other flying members of the team, suddenly changing direction. He turned on a dime and launched himself in the air, jumping from building to building.

He had superhuman strength and stamina by this point, but running full-tilt for half an hour from building to building will take a toll on anyone.

The five of them crossed the distance quickly, where they came across a bizarre sight.

An emaciated young man dressed in nothing but his underwear, a ye olde prospector hat, and a fake beard, was wielding a pickaxe against the local bank.

Instantly that dropped the guy into the non-legacy super category as legacy supers almost never robbed banks. It also meant he was a little more dangerous because they hadn’t grown up with the rules of super etiquette.

“YEEEHAAAW!” the ‘prospector’ shouted, busting open the side of the bank with the pickaxe.

Perry was not expecting money and chunks of gold to literally begin falling out of the walls of the bank, but that’s what happened.

To reiterate, this young man hadn’t picked straight into the vault or anything like that. the WALLS were crumbling under his pick and releasing gold nuggets and banded twenty-thousand-dollar stacks.

This guy’s got some sort of wildcard power that relies on metaphor, perhaps?

The Prospector was surrounded by no less than twenty masked individuals, who looked to be minions taken straight form the bank, judging by their business casual civilian attire. Most of them were busy picking up the riches as fast as they could fall, but others were causing their own havoc. Two had set fire to a car, giving Perry’s team the smoke-signal they’d followed to find them.

Perry didn’t think it was intentional, because the two young women with fancy blouses and bank-teller name-tags were watching it burn and high-fiving each other.

Some kind of mental component?

There was more depth to this situation than met the eye.

“Already, Breaker, hide on the roof there, and come down if you see the need to save our asses, Wraith, go around back for an ambush, and the rest of us will walk in like we own the place.

“’The usual’, then.” Heather said, pulling her hood over her head to hide her shock of red hair, fading partially out of view. Extending one hand dozens of feet away, she grabbed a lightpole and whipped off into the distance, moving as smooth as silk.

“There’s tickets in them newfangled trans-pertation vehiculars!” the ‘Prospector’ shouted, turning his attention a car and smashing it with the pick.

The car crumbled apart like stone, revealing thousands of dollars worth of tickets for public transportation.

The minions began stuffing them in their pockets with glee.

“Hey!” Perry said, landing in front of The Prospector, his jets creating a massive swirl of smoke and debris as he confronted the super.

There was a moment of silence.

“Before I arrest you, can you hit that lightpole right there? I wanna see if flashlights pop out.”

“Tarnation, It’s the Po-leese!” the young man shouted, his voice breaking. “They’re after me moonshine! Quick sonny, gimme the red’un!”

“Here!” one of the minions said, digging around in a massive steamer trunk.

“Stop that!” Perry said to Plagius, when the minions threw themselves in front of the team, buying their comrade time throw their leader ‘the red one’.

The kid in his whitey-tighties whipped off his hat and beard, tossing them aside before slamming on a bright red plastic fireman’s helmet.

A fire axe manifested in his hands, along with some suspenders attached to his undies.

“Good evening ladies,” The gawky kid said, posing like a pin-up fireman as Perry, Hardcase and Plagius pushed through the crowd.

“I guess you’re here to bring the heat. Fortunately… I know how to handle a blaze…”

Hardcase’s mech seemed to stop in its tracks, and he could hear her panting over the mic.

“Wow, is it hot in here, or is it just him?” she asked.

Perry cocked his head, looking at Hardcase.

“I don’t know why I just said that!” she shouted.

“Alright, take him down.” Perry said, arming the noob catcher while Plagius moved forward to punch him out.

“But be careful…You might get burned,” the gawky teen said in a sultry voice before spluttering. “No, this isn’t the red one I meant, the other red one!”

Looks like he’s got about a five second cooldown where he’s locked into a role.

Perry’s eye twitched when he spotted a plastic red Halloween mask of the infamous cult leader Debonaire flying through the air.

That would be a problem. Debonaire was a red-skinned Minder who’d run a powerful cult some twenty years ago before he’d been taken down by the supers at the time. Making a mask of him was in very poor taste, as the man had done some very awful things to people. Granting yourself a portion of his abilities through cosplay powers was in even worse taste.

It probably explained why the bankers were acting like zealots, thoughn/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

XSDisintegrate.EXE

Perry kicked the civilian out of the way and whipped out a disintegrate, turning the mask to dust halfway to the guy’s hands. No reason to give him ANY opportunity to access that powerset.

“What’s your Super Name?” Perry asked as he approached, the masked bankers shaking off their stupor and fleeing in every direction.

Persistent effects are tied to the accessory that spawned them, Perry noted.

“Roll.”

“Roll?” Perry asked, making a circling motion with his finger.

“With an E.” Role said.

“Oh, gotcha,” Perry stepped up and tried to tip the fireman’s hat off Role’s head, but it refused to budge.

Accessory seems to be supernaturally secured while it is in play, Perry thought.

“You realize that you’re under arrest, right?” Perry asked. Plagius and Hardcase were looming over either side of the scrawny kid’s shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah,” Role said with a sigh, extending his arms, while Plagius secured them with some of the cuffs on his belt.

“Take off the sexy fireman hat and cancel whatever it is you’re doing to Hardcase.”

“I don’t mind,” Hardcase interjected.

“Or I will break your hat, and then your face,” Perry continued.

“Fiiine,” Role said, taking off the fireman hat, tossing it into the steamer trunk filled to the brim with accessories.

“If that dumbass had just passed me the right red one,” He muttered under his breath.

“Whoah, that was weird,” Hardcase muttered, shaking her head as the sexy fireman vibes faded from her mind.

The police showed up only a few minutes later and bundled up Role for transport. Perry and the team signed off with Nexus, and each of them walked away ten grand richer.

Not bad for an afternoon. Honestly it wasn’t much now that Perry understood the sheer scale of what a super could make, but they needed practice together and patrolling might as well make them money.

“That was anticlimactic,” Heather said as they broke up and went their separate directions.

“I mean, a good super team should aim to checkmate the other guys as quickly as possible and take ‘em down with minimal risk.” Perry said. “Four on one is more my speed. Safe and quick.”

“I know that, but… man it’s boring to just cling to the ceiling and watch you guys steamroll everyone.”

“You want the next takedown?” Perry asked.

“I was thinking team-fights instead of noob hunting.” Heather said.

“Let me just call up some of the supervillains I know and ask if there’s any team that wants to get stymied right in the middle of their master plan,” Perry said.

“You do know an unusual amount of supervillains.” Natalie said.

“That is true,” Perry said with a shrug.

The three of them parked at Perry’s lair, and Nat ran off for a minute around the front of the motel before coming back in a fresh change of clothes.

Perry cocked a brow at Heather.

“She kinda, sorta…ran away from home,” Heather whispered.

“Did you…?” escalate things?

Perry left that part unsaid.

“Nah, I just watched. She got into this big fight with her mom, yelled like she had lungs twice her size, and stormed out the door before jumping into her mechsuit and jetting off.”

Running away from home implied that you don’t have the money, job, or social strength to live your own life, and may fall in with the wrong crowd in order to make ends meet. Runaways often failed and came crawling back or fell dramatically.

A super, on the other hand, could do one job and live in the lap of luxury for years. It was a completely different ballgame. Nat’s inherent social value as a Tinker was already higher than that of her parents, and the mechsuit she’d made was likely worth more than the cul-de-sac her home resided in.

“It’s less Nat ‘running away from home’ than it is her parents losing their meal ticket.” Perry muttered.

“Yeah, her mom actually said something to that effect out loud after she was gone.”

Perry scoffed but didn’t say anything more as Natalie approached.

***Role***

“Supervillains keep getting dumber every year,” the heavyset Nexus officer said, shaking his head.

“Just younger, I think,” the other said.

Role didn’t say anything, waiting for his chance.

About ten minutes into the trip, the officer on the left was swiping through his phone while the other took his eyes off Role habitually check his gun.

Role reached into his underwear and retrieved the plastic Nexus badge from under his nuts, brandishing it in front of him before either officer could react.

The Role consumed him.

“I’ve seen enough, gentlemen.” Role said, holding up his badge. “I’m satisfied with your performance.”

“What?” The nexus officer said, his brow furrowing.

“I’m an undercover operative, and my job was to assess your performance. You passed with flying colors. My name’s Detective Role.”

“Detective,” the two retrieval officers stiffened, giving him a hasty salute. “Thank you sir,”

“No problem, I’m just pleased as punch that my juniors are performing so well,” Role said. “Now, I need to write my report. Would you mind dropping me off at the party supply shop on fifth and G street?”

“Yessir,” the officers said, changing the direction of the van.

UNREGISTERED COURSE ALTERATION. DEPLOYING COUNTERMEASURES.

“Wha-ACK!”

The interior of the Nexus prisoner transport filled up with foam, sealing Role in place while the van’s autopilot jerked them back on course for Nexus.

“DAMNIT!” Role shouted, his head barely above the rapidly hardening foam. A tube came down from the ceiling and jammed itself into his mouth, flooding his lungs with oxygen before the entire van filled with foam, locking him in a hard brick of foam along with the compromised Nexus officers.

***Perry***

Perry was up later than all of them. Nat went to bed first, stifling a yawn, followed by Heather, who went home for the night.

It was about two o’clock in the morning, and Perry was hopped up on pure anticipation. Like a child before Christmas.

Tomorrow he’d get the last ingredients he needed to perform his prototype soul-surgery.

Perry had checked and double checked and triple-checked every tiny detail. To his relief, he hadn’t found anything wrong, because he’d triple checked them every day for the last week.

Still, Perry couldn’t sleep.

He adjusted, ran numbers, even laid down and took new video of his soul to make extra sure everything was the way it should be.

There were some minor changes since movie night, but Perry had already adjusted for them.

Dear Lord, I can’t wait. What if he slept through the delivery and he started three HOURS later than he might’ve otherwise? Perry had already waited ten years, and he’d be damned if he waited any longer. Obviously the only logical answer was to stay up all night and be awake when the delivery arrived.

Unable to find anything that needed fixing or adjusting, Perry began to go over the spells he intended to add to his repertoire.

His Tinker Twitch consumed him as he began theorizing turning the telekinesis spell into a haste spell.

A proper D&D Haste spell didn’t exist in Manitian theory, but Perry thought he might be able to cobble one together by drawing on advanced physics.

Namely gravity, and the fact that gravity itself was merely a gradient in the flow of time, which caused acceleration in the direction of the grade.

The oft-underused Dragol’s Telekinesis was poorly thought of as being far too expensive because it used concentrated slip-beast ichor to achieve the telekinesis’s acceleration.

Similar telekinesis spells used kinetic force, and slip-beast ichor was more often used in teleportation spells, where it’s expense could be justified.

To Perry, this implied that slip-beast ichor warped spacetime, and was creating gravity to produce acceleration.

A hint that confirmed his theory was that Dragol’s kinesis had an area limitation rather than a weight limitation, unlike many of its contemporary (cheaper) telekinesis spells.

If it created gravity, that meant Dragol’s Kinesis was creating a time gradient in the direction of the caster’s desire.

NOW!

Clocks in high orbit tick about forty-five microseconds per day faster, because they’re less affected by earth’s gravity.

Not a HUGE difference to the casual observer, and such a nearly imperceptible gradient in time created the substantial acceleration of Earth’s gravity.

What Perry wanted was to use Dragol’s Kinesis as a base to allow himself to condense his own personal time to create a Haste spell.

The major stumbling block was concentrating time in that manner was applying quite a bit of force to the fabric of spacetime.

If Earth’s super tiny amount of time distortion made an acceleration of 9.8m/s2, then the amount of time distortion to give one effectively double speed, the gradient’s acceleration would be…

Perry blinked as the number marched across the surface of his calculator.

Seems like I might explode, or implode. If the spell flubbed and released any byproduct gravity, it would be basically the equivalent of opening the hatch at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Just utter annihilation by forces the human body wasn’t meant to endure.

Sounds like fun. Definitely going to need to take precautions with the Haste spell testing... I wonder what Special Relativity has to say about Solaris moving at the speed of light?

Perry noticed one of his lights flickering.

Well, that’s odd. Perry’s lightbulbs should last longer than he did. Pulled out of his Tinker fugue, Perry sensed motion behind him.

There were four men standing in his Lair.

Incognito, the infiltration specialist.

Dream, who controlled others with debilitating hallucinations.

Mass-Driver, the literally unstoppable mercenary sweeper.

And a man wearing spotless a white suit. He was rather large, about six three, and extra wide. He wore gold rings on his fingers, close shorn brown hair, and expensive shades covering his eyes.

“Good evening Paradox. I am the Underwriter, and you’re about to have an ‘Accident’,” he said.

“Fuck!”