The Mountain put his stogie back in and puffed a few more times, thinking, eyes flecks of stone, face impassive. “Now, here’s how it’s gonna play out.

“The blues are gonna come in here, and kick the shit outta you. You deserve it. Yer sloppy, an’ you’ve sent some of them into permanent disability or retirement, done broken backs and brain damage.

“Then yer going to prison.

“Now, I hear magic got you yer powers, and magic has a way of coming back. That’s fine fer you.

“If you get yer powers back, someone is going ta come for you. She’ll know you got ‘em, and she’s not gonna wait. She’s gonna come for you, and then the Wrecking Crew is gonna vanish, because she don’t trust you t’ play the game, and you’re stupid and clumsy at it when you try.

“You think on that when Loki or whatever wiseass godling or demon comes to recruit you. You fucked up the game, an’ now you’re out of it. Stay out of it. Ride your rep for as long as you can, tell yer stories, have fun telling punks to give the finger to The Man.

“But if you start encouraging mooks to do what you did to the Avengers the way you did it,” his eyelids got heavy and low, “then I’ll hear about it.”

He dropped his cigar on the ground, and slowly ground it out. Cement crunched as it compressed under the pressure of his foot.

“You have a good day now.” Trenchcoat and all, he rose quietly to his full height, and strode out the way he had come.

The wave of blue came in just a few minutes after he left. As promised, they beat the Wrecking Crew to within an inch of their fucking lives.

------

“I hope that wasn’t a tipping point, Mr. Hill,” I muttered to him, as we sat on one of the many hills of Central Park, enjoying the autumn weather. Winter was in the air, chasing away normal folks, but cold didn’t mean much to the likes of us.

“Me, too, girl,” he half-spat, half-sighed. “Spent a lot of time playing the Dance out on the Coast. It feels like a bad moment. Especially that Octopus fella. Ego thick as his glasses, like a lot of Schmot Guys. One of the big organizations picks him up, that could be bad news.”

“Too bad the Hag wouldn’t come in to deal with them. Too small.” Function pulsed firmly against my back, Asgardian magic there, ready for use. I could use it to turn into my own version of the She-Hulk, if I liked. Asgardian-level strength added to my own was not something to scoff at.

I might give it away to the Patriot and his Shield. The ability to empower a few other people with Asgardian-level strength and durability was too sweet not to use. If I wanted some more physical enhancements, there were ways I could go about it. I was the best modern alchemist in the world, fer Mithar’s sake...

“The Hag is waiting for Murica to explode under its asshattery. The werewolves, the vamps, the rising mutant hate, the Crux... if her killing a million of ‘em and throwin’ ‘em back across the river doesn’t sum up what she thinks of Murica, dunno what other kind of proof you need.”

“She ain’t letting them grow, Mr. Hill. She’s still coming in here, taking down vamps, whole Clans of weres, the politicians and the officers who endorse them. I think she’s got more mercy in her than you think, because if the States implode, it is going to be fucking bad.”

He paused to think about that, looking up at the cold autumn sun above. “Fuck, she’s saved this country at least a dozen times,” he finally admitted. “I was there for three of ‘em. Didn’t even really strike me. Thought she just came in for the fight, and for the planet, acting all noble savage and whatnot. All she had to do was be a little looser about it, and she could have cost Murica millions of lives.”

“My guess is she loves the idea of the country, just hates the execution of it,” I opined, from a position of knowledge he just couldn’t have.

“Huh. Possible. Never really thought about it. World with Powered in it, what’s a Constitution? Has to have some power backing it, be more than just a piece of paper, right?”

“Not if people could live up to it. The fact they don’t is the whole problem, I’d like to think,” I judged.

“Take yer word fer it.” He wasn’t a deep thinker about things he didn’t care about, and the way Muricans glorified their early history pissed off most people who grew up Tribal.

“You gonna tell me about the arse-hats you took out? I can probably work it out if not.”

He took a deep breath, obviously expecting the question. “Richter an’ the White Tiger are the Names.”

I whistled long and low. “Damn, Mr. Hill. That was pretty damn slick. They think the Compact and the Courts got to Richter, and the Yellow Claw took out the Tiger.”

“Yep,” he said shortly. “Like I told those idiots, it ain’t that hard to take out Powered if you plan for it. Once you’re ready to step over that line of collateral damage, it’s pretty damn easy, all things considered.”

“Anyone else know?”

“The Hag. She said she’d tell the Great Bear, an’ that’s as far as it would go. Their investigation is the main reason the story is the way it is, an’ the Compact, Courts, an’ Claw don’t mind the notoriety. Also totally messed up the Divs so some Caster can’t go in and see anything.”

Richter had been one of the big early crime lords of the Coast. Clearing him out had basically given the Coast to the Compact, as the Vampire Courts had overstepped themselves, flush with the rep of taking out the quake-making mastermind and supervillain. The Champions had gone in and wiped out ancestral vampires, their thralls, and their living families worth a collective twenty billion dollars or something, gutting the Courts on the Coast and basically sending them fleeing back here to wrestle with the Maggia and stuff.

The White Tiger had been the big Oriental crimelord there, running the Murim for most of the Asian communities before and after WW2. He was a superhuman martial artist, a cunning manager of his gangs and people, discreet and clever about his jobs. Getting rid of him had opened up the Coast to the Yellow Claw, the Mandarin, and the Hand; he’d kept them all at bay, or had working agreements with them.

“What were they doing that crossed your line?”

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My line was crossed when my stories got cross-posted! :P

If you're not reading this on Royal Road, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! You get the foreword and afterword, author comments, and comments from people with questions! I have not given permission for this story to be posted ANYWHERE ELSE.

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“Richter was figuring to trigger a ten-pointer on the San Andreas Fault line, an’ use the chance to go ‘legit’, take the chance to pitch in an’ ‘help’, secure a place for himself, an’ grab open power that way. He figured at least a million people would die, but it didn’t matter to him.

“The Tiger was starting up blood sports, an’ getting civilians involved in them. Part of the influence of the spirit empowering ‘im, I think, but he was killing who he wanted to, makin’ examples out o’ them, didn’t care who or what they were. He cut the throats of some young no-name heroes tryin’ to stop some of the shit he was doin’, an’ I had enough of him.”

If I remembered right, Richter’s had been the only organization The Mountain had ever been openly affiliated with. If the records I’d seen were true, he was one of Richter’s right-hand men and most trusted enforcers. That loyalty to the quake-making mastermind, and his involvement in the man’s schemes, had brought Richter up and made Mr. Hill’s rep, and even now it was unshakeable in the darker places of the Coast.

No one else had ever been able to draw him in, but his adherence to contract was legendary.

He had no such personal relationship with The White Tiger, and really didn’t like working for the Murim organizations much... but he still took their money and followed his contracts, so even the Asian crimelords respected him, despite him flat turning down the chance to become family.

There wasn’t a major criminal organization in the world that hadn’t tried to rope him in. Of course, they didn’t have the respect to treat him as anything more than an enforcer of the highest caliber, and Mr. Hill wasn’t the type to be a mastermind and step in at the top, although he had the slow, careful, and patient mindset to do the job, along with a lot of experience.

But, like he said, you didn’t need to be a genius to kill people.

“Hawkeye helped, didn’t he?” I asked calmly.

Mr. Hill didn’t say anything, which said it all. No wonder the two stayed in contact after all these years.

“Gotta say, Mr. Hill, you dance pretty good.”

It took a bit for his slow belly laughs to start, looking up there at the sun. “Twinkle-toes inna size twenty-six, that’s me.” I laughed with him as we sat there and enjoyed the sun for another hour, taking a break from the crazy world.

=============

A few more tense months go by...

The Elder of the Universe of martial combat, Champion, was here.

Sending off Galactus, AND the Fourth Host of the Celestials, had gained poor little Terra some intergalactic infamy. Alien races that had infiltrated or invaded us not even knowing there were Celestials here suddenly were sweating cold buckets when they realized how stupid they’d been.

Of course, it didn’t discourage the Kree or the Skrulls, who’d long known of both forces, although the number of worlds who had escaped the hunger of Galactus wasn’t high at all. I’m talking length of galactic history numbered on one hand not high.

The aliens all wanted to know very, very badly how it was done, but that was all being handled up there by the High Guard and the United Nations, above our pay grade. Suffice it to say that the Champion of New Israel was suddenly in very high demand for making very, very, VERY high-end magnetosphere attunement devices, and what Mr. Lensherr could charge for them was incredibly high.

We knew this because Electro Perfect Volturium™ was the go-to wiring for the things. The money bought a TWO-sigma increase in purification, and he and Mr. Hill could go to crazy town on the process now.

If I stepped in with 22d6 of Sundering and Breaking bioelectricity that could move atoms around like water under Dillon’s control, even he didn’t really believe how fast and easy he could make room-temperature superconductive cable.

Well, until he got the checks and his bank account started accumulating zeroes. There really was no way to satisfy the market for the stuff. He was very, very happy, and got religion about making himself not bipolar every day.

The key to employing the magnetosphere rings was peaceful contact with Galactus’ Herald and having the data there to use, meaning attunement ahead of time. That required time and pre-planning, which meant every starborne race alive wanted one of the things to buy off the World-Eater if possible.

It was a good business opportunity, with literally unlimited demand. The data would buy your biosphere from the World-Eater. What was that worth to your species?

Naturally, it brought other kinds of attention, and testing yourself against Earth’s heroes suddenly Became A Thing. The poster child of this movement was the Elder of the Universe called The Champion, Tryco Slatterus.

His great circular ship The Colosseum came into the solar system with fanfare and announcements on all frequencies. There was no attempt made to hide the shape or its purpose, and indeed its presence in the Sol System was soon public across most of the universe.

The Tournament of the Champion of the Universe Tryco Slatterus was coming to the barbaric backwater of Terra after it managed to chase away a Host of Celestials, and the World-Eater Galactus Himself. Obviously, someone wanted to prove Terra wasn’t all that for pulling off such a monstrous feat.

It was a Big Moment for us in the eyes of the rest of the universe, giving such recognition to a backwater. Perhaps not so much to Earth’s people...