Silence filled the small room, before Mindpusher’s small cough got everyone’s attention.

“Does it matter?” He asked. Jennifer wasn’t the only one who was surprised, and the pimp continued. “I mean we know there is a mastermind behind all these attacks, but so what? We don’t know who it is, and it’s not our job to find out. We aren’t villains, we are the ‘villain support’.”

“What does that mean?” Walker’s questions echoed Jennifer’s own.

The pimp shrugged as he explained further. “It means it’s none of our business who is behind all these attacks. We are here to support the villain in his enterprise, not fight his battles for him. Why do we have to do anything when the villain isn’t even around.”

“You want to cut and run?” Jennifer did not bother to mask her anger. Mindpusher just shook his head.

“No, I want to do my job. We are villain support, and right now there is no villain for us to support. He is out of commission.”

“So, you do want to cut and run.” Mister Black sounded calm, but Jennifer knew him well enough to hear the anger beneath his words. Mindpusher didn’t.

“How do we even know if Master Fist want us to find out who is the mastermind behind all this?”

“You don’t think Master Fist would want to know who is attacking him? You don’t think he would want payback?” Jennifer asked in incredulity.

“I am saying it is not the job of villain support to ‘guess’ what the villain wants to do. It is not our job to think, our job is to merely do as we are told. If the villain did not tell us to do something, who can blame villain support for not doing anything?” Coward! Jennifer fumed internally while Mindpusher put his hands up to placate everyone. “Look, I am not looking to run. Why should I? My base of operation is in Velocity City, but we are not villains. We are not even minions. Minions are like villains-in-training. If the villain goes down, the minion steps up, and gets a promotion. We are the ‘villain support’. The job is very specific and making decision on behalf of a villain is not part of it. All I am saying is that we wait for Master Fist to wake up before doing anything. Trying to figure out who the mastermind is, and getting payback for the fires? That is not something in our job description.”

The room fell silent as everyone took in what the pimp had said. Jennifer was a little surprise no one objected to Mindpusher’s reasoning. She never realized there was such a difference between being a minion and villain support. Like most of the general public, she always thought it was nothing but a change in name. It seems she was badly mistaken.

She was about to response when Mindpusher’s head suddenly tilt backwards, and, incredibly, a line of red appeared across his neck. Jennifer’s eyes blinked rapidly as her brain fought to understand what was going on. Then, a gurgling sound could be heard. The pimp’s death rattle knocked everyone back to reality. Chairs were thrown to the ground by the force of how quickly everyone stood up. Then, she saw the shimmer. A transparent and almost intangible ripple in the air. An invisibility cloak, potion of invisibility, a spell of some sort; the various possibilities rushed through Jennifer’s mind as she realized there was someone else in the room. They were in danger, and she never even knew it!

Through the shimmer, Jennifer saw the assassin pressing something on her right arm. The invisibility slowly wore off, and Jennifer got a good look at the assassin. The strange black costume, the helmet with cat ears, and she realized she knew who she was.

“The Graceful Silence.”

“Sorry about that, but I couldn’t stand any more of his whining.” The veteran assassin wiped the blood from her dagger on Mindpusher’s costume. Her actions and tone of voice was bland, as if she was talking about the weather. The Graceful Silence gave Mindpusher a gentle push and his body fell to the ground with a thud. The assassin then took over his seat. She smiled at Jennifer. “You are Mrs White, Victor’s…assistant. I heard you are in bit of a bother. Maybe we can help each other.”

Jennifer took a glance at the growing pool of blood on the floor and subconsciously realized that her father was right. A red costume does hide the blood well.

***

Patience is a virtue. Deion usually do not put much stock in idioms, but this was one that he agreed with. Patience is a virtue, especially if you are an assassin. So, he waited. Crouching on the rooftop as two men finally walk out of the door into the dark, empty, and quiet alley. In the quiet night of King’s Edge, Deion could hear them clearly.

“See! I told you there’s nothing here. Who would bother us way out here?”

“No, I swear I heard something.”

“You’re just paranoid, Nick.”

The two men stopped outside the door, looking at both directions of the alley and Deion shook his head in slight disbelief. He had just cast a spell outside the door that made a loud sound, and you had to be deaf not to hear the ruckus he created. Luckily, one of these idiots wasn’t deaf.

Deion stood up and looked down at the two men directly below him. He pointed his gun at the one called Nick. Even with the mask, he could tell that Mrs White was surprised when he requested for a gun. Deion understood why. So many magic-users refused to use technological weapons that it was almost a stereotype. Deion never understood why that was the case. Magic itself was a weapon, so what’s so wrong about using a gun?

Deion waited till the two men turned away from each other. They had no idea what was coming. The moment they did, Deion fired. The silencer muffled the sound, but noise was created when Nick dropped to the ground. The other man looked at Nick in alarm, but Deion had already adjusted his aim. He fired, and the man drop dead.

Deion stepped off the ledge of the roof and fell.