The walk back home wasn't that exciting, all things considered. Ale was thankful for that; she hadn't thought much about talking with Bryan / Dylan at the moment. It was something done to waste time after all. She found it entertaining, yes. But that was the extent of what she had expected to find about the other kid.

It was kind of amusing the fact that this random kid was less mentally mature than most of Alexa's friends, using [Core Power]s to impress other kids? It was downright adorable.

[Incoming Message through personal message address: 'I didn't know you were a Saintsworth']

Oh, right, most people had some weird fixations about that. Was that the case here, too?

[Sent Message back: 'Will that be an issue? I was just named like that a few weeks ago.']

[Message received: 'It isn't…My parents…they… don't like the Saintsworths…But we can still be friends!']

This last name was proving to be more annoying than anything. When were they going to find people who didn't find an issue with their name? Weren't the Saintsworths supposed to be at the top? Why did people kept coming to find issue to them?

[Sent Message: 'Sure, like I said, I just got the name a few weeks ago when my asshole older brother found me near a bank while I was doing some errands.']

Close enough to the truth, [Eleanore] would be so proud of them.

The rest of the conversation was normal enough, and mundane enough too, a couple of questions about playing together and if he could come out in the streams. He could not, her fanbase would turn rabid if she put a male, of all things, on stream, more so if it was a no-name kid.

Ale liked and enjoyed her first acquaintance…but he wasn't that interesting to be broadcast to the masses, not unless he at least had some sort of following already, one that could tolerate and fight back against Ale's Interns (Her fanbase was called that).

The conversation while interesting, had been needed to be cut short.

[Sent Message: 'Sorry, we are about to arrive home, I'll talk to you later.'}

Ale then closed the mental application and refocused on the real world, she had been paying tangential attention to what was happening in the real world of course, mostly so she didn't hit her face with a sign, wall or pole. That would be embarrassing, and she wasn't the cute type to do stupid stuff like that.

No, she was the prettiestest of them all. So she would do what was normal and be a reasonable person.

"So any reason why we came to this establishment?" Ale said pointing at the restaurant in front of them, the vegan bistro they had visited before, the one where Alexa got the weird tofu burger with a weird flag that she kept in their room.

Alexa had wanted to come here again, but they hadn't been able to pull time to do so.

"The meeting is here, neutral grounds… Let's go to the bathroom, we will suit up there." [Big Sister] said, pointing to the side of the building, there were a couple of doors that read bathrooms.

Some kind of public service…or so Ale had thought before, but now that they walked into the way cleaner bathroom, she could see them for what they were.

"Is this some kind of hidden changing room for villains and minions?" Ale asked as [Elder Sister] walked to a wall and put her hand against the crystal-like square, her handprint shining in green light as a compartment opened.

"Kind of, they also store for Heroes and Sidekicks, but not many of those use them, kind of like a safe space to change in the field." [Big Sister] answered while walking to one of the stalls, "Yours should be there too, put your hand against the scanner and it should give your suit. Put the mask on before exiting:"

Ale did as instructed and sure enough, felt the rush of electricity as it attempted to read her data. Ale, of course, fed the data needed, and sure enough, a new compartment was open and her armor showed…Or the spare she had left in base anyway.

Her normal suit of armor was stored in the [Banked Storage], but if she could save on expenses, she wouldn't mind it. [Billy] had said that it would be expensive to build more than one of these, but the spare had been built by Ale and left there, since it would be weird to not have a spare.

And now, thanks to those preparations, she didn't need to go into combat while pretending to use substandard equipment, so yay Ale for being responsible. Alexa and Alexandra could learn from her to be honest.

Putting on the armor wasn't that hard, all she needed to do was pull out the skintight bodysuit, remove the armor add-ons, and undress…

"What do I do with my clothes?" Ale asked aloud.

"Put them in one of the duffel bags and shove them into one of the lockers when you are done, they shouldn't steal them, but don't leave anything you can't afford to lose." [Big Sister] answered.

"Kay~" Ale said back as she started putting her hoodie, shirt and shorts into the bag, the sneakers she could use under the armored boots of her armor, but the shorts, shirt and hoodie were too big and recognizable.

So those would need to go into the bag.

Her underwear was safe since the skintight bodysuit was designed to interface with the fungi underwear, or as Alexa liked to call them, the shroomers and top. The next step (The armor add-on) was easier to do, since most of those parts were designed to latch into the skintight bodysuit, it worked like a sort of clothes for her bodysuit.

It also helped cover the most obvious parts of her body, protection for the vital organs and stuff like that, it also helped to give her some excuses to pull out some quick last second shifts, she only needed to move her hands near one of the compartiments used to store things and she could claim to have pulled them from there.

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She would no longer be able to pull out claws from her feet, though, since that would damage her combat boots…and her sneakers, the sacrifices one had to do for fashion….

"Are you done?" [Big Sister] asked from outside the changing booth.

"Yeah, thank you for waiting," Ale answered as she donned her mask, the thing snugly fitting, one of the nicest things about this was that she didn't need to accommodate her face to the mask. It allowed her to keep her identity while hiding it, it was kind of cool in that way.

"Let's go then," [Big Sister] said walking out of the bathroom into the open. Ale walked behind her after storing her things in one of the lockers and memorizing the code to the digital lock.

Just a ten-character-long password of only numbers? Easy.

Walking outside, the first thing Ale noticed was that there weren't many people around, unlike before, when she walked in, there were way fewer people than she expected, soon enough it was easy to notice why. More and more [Minions] had been arriving around, all in white or black vehicles, similar to the one she had ridden before, yes, but in these numbers?

One would need to be very dumb to not notice what was happening.

"Isn't it an issue to make this much of a scene?" Ale asked aloud.

"Usually yes," The one to answer wasn't [Big Sister], instead it was [Billy] who came out from one of those vehicles, wearing his googles and a scarf covering his mouth.

It was barely enough to hide his face, and Ale wasn't sure that counted as a [Mask], but it was what the [Elder] was wearing, so she wouldn't be the one to find fault with him.

"The thing is…this is neutral territory, so we get some leeway, also we aren't the only ones coming…See that way?" [Billy] said pointing in the opposite direction they had come.

Soon enough, Ale found what she was looking for. From the sky descended two people holding a platform, which was shining in purple light as it was lowered down. From it, some people came walking down.

A man wearing a white body armor with a billowing cape behind him and a shield on his chest with the letters SF, [Superforce].

A woman wearing aviator glasses, black hair and a skintight body armor in a similar design to the one Alexandra had used that one time, [Chrysalis].

A man wearing skintight bodysuit with the blue and white colors, looking somewhat jittery and searching around the minions till he noticed Ale, who merely waved at him only for the [Hero] to scowl. Before he was able to move, the hand of [Superforce] descended into his shoulder, making him deflate, though, [V-8].

"[Heroes]?" Ale asked seeing those three known ones, others walked down from it of course, but Ale was too busy focusing in the two that had actually attacked her before, she of course knew the others could become an issue, but was ignoring them for now.

She did found it weird that among those numbers a couple shorter ones had moved to the back, but decided to not comment on them.

She herself was somewhat short after all.

"Yeah, when a Core User becomes that much of a risk we have to stop pulling punches, so we diligate the work," [Billy] said sighing, "You can pull out if you are uncomfortable of working with them, we will not pair Minions with Sidekicks or Heroes with Villains, but even so… Some of them don't trust us to not backstab them…"

"And we don't trust them to not do the same," [Big Sister] added after [Billy] stopped speaking, "Yeah, we know. It is more often than not them that start, but a Minion will always be blamed, and a Villain will always take the fall."

"Yeah, and like I said, optional mission for you all," [Billy] repeated once more, "No shame in pulling out, or going only to one of the cleaning and mop up missions."

Cleaning and mop up?

"I thought we had come here because you found Meli-Meli." Ale pointed out, "But instead this is for cleaning and moping?"

"He means the mission for attacking the weird zombies as mop up, and cleaning is probably…" [Big Sister] said turning to [Billy] so he could finish the last one.

"What you think probably, disposal of evidence." [Billy] said sighing, "We will have too many corpses that we can't return to their families, not at risk of whatever this is passes on to the normal populace."

"I thought it was merely a [Core Power] shenanigans? How could it spread?" Ale asked confused, as far as she knew, there was no aspect of Meli-Meli's power that could work like that.

"We are staying on the safe-ish side of things," [Elder] said sighing, "We also don' want to tie up so many resources into one spot, but this power is going out of control, so we have to assume Melisandra is doing something to spread it further away from the normal limits to these powers. Usually these types can only affect a couple of people at once, more than that is rare."

It was rare? Ale didn't think it was that rare, she had other two examples of a [Core Power] affecting many people at once, both the theater guy and the scrambled one had been like that after all.

Also all the people that spoke with Alexa could be an example too, Ale still thought there was something to how people spoke to Alexa. But she still didn't have enough proof about it to do something about, perhaps this could help her find about that?

"Is that everyone from your side?" [SuperForce] came forward floating barely a few centimeters above the ground, standing just far enough from the other [Heroes] that it didn't look as if he was near them, but not close enough to the [Minions] that he was threatening….

Not that he wasn't, Ale knew he was dangerous just by the amount of [Mana] that her sensors picked up from the man.

"Just a few more to come-" [Billy] said before a series of flashes appeared around him, [Gabriel], [Eleanore], [Vulcanus] and a couple new ones that Ale hadn't seen before.

"Vulcanus, Cerberus, Gabriel…" [Superforce] said first then turned to the other new ones, "Hydra, Empress…."

So those were the last two huh.

The first one was a girl whose hair seemed to emanate a gas…or become a gas, Ale wasn't sure what was worse in this, if the girl was actively changing her hair into a type of gas that was being spread, or if her hair was becoming that kind of phenomena, the first implied a control over her body beyond what was logical or physically possible…

The second one meant that she was generating something out of thin air, which was a whole other can of worms.

The other girl however, was easier to understand, the girl had horns and a reptilian tail coming from her back, just right around where her waist started. Easy to understand and gauge.

Probably a [Beast core] of some kind.

"Scoutboy," Hydra said, nodding to [Superforce], "I see you didn't bring all your friends."

"Did you finally get tired of the add-ons? I guess not since you still have the psychopath with you," Empress added after Hydra, looking up and down at [Chrysalis], "Make sure you keep the leash on, if she hurts one of My Minions again, then she is dead."

"Come and say it to my face you flat bitch!" [Chrysalis] screamed from behind as [V-8] walked away from her, "Not so brave now, huh!"

"And remind her of the difference between a normal sidekick and an actual Villain," Empress added smirking, "Unless you want me to demonstrate?"

"Stand down, Chrysalis," [Superforce] sighed, "We didn't come to fight."

"...Hmph," [Chrysalis] said while crossing her arms atop her chest, "Why am I even here? This wasn't part of my probation."

"You were chosen because you have proved to have resistance to high-order Cores," [Vulcanus] spoke before [SuperForce] could, "Everyone here was accepted because of one such reason, or to provide cover in the outer area as an alarm."

"...You are going to use your Minions as canaries…?" [Superforce] said shaking his head, "We talked about this before Vulcanus…you can't-"

"They are aware of the situation and were briefed about it, unlike your side, we don't have anyone who doesn't want to be here." [Gabriel] spoke before anyone else, "And you are only here because we don't want you getting in our way and breaking our containment line…again, letting a dangerous Core User escape….again."

"Again?" Ale asked in a low voice to [Big Sister].

"Don't ask me, I am as new as you….as far as I knew these weren't a thing before…I thought we would meet up with other Villain group…" [Big Sister] answered.

"That's enough, everyone," [Vulcanus] clapped his metallic hands and brought everyone to attention. "I'll explain the rough plan, risks that we will encounter, risks that we may encounter…and compensations."

Almost everyone stopped gossiping among themselves as [Vulcanus] spoke, almost being the keyword here, as the [Hero] side still spoke in hushed tones between them.

"From our side, anyone that wants to walk away may do so, there are very few Core Powers that are required for this mission, and even those have some replacements ready to use." [Vulcanus] said, turning to them, Ale got the impression that the actual eyes behind the fake ones in [Vulcanus ] 's face had stopped at her for a few seconds, "From the Hero side…you may act as you wish."

"They are aware of the risks and will remain," [SuperForce] said, "No one will leave, not till justice has been served and the city is once more as safe as possible."

Ale did notice that [Chrysalis] grumbled again, [V-8] continued staring roughly in Ale's direction though, what was the deal with that?

"...And I am the less Human," [Vulcanus] answered with some fake mirth to his voice, getting a couple giggles, both from [Minions] and [Superforce], "This is our target for the day, designation Subject MS. A confirmed Mind Core User with a possible sub power that allows her to propagate her domination to secondary targets, we have evidence that supports the theory that she may be able to control secondary targets even if they didn't have contact with her before…So she is currently on the S-List of Dangerous entities. Do not be mistaken, that is no child in danger crying for her parents…That is a monster wearing a child's figure; her parents' minds were destroyed beyond what the best Mind Healers could treat… She will be put down, one way or the other."

Ale saw around and no one was questioning or saying anything…Good… Then that meant that they wouldn't mind if she took the biomass and the [Blueprint]... right?

Ale would need to ask later. To someone who wasn't squeamish… Wonder if she could get some private time to speak with [Vulcanus]... Or would she need to use the message code? Decisions…. Decisions…..

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