Blüdhaven
July 18, 11:03
SHIELD's growth hadn't stopped. In the days that had gone past since our first successful mission, its numbers had continued to climb, and we now boasted over sixty five employees, or agents in this case.
The badges were already done, but until we had the legitimacy and the sheer weight to back up showing them off, the identification cards would do for now.
Back on the topic of an increased workforce, Economos now headed his own small team of support analysts. He was really good at his job, with a unique wealth of experience that was hard to come by. But he wasn't Mike.
Nor did I want him to be. Not entirely at least. Sure, I missed having my super A.I. friend treat the internet like it was his playground. However, his responsibilities had ballooned, especially now with Cassandra.
He was her tutor while I wasn't around in addition to all the monitoring and overseeing of construction projects. Of all those things, I knew which held the highest place in my heart so I chose to relieve him of some of these burdens, even though he didn't see it that way.
We had started slow, but soon, almost every hero, villain or criminal related thing he was responsible for would be relegated to SHIELD. Mike would be left to focus on being a butler like he wanted. For now, he would have to maintain his split attention which had become a tad less divided.
Some monitoring and search tasks related to The Light had been passed on to Economos and his team.
Lex Luthor and Queen Bee were the only… normal humans—yeah let's go with that—part of The Light's roster. Their involvement in its affairs and ploys were facilitated by their own power bases; Luthor's corporation and Queen Bee's rule of Bialya in addition to her team of misfits that had been reduced to just one member.
Luthor should have had his own operative in Superboy, but we know how that went. Actually, now that I think about it. Had Superboy been successful, would he have stopped at one?
The answer came easily. It was a resounding NO. Look at how they handed out Kobra-Venom like it was candy. These enlightened ones would not pass up on the chance to have an obedient army of Kryptonians.
And that's why one of the first things I wanted to do with SHIELD was to take Luthor and Queen Bee off the board. Ra's al Ghul was gone and Oceanmaster was in prison. the Brain, Vandal Savage, Klarion, and these two were the main threats left.
I didn't know where to even start looking for the Brain. Klarion never left Savage's side so that meant finding the immortal. I had actually pried a location from Ra's mind, Khüiten Peak.
The snow-capped mountain in Western Mongolia hosted the rare in-person meetings that took place between the cabal's members. In ages past Savage used it as a headquarters, but now that purpose had been abandoned.
It had a cave in its depths where the meetings happened, but those had stopped since I started making things difficult for the cabal. The members of The Light were prudent if anything.
With their secret, well-thought out plans being exposed like they'd held press conferences to discuss them, they had wisened up. That didn't stop me from going to the place myself and scanning and bugging the hell out of it.
Of course, the place was clean as the home of a germaphobe. Not a single hair strand or clue pointing to anything could be found. All we could do was monitor it.
Back on the topic of Luthor and Queen Bee, they were public figures with public holdings and endeavours. And those could be tracked and investigated. To remove them from the board entirely, we need evidence of wrongdoing.
For Lex, that meant surveilling the man himself and every single location he owned whether they were related to Luthorcorp or not. Honestly, I didn't expect to find much. Dude was the worst kind of criminal; the smart kind.
Even Batman with his "world's greatest detective" status hadn't found anything. But I wasn't him, and SHIELD wasn't the Justice League. If the agents I was about to sic on Lex's shell companies and Queen Bee's palace didn't get what we needed, then we would remove them from the board another way.
That was of course a last resort, after everything we tried didn't work. However, I didn't think it would come to that because of the other angle the analyst team was working.
Talia had warned me about the League of Assassins' disbandment, stating that if The Light wanted to preserve what remained of it, all they needed was a leader. Someone who could lead and train the men.
Since then we'd been keeping an eye on the remnants, and her words were proven true. Deathstroke had taken the reins and become the leader of the renamed League of Shadows.
He moved their base of operations to Santa Prisca, taking advantage of Bane's period of weakness to wrest control of his own fiefdom from him.
None of that had escaped our gaze. If the investigations into Luthor and the dictator lady didn't pan out, Deathstroke would lead us to the real prize. Hopefully.
Before I could send the men and women that had decided to join my ship after some of the world's most evil, most skilled, and overall smartest and most shrewd people, they needed to up their games.
Bioware and cyberware, no matter how potent, wouldn't cut it. At least not completely.
Before the many upgrades most of the recruits received, they were all talented and well trained. Some more than others, making them the best of the best in their fields before having to leave the service for one reason or another.
It was impressive frankly, seeing firsthand what the connotation Special Forces really entailed. But it was also enlightening. The term didn't even refer to the people it was usually assigned to, but rather the class of missions they undertook.
Make no mistake though, some of the general public perception held merit. Special Forces operatives were among the very best. However, compared to people like Batman (an unfair comparison), Ra's al Ghul, his daughter, Cheshire, Sportsmaster, Deathstroke, etc, they fell short.
It was as Sara Lance said, "I was trained by people who make Special Forces look like kindergarten." Again, a gross exaggeration, but with an iota of truth.
That's why before I could comfortably sit back and send the recruits after The Light, they needed to become more than they were. The physical side of things were handled, but the skills portion of the mental side needed to be worked on.
They had to learn and unlearn many things and become more than just soldiers. They needed to become specialists. And who better to forge them into these operatives than the A.I. modeled after the memories of Ra's al Ghul.
Standing on the upper floor of SHIELD's first ground headquarters, I swiped the giant holo screen above the tablet in my hand. The display changed from the progress report on the target locations I asked the analysts to monitor to six rooms displayed in a grid.
In each of them, the recruits wore VR goggles and relaxed in reclining chairs. I swiped the screen again and the screen changed to what was going on under the hood.
A separate instance of the A.I. instructor, Neo, guided each agent according to the role they were meant to play. General combat was the most common. In the virtual world, injuries and fatigue didn't occur and neither did they translate to real life.
There was only just pain, so there was little holding back… on both fronts. These weren't beatdowns. The agents were already hardy and skilled prior to their recruitment, and the A.I.'s goal was to improve them.
So these were controlled spars, rather than open, no holds barred ones.
For those that I'd preselected for the investigation missions, their simulations were mostly focused on stealth. The environments in their simulated realities were the most interesting, same as their training.
These guys already had training in urban, social, and visual stealth, among others, but they had almost no experience in the ninja-like stuff Neo showed them. Fortunately, he was a good teacher and they had the needed upgrades to complete the stunts they were being taught.
I kept swiping, pausing a bit on some names like Rene Ramirez and Lyla Michaels before giving the rest brief glances all the way to the end. It would take a while for the recruits to reach the skill levels of people in the League and the team.
We were talking months even with this accelerated program, but I hoped to field the promising ones by the end of the month. Time wasn't on our side with The Light being their enlightened selves.
And the recruits also needed to use their skills in real life, on missions and assignments so they themselves could see the benefits. There would be no need to convince them to opt for the sims.
Now that I think about it, I could program virtual versions of the League members and create a separate sim where they could fight these larger than life characters. In the high unlikelihood that they came out victorious, drew with them, or even managed to hold their own for a good while, they'd be motivated all on their own.
Nodding to myself and noting the idea down in my Danger Room project file, I dismissed the feeds and checked the time. There was a good chunk of minutes before midday. I could have two separate vetting sessions before the clock struck 12.
Then it would be lunch with Felicity and Cass.
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Blüdhaven
July 18, 11:03
Getting to eat food like this on a daily basis further reinforced my decision to reduce Mike's hero duties.
For lunch, he made us a stir fry with all kinds of meat—octopus and shrimp included—and vegetables, pasta, and chili that made our mouths water. The three of us ate our fill in the beach house and almost decided to spend the rest of the day enjoying the beach and the breeze.
Only Cassandra's apparent inexperience with ice cream and a stroll while eating one motivated us to leave. Okay, I wanted us to take a look at Bludhaven's improvements, and that played a big part in the decision. Felicity's mortification at the news about Cass also helped.
Getting to Bludhaven proved simple enough. I had optimized one of Faust's teleportation spells and had multiple running permanently in the house. Originally, they were orbs that encompassed whoever was being teleported.
Now, they were flat purple circles that delivered whoever stepped through them to preset locations. On the matter of safety and security, the portals were only one way, so no one was making their way to my home away from home.
The streets of Bludhaven were a far cry from what they used to be. There were more people and more cheerful expressions, a tangible effect that had risen from the city's criminal element being utterly gutted.
It had by no means become a utopia. Despite the thoroughness of the purge, there were more than enough lowlives that had managed to slip under the radar. Break-ins, robberies and thefts still happened, but they were nowhere near the insanity of before.
This was helped by the new mayor, the new chief of police, the support Rath international had thrown behind them and the city, and the anonymous tipline we'd set up to help the recovering police force do their jobs and crack down on any stragglers and uprisings.
Because I'd chosen it to be my home, Mike would still be in charge of monitoring any huge criminal movements in the city. Too much effort had gone into getting it to reach this stage and I would be damned if I let some pretentious crook ruin it.
For a good while we just strolled leisurely through the city holding cones. I had had three of them, same as Cassandra. She reminded me of babies who tasted something sugary sweet for the first time in their nascent lives and went absolutely ham for it.
"Want another one?" I asked Felicity and raised my left arm, gesturing to the inner pocket of my greatcoat.
"Ughh you have no idea. But I'm afraid I'm gonna get fat."
"Hm," I was about to tell her something when I felt a pull. Looking over, I spotted Cassandra pointing at my fourth cone and then the pocket. I gave her a smile and reached into the pocket and pulled out two cones, passing one to her and then Felicity, one of them more eager than the other.
I could make bags of holding now. Mystic Eyes of Permanence made the need to find the necessary materials and energy sources obsolete.
"You know, if you're worried about gaining weight I can whip up an implant that will keep you in shape. In fact, any shape you want."
Felicity licked her ice cream and stopped. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you just called me fat."
I leaned in and snuck my arm behind her waist, gently pulling her against me. "Fat or not, you'll be the Felicity I want, so…"
We leaned in and kissed, a chaste thing that didn't last long. But it did draw attention. As for Cassandra, I'd never seen her awkward. It was a good improvement over her constant placidness, so it was a plus.
"But seriously," I said while Felicity and I interlocked fingers. "You say the word and I'll get it for you. I can also make you a real blonde."
She gasped and squeezed my hand with a vengeance. "I keep your secrets."
I closed my lips and made a zipping gesture over them.
We continued our stroll and arrived at our predestined location, a park that looked drastically different from how I first found it when I came to the city. Just like the rest of the city, the effects of the purge had touched it.
In addition to buying the landfill, our company had made a partnership with a garbage collecting company. The originally dying business had been revamped by the influx of cash and opportunity.
Now, they were not only responsible for collecting the trash from most people's homes, they were also the ones behind the city cleanup. The streets and alleys were cleaner because of them.
The park had been picked clean of any offending rubbish, but it was a ways away from becoming a picturesque location. That was also in the works, but like everything else, it would take time.
A quick and subtle use of a cleaning spell spruced up a bench for the three of us. We sat down and I retrieved a small cooler from the pocket of holding, and we quietly went through the backlog of ice cream Mike had prepared for us.
After a while, I brought up a topic intended mainly for Cassandra, specifically about the school we passed by. I explained to her that I wanted to enroll her there and the conversation had brought us here.
"Why?" she signed.
"Because…" I paused, the internal debate lasting milliseconds. "I made a promise to your mother."
Her eyes went wide and her body language changed.
"I told her I was going to give you your voice back and make sure you grew up into someone better than what she wanted you to be. And school is part of that. I'll understand if you don't want to go. There are other—"
I only managed to glimpse the burgeoning tears in Cass' eyes for a split-second. She threw herself into me, pressing her face into the side of my chest while her tiny hands gripped me tightly.
A weight pressing on my chest melted away and a warmth took its place. Gently and repeatedly, I brushed her slightly longer hair and looked to my right. The warmth within ballooned at Felicity's supportive and appreciative smile and I took her hand in my own, holding it tight.
Life couldn't be any better.
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