Atop a high rise apartment smack dab in the middle of the Chicago skyline a man in a skintight black bodysuit was in the process of his villainous monologue.

  “You know what separates heroes like you, from villains like me?” the man asked the three other people clad in ridiculous getups of various colors before him, “Resolve” the man waved a metal cube around with his right hand, small seams were visible it and a analogue seven segment display sat in the middle counting down the seconds, at that exact moment it read 15:32. “Unlike you heroes” the man jeered drawing out the final word “I am willing to make the sacrifices necessary to fix a broken world” He raised the cube in the air once more, “in a mere fifteen minutes, my ultimate weapon will activate and there will be nothing you can do to stop me!” the man cackled, as the three heroes glanced at each other in amusement.

  I looked down from my little utility drone and took stock of the situation. The trio of heroes was a fairly standard composition, if a little green, on the left flank was a tall teenage girl in something like gothic plate made out of some sort of cherry red colored composite instead of metal, rather than the expected helmet she wore a half mask of the same cherry color with a large peacock feather stuck into a knot at the back, loose fabric streaming dramatically behind it. Landsknecht, as the hero was called, wielded a long pike made from a similar composite to her armor that ended in two dull metal prongs. On the right and slightly further back than the other two was a much shorter boy, clearly the youngest of the three, he was completely covered in mismatched pieces of scrap metal all the way up to his neck. Like Landsknecht his headgear also only covered the top half of his face although it was made from the same scraps that covered the rest of him, floating around him were varied pieces of sheet metal, ball bearings and rusted nuts. He had chosen the rather flattering name Junkyard. The final member of their team stood prominently in the center, he looked somewhere between the age of Junkyard and Landsknecht but was clearly the leader, and of course he was. He stood tall and proud wearing a skintight red bodysuit with a stylized eye emblazoned on the center, the watchers brat. How Pupil had ended up on a team with nobodies like Landsknecht and Junkyard was beyond me, but their presence meant that recovering my stolen property had become an unrealistic goal.

  As the small group of heroes began their inane back and forth with the villain in black, also known as the king of original names, Nero, I let out a frustrated sigh and rolled my chair away from the screen with the feed from the drone and began dialing up the client who was meant to receive the item I would now have to destroy, it range only once before a deep voice with a vaguely eastern european accent answered,

  “Who is this and where did you get this number?” The man sounded like someone forgot to stock up on milk so he had to go without for his morning bowl of nails. I quickly typed my response into a text to speech device and chose a random voice,

  “I have called to inform you that your nanobot swarm cube’s delivery will be delayed and to provide an updated estimated time of arrival” a toneless feminine voice said, I always use the older speech models, I like the contrast of ultra tech vs early 2000s text to speech.

  “The fuck you mean my cube will be delayed, I ordered that a month ago” the man angrily shouted at the unfeeling voice, and incidently the very feeling tinker behind it, “how long is this delay going to be”

  I looked over at the shelf where I kept that particular product, even though I knew that I had plenty of everything in stock and that any scarcity was purely artificial. “If you would be willing to provide a location for expedited delivery, our resident team of skilled engineers will have one ready for you first thing in the morning, if our expedited shipping is inconvenient for you, then we can have the product to you two days after the original promised date.”

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  “What is a suitable location for expedited shipping and how could it inconvenience me” the man replied

  “A circular area fifty feet in diameter ringed by reflectors clearly visible to the sky” I began through the digital voice “you will also need to provide the coordinates of the location in a lat slash lon format, a payloadless intercontinental missile carrying your delivery will then strike the designated area, I guarantee that no product we sell would be so fragile as to be damaged in delivery through this method” I continued “while we would not normally provide this service we are dedicated to ensuring our customers have the best experience with us and will offer our expedited delivery free of charge” before the customer could reply I continued “you will receive a SMS to the device you are currently using with instructions on where to send the coordinates.” there was silence for a moment before the customer responded,

  “A missile strike in the polish wilderness won’t go unnoticed”

  “Our shipping and customer relation teams has recognized the obvious risk of detection caused by our expedited shipping and have a foolproof method to ensure your delivery does not trigger any alarms” I replied,

  “Fine, just get it here” the customer replied tersely

  “Thank you for shopping with, remember, don’t tell your friends” I ended the call and rolled back over to the monitor showing baby's first showdown.

  Nero was tied to a metal safety rail looking worse for wear and the three heroes stood around the cube which sat still in the air three feet above the ground, 3:14 was displayed on its little screen. I designed my goo cubes to spatially lock themselves at the five minute mark, the user could make the lock activate later or earlier but five minutes was the default. The special lock made it easier to set up a ‘kill zone’ for the nanobots, once they left the area or ate everything inside they would self-destruct, the box itself being a good center point to measure from. Now the heroes were actually looking worried, the cube was made of tough enough stuff that it would take someone like Seismic, Vacuum or Watcher herself to break the thing open so Pupil sure as hell wasn’t smashing it, Junkyard’s powers required a sympathetic connection to the concept of trash, or some bullshit, so he couldn’t fuck with it, and while Landskecht was a tinker, she was more focused on materials than reality fucking gadgetry. Luckily for them, and the residents of Chicago, all I had to do was press a button to send a kill signal using an array of laser pointers on my drone. A few infrared flashes later and the cube dropped to the ground as the nanobots changed their primary directive to turning the cube, and themselves, into harmless slag. As the high school drama club jumped back in alarm, I set my drone to return home. Then I sighed and went back to the phone

  “Who is this, it's like three am” a deep feminine voice said through a yawn

  “Good morning Ms. Hellcat” I chose a different voice, this one masculine and equally toneless “I’m looking to do a product demonstration, would you accept a complementary missile strike.”

  “What?” the woman replied and after a moment continued “is this the bomb people?”

  “As clever as always, just what we expect from premium clients” I replied, then pressed forward

  “Can I interest you in that missile strike?”

  “I don’t really need the heat that comes with missile strikes, corpses draw the capes’ attention” she replied tersely,

  “Well then perhaps you would be excited to hear that thanks to our proprietary suite of advanced targeting systems we and can guarantee maximum damage while avoiding any casualties” who knew a free missile strike would be such a hard sell

  “Fine, do some damage to Fastmover’s stuff, just don’t call me at three in the morning” Hellcat replied before hanging up, I made a few more calls and arranged a few more product demonstrations. All in all a good night’s work.