With everyone in normal civilian clothes, and Isoko not very happy about that, Mark led the way out of the room and into Blackthorn’s penthouse of debauchery.

  At least the debauchery was behind closed doors right now, but there was a scent in the air that was unmistakably… what it was, and also the vectors behind those closed doors were… unmistakably present.

  Ignoring all of that, Mark walked out the hallway and into the main open floor of the penthouse. It was a living room, dining room, kitchen to the side, and a big meeting area, all at once. The entire western part of the room was the curved, windowed wall of the suite. Outside lay a rooftop pleasure garden, almost as large as this main area of the penthouse suite, but with one really nice tree shading most of that outdoor space.

  Mark had once imagined that this was exactly the kind of place that a superhero would call home, with most of it open and with ample access to the sky, for flying. The black obsidian that was the tower’s facade, however, was still visible inside of the suite, and out there as craggy pillars holding up the roof overhead. So not really a superhero’s lair, but more like a supervillain.

  Which had a certain appeal.

  The sun was up, but not up too high. Light poured in at a steep angle, into the penthouse gathering room, where it illuminated Archmage Steve Blackthorn. He was sitting in the sun, reading from a handheld screen and sipping coffee, wearing what Mark considered ‘informal archmage robes’. They looked normal-ish, but also soft, like something you’d never wear in public but which still said ‘archmage’. Blackthorn just wore them in public, though.

  Blackthorn grinned at Mark and his team. “Morning! How’d you all sleep?”

  “Very well, thank you,” Mark said.

  Blackthorn waved a hand and one of the big fridges near the kitchen opened up. Silver trays flowed out onto the kitchen counter, while silver racks floated out of storage to land on the counter. The trays went onto the racks and the racks turned on, igniting little fires under the trays. With another twist of his hand, the chill on the trays and the condensation evaporated. Plates, mugs, cups for orange juice, and utensils, slipped out of cabinets and landed at the front of the serving trays.

  As the coffee pot filled with coffee on its own, and orange juice appeared in a large pitcher, the scent of sausage, bread, and breakfast filled the air.

  “A big breakfast, ready and waiting!” Blackthorn said. “Go ahead and get some, and then the three of you can sit over at that other table. but Mark, you sit with me and we can talk about some things.”

  Mark’s stomach rumbled at the thought of food… Or maybe that was mostly Sally. Sally was starving. And just like last night, even in the face of unknown demonic horrors, she was won over by the thought of food. She was still pretty wary, though, until Isoko made the first move with Eliot close behind.

  Isoko bowed politely, as they had learned in Xerkona Etiquette class, and said, “Thank you for the consideration, Archmage Blackthorn.”

  She went and got herself a heaping helping of sausage and eggs, both of which had been rather scarce at the settlement. Eliot was next in line, doing a similar ‘thank you’, and then Sally was there, grabbing food, too, grabbing an extra large serving plate that was as large as 3 normal plates.

  Mark said to Blackthorn, “Thank you.”

  “No trouble at all!” Blackthorn lifted a hand and 3 pieces of bacon floated out of the bacon tray to land upon his crumb-scattered plate, sitting in front of him. He started reading his screen again with one hand as he nibbled on the bacon with the other.

  Mark got a full plate and also a large orange juice.

  Everyone else went to sit at a table down the way.

  Mark sat down with Blackthorn.

  Blackthorn noticed him, but he kept reading his screen.

  Which was good enough for Mark! He dug into his food and it was delicious. Perhaps, if Blackthorn’s vector was anything except for calm interest pointed at things far away, and then vaguely pointed toward Mark when Mark was 80% done with his food, then Mark would have been more wary of all of this. But it seemed rather like a perfectly normal morning and Blackthorn was willing to let Mark finish before they spoke.

  Obviously it was not a normal morning at all, but Mark could pretend for a little while longer.

  When Mark finished off his last piece of pancake, Blackthorn turned his focus to him.

  “So Mark,” Blackthorn began, as he set down his screen. “I’ve decided a few things.”

  Mark steeled himself.

  “One kilo of adamantium will buy my complete help during this situation here, but I won’t actually open the way back to Daihoon for you. I’ve been warned not to do that and I’m going to treat that warning seriously, because it’s the smart move for me. Other than passage to Daihoon, and fighting your fights for you, I’ll provide complete protection in this location and answer anything regarding what’s happening here, and assist in many small ways. How I assist is up to you and yours. I won’t nickel and dime you, either. I won’t, however, give you blanket magical instruction for this 1 kilo of adamantium. Actual magical instruction will be more kilos of adamantium.

  “I fully expect if you only take this beginning deal then we’ll run into a lot of me saying ‘That’s magical instruction and not part of the deal’. If you do want magical training, then I can only give you so much, as real training takes a whole lot of time. We do not have a lot of time.

  “That’s the base deal.

  “I won’t demand the adamantium for services already provided, such as room and board for the night, because everything I’ve done so far is pretty much what I expect of myself. I don’t like bullies, and the Empires of Daihoon are trying to be bullies right now. I don’t play those sorts of games.

  “But lighthearted shit is the stuff I love, which is why I’m willing to help you so much with this, because that boy, Tartu Solari, and his team, have issued verified and accepted Hero/Villain Program challenges to you and yours. The news briefing of all of that is going to happen on the 9 am news, in about 20 minutes. You can watch it together with your team. It should be coming on at around 9:15. So we have some time.

  “As far as I know, the event will be 3 days of fights between your team and their team, with one major fight per day until February 26, whereupon you will either be in chains and captured by the Collective, which is what Tartu will be gunning for, or you will be able to escape back through the gate.

  “The last fight will take place at the gate itself, with your team assaulting that location and attempting to break through. The fights up until that last fight are all about securing resources for that final fight. It will be completely unfair every step of the way, and the Collective is going to try and make you lose, but they have ‘promised’ to let Tartu be the one actually fighting you. This is, as you can imagine, barely the truth. The thinnest veneer of truth, really.

  “So they’re lying and doing a bad job of it.

  “So that’s what I’m offering; help everything in regards to your team escaping back to Daihoon through the gate.” Blackthorn rolled his eyes, breathed, and added, “And now that I’ve explained the basic structure, I’m supposed to tell you that if you play-act the whole thing, making a good show for Crystal Tower but taking a dive, the Collective will ‘go easy’ on you for the crime of ‘selling Addavein’s adamantium’… And that might be true, but I wouldn’t bet on that.

  “Taking a fall would put you right back where you started, before you agreed to escape with me.”

  Blackthorn ended it there.

  Mark had a lot to think about.

  So Tartu wanted a piece of the Hero/Villain Program pie, huh? And he was willing to use all of this stuff coming to Mark to get that pie. Not just a small slice, though. The whole damned pie.

  Everything about this situation was kinda fucked up, but the part about Tartu was the most fucked. Like yeah, the powerful empires of Daihoon wanted to throw Mark into their own private adamantium farms and make him make them metal. And that was shitty in ways Mark didn’t want to think about too deeply. But those were the calculations of empires versus a world of kaiju, and if Mark’s metal could save lives and do a whole lot of good, then he owed it to the world to give a lot of it away… Or sell it. Mark preferred selling it, really.

  He could give it to worthy people, though. That was fine.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Mark was pretty sure that Memphi and Blackthorn here were more than willing to buy it, and Mark was cool with those sorts of trades.

  But the empires wanted to take it, and they’d probably throw a whole bunch of words at him like ‘duty’ and ‘honor’ as they tried to break down Mark’s resolve, and in the end, they would take it, and Mark couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  So fuck that!

  Mark had already done his supreme good deed for the world by rescuing Addashield from his Fall. Everything past that was all Mark’s prerogative. So FUCK whatever shit was going on with the Collective.

  … And yet…

  Hmm.

  Mark had one big question before he made a decision.

  Mark asked, “The Collective knows I’m adamantium blooded, yes?”

  Blackthorn shrugged. “The boots on the ground? No. I’d imagine not at all. The higher ups? 99% yes. The people of the Collective that you would be fighting here in Memphi would have no real idea why they were sent against you, and in my opinion, if you told them, they would invent whatever excuse felt most salient at the time to continue to pursue their assigned task of taking you in. The higher ups would probably ‘come clean’ about their subterfuge with their lackeys, and say something like…” Blackthorn took a moment to think. In a slightly higher voice, he mocked, “ ‘Of course we didn’t tell you the truth. We don’t want Mark out there and vulnerable to real kidnapping, due to real information about the situation being out there, so yes, we only told you what you needed to know. Operational security, yadda yadda.’ And all that.”

  Mark made a few rapid decisions.

  Mark asked, “Got a scale? I’ve got 11 kilos right now, and you can have 2. I want your help and magical training.”

  Blackthorn grinned, and then he waved a hand. Mark’s dirty dishes flew off into the dishwasher in the kitchen as a drawer opened by the wall. A small set of scales flew out, along with a set of weights, to land on the table where Mark’s plate had been. “Here you go.”

  Mark portioned off metal, asking, “Cubes? Wires?”

  “Do you know how to forge them to a higher Power Level hardness? Crystallization, it is called; if you’ve done research into that sort of thing.”

  Mark paused. “I’ve had some success with that, but...” Instead of explaining anything else, Mark flicked a 100-ish gram shard of adamantium into the air and concentrated. The bit of metal compacted this way and that, while expanding in a lengthwise direction, like Mark was squeezing a tube of toothpaste and making the tube of paste longer… Sort of. Mark wasn’t directly controlling any of the crystallization, though the adamantium was absolutely crystallizing. In ten seconds the small bit of adamantium had formed a rather gnarly shard of absolute black. Mark set it down on the table in front of Blackthorn, saying, “It’s really good for all offensive purposes and I can make larger, harder objects, but the small bits showcase the issue that the larger objects do not have, if only because I can’t solidify the larger ones as solidly as the small ones.”

  Mark disconnected the shard of adamantium from his astral body.

  Blackthorn picked up the shard of crystallized adamantium and looked it over. He set it back down and said, “This is a problem of practice; nothing more. You might find some use in directed meditation, which would involve your familiar helping you to focus on one thing while working on the crystallization. Clarity of purpose will make crystallization a lot easier. There are broadly two types of clarity you would want to practice. Clarity in making the best possible object you can make, and clarity with regard to the object’s purpose. Form and function. They are not always the same thing.

  “Focusing on the object itself will result in a solid object that others and yourself can use in multiple ways. A sword can be used for a lot more than cutting down monsters, for instance. It can also be used to deflect things and— Well you know how to use a sword. All of that. An adamantium sword will become more sword when properly crystallized to become a sword. That’s crystallization on a form.

  “Making an object based on function, for instance a cutting weapon that happens to be shaped like a sword, will result in an object that is stronger in that purpose and weaker in all others. A sword made with the purpose of cutting will probably end up thinner than a normal sword, longer perhaps, and probably a little curved. Single-edged, probably. Unless you have a different idea of what ‘a sword for cutting’ is? No. Did not think so.

  “Anyway. That’s how to improve your crystallization process. Concentrate on form, or function, and practice, practice, practice.

  “For the purposes of the adamantium I want, don’t crystallize it; I changed my mind about that. I’ll take the 2 kilos in thin rods, about 10 centimeters long each. I’ll be making them into swords and other weaponry for my people.”

  Mark took that all in, and then began making rods, asking, “Thinner? Thicker?”

  “Half that thickness, or thinner if you can.”

  “I can do a quarter-millimeter thick.”

  Blackthorn raised a happy eyebrow. “One millimeter is good, and it’s impressive you can go that thin. I bet that cuts rather well.”

  “It does, but when it’s that thin it’s hard to handle,” Mark said, as he drew adamantium in thin rods and weighed them out on the scale as he went. Two kilos didn’t take much time at all, and soon Mark was down to 8.9 kilos remaining for his own use. He looked at what he was giving up, as it sat on a little tray that Blackthorn had brought out, and felt a crushing sense of loss. Mark softly said, “It feels so bad to lose that much at once.”

  Blackthorn grinned. With a flick of his hand a lid went over the box and the box floated into the depths of the penthouse, down a hallway. Mark felt it vanish from his perception soon enough, which reminded him he still needed to practice with his adamantiumsense, to better sense adamantium at large distances.

  Blackthorn said, “It never feels good to give up some power for another power, but you get used to it. For instance, I’ve just acquired 2 kilos of adamantium in exchange for the Collective collectively breathing down my neck for the next 5 to 50 years, depending on how bad this whole scenario goes.”

  Mark arched an eyebrow, then moved on, “What next?”

  “Oh come on! I thought it was good jest to poke fun at you like that.”

  “Ha ha?” Mark asked, humoring Blackthorn.

  “Thank you. Anyway, for what comes next, you’re going to want to speak to some of the Villains of Memphi. It’s the counter to the Hero Association, though they obviously work closely together due to the basic Hero/Villain Program. It’s going to be a part of the— Ah.” Blackthorn turned and flicked a hand at a wall that held a painting of the sky and a storm. The painting descended into the wall, revealing a large screen. “It’s 9 am!”

  The screen flickered on and some reporter was instantly and loudly talking about ‘welcome to Battles in Memphi Mornings! BIMM!’ and then Blackthorn lowered the volume.

  ‘BIMM’ registered as something Mark was aware of… vaguely. He couldn’t quite place where he had heard it before, though. Something… something something kaiju fights? Ahhh… Mark lost that train of thought completely. It was just a news program, right?

  Maybe he had heard his uncles talk about it once?

  Blackthorn turned back toward Mark and continued, “We can pause this conversation when the story actually drops. So! About the Villains? Meeting them? Is that something you’d be interested in?”

  Mark asked, “If Tartu will be enlisting the heroes, then I’ll need the villains to run counter fights? Is that the idea?”

  “Correct! They’re probably all being pressured in certain ways, so expect—” Blackthorn grinned. “—villainy.” He added, “Also, while the HVP has taken over most of the international intrigue happening here and now, you should still expect capture attempts pretty much everywhere outside of this tower.”

  Mark paused. “… What do you mean, the HVP has ‘taken over’?”

  “It’s a clusterfuck of international proportions right now, with a few different sides. I liked Eliot’s breakdown of the people involved, you know. But you forgot the HVP. The HVP is an international organization that was started, in part, to make a union for superheroes to save the world and all that junk, but what they ended up becoming was a power unto themselves. Real power, too. Good power, for the most part, but still a whole lot of power. The point is that the HVP can save or doom pretty much any city on Earth by withholding or giving aid. Usually they give aid, but there have been rare exceptions when they have not.”

  ...Oh.

  Yeah.

  Mark recalled the HVP withholding aid for Jacksonville years and years ago, and then Jacksonville imploded and now it was a bunch of exile cities without a real government.

  So yeah. The HVP was a big player.

  And they were stepping in on Mark’s side.

  Mark felt… really good about that.

  Mark was feeling a little overwhelmed, too, and—

  Mark caught sight of Tartu on the screen, on ‘Battles in Memphi Mornings’.

  Blackthorn turned to view the screen, and then he turned the volume up, saying, “Ah! Looks like there was a broadcast schedule change.” He gestured over to Mark’s team, saying, “Come on over!”