Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 126: Supersocioeconomics

“Alright,” Perry said, rubbing his hands together as he scanned the assembled crew: Breaker, Plagius, Heather, and Sophie. “I’ve gathered you all here today to do some very important work.”

The four of them collectively held their breath.

“We’re gonna stalk Brendon today and see what the hell is up with that dude.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Heather said, waving over at Brendon pushing his mop along the halls of the lair. Brendon waved back.

“Excuse me, do you actually need a Drainer to do surveillance on a civvie?” Plagius asked.

The teen was starting to come into his powers and was getting a little big-headed. Perry truly had sympathy for him, because both of them were under the same microscope due to their power’s potential to increase at exponential rates.

Drainers increased exponentially because when they grew, it meant they could drain more powerful people, more often. Perry was fundamentally the same.

Body 8 -> 12

“You may go patrol on your own when you can snatch the handcuffs from my hand, young Gras-“

Plagius’s hand whipped out and audibly cut through the air just above the handcuffs as Perry yanked them out of the way.

“Wow, you’re a lot faster!” Perry said enthusiastically. “Those speedsters we’ve been feeding you are doing wonders!”

“Then why didn’t I get the cuffs?” Plagius said with a pout.

“I’m faster too!” Perry said with a grin.

Perry glanced at Breaker, who looked a bit restless.

“I tell you what. If Breaker wants to go do some noob-hunting instead of stalking Brendon all day, you guys can go as a duo. Breaker needs someone to keep him from getting sucker-punched.”

And Plagius needed someone to be the adult in the room, but you do not say this out loud to a sixteen-year old.

Breaker had always demonstrated a fair understanding of his own mortality, which lead Perry to believe he had a better sense of risk than Plagius.

Being somewhere around five years older than Plagius with a more fully developed prefrontal cortex didn’t hurt either.

“Hey, you up for it, man? It’s fifty grand each takedown.” Plagius asked, glancing over at Breaker.

A bad day might see them only catching one, or none, a good day could be as many as five noob takedowns. Just depended on how much chaos was going on that particular day. Pretty lucrative, all things considered.

“Hmm…” Breaker thumbed his chin. “I dunno. I got a few commissions to sandbag some pretty big names, we’re talking seven figures…”

Which Breaker will turn down because he doesn’t wanna piss off those big names, Perry thought, watching the interplay between the two with amusement.

“C’mon, I’ll give you half of my reward. I need the takedowns more than I need the money.” Plagius said. It was true, but he probably could’ve gotten Breaker to accept for nothing if he knew how reluctant the dancer was to piss off big-shots.

“Alright, deal,” Breaker said, grudgingly accepting.

Well, if it works out well for them, that’s fine. Plagius was growing fast, and getting real good at dialing in his draining power, so he could incapacitate without risking killing the other guy.

He’ll be a big name in a few years…assuming he doesn’t go crazy and/or or get killed, Perry thought as he watched the two rookie supers leave.

I’m almost out of my rookie year, aren’t I? Or maybe officially out of it completely because of killing Neuron. I better watch my ass.

“Alright, so it looks like it’s just gonna be me, Heather and Sophie. Sophie, you can watch him at work, then Heather and I can take shifts-“

“Ta-dah!” Natalie said, beaming as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs to Perry’s lair, her hands in the air.

“You are looking at a newly minted millionaire!” Natalie said, doing a little spin and motioning to herself for emphasis.

“So you finished that commission for Andre?”

“yup~! Sixteen earrings in one go!” She fist-pumped.

Perry blinked.

“So you just made-“

“Fifty-two million after taxes!”

“Damn,” Sophie blurted. Even sex-angels knew that was a TON of cash, especially when earned in a weekend.

“Does Perry get a cut?” Heather asked.

“Uh, what?” Natalie asked. The other people in the room

“The heck are you on about?” Perry demanded, glancing at Heather.

“I think it can be argued,” Heather said with a sly smirk. “That Perry put in some of the effort that made this possible. It’s hot, sweaty work, tossing ninety pounds around a motel room.”

Sophie nodded sagely.

“Well, I mean, if you want…” Natalie said, glancing up at Perry guiltily, her voice going quiet and immediately making Perry feel like a jerk. It was punctuated by a rib-nudge from Heather.

Why are you elbowing me!? You’re the one who made her feel like she was exploiting me!

Perry elbowed Heather back, hard, before schooling his expression for Nat.

“They’re kidding,” Perry said, sighing. “Poorly. I want you to keep your money. Matter of fact, here’s my banker slash lawyer,” Perry dug through one of his workbench’s drawer’s until he found John White’s card, handing it to Natalie.

“With that much money, you may want to ask him about creating an irrevocable trust so Nexus can’t take it away from you for blowing up a city block.”

“Irrevocable trust?”

“It’s basically a lawsuit dodge by rich people where they give ownership of their assets to a ‘trust’ which is a separate legal entity which then pays them all of its profits. Government or private suers have a lot of trouble taking it away since it technically isn’t owned by, or operated by, the person in question.”

Perry had been doing some research recently. Owning a small business will do that to you.

“But they get paid all the profits from it.” Heather asked, brows raised.

“Ayup,” Perry said with a shrug. “Primarily, they’re used by doctors and supers so if they ever get sued out everything they own in a divorce or a wrongful death case, they can rebuild from scratch easily with the large guaranteed income from the trust.”

“Wow, rich people suck.” Heather muttered.

“Ayup. Anyway, get into contact with John and see if that’s a good fit for your new lump-sum. I kinda wish I had something like that when those dumbasses destroyed the scrapyard with my demon summoner.”

Perry’s eyes narrowed as he relived the irritation. Good point, I should start setting something aside myself. Note to self: call John about money stuff.

“Huh,” Natalie murmured, studying the banker’s card for a moment before pocketing it. “So what are you guys up to today?”

“Maybe the poorest member of the group should explain,” Perry said, motioning to Heather. Turnabout is fair play, you redheaded witch!

“Eat a whooooole bag o’ dicks, Perry.” Heather said, fighting down a smile. She was almost a millionaire after all the rookie hunting they’d been doing after High Tide, but it paled in comparison to Perry and Natalie.

“Besides, isn’t Sophie the poorest?” Heather asked.

“I own planets.” Sophie said.

As they stared at her, she shrugged. “Elysium is very big, and I am very old.”

Heather heaved a sigh before reorienting on Natalie. “We’re stalking Brendon today to try and figure out what the heck is going on with him.”

“Indeed,” Perry said, dramatically popping open his button-up shirt.

“Really?” Heather asked, looking down at his T-shirt with mild disgust.

Mild disgust? Perry glanced down.

Wildlife Observation

Above the text was a picture of a man with binoculars raised to his face, and reflected in the lenses was another man showering, sensitive bits concealed by soap suds.

“Close enough,” Perry shrugged.

***Later***

“He’s just standing there. Talking.” Heather said over Comms.

“Yes, I can see that,” Perry said, observing Brendon using the magnification built into his helmet.

Brendon was chatting with the owner of a mom & pop convenience store over a jar of spicy pickles. The giant teen wrapped up the conversation in a few minutes before heading out on to the street, moving a kid on a tricycle from the road to the sidewalk with a single massive hand before moving on.

He waited at the crosswalk for the light to turn green by knocking out a set of fifty pushups to the bemusement of the civilian onlookers.

“You know, I’m starting to wonder why we thought this was a good idea?” Heather said over the intercoms.

“Remember the time he was the only one completely unaffected by Gerome dicking around with reality?”

“Yeah, but this is so boring!” Heather moaned.

“No argument there,” Perry muttered.

“I think it’s sweet how nice he is to everyone he meets.” Natalie said.

“Sooner or later, he’s gonna slip up and reveal what power people are willing to kidnap and/or kill to get their hands on.” Perry said, keeping a close eye on Brendon.

Something was up with their massive friend, but it was fairly obvious the person in question had no idea what it was. He was just…Brendon.

It would also be unethical to run Brendon through a series of intense tests to determine exactly what was going one there, which left observation as the most effective means of discerning what was going on.

So is he immune to all other powers, or a baby fourth dimensional being, or some kind of denseness singularity? Unaffected by anything he doesn’t understand?

What is your deal? Perry thought, eyes narrowing.

I can probably scratch that first one out by asking Breaker to challenge him to a dance battle. If it takes, then he’s not immune to other people’s powers…

Which is experimenting on him. Which we’re not going to do, because he’s our friend and we’re not monsters.

Perry sighed, rubbing his chest where the soul-surgery had been performed. Naturally there was no damage to his physical body, but the motion made him feel better.

After adapting the modifications he could make sense of, Perry had drastically decreased the size of the package that got put inside him…

Which was good, because there wasn’t supposed to be anything there in the first place. The damage to his soul had made him cranky and prone to isolating himself, as well as viewing people as numbers. Right now, one of the only reasons he didn’t subject Brendon to a battery of tests was because he had decided it was wrong before the surgery.

That and it would piss off Nat.

Perry deliberately tried to avoid cutting out segments of his soul that had to do with people that were close to him. He tried to target things like likes and dislikes, which logically didn’t have much effect on his daily life.

For example, for these two spells, he’d cut out his opinion on potato casserole, among other things.

When he’d pulled out the bowl of potato casserole that he’d left for himself to recover his enjoyment of the food, he’d felt…nothing.

Stopping to think about it, Perry had made a realization that Gadrevan probably hadn’t: Very few experiences or opinions in a human’s life are formed completely without connection to other people.

Cutting out the potato casserole had cut out Dad’s potato casserole and the nostalgia associated with it.

Which was why pulling a cold bowl of potatoes and cheese out of the fridge failed to generate a response. Pretty obvious in hindsight.

Which was why dinner tonight was dad’s potato casserole. Perry’s after-surgery recovery involved recreating meaningful emotional connection to the dish, in order to recover his likes and dislikes as close to their original state as he could.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Natalie asked, seemingly reading his distraction through his helmet.

“Potato casserole tonight at my house.” Perry said.

“Potatoes are worth a mint right now,” Heather said over the intercom. “Only the ultra-rich, like you two land-barons can afford them.”

Oh yeah. The second shipment from Washington had barely prevented complete collapse because of the ruined crops from Gerome’s little stunt. Perry didn’t think about it much because he was a Super, and they simply didn’t go hungry, but…

Did Brendon spend forty dollars on that jar of pickles? Perry thought, frowning. There were a lot of empty shelves on that convenience store.

The problem was that potatoes were both the food and the seed. The demand for the staple had been such that the actual number of seed potatoes saved for next year were lower because of unscrupulous farmers looking to cash out their seed potatoes now at gold-like values, and buy them back in a year or two when the price bounced back.

It didn’t take many of them to do that before everyone realized that when the next crop arrived in ninety days, it would be smaller than the one before it, while the demand for food would be exactly the same, leading to a downward spiral of scarcity.

Nexus had stepped in and put the burden on the citizens by forcing the non-profiteering farmers to keep a certain amount of seed potatoes and sell the rest to the ones who didn’t have any…at whatever price they deemed fair.

In the pinch, potatoes had essentially disappeared off the shelves, which led to a bit of a cascade effect as people bought other things to fill their bellies, emptying them out of store shelves as well.

I guess I am kind of rich, Perry thought. Dad knew a guy who farmed potatoes for a living, after all.

Perry had considered trying his hand at farming, but a couple things stopped him: He wasn’t specced for it. Sure, he could make a strong building that could house hundreds of floors of grow-rooms that creating multiple hectacres of produce at inexpensive prices…but he couldn’t make the potatoes grow any faster or more nutritious than they might’ve otherwise. Perry’s perks didn’t work that way on living things.

Not to mention mutant insects and giant worms to contend with. Perry would have to have the building outside the city.

If he started, he wouldn’t see any results for ninety days, which was when the rest of the farmers would be releasing their new produce into the market all at once, driving the price way down.

In the inevitable price crunch three months from now, Perry would likely be able to outcompete the average farmer, sending multiple farms out of business without meaningfully changing the food situation for the average citizen.

Wait a moment. What about the Growth spell? if I got enough unicorn shit, I could probably mass-produce potatoes, at least enough to put a dent in the shortage until the next crop comes in.

The growth spell would normally be a bad business model because unicorn shit was finite, but Perry wasn’t really looking to make a long-term profit so much as help his city through a rough patch.

He could also lower transportation costs, and alleviate some of the current hunger by going out on some of the emergency Nexus Foraging parties.

Basically they were volunteer supers who went into the woods and hunted megafauna in an attempt to bridge the three-month gap between now and when the crops started flowing in again.

Could be good practice for my trip to Chicago, Perry thought.

“Paradox?” Natalie asked, waving her hand in front of Perry’s face.

“Eh?” Perry grunted, coming back to. They were standing on another rooftop, still watching Brendon, but Perry had no recollection of how they’d got there. He’d retreated so far into his thoughts that he’d forgotten what was going on around him.

That hasn’t happened since Karnos. Not a fantastic sign.

“Yeah?”

“It’s five o’clock. Are we going to your house for dinner?”

“Yes, dinner sounds good.”

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