Conorssss
The two of us are walking side by side down in the sewers of NYC, which are, in my opinion, at least unnecessarily large both in width and length. That, however, only works in our favor as instead of having to thread through the murky waters, we instead just walk on one of the elevated sidepaths leaving our feet dry and clean… somewhat clean.
Never mind that, though, despite not having to walk inside the dirty water and sewage, I still felt dirty just by being here. The smell… oh god, the smell. It is precisely what you would expect from the sewers of a large city.
Each footstep taken echoes through the sewers creating a bit of a creepy atmosphere which is why I decided to start up a conversation while Felicia is guiding me toward our destination, wherever that may be.
"This may be a bit of a weird question, but how do you deal with everything you steal?" I suddenly ask to end the silence, and she looks over her shoulder as if questioning what I mean by that. "Like I would imagine selling stolen goods is just as hard if not harder than the process of stealing them in the first place."
"Why do you ask? Planning on entering the trade?" Felicia asks, turning her gaze in front of her again.
"Not exactly, but all I'm saying is that I end up busting criminals in art museums and the like way too often. If a few expensive paintings or art pieces were to 'suddenly' go missing the only person to blame me would probably be Jameson."
Hey, don't judge. If I am to buy out Oscorp and Stark Industries whenever the opportunity arises, I will need lots of money. I have saved up a few billion from the dungeons plus the loot from Silvio Manfredi, but that's not gonna be enough.
She shrugs. "You're right that selling the goods is much harder than actually getting my hands on them, which is exactly why I don't sell most of what I steal."
"Huh?" I question what I heard.
"I managed to sell a few paintings I stole when I was only starting my career, and that is more than enough for me to live the rest of my life in comfort. Pretty much everything else I just store as trophies in my super secret underground villain layer that I won't reveal to you. The only exception to that rule is work that has been ordered from me, like the research we are stealing right now." She says cheekily, but the answer just raises more questions in my head.
"Then why steal in the first place? I had the impression that you needed a lot of money for something…"
She stops in her tracks for a second and falls into thought before briskly continuing to move forward.
"Hmm, for the thrill, I suppose. Living a normal life, slaving away at some corporation, and sitting in cubicle 10 hours a day seems boring." She turns around and smiles coquettishly at me, all the while continuing to walk backward. "Wouldnt you agree?"
"I suppose." Damn, no stealing for me, but maybe that's for the better.
"Come on now 'I suppose', the fact that you keep going out in that costume despite making so many enemies tells me you are after the exact same thing."
"Nonsense, I'm a hero, I do this to keep the city safe." I lie through my teeth. I'm only after the xp that practically delivers itself to me on a platter as long as NYC continues to thrive. How else would I get strong enough to survive Thanos or whatever other cosmic beast that might try to destroy my way of life?
Felicia hums in a way that makes it clear she doesn't quite believe that. "Mhm, most heroes I've heard of don't get ideas to steal art and sell it for money."
"Everyone loves money," I say simply, and she nods as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. "Anyhow, you must be enjoying yourself quite a bit recently if you are just a thrill seeker, right? I mean, all the people trying to kill you and all…"
"All the people? You mean Bullseye?" She gives a name I hadn't heard of before, at least not in this life.
"Bullseye?" I repeat
"Right-hand man of Kingpin. He's pretty good with guns and has been attempting to catch me lately. I guess Kingpin wasn't a big fan of me breaking into his base." She continues to walk forward, sounding unconcerned about Bullseye hunting her. "Hasn't even gotten close yet."
"Well, good to know about one more psycho to worry about, but no, that's not who I was talking about," I said. "Osborn armed all the Maggia families in the city and told them to get rid of both of us no matter the cost."
Hearing me, Felicia bursts out laughing. "Oh, if any of those baffoons manage to even get close to me, I might as well hang up my costume and go… I don't know, become a nun or something."
"I hope you know you just jinxed yourself," I say and get a resigned sigh in return.
"Ugh… yeah."
As we talked, Felicia continued to guide me further into the sewers, where we finally came across what looked like an end to our path. A giant hole without any pathways leading down. The river of sewage we were following also all fell down as a waterfall into the hole leading to a giant lake of disgustingness.
I walk past Felicia, who has now stopped, and look down into the hole. "Did we take a wrong turn? If you are planning for us to go down there, then I think now is the right time for me to tell you that I brought no diving gear with me."
Even if I did have diving gear, I wouldn't touch that sewage lake with even my toes.
"No, you buffoon, look to our right." I do and see a door. Oh, this just must be our destination.
Before I notice, Felicia already has a key in her hand that she is using to unlock the door. Where did she get that from, her suit doesn't have any pockets…
As the lock clicks open, she throws the key haphazardly to the floor and enters the room with me right behind her.
Inside is what clearly used to be a neatly set up lab, well still is in some parts of the room. Numerous monitors show different diagrams and information on the walls, while a few tables have chemicals and other lab equipment set up on them. In other parts of the room, however, it looks as if a storm swept through or a fight broke out here as furniture is broken, thrown to the ground, and a river of different chemicals is just flowing on the floor.
"So no signs of this giant lizard I was promised would be here," I say while Felicia hastily walks to what appears to be the main computer terminal, luckily still intact, and begins digging through it.
"Well, lucky us." She says, focused on her current work. I walk behind her to see what she is doing as she takes out a storage drive from the middle of her boobs (is there a pocket there?) and connects it to the computer to begin transferring data over. "This is gonna take a few minutes, so sit tight."
While the data is transferring, Felicia continues looking through the computer files. I, being bored, looked around the rest of the lab for anything interesting I could find, perhaps even the concoction that turned Curt into the Lizard in the first place.
I don't get a chance to do that for long, though as before I know it, my spider sense abruptly warns me of something coming at me from my left side. I calmly jump up over whatever I am being warned about, and as I look down, I see a big green scaly tail sweep past where I just was.
Huh…
The tail sweeps past my previous position and crashes into a still intact table by the wall causing it to break and send all the lab equipment on it tumbling to the ground.
"You know, for a frankly humongous bipedal lizard, you are quite sneaky." I quip, genuinely impressed at how quietly he was able to move to come in here unnoticed.
"You thievessss." The lizard growls angrily. "Come here to ssssteal my work, you have. Tear you apart like the previous ones, I will."
(Note: Not sure why I made him speak like Yoda but let's roll with it.)
He raises both his arms in the air before smashing them down to me with great force. He is, however, way too slow, allowing me to web myself to one of the walls long before his attack connects.
With me out of the way, the strike connects with the floor below, sending small rocks flying all around. I dodge them with ease, but one hits Felicia in the back of the head.
"Ow, I'm still busy here. Deal with him without causing too much of a ruckus, will you?" She sends a weak glare my way before continuing with her work.
The Lizard doesn't seem to take itself being ignored too well as it immediately charges forward at Felicia, growling, "Thiefff."
I disrupt its charge by slinging myself back out into the sewers before attaching webs to the back of its head and pulling with all my might.
"Let's go play outside, Connors." The Lizard goes flying past me, tearing apart in the doorway that is frankly too small for his body and leaving a Lizard-sized crater in the sewer wall opposite of the lab entrance.
"Connorsssss," It says, "Conssss issss gone."
The Lizard, now ignoring Felicia, runs straight at me, and I respond in kind by shooting webs around his waist and also restraining his arms. As he stops to attempt to break out, I, never having let go of the webs, flip high into the air and over his head. Upon reaching the ground, I use my strength to pull him off the ground sending him flying over my own head, and watch as he lands head first into the ground in front of me.
"Are we done yet?" I ask but only get some sounds of pain in return. Despite it seeming to be tired, it still starts getting up again. Wait, are those its teeth on the ground I see? Ouch.
It takes it a full 10 seconds to get up on its feet again, but when it looks up with its pained face, all it is met with is my feet coming straight at him.
Seeing as it was still unwilling to give up, I shot my webs to the ceiling and, after getting a running start, performed a swinging kick to its chest, sending the Lizard cascading into the hole of sewage water behind it.
Calmly walking over, I lean a little over the edge to watch as the unconscious Lizard sinks into the sewage.
[Gained 24% experience]
The fight is over for now though I have no doubt I will be seeing him again. On second thought, maybe it wasn't the best idea to send him down that sewage lake as I just provided him a perfect opportunity to escape… over 400 points in intelligence, and I'm still an idiot sometimes.
I look over at the lab to see Felicia walking out with the drive in her hands. "I've got what I came here for, time to leave. I don't want to spend any more time in this sewer than I have to."
"Neither do I." I nod. "Hey, do you think you could provide me a copy of the data you stole?"
She raises her eyebrow at my unexpected question, "Why would you want it?"
I point down at the hole where I sent the Lizard to. "I took care of the reptile, but he will most likely be back for round 2 at some point. I wanna see if I can make an antidote for whatever caused Curt to turn into that thing."
She thinks for a moment before agreeing, "As long as you don't share anything on it with others, I see no problem with it. Just remember, if you do share it, my blood will be on your hands, superhero."
I had no intention of sharing anything there. I just want to test my own knowledge skills to see if I could produce an antidote without Diana's help. They should be high enough levels by now.
"Do you want me to go make you a copy now? It will take a bit of extra time." Felicia asks, but I shake my head.
"I don't really have time for that now. I actually have an appointment in…" I check the time in my system. "10 minutes from now. Do you think you could make a copy and leave it, oh, I don't know, on the roof of Oscorp tower? Maybe put some duct tape on it, so the wind wouldn't take it away. I'll go get it later today when I got time."
"Fine, but we won't be making it out of this sewer in 10 minutes-" Felicia begins to say but is silent by me using my sling ring to create a portal leading right outside the sewers. "Oh."
"After you," I say and watch as she heads through the portal.
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Note: The third chapter this week, and it's only Wednesday. I wonder if I can do daily uploads this whole week? We will find out. By the way, I was pretty happy with how the lizard fight turned out this chap.
Here is a question to you all regarding lemons/smut in this book:
I know that whatever I will write in terms of lemons will be complete garbage, so I don't want to put it in here, I have two options that I am considering right now, and I want you to vote.
Option 1: Just skip past them altogether. You guys use your twisted imagination on what happened off-screen.
Option 2: I make a separate "book" that just has the lemons, so those of you who want to read whatever cringe I write can go do that.