"They're a rotating-membership group of nine appallingly destructive capes. I don't know where they are but I could find out where they were last causing mayhem. They've all got a kill order on them and as a group they're classed in the same tier as Endbringers. But if I block you whatever they've got to keep native Masters and Strangers and such from doing the same thing might give you a problem too."

"Unless we know for sure that it would I think it's worth a shot."

"If I can call you in for contract hits on supervillains I could get you a list. Although most of them don't rate a kill order. I don't think any of the villains currently active in my city do, you have to do something more than be conspicuously a neo-Nazi."

"...I would also like to do something less drastic than that about them if you also have Nazi supervillains. Dad's a Holocaust survivor."

"I understand the impulse. But as organized supervillainy goes E88 is sort of on the more civilized side. They run illegal businesses, hold odious opinions, and get into fights with superheroes, but they hold it down to background radiation and check the other local parahuman gang activity to an extent. Plus, villains often show up to Endbringer fights, under truce, and help. The S9 are one thing, smalltimers who might be able to get Leviathan to leave even two minutes sooner are another thing."

"Ugh. Fine, since you're the one holding the door I won't make the time you'd have to do it in longer by going after them, but if they happen to get in my way I don't promise to hold back any more than 'no brainwashing.'"

"Don't you think I should be making promises or not, given that I'm the no brainwashing option? But yeah, no going after the Nazis, no matter how tempting it is."

"It's just Nazis are a little more personal for me. And I did say I wouldn't go out of my way to attack them."

"Oh for fuck's sake."

"Sometimes Milliways decides to deprive people of doors for arbitrary lengths of time, no more than two days apparently, but within that period pretty arbitrary."

"I mean, I was planning to camp out anyway, but if it keeps me that long there goes the fantasy of you making all the S9 members march themselves to the Birdcage unless you want to wait too."

"Gimme a specific example of an evil thing they've done."

"The Slaughterhouse Nine? Well, nobody's figured out how to save Gray Boy's victims, yet, they're in time-looped eternal torture. Another supervillain eventually killed him."

"Yeah, I think we can camp out a couple of days."

nod

"Good."

"My magnetism is...really, really strong, actually, and my sister is a fuckoff powerful telepath, so yeah, we can probably clean up more than just this one group if you do have a list."

"There's an entire condemned city where Nilbog was quarantined... I'm curious to know if you could, but terrified to suggest, that you could try some telepathy on the Simurgh quarantine zones. You won't convince anyone to unquarantine them and I don't know if she leaves telepathically visible marks, but if you could find out what exactly happened to the people inside... There's a Simurgh victim on the S9, too, you wouldn't necessarily have to detour to the quarantines."

"Which one?"

"Goes by Mannequin. Tinker. Used to be working on self-contained environments with a view to space colonization. Simurgh killed his family and drove him insane."

"...Ick. Um, yeah, noted."

"I am simultaneously impressed and appalled by how much higher stakes your world's superscene is compared to ours," Marie says.

"I do have days where I just sit in my workshop for hours, programming robots to do my homework and working on my dad's suit, but yeah, sounds like you've got various flavors of idyll."