Whatever it is you need to reconnoître?

"Yeah, by 'reconnaissance' I mostly mean stuff like finding further connections when we crack new villains."

Hmmm... Are the villains you've cracked already not connected to other villains you haven't, though?

"Some, and we have found new villains that way, but not every one has clues we can use to find a new one."

Are there any extant? Being busted is not, typically, very conductive to learning things they don't want known in a very natural fashion, whereas spying could be.

"The problem is that when we find them they're generally doing things it's more important to stop than to spy on."

You know nothing of their whereabouts?

"...I don't know of the existence of any particular villains we haven't stopped yet, they're generally pretty covert right up until they're not and then they get squished."

I see. That's frustrating. And do you have any idea of the—general shape of what they might be trying to accomplish? What things were they doing, exactly, that you had to stop?

"Nothing that obviously suggested a pattern for some greater conspiracy."

You know, conspiracy or no I'm actually curious about what villains actually do.

"Lots of things. Trying to conquer the world is...surprisingly popular."

Well from what you've told me it looks supremely badly run.

"It would be less surprising if they seemed primed to do something intelligent with it!"

What do they typically want to do with it?

"It's not always obvious but, like, someone who has four lieutenants and one of them got tortured into it is not someone I'd trust with a goldfish let alone the world."

...what the fuck.

"She had an artifact he wanted under his control and he figured it was worth trying to coerce her into working for him before killing her and hoping someone who already worked for him would attune to it."

That is so absurdly—why would he—who would even -

"It's a really good artifact and it was part of a matched set and the other three already worked for him."

He sighs. How far has the most successful villain gotten?

"Depends on how you define villain. The conventional classification doesn't classify anyone as one who isn't a criminal, but the really successful ones tend to work in places where they can avoid that."

Like some of those terrible countries?

"Mhm."

But they always do eventually get found and stopped, yes? Or are there any of them running countries here and there?