Yue

 5th February

20:49 GMT -5

A cowboy escaped from the eighteenth century sets his guitar aside as the last of the notes fade away. Dull red leather jacket, blue bandana covering the lower part of his face and a decidedly black hat… The costume puts me in mind of Gregory Saunders, but he's a very old man back on Earth 16. I'm pretty sure that his lycanthropy is the only thing that keeps him functioning, and I don't know if werewolves have indefinite lifespans. This fellow's younger. Great grandson of the local version, maybe?

A small crowd of Made Men have… Not 'gathered' but.. perhaps 'congregated' around him as he sits on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the Shadowcrest garden. The building is in the equivalent location to that of its Earth 16 double, which made me a little worried until Mister Scott explained to me that the exterior is protected by heavy duty illusions and wards. We can see out, but no one who comes this way will see anything very interesting. Speaking of the old revenant, he's over to one side of the garden talking to the local version of Hawkman and Robotman… Manhawk and Automaton. Old cronies from the Crime Lodge days.

Back on Earth 16, I've given Doctor Crane a little post-mortem fame by bringing his failed attempts to gain legal personhood back to public attention. Here, he's famous for not caring one bit about having a human form. Over the years his brain box has been plugged into wheeled and tracked vehicles, bipedal and quadrupedal robots, factory machines, mainframe computers and on one notable occasion an Apache helicopter gunship. His Syndicate file indicates that they have him working on facility management in one of their storage depots at the moment, because while physical frailty isn't as much of a problem for him as it is for his contemporaries he's still an old brain in there.

"Any y'all got any requests?"

Heck, this is as good a place as any to get some attention. I generate a construct banjo and let my hands glow with orange light as I pluck a few notes.

Through the crowd I see the guitar player jerk his head around to look at me.

"And who you suppos' to be?"

I smile, shrug and play the refrain again as the crowd starts to part between us.

He takes hold of his guitar. "Guitar leads this duet, jackass."

I shrug. "I'm not stopping you. You're just not playing."

"That how y'all want it?" He stands, guitar at the ready. "Alright. Ah'm game. Keep up if'n y'can."

He skips ahead, playing the next riff. I take a couple of steps closer, echoing it as I go. He's already moving onto the next part as I finish. I'm not sure if he's annoyed about being forced to share his stage or he just wants to find out how good I am. Which makes me feel very slightly bad, as I've never played a banjo in my life and am barely having any input in where my rings are sending my fingers. I couldn't outplay an actual musician without studying an awful lot of professionals and taking on board huge amounts of data, but for something relatively simple where I only have to play off-

He's getting faster, and he's smiling under that bandana. Yes, he thinks he's testing me.

-one person rather than a whole orchestra, conductor and audience this works fine. Since the only part that's not being handled by my ring is the movement of the rest of my body, I make a show of copying his body language at the same delay as the notes are being played. He's still getting faster, and I really think that at this stage he's trying to make me fail. Maybe a little fail that only he will notice. A supervillain musician hazing.

Sorry, it's a well-known tune and power rings don't trip up over keying.

He reaches a fast pace as the song approaches its end, his smile calcifying as it requires all of his concentration to maintain his breakneck pace. We're only about a metre apart now, and I think that without my rings I'd need to splint my hand to recover from moving my fingers at this speed. But… He seems to be enjoying himself, and from the expressions on the faces of the crowd I'd say they are too.

The music reaches a fever pitch, then with a final strum dies. Evil Vigilante and I stare each other in the eyes for a moment.

"Hah!" He pushes his guitar to the side and holds out his right hand. "You're alright. Put 'er there!"

I allow my construct to dissipate as I take his hand in mine and shake it, musician to fraud.

"Name's Desperado. Fastest guitar in the west. You another Power Ring?"

I hold up my ring. "I'm afraid so."

"Three rings? You compensating fer something there, partner?"

Best serious face on. "There's no such thing as too much equipment."

There are a few sniggers at that, both from the crowd and from the man opposite me.

"Y'know, you do kinda look like Bluey."

"Family resemblance. Pleased to meet you."

Okay, got a degree of attention. Now, how best to make use of it.

"And I'm sorry about stealing your stage, I'll give it right back."

"Oh yeah? I've run with rodeo clowns before. Show me what you can do."

He walks away from the fountain towards his accomplices Black Knight and Pulsar. And.. now most of America's most wanted are staring at me.

"You all know why we're here. Slade Wilson's people are pushing when they used to hide, income is down and the new bosses are telling you to take it and hide. And -understandably- you're pissed. An arse-kicking is a lot less fun when you're receiving rather than giving, and Doctor Chaos was talking some good shit, wasn't he?" I generate a construct helmet matching the one he housed his consciousness in. "Killing a few hundred people didn't work, clearly the answer is to kill thousands!" I dismiss the helmet. "After all, things improved so much after Connecticut."

"The sad fact is, business as usual? Is not going to work. We've gotten to the point where we are so hated that it's overwhelming their fear. It's not that they're less scared -and as I look around here I can see some very scary people- it's that they don't care that they're scared. People with nothing to lose will do crazy things. Kill all a man's friends, and he might just pop over to a parallel universe and recruit more. Kill a man's wife, and he might surprise you by invading your home with enough fusion bombs to split the moon in half. A little fear smoothes the wheels. A lot of fear throws everything out."

"None of you are stupid. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. You know that the same old scams aren't working. And you're all looking around for the new scam. So let me lay it out for you. Wilson's people are perfectly happy to repeat Connecticut in every state if that's what it takes to win. And I'm sure some of you would be as well. But ask yourself this: who profits? If we expended the Syndicate's entire strength, all our secret weapons projects, everything… What do we get? A giant, smouldering wasteland to rule over. Do you want to live in a wasteland? Because I don't."

"I didn't become a supervillain-" At all. … I think. "-to live in a wasteland. I became a supervillain to enrich myself. Maybe a few people around here like fighting for the sake of it, but I doubt you'd do it for free." In the second row, Vamp shrugs. "I'm not going to live somewhere without running water. I want goddamn running Champagne! Who profits? It should always be us. And if something doesn't profit us, then we shouldn’t be doing it! And right now, the United States of America is far, far too hot for us to operate profitably."

"Someone with superpowers and no moral hang-ups can always make money. So that's what we're going to do: make money. Go places where we can make money, do things that make us money. Over the next few weeks, you're all going to be getting marching orders and shipping out to places where there's money to be made and no US army on every street to stop you. I'm sure you all remember how to take over other people's syndicates and make them work for us, it wasn't all that long ago you did it for the old Management. But if you've got a better idea, come and talk to me about it. People with good ideas could find themselves getting rapid promotion. And if you don’t have a better idea, but don't like my idea anyway and are going to piss and moan about having to work for your money, then fuck off. You know where the door is, and if you're really lucky you'll make it five paces before the Justice Underground shoot you dead."

I take a moment to look around. Most of them are maintaining a disinterested front, but they're all paying attention. And I can see the undercurrent of fear that they can't completely ignore any more.

"Syndicate, it's time to adapt or die. Your choice."

I raise my right hand in a wave of goodbye, and turn away to head back into Shadowcrest. Now, the other part of handling the Syndicate. Talon inherited a lot of Owlman's old projects. Where's he gotten to?