System Supervillain: Book 9: Admin Issues by Grosse Stuart

Author:Grosse, Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 105 – Dinner Date

Normal people never really understood just how much the world of capes and cowls depended on infrastructure like the Guild to survive. Sure, anyone who was slightly aware of the Guild’s existence understood that medical services, super-suits, and gadgets all had to come from somewhere, and not everyone had a super-genius on the team, if they had a team at all. But it went beyond that.

See, humans, even superhumans, were social creatures. Oh, sure, most supers had a secret identity that they could use to be out in public, but that was never really the same. You had to be a good actor to keep people from catching on to the fact that you were hiding something from them, especially when your costumed business kept interfering with your mundane life.

That wasn’t a release. That was a change of trouble. And, if your civilian ID was even slightly well-known, you had to worry about stalkers, paparazzi, and people trying to scam money off you by jumping in front of your car, and all that. Worse still, each one of them was a potential way for your caped identity out in the open. More than one super had been unmasked because a stalker followed their civilian persona home, and then saw the mask leaving the house.

To help with this, any city with a Guild office (no matter the branch) typically had at least one gathering place where the masks came off, and everyone was on neutral ground. They were usually operated (at least in the public eye) as a private club. Except, you didn’t need to be high society to be part of this club, you just needed to have a Guild membership.

In Paris, the Guild-backed club was Cape et Masque, or ‘Cloak and Mask’ in English. Ironically, it was a firmly ‘mask off’ establishment. The only people who could get in were Guild members, or their guests. The Guild made certain that anyone who brought guests knew that they were responsible for the guests’ behavior, and charged an extra fee, but didn’t interfere more than that.

Paris was a city of 2.2 million people. Roughly 1% of the population had powers of some sort, or about 22 thousand people. The Guild was pretty good about getting supers to be part of its ranks, so one could expect about 12 to 15 thousand of them would be Guild members. Then you had the non-supers who were part of the Guild.

Yes, there were non-supers who were in the Guild. Masked vigilante types who used gadgets and training as a substitute for powers were one example, but there were also many non-supers who simply worked for the different branches of the Guild. Guild employees were part of the Guild, after all, and a place like Cape et Masque was somewhere that they could unwind, without having to worry about civilians finding out things they shouldn’t. The Guild knew how to keep its workers happy.

Not that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts.

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