One Of Them

What did I say?

They were really just going to drop it on me like that, without even giving me any time to think about it?

"I… Why do you even want me?" I asked, "I'm just a Crafter who had his first night out last night, I don't stand a chance against any of the big shots like Quasar, The Amazing Lad or Last Gasp."

"Uh, did you forget the moment where you managed to mess up Phet, the literal undefeated leader of the Coventry Mob?" Lauren shot back with a shrug, "That more than makes you qualified for a recruitment pitch."

Messed up Phet? That wasn't how I remembered it. I remembered jumping back and forth trying to avoid getting tagged by the guy, I didn't exactly remember messing him up at all.

"I didn't really mess him up," I replied, airing my confusion. "Wildthing was the one who stopped him from turning me into concrete pizza, or did you forget that moment?"

"Oh Sparky," Lauren shook her head. "The entire PHA has gone up against Phet and didn't even manage to scratch him. The fact you were able to do as much as you did to him was awesome. The fact he's still in medical because of what you did is just the cherry on top."

Phet… was in medical because of what I had done?

"Wait, you didn't know?" Lauren said, catching my gormless expression as I digested her previous statement. "You do realise how much electricity you ended up zapping him with, right?"

"Well yeah," I said, "I had to amp up the power with my taser baton as a boost to the power."

"If you know what you did, why are you acting so surprised?" She snorted. "That kind of electrical discharge would have been enough to fry someone twenty times over if they were a baseline human. The fact Phet survived it at all is just a testament to how powerful his amping drugs are."

"Wait… Do you mean to tell me?" I gasped, the question trailing off.

Lauren shot me a toothy grin, "Penny drops!"

"But he's one of the strongest bruisers in the community!" I exclaimed in protest, "A shock that powerful should have rattled him, sure, but he also should have been able to shake it off pretty easily."

Crashcourse tilted her head to the side and then began to explain, "Okay, so Phet uses drugs to increase his resistance to damage and to increase his overall strength, even giving him access to other powers when he gets strong enough, right?"

I nodded, keeping up with her so far.

"All of those changes are basically flesh deep. Electrical attacks don't-"

"Oh my god, an electrical attack like mine would have travelled straight through him trying to go to ground, it would have totally fried his nervous system," I gasped.

I might not have almost killed him, but I definitely could have paralysed him for life if he had been any weaker.

I could already see my reputation being shattered right before my eyes.

"Yeah, even for someone with an enhanced healing factor, nerve damage is one of those things that takes quite a bit to get over."

"Okay, Crashcourse, I think you've made your point," Greave cut in. "We're trying to recruit him, we're not trying to give him a heart attack before he can even become part of Hypogean."

"How… How do you even know any of that?" I asked, the question coming to my mind almost as quickly as I blurted it out.

Greave looked sheepish as if he thought the fact that he had tried to change the subject had somehow offended me, so I decided to clarify my question a little.

"Look, Lauren, that's gotta all be super sensitive behind closed doors information, right?" I asked, "So, how do you know all of that stuff about Phet's condition? Come to think of it, how did you know that Quasar was on his way, or that I would be looking at the PHA when I was?"

"That's privileged information," She said with a cheeky grin.

"Suffice it to say, Lauren is basically the whole reason that we haven't failed a single job yet," Pulsewave chimed in.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far, but you do know how to flatter a girl," She said, batting her eyelashes bashfully at the boy, who only rolled his eyes in response. "No, not just me, the boss has a pretty large part in it too. At least 50%. Maybe more like 40."

"So she says, at least," Bastion said with a sigh, something told me that there was definitely some tension on the whole boss front.

"Look, we can chat here all day if you want to," Lauren stated, "But if you want to know everything, if you want to get all the information you want on the boss, on what we can do, then I'm afraid you're going to have to sign on and become part of the team. All I can say is that we're a solid group, we've got a top track record, and we're all just in it for a bit of fun and a bit of profit. So, again, what do you say?"

I rubbed the back of my neck with the hand that wasn't covered by my gauntlet.

So far I'd managed to pick up some pretty good information, no doubt information that the PHA had never heard before. Information that would definitely help them capture the members of Hypogean. But was it enough?

Surely I could drag out some more information over time if I really tried.

Like, who was this shady boss that Lauren kept bringing up? What made Hypogean such a good villain group?

That was the sort of thing that I needed to get to the bottom of. It was the sort of thing that would seriously get me in the PHA's good books if I were able to figure it out.

I took a deep breath.

"Fine, I'm in."