A Delivery...With No Return Address, and Some New Surprises

Marion spotted a delivery driver, she seemed to be in her early 20s, in an unfamiliar uniform leaving the front door and heading for her vehicle. There was a package, of considerable size, sitting on her front door. Marion was confused, she hadn't ordered anything and she knew for a fact none of her family, including her ex, had packages sent to the house. Regardless, Marion was wary. Her security observation system wasn't the only surprise the house had, it also had a set of pneumatic tubes and hidden mechanized arms to discreetly move things around the house, she had installed the system shortly after moving into the house with her ex while he was away from the house as a way of discreetly ensuring any surprises she had for him that arrived at the house did not become something he would be able to see before she was ready. Marion knew that the system made her house basically a lowkey supervillain home back then, she just wanted to put her technical skills to use without really leaving the house, and she probably had a feeling in the back of her mind that a day where she basically became a supervillain would come in her future.

Marion had quite the hefty personal finances, not that her ex knew that since they never merged or consolidated any of their finances in any joint accounts. What a lot of people didn't know is that Marion was effectively a welfare brat, but the disconnect because of her grandfather's name and her family name before marriage had insulated her quite well. Even so, she was still hesitant to use her personal accounts if there was no pressing need to do so, especially if it served no practical need in her eyes. Yes, all the resources for remodeling the house discreetly had come from her personal finances, but that came about by her practical need to keep things under wraps when she wanted to do her own personal projects while alone. Marion was technically the 4th wealthiest woman in the city, she just didn't like to advertise her financial safety net, and saw no real need to let other people know about her personal financial security. The only reason she was pressing for money in the divorce was that was the tax she had personally calculated her ex had to pay for being a cheater and lying asshole. Even with all that in mind, she hadn't had any packages come to the house in over a decade, not to mention the meticulous record she kept of orders to and from the house.

She brought up the translucent bomb cage hidden in the garage, one of her little safeguards that was based on the nature of where she lived, and sent the package via the tubes to the cage before making her way to the garage with the remote for a dated robot designed for handling potentially hazardous packages. She dropped the little wheeled robot with 4 mechanical arms, the arms were designed to be disposable, into the chamber with the package and she secured the door to the chamber before turning the remote on and operating the bot. It took a few minutes, but she got the package open. Before doing so, she observed the delivery tag, and saved a copy of the image to the remote's internal storage, and noted there wasn't a return address. When the outer wrapping of the package was removed, there was a collection of small metal cubes, each cube seemed to have a 5" diameter, that were lined up and stacked to make up the 5' by 2' package.

She used one of the robot's arms to tap one of the cubes so she could better observe how they operated. Suddenly, all the cubes lit up with red lines running all about them, in an almost artistic way, before floating out of their delivery arrangement and configuring into a large square that took up a considerable portion of the chamber that suddenly projected the image of an elderly woman in a very expensive, and wicked-looking, suit. Marion knew that image, Madame Ruin, she was a supposedly retired confirmed supervillain that got out of the game over 50 years, ironically it was also a few years before Marion was born.

"Marion Teltharis," she said in her elderly, yet spry, voice. That confused Marion, Teltharias was her grandmother's family name, her reclaimed maiden name was (and now is) Ashger. "You certainly don't disappoint, we all knew you would travel this path for quite some time," Marion knew the allusion, her mother had been in the supervillain game (unknown to her father's side of the family, and that went double for her father) for a few years before deciding the whole thing wasn't worth it, granted her mother only did the whole thing back when she was teen and stopped before her 19th birthday, the woman continued, "did you know your grandmother was one of the greatest villains of her age, probably not, since nobody seems to talk about that persona. Anyway, excellent work on your first endeavor, the triggering incident probably had to do with that fool you dumped with the police, nice touch serving his papers while he was still there. You're probably wondering why I am contacting you. Well, you see, I'm the one who runs the villain real estate market, not that law enforcement of the heroes of this city are aware though, and I know you are now in the market for a proper villainous lair. Don't worry about transmissions, this is all prerecorded for your convenience as much as mine, after you tell this system the kind of establishment you are looking for this unit will self destruct, after sending an encoded data burst to a preset receiver, I hope you have it all somewhere isolated or designed to take a blast, but this part that's been rambling on is the introduction. Sorry to say, henchmen, henchwomen, and minions are not a service we can provide you, you are on your own for that. Now, just what are you looking for?"

Suddenly the "screen" was a set of choices. Manipulating the limbs of the robot, Marion said she wanted a tech-themed base, in the extra input section she typed out that was thinking of making it have an erotic lean. The heroes were **** to follow a set of codes that made sure their outfits, and projected personalities, fit with something that wasn't morally offensive to most parents, and potentially marketable. The merchandising deals some heroes had were utterly ridiculous. Granted, any heroes that signed up for merchandising deals were legally obligated to let the city, and thus the police ****, know their identities. The term for these individuals was "public heroes" and every hero was basically on a registry, but the heroes that didn't have merchandising deals or some kind of corporate sponsor were permitted to treat the security identity section of the forms as optional, the bare minimum they to give was their first name, there's usually not a whole lot you can do with an alias and first name. In short, they couldn't have anything overtly sexual about their outfit, and they couldn't even talk about anything to gruesome but they also couldn't be seen as being involved in anything Mature on the public record. Hence why the issue with those two super sluts was eating so much time and resources for law enforcement, just the implication of something that wasn't family-friendly could ruin the career of almost any young superhero, especially if they were female.

True to the message's warning, the cubes blew up into barely usable piles of slag and ash. Well, it looked like Marion was continuing a tradition she wasn't fully aware of, as were all her children. Pity most of her children were targets of her **** schemes. Now, she just had to see what Madame Ruin could unearth for her. Also, the way that Madame Ruin talked about her grandmother implied the two were pretty close, possibly even in some sort of relationship.