(See
Author's Note: Double January for more details)
January 17th - Take 1
After the rooftop debacle, I determined that the best way into and out of the lab was to simply invent a teleporter. Not such a crazy idea as you might think. Our world has a few portals to other lands, and there were a number of people with superpowers who could teleport themselves, so it was certainly possible. I didn't exactly realize just how unlikely it was for me to develop my own personal teleporter in a week.
That first attempt almost saw me sucked into a void. Fortunately for me, my foster-parents/minions were supervising and saved me. Cursed lack of upper body strength!
January 17th - Take 2
I didn't end up doing much plotting that day because me-now was sucked into the temporary void of real estate dealings. Fortunately it wasn't the normal regular-person form of real estate dealings where you have to deal with property taxes and mortgages and realtors who as far as I can tell get paid for being licensed to use a rather simplistic database.
No, this was the villainous underbelly of real estate, where property titles are occasionally decided in a cage match, and the mortgage rate depends less on the capricious whims of governments and corporations than it does on how many WMDs you have access to. Among many other entertaining factors, of course.
As a junior member of the society in the most literal sense, all I really had to work with in currency was IOUs of dubious backing, the money and items from a series of bank robberies, and a willingness to shoot people if needed. I walked away from the auction with the rights to a warehouse I would need to store all the crap I'd taken over the last month. Living through the same time period twice leaves you with a lot of useful stuff and not a lot of places to leave it.
Plus, I was expanding as a villain. I needed the extra lair.
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