Back at the one-room apartment, Lester sat on the small bed, which he had fixed with some glue, a couple of nails, and a few zip ties. But at this moment, he was not thinking about the bed. He was focused on his phone and the new app he had. The name of the app was the same as its provider, Calamity and Woe. The app worked basically like the Justice and Valor app he'd used as a hero. But this one had a darker scheme and a logo of a snake biting a skull.

  Firstly on the app, Lester looked up his personal information. There it read that he was, in fact, a C-rank freelance villain. C-rank villains could, as far as he knew, only be either freelance or contracted. This meant that C-rank villains couldn't do villainy by themselves, but they did have the app, and they could choose to whom they worked for. It wasn't ideal. But it was definitely a step or two above being a henchman.

  After a moment, Lester's thoughts shifted to the other ranks above him. B-rank was where stuff got much easier. B-rankers were independent villains, who could do as they pleased, maybe only slightly hampered by the guild rules. After that, came the A-rank master villains, who had, in addition to the B-rank benefits, the right to participate in the official business of the Guild of Calamity and Woe, which included setting rules and stuff for others to follow. Maybe, one day, he would be able to advance to at least B-rank. All he needed was to become more powerful.

  But now, Lester reminded himself that he was a C-rank freelance villain. And this meant that he would have to work for money.

  In the app, Lester shifted to the section of open jobs. He went through them, skimming through descriptions. All in all, there weren't any good ones there. But there were a lot of jobs that felt suspicious. There was one, where the hire would, as a test subject, get shot with some experimental electric weapons. Even though the job description said that it was absolutely safe, it was definitely something he wouldn't do. He'd gotten enough of getting shot by strange beams in the superpower evaluation damage-resistant test.

  There were less suspicious jobs too. Many bounty hunter jobs actually. But those didn't seem that enticing. He'd been on the other end of that business, and it just didn't feel right to start hunting people whose only crime might have been to escape from some mad scientist's laboratory. But on the bright side, there weren't any bounties on his clones, and the old bounty on himself wasn't there either.

  In the end, the best job he found was a bouncer gig at a gentleman's establishment known as Randy Knockers. The work there would pay twenty dollars an hour, which, to be honest, was four times as much compared to what he'd gotten back in the day working as a hero in the Big Hart Mall. But still, the job definitely didn't sound that fulfilling as far as careers went.

  There wasn't, he decided, anything worth really doing. And he still had some money left. A bit over ten thousand that was. He could maybe wait for a while and see if better stuff showed up.

  Lester added a job alert, which would alert him whenever something that paid more than a hundred an hour showed up. Then he closed the open jobs section of the villain app, moving to browse other stuff on the app. There was a personal message section, but it was empty as no one had sent him any yet. There was also a market section where there were people selling and buying illegal and a fair amount of legal stuff too. There was a section for general posts, where, among many other messages, there were a couple of posts from freelance villains, like himself, looking for members to form gangs. It was maybe a possibility for him, if it turned out that working alone wasn't viable. But he was still going to go with the solo career for now.

  Lester put down the phone, deciding that he had enough time for villain stuff in the future. Now, after working hard, suffering enough, and finally becoming a villain, he was definitely going to take a day off.

  But first, there was an important thing he needed to do. He needed to place the point he'd gotten from passing the supervillain evaluation test. And from how he'd fumbled with his power several times in the test, he knew that there was only one place to put the thing.

  "Villain Interface, put one point into Will," Lester said as he stood up from the bed.

  Will increased to 6.

  Suddenly, Lester was hit by a feeling of peace. There were no worries. But there wasn't any reason to do anything either. Which was all okay.

  Lester caught himself before he would have fallen to the floor, and he shook off the lingering effect.

  Now, he only had to decide what to do on his day off.

  ***

  Two hours later, dressed in his cargo shorts and t-shirt, Lester stood in a narrow alleyway, in front of an unmarked door. The door was the entrance to the bar known as the Henchman's Rest. He'd first heard of this place from Red back at Armie's Strongarms, as Red called it the best bar in the whole of Recalm City. After he'd gotten kicked out from the group, Lester had come here a bunch of times. It was a place for henchmen. Lester knew he wasn't a henchman anymore. And the place might be, in that sense, beneath him. But this place was familiar to him, and it was much cheaper than most villain places.

  Now he was here to meet Red.

  Lester opened the door, entered the bar, and looked around, taking in the place. By the looks of it, the place was a bit crowded, but not in a too tightly crowded way. As a place, it had a certain super-bar look. All the chairs and tables had heavy steel frames to stop them from breaking easily. This was a necessity for some people with superpowers. The people here weren't nearly as strange looking as in the bar in Juniper Grove, mostly normal people here to have a drink after a difficult day of working for some supervillain. But you could still see guys here who normal people would try to avoid, like for example, at the bar, ordering a drink, was one of Count Vendetta's henchmen. The guy was hiding his bat ears under a cap, but you could still see the guy's skin was a bit too pale and leathery to be entirely normal.

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  Lester went to the bar and got a pint of beer, before venturing further in. He spotted Red alone at a table, drinking, there, a dark beer of his own. Red was wearing the type of camo clothing he had been wearing in the forest, and he still had a ton of knives around his body. The guy had, by what he'd heard from him, retired a week ago. But there hadn't been time to meet with his old hunting friend yet.

  Lester had gotten in touch with him, saying he would want to talk about stuff. Now, he approached Red and with a smile said, "You look too young to retire." In fact, Lester thought Red was somewhere in his forties. But looks could always be misleading.

  Red let out a smile, indicating for Lester to take a seat. He said, "Well, it's not my age. It's just that I was feeling that my luck was running out, and I had to make a choice between retirement or the other kind of retirement. And having done hunting monsters for ten years, I was thinking of trying for a calmer life."

  Lester thought about Red's words. There were a couple of things there. For one, surviving for ten years as a monster hunter was something nearly impossible, considering the risks. And also, what kind of a fortune would one acquire in that career in ten years? It would be easily in the millions. But there was something else in his old friend's words too.

  Lester nodded. "Luck's a fickle thing."

  "Yep, could run out for any of us." Red hesitated for a moment then continued, "Whiskers bought it a while ago."

  Lester didn't say anything, letting Red continue.

  "It was a land shrimp, disguised as a tree. For some reason, Whiskers couldn't sense the thing. The guy could hear a mouse up to a hundred meters, but for some reason, this monster was totally invisible to him and to the rest of us too. Whiskers got right next to it, and the fucker just snapped his head off."

  "Damn," Lester said, "Don't know what to say."

  "Yeah, shit like that happens to a lot of people out there in the wilds."

  Lester thought about Whiskers. The guy wasn't much of a talker, but from the time they'd spent together, he'd had a sense of why the guy did what he did. It was like Whiskers had been in his element in the forest. He was a hunter by nature. But, as it was, there was always the better hunter.

  After a while of silence, Lester said, "How's Armie's Strongarms now?"

  "I think it's just Armie and First now. And the kid is weird. After Whiskers died, the boy somehow developed super senses. It was like the kid did it just to make Armie happy. If Doctor Nastybrain starts selling those things everywhere, normal henchmen would be out of business fast. I heard there were a couple of them already out there. Boss Smack, I heard, bought two of them, and soon after, he laid off five of his regular henchmen." Then Red stopped.

  Lester could sense the thing that Red was not saying. He, Lester, might be one of the clones. Red would likely be at least somewhat interested in what the deal was. But maybe it was something that really didn't need to be talked about.

  "Yeah, we'll see," Lester said. "But what about you? Are you just going to do nothing for the rest of your life?"

  "That's the plan. Though, I've been thinking about putting up a company. Just some tours out into the wilderness for rich people. Nothing too dangerous, staying close to the city and all. Something small to do in my downtime."

  Lester let out a smile, realizing that Red's retirement might not mean what most people meant with the word. For some, the wilderness was a way of life that they couldn't just leave behind.

  After that, they talked about Red's plans for the company and other things he was going to do. Lester also told him some of what had happened, leaving out other parts like the fact that he'd broken into Nasty's lab.

  "So, you have powers now?" Red said.

  "Yep, but I'm still trying to figure them out." Lester smacked his fist together turning them for a moment into water.

  "How did that happen?"

  "Don't really know," Lester lied, "One day I accidentally hit my hand and it became water."

  "Funny." Red stopped for a while. "It actually reminds me of that cat thing we fought back then when you were with us."

  "A bit like that, but I can't control it as well, and I get tired after using it a lot."

  "But still, it was enough to make you a villain."

  "Yeah," Lester said, but he was interrupted by a buzz from his phone, and he glanced at it. It was a job alert. "It seems there's some high paying job in this new app that I got."

  "The Calamity and Woe app?" Red said, sounding curious. "Let's see what it says."

  Lester opened the message, and they looked at it together.

  Bodyguard needed!!!! URGENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

  Meet as soon as possible before 21:00 at Greenrose Road 4.

  The assignment will take less than 12 hours.

  Requirements: Minimum ranged combat E-rank. Minimum mental resistance E-rank. Minimum damage resistance E-rank.

  Payment 5000$

  Lester's eyes focused on the sum. Five thousand for less than one day. That was beyond excellent.

  "What do you think?" Lester asked Red.

  "It's a bit too much money. One would ordinarily get around one thousand for a job like this. But on the other hand, it does have the urgency, which would be a reason to pay slightly more."

  "So?"

  "I'll put it this way. They would not outright kill you. But there might be something they're not telling you. And in my opinion, the mental resistance requirement is always a red flag."

  Lester thought about it. Would there be hypnotic assassins after the person he was to protect. If that was indeed the case, he did have the required mental resistance, which would hopefully protect him from any mental whammy thrown his way. And his damage resistance was C-rank, which meant that he would probably survive. And five thousand was a lot of money. And he was a villain now, and villains weren't afraid of a little danger.

  "I'm thinking of taking it," Lester said.

  Red gave out a hushed grunt. "Just be careful then."

  At that moment, Lester noticed the time. "It's in half an hour. And Greenrose Road is on the other side of the city."

  Red took a sip of his beer and smiled. "You better hurry kid."