The Wrong Genre

Blame

"How long do you think it will be before they come back?" Kyle asked, intermittently fiddling with his sheathes and glancing towards the door. He had always been on edge among the villains, although the last few weeks had calmed that marginally, but his anxiety seemed to have skyrocketed after Zack's story.

"My cousin gets mad quickly, but he also pretends to get over it just as fast so he should be back soon," Zack beamed, seemingly back to his usual cheerful self. "He's also probably had time to think about how bad that outburst made him look, so he'll be a lot calmer."

"Good, we have bigger problems than his ego to deal with," Interdit sneered.

"Are you all done with the sob-fest?"

"Speak of the devil," Flashmob muttered darkly.

"Hi cousin, have a good walk~?" Zack grinned.

"Someone needs to explain to me," Maestro began, completely ignoring Zack's greeting, "how you all managed to lose Zakum." Since they had seemingly not taken his advice to get rid of Zack before he got back, he was apparently determined to pretend that they had.

"It was probably during the grid search," Romulus spoke up after a moment of silence, looking like he already knew what Maestro's reaction to this was going to be.

The older man paused for a beat, then turned to look at Romulus with a stern glare.

"You didn't go in pairs."

It wasn't a question.

"I sent the part-timers in pairs," Romulus replied, but he clearly didn't think it would help his case much.

"It was more efficient that way," Flashmob snapped in his defense, standing explosively.

"Was it, now?" Maestro snarled, turning to her with a disgusted sneer. "And how did that work out? Did you find Rabastian quickly?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Did everyone return safely?" Flashmob's knees buckled at the accusations, falling back into her chair as fast as she had stood even as she continued to deny weakly.

"We thought that—"

"What was the greater good that came from cutting those corners?" He snarled, sweeping up to the table to leer down upon the heroes. "If you were going to make one of the rookie mistakes about numbers, the least you could have done was utilize the comm links that I provided to you all. Where were those? Were any of you wearing them?"

There was a beat of silence.

"Not even your minions were wearing theirs," Interdit sneered. Maestro threw Romulus a dark look.

"Your pay's getting cut for a month," he snapped, and Romulus, rather than protesting, looked down at the floor in shame.

"I wore mine," Stravarius piped up, "but no one else had theirs so I guess it didn't do much good at all."

Maestro hesitated a moment, eyes narrowing as he considered this.

"Zakum wasn't wearing one either," Vertigo pointed out, hoping to get the villain to calm himself. Zack had said he would be calmer, and she supposed he at least wasn't attacking anyone, but she wouldn't call this verbal tirade calm. However, he only waved a hand in dismissal.

"You should have been able to hear Zakum," he frowned, "his is integrated into his system, he doesn't have one externally so he always has one." There was a tense moment as Maestro pondered this. Then his eyes widened, and although it was hard to see with his darker coloring his skin seemed to pale marginally as something occurred to him. "You didn't think he had one, did you?"