Every supervillain heist needed a Steve — a henchman who scoped the area ahead of the job, gave the all clear, watched for police or heroic intervention, and stayed clear and un-arrested so he could make the call to the Service if the villain and other henches were arrested. The Service would then clear out the villain’s lair, call lawyers — do whatever was necessary. The Steve’s job was to be unnoticeable. To be whoever he needed to be at the time. To be no one at all.
The Third Tier Crook called Leather was a good rainmaker — she paid well and took reasonable care of her henches. The Steve assigned to her was content with his lot, even if there were aspects to the Crook he actively hated. But when Leather arranged for a rock journalist to spend a week as a hostage, interviewing Leather and her team, the Steve finds himself in more than one situation he never expected.
But then, no one ever said being the Steve was easy.
“Being the Steve” is a novella length work taking place concurrently with “Interviewing Leather.” Its first rough draft is now available on Patreon for subscribers at the $5 level and above. November and December’s $15 level subscribers will get a DRM free copy of the final when it gets published in early 2018. For those who want to know more about the supervillain support services… well, that’s in there. But honestly… there’s a lot more to being the Steve — especially this Steve — than that.
I absolutely loved this piece. It was, in may ways, a perfect thing.–Patreon user “Somebody Else,” quoted here largely because it made my bloody week
