[h2]Raymond Haywood: The Cruise Room[/h2]
'With all due respect,' Raymond proffered as Benito chugged his vial of serum, the gaze of his mask matching that of the badly-scarred villain who had suggested violence was not the way, 'there is a reason the saying goes "to cut off the head of the snake". One does not collapse an organisation by eliminating its peons, for there are always more peons. You have to remove the head - that is, you have to ensure the organisation does not reform, and the best way of doing so is to remove those that organise it to begin with. And when all rests on a single lynchpin...'

He didn't get to say more than that, as the man who had drunk the vial exhibited what appeared to be a new power outright, shortly before blacking out and taking the others in the room with him into unconsciousness.

[hr]

Raymond came to about the same time as everyone else in the room. Scenes of death, destruction if one would, on a cosmic scale continued to roll through his mind, planet after planet vanishing as he played back the scene in his mind again and again. No wonder, then, that everyone was as affected as he was - to the extent that one villain, the one hailed as Whipstitch by the Broker, even fled the bar entirely, muttering something to herself about manipulation.

Forcing his breathing rate to slow, feeling his heartbeat steady as he calmed himself, Headhunter paid attention to each of the speakers that followed. One villain made the obvious point: Patriarch likely already had a spy within their ranks. He’d be interested to receive those vials, and he’d want to have a chat with the Broker to determine how he got them. Another simply asked what the Broker had done, as if none of what had happened was already obvious. And a third, the same man in fact who had so aggressively demanded a vial, completely changed tack and agreed to purchase a single vial the same way everyone else was. Had the trigger event affected the man so intensely? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

One last speaker. This time, Chatterbox opened his mouth, simply to confirm his belief that the aforementioned Benito had, indeed, been granted his own set of abilities, as well as asking just a tad comically that any others interested in a vial didn’t take one in the bar again. And on that note, Raymond felt it might be appropriate to determine what exactly Benito had done to make that glass vanish.

‘Benito, was it?’ he asked, raising his voice just enough to catch the man’s attention. No need to suggest he’d just triggered - because of course he had. Instead, he wanted to clarify precisely how, and so uttered ‘If you wouldn’t mind doing us a favour, perhaps you could try to take another glass of water?’