Mark sat down across from Isoko at a nice restaurant in Central Citadel, saying, “So I have no money. I hope you’re paying.”
Isoko laughed. “I will pay. Don’t be too expensive of a date.”
Mark’s face was red. “Not a date.”
The waiter asked them, “Do you know what you would like to drink?”
“Lemonlime soda,” Isoko said. “I’d like to order the molcajete as well, for two, with extra tortillas.” She winked at Mark. “I’m buying, after all.”
Mark chuckled, maybe a little nervously, and told the waiter, “Lemonlime soda.”
The guy left with their order—
Isoko asked, “Did you research my grandmother?”
That was a much more comfortable topic.
“A little bit. I did. The Wandering Sage was a supervillain air kinetic from 1995 to 2035. She only retired recently— Well. 13 years ago. She still comes out to lay good weather down for kaiju fights, but other than that she is in seclusion? Ever since she did that kidnapping of some True Healer to get back 50 years of her life. Before that she was one of the usual villains doing their usual thing —which I still don’t rightly understand— of doing some sort of citywide readiness-test thing.”
Isoko smiled a little. “The story of the healer is a little more complicated than that, but that is the public tale. The real story is that mom got cancer and none of the healers could fix her, so grandma pulled a grandma and she jumped the line in a healer’s queue and simply kidnapped the one she needed. She let him go after she got what she needed, and she got 50 more years of life, but Crystal Tower came down hard on her. Her actions were unsanctioned and Glorious Man beat her up in a… semi-real fight, and forced her into retirement.
“Which brings me to the Villain Program.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. Sure; let’s just skip over a fight with Glorious Man. Okay.
Mark hadn’t read about that.
Isoko continued, “Normal villains do things like rob banks that are cleared to be robbed while hero teams try to stop them. It is pretty much sparring matches on real-world scales, so that teams can learn how to work together in real world scenarios. The villains participate because they’re allowed to keep what they steal out of the banks— the banks are always heavily secured in multiple ways beforehand, of course. Banks, museums, etcetera.
“Grandmother was a supervillain. She had a lair and heroes had to assault it and bring her to ‘justice’. Have you seen the videos? The shows still run on prime time. Even baselines can watch them.”
Mark shook his head. “No. Never saw them. I was raised… I found out I was raised in a fundamentalist Curtain Protocol land like, last month.”
Isoko’s eyebrows went up. “Oh! So you probably have a bad opinion of villains, then.”
“It’s probably a wrong opinion, yes,” Mark admitted.
Isoko laughed wonderfully. And then she said, “It’s basically just organized sparring. There are real injuries, but they try to keep that from happening. It’s mostly knives sharpening knives so that everyone is prepared for when the real monsters come out of the ocean. You can’t send your kaiju-killers out into the woods after horror stories, after all, but they still have to stay sharp. Grandma always says that untested steel breaks all the time.” She shrugged. “And it helps to keep everyone in everyone else’s business, so that society remains intact. It is not unlike that class I joined you for.”
Mark suddenly realized something deeply true. His mouth fell open a little, then he said, “You are a rich person! Just like all the others in that room!”
Isoko laughed. “I am not! You take that slander back right this instant.”
“… Well…” Mark adopted some words he had used in class, saying, “We can lay the veracity of that claim to the side, but I am rather sure you do know how to play this social game.”
Isoko smiled. “I am very bad at all of that and wanted to stay as far away from it as possible. You’re halfway decent at it and you might actually need to learn how to be better at it, but I will not suffer that fate.”
“This is that ‘some people are kaiju killers and some are not’ thing you said yesterday,” Mark continued, “Like, yes. I see that. But it’s too simplistic, right? I’d imagine that being in a city and being a… I'm sure there’s a name for them. One of the city heroes? Being one of those makes you develop bad habits? No one is actually trying to kill each other in those programs, after all.”
“Oh yes. Bad habits all around. It’s still the best way to multiply a person’s power into being able to kill a kaiju, though. Grandmother can clear the path for Glorious Man rather easily, tossing away all of the smaller monsters and making an actual clear path for him, but Glorious Man is the one who actually swings the sword— Err. ‘Throws the punch’, I suppose.” Isoko said, “Being on a team of 4 and going into the wilderness and hunting down those house-sized threats is actually the most dangerous profession for a hero.”
“They just call them monster slayers over on Daihoon.”
Isoko got a real excited look to her as she said, “That’s what I’m going to be! You saw how resistant I was to your Union. I can do that to every effect I’ve met so far, so I’m going to be the center of a team. I’ve already decided. I’m hoping for Paladin of Freyala, and then to join the Grand Guard of Aluatha.”
“I just read about those. They’re a guild-based agency, sort of like the Slayers, but more regimented?”
Isoko raised an eyebrow. “A Slayer, eh? You want to join those people?”
The waiter arrived with the molcajete, which Mark didn’t know or even really recognize. It was a big stone mortar, maybe, sizzling hot with meats, cheeses, and what looked like thin-sliced cactus on top of it. It came with a tray filled with tortillas and a side of beans and yellow rice. It smelled spicy and quite good, actually. Mark had never seen anything like it before.
The server asked if they wanted anything else, and Isoko politely said no. Mark also said no. Isoko was already digging in as Mark put a tortilla on his plate to start.
Mark asked, “What’s wrong with the Slayers? They’re a rather mercenary outfit, yes, but they’re well respected over there… from what I’ve read, anyway. Also, is this cactus?”
“It is cactus! It’s one of the best parts, and I have no idea what kind of cactus it is at all.” Isoko took the big cactus leaf off of the conglomeration of melted meats and cheeses and started cutting it up, before she handed half of it over onto Mark’s plate, saying, “The Slayers are better than adventurers but if you want to be allowed into any organizations then you… Hmm. Actually, you could do fine anywhere you go, I think. The Slayers have organized contracts for monster kills… The Slayers are rather deeply affiliated with Xerkona. Is that why you like them?”
“I just found out they existed three weeks ago, but there was a near-friend I had who was very enthusiastic about them, and about forgoing all demands of outside authority upon her life. She ended up signing with the Slayers and going over to Daihoon two weeks ago.” Mark had a bite of the cactus. It was tough. “The cactus is tough?”
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Isoko bit through the cactus with platinum teeth. She paused. She swallowed. “Is it? Maybe it is.”
Mark laughed.
Isoko said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what was your plan before… Everything?”
Mark found it easy to tell her, “Go to Daihoon with a friend and sign up for a settlement expansion expedition. Maybe see about making a life out there. I just didn’t want to be a brawny, and so I got tangled up in… a lot. Anyway! The idea was to go see the Two Worlds, kill monsters, and then maybe come home with a lot of money or maybe not. That idea changed a lot, and now I know I’m going to be the center for a team… theoretically, anyway.”
Isoko chuckled once. “Oh yes. I see why you would like the Slayers, then. They’re very worldly; respected, but with few real attachments or responsibilities.”
“That’s what I heard, too. What are you going to do with the Grand Guard of Aluatha?”
“The family has cousins in Aluatha, so I was going to go there. Be a part of that. I am not suitable for a kaiju killer program at all. Not even support. I’m planning on wilderness patrols with regiments of people and then running if we encounter anything that needs running from. I’ll probably be a healer/support, because with Platinum Body I can ensure I survive most things, so my team can survive even more.”
Mark smiled softly at that thought. “Almost everyone here is planning on being a healer of some sort. I never really planned on that, but I like that idea, too.”
Isoko arched an eyebrow as she said, “The best form of healer is one that ensures the enemies do no damage, so yes, you will be a very good ‘healer’.”
Mark felt a little embarrassed. Quietly, he admitted, “It was too easy to just put people down. It doesn't feel right. The only people that withstood it at all were those with different bodies than normal. I imagine that’s a normal problem for Freyalan healing, though.”
“That’s a well-known problem; weird body types make it harder to use. You overcame that. It’ll only get easier for you as your Power grows.”
“You’ll be able to shrug off everything, though, right?”
“That's the hope! I’m glad Platinum Body allows me to shrug off most things. It’s scary out there. You meet one minder monster and it’s all over for most people. Fortunately those are pretty rare, and almost all of them are hive-mind monsters that prevent the rise of other minder monsters in the same area.”
Mark had taken quite a monster-prep class back when he was under Curtain Protocol, but he knew he didn’t know much when it came to the true capabilities of monsters.
Mark asked, “75% of all common monsters are just malformations of mundane creatures and plants, aren’t they?”
Isoko looked happy to begin, “First you got the enlargements. A bigger, badder creature. That’s technically a malformation, at about 35% of all monsters…”
They spoke of monsters for a good hour as they ate Mexican food. It was a good lunch. It was good company. It was almost like hanging out with Sally again, but very different.
Mark needed to give her a call, if he even could. Where was she? What was she doing?
It wasn’t till later, when Mark was in his room working on Two World History coursework, that he connected Isoko, who was Japanese, and the Mexican food at lunch to Aluatha which was on the other side of Mexico, on Daihoon. He wondered if Mexican was popular in Aluatha, because he was pretty sure that it wasn’t that popular in Japan.
… Or maybe Mexican food was popular in Japan? Crystal Tower was in Japan, after all, and that was Earth’s center for superheroing.
For a moment, Mark thought of being a ‘proper superhero’, of ‘putting down villains’ for a ‘day job’ and then killing kaiju every other month. It was an interesting idea.
Mark hated the idea of using his Power negatively on other people, though. It was all sorts of wrong.
He was glad to have ‘sparred’ with some people with the offensive version of Union, though; it had been a good learning experience. Mark was pretty sure that most of the people he fought felt the same way…
So maybe there was use in the Villain Program?
… Eh!
Mark was still going to do the monster-killing and exploring-the-world thing. But backup plans were always good…
Mark flicked through his tablet, to search Memphi, where his uncle and his uncle’s husband lived, and where Mark would go in 7-ish months to reconnect with family. Did they have a Villain Program? They were a tier 4 city, after all, which was a lot more than Orange City’s tier 2. Mark was pretty sure they had—
“Yup,” Mark said, as he looked over a site dedicated to the ‘Villains In Memphi’, or VIM. “They do have a Villain Program.”
Mark ended up spending the rest of the night reading about the hero/villain programs all throughout the world. He had always thought of the idea of villains as completely idiotic, but, yeah, everything he read about ‘the purpose of the Villain Program’, according to various sites, was either to ‘provide entertainment’ or to ‘sharpen young heroes against known threats’ or, from the more cynical sites, to ‘give humanity something to focus on besides the monsters’ or rather ‘to delude humanity into doing/thinking X or Y or Z’.
Mark didn’t know what to make of those claims.
He moved on.
Wandering Sage was pretty much the same as Mark had researched last night, but it was different to look at her now, after meeting Isoko. The old woman was bombastic in her old videos of capturing heroes and ‘ransoming’ them to the city for money, but she also showed up for every kaiju battle, in the background of every wide-angle shot, there she was, clearing the sky for Glorious Man to punch off a kaiju’s skull. The front-facing site for Wandering Sage, visited through Crystal Tower’s page, had Wandering Sage’s greatest (read: most commercially successful/popular) stories about how she threatened to freeze or heat Tokyo to unbearable temperatures unless her call-outs against various heroes (all of them rookies) were met in battle, in places of her choosing (Also here’s a link to her video page with those battles).
Crystal Tower ranked her as ‘Supervillain – Retired yet working’—
Mark’s breath caught as he read something he didn’t expect to read.
Mistress Storm of Orange City, who Addashield had murdered in the flyby, was trained by Wandering Sage.
There was Mistress Storm’s rookie video of her fight against the ‘ancient crone’ Wandering Sage, with her white hair flowing everywhere during the battle in the sky over Tokyo Bay. It was before Wandering Sage had kidnapped the True Healer and gotten de-aged. Wandering Sage had trained Mistress Storm.
Mark hadn’t known that.
Somehow, Mark found himself watching a video of Wandering Sage giving a eulogy for Mistress Storm. Wandering Sage was dressed in mourning blacks, a veil over her young-looking face, as she spoke in front of big pictures of Mistress Storm. She spoke of her former student saving the world every other month with her husband, Red Thunder, of how they did their famous flybys, and how they would both be missed.
Wind whipped across two blanket-covered statues behind Wandering Sage.
White stone statues of Red Thunder and Mistress Storm stood revealed, under the light of day.
Wandering Sage spoke clearly and without any anger at all, as she said, “These statues will go into the Hall of Heroes, to stand with the rest of the heroes of this world who have lost their lives in the course of duty to us all. The statues were made with loving care by Glorious Man himself. Addashield’s Dragon Son has donated a thousand kilos of adamantium to Crystal Tower in recompense for his father’s sins against humanity, for his father’s murder of Mistress Sto—”
She cut herself off.
She ended her speech there.
The video ended.
Mark had some emotions he didn’t know what to do with, so he buried those emotions and went on to other research.
He gained some topics for tomorrow’s Social Club party.
The Hero/Villain Program. Asking if the big-power/small-power split between kaiju killers and normal monster hunters was real, and to what degree. Team Building and Power balancing within a team. And finding a potential team to go on a training exercise run somewhere out in the real world—
“Oh,” Mark said, “And I need to go get my Power Level numbers checked… I’ll do that tomorrow, before the Social Club…” He shuddered, shivering a little, as he thought about actually going to Social Club. Mark got out of his chair and shook himself a little. “It’s just nerves. Nothing but nerves—”
He would face bigger things, in time, than a party full of nobles and otherwise.
Dragons, kaiju, and real problems.
In all likelihood, the worst thing that could come of tomorrow would be a bit of embarrassment. The best thing would be finding some people to go on a training mission with, or finding out about the world and what was happening among the upper echelons of society.
Addashield’s Dragon ‘Son’ was still making waves out there, trying to become an accepted member of humanity.
Mark still didn’t know what to make of that.