The rest of the school day blew by in a breeze. I couldn't stop thinking about my joh interview later this evening.
Superheros and supervillians were a common place thing in today's world as even though the majority of people never awakened powers, millions of people still awakened every year.
Many of them turned to a life of crime, choosing to use their powers for stealing and destruction instead of making the world a better place.
Luckily, there were some people who used their powers for good, fighting against the criminals in a selfless battle of morals and keeping them under control.
I never really dreamed of being a bad guy or a good one, hoping instead to use my potential powers to make money legally in a normal, powered job field.
Now though, it seemed like I'd be joining the side of evil even without any kind of power to help me succeed.
The school bell finally rang, signaling the end of the learning day, and I follow the stream of students through the front doors and out onto the street.
I looked at a business card the man in the lion mask had handed me after I signed the contract.
The card had an omega symbol in bold on the front of it with Omega Employment Opportunities stenciled in bold lettering across the front.
I flip the card over to read the back side of the card, where the man had scribbled an address and time for my interview with his golden pen.
4pm, only thirty minutes after school let out. Luckily the address was only a couple blocks away from school in one of the business centers of the projects so it would only take me around ten minutes to arrive.
Deciding I had nothing better to do, I started walking down the dilapidated street in the direction of the address.
It took me exactly ten minutes to arrive at the front of the building where my interview was scheduled.
The building was a simple concrete structure, just like the majority of the cheaply constructed buildings in the projects. It had two stories with no windows at all, and a glass, double door as the entrance.
As I walked through the double doors, I was fairly unimpressed. The lobby of the building had dirty, white, rubber tile floors with a couple rows of fold out chairs set up along a wall on my left.
The entire lobby was empty, except for myself a woman wearing a smiling, silver lion mask seated behind a white, fold out table in the center of the room.
I walk towards the woman, but before I can speak, she turns to face me and speaks in a cheery voice.
"Welcome Mr. Corsair. The hiring manager will be with you in a moment so please take a seat!"
After she finishes speaking, she turns to face forwards again and I nod before sitting quietly in a chair.
I stay sitting for a while, probably close to 15 minutes, watching the woman while I wait.
She continues facing forwards, not budging an inch except for the rise and fall of her chest while she breathes.
Suddenly, without any sign of change, she turns to face me once more and speaks.
"The hiring manager will see you now Mr. Corsair. Please head down the hall and enter the door on your left."
I nod before getting up and head towards a hallway at the very back of the room.
The hallways only extends around twenty feet, ending in a split between two doors on either side.
I knock on the door to my left and wait, before I head a masculine "Enter" from the other side.
I turn the doorknob and enter the room before closing the door behind me. The room is completely different than the drab white tiling of the lobby and as I turn to face forwards again I take it all in.
The room is fairly small, obviously some kind of office, as it only had enough room to house two occupants and a desk.
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The desk itself looked to be made of some kind of expensive wood that was covered in an exotic, dark, finish.
The floor is covered in a short carpet, colored in a deep red, with a leather chair on either side of the desk.
Behind the desk stands the man I had talked with at the job fair, albeit a lot less robotic from before as he gestures towards the empty chair on my side of the desk and addresses me.
"Welcome Mr. Corsair. Please take a seat and make yourself comfortable."
As I take my seat and am pleasantly surprised at how comfortable the chair is. The man also takes his seat and opens a drawer in the desk before retrieving a stack of documents and placing them on the desk, pushing them towards me so I can read through them.
"We've compiled a list of potential employers for you that meet your criteria. The main thing between them is that they either offer sizeable compensation for unpowered individuals, or they offer scholarship opportunities for promising new recruits. Some of the employers we have listed here offer both, but the line of work they do is riskier than most."
I start thumbing through the stack of papers and begin to set aside a few that seemed interesting to me.
"What do you mean by riskier?" I say.
"Some of our clients tend to dabble in more dangerous activities that would potentially put someone without powers like yourself at great risk. I can't discuss specifics of those with you until you sign the non disclosure agreement but I can assure you that our company enforces a mandatory health insurance policy on those kinds of jobs. If you would like to know exactly what they would entail, you can sign the agreement and I would be happy to explain them in detail."
As he finishes speaking, he reaching into the drawer again before pulling out a massive document that must have been close to a hundred pages!
He places the NDA on the desk with a thump and slides it over to me with a pen he produced from his jacket.
I speed read through most of it, but basically if I sign the NDA, I won't be able to tell anyone about what I hear within this room, sue the company, or testify in court against them.
I pick up the the pen and sign my name on the dotted line and he pulls the papers back towards him.
"Excellent!" He says. "Now, what would you like to know?"
"This job." I say while pointing at a contract with a sizeable pay grade and a full ride scholarship to boot. "What's the catch with this one?"
"Ah, that would be Dr. Finkelstein. He's a very wealthy customer but he tends to get into quite a bit of shenanigans with heros. He focuses on mainly media personality crimes. For example, last year he stole all of the art from the Mega City art exhibit and replaced them with crayon drawing of the original paintings. This caused quite the uproar in the artistic community which I'm sure is exactly what he wants."
"So he likes pissing people off? That doesn't sound too bad."
"Yes he does like irritating those he deems uncultured, but his crimes can often times result in hero intervention and result in injured employees. No one has been killed so far but we've had quite a few complaints and his employee retention is abysmal."
"What about this one?" I ask, pointing at another contract.
The man continues awnsering any questions I might have about the different contracts until we'd gone through the entire stack. The whole process took nearly an hour but the man never seemed to lose his patience with me.
Many of the jobs for unpowered people were fairly simple. Most of them had you working in a support role, fixing gadgets or doing household chores for the villians and their powered henchmen, with decent pay and benefits as compensation.
Some of the jobs were more dangerous. One of them was requesting lab rats for science experiments but was paying a ridiculous sum of money. I was almost tempted to take that contract until the man informed me that the last employee to sign that contract ended up with an extra arm.
At the end of the hour I finally decided on signing the employee contract for Dr. Finklestein, as he was offering a very comfortable pay grade with a full ride scholarship program.
He also had an excellent team of lawyers, according to the man, so I figured if I got knocked around by some heros and wound up in jail, I wouldn't end up serving too much time.
Apparently there were even laws that protected henchmen from undue prosecution and physical harm. If you surrendered peacefully to a hero, they wouldn't be able to use violence against you as long as you cooperate.
After I finished signing my name to the contract the man brought out another piece of paper with a bunch of fill in the blank questions.
It was mostly straight forward, with questions like "Do you have any next of kin?" Or "What are your awakened abilites?"
According to the man I could just cross out any questions about abilities since I had none, and that included most of the questions, so I breezed through the form.
Finally I came to the last question. "What is your villian name?"
"What should I put for this question?" I ask the man. "I'm just a henchman so do I need to fill this in?"
"It's not required." He replies. "But it will help if you get arrested, as the police can't ask you for your real name under the law, even if you're just a henchman."
I press the pen against the bottom of my chin and think for a moment before writing down what I think would be a cool villian name.
As I write Corsair down on the paper, the man nods and hums to himself before taking the paper and contract and filing them away in his drawer.
He then takes out a piece of paper and writes an address and time down on it, before handing it to me to look at.
0730, 3434 West Ave.
"A pleasure doing business with you Corsair." The man says as we both stand and he shakes my hand. "I hope this works out for you and if it doesn't, feel free to visit us again."
I thank the man before pocketing the piece of paper and exiting the room. As I head back through the lobby, the woman is gone, along with her table and all of the chairs. Leaving only the white tiles and walls surrounding me as a walk through the glass doors and onto the street.
As I exit the building, the sun is just starting to set, and I turn down the street to make my way back to my apartment to get a hot meal and a good night's rest before starting my job tomorrow.