The doctor led me into an amazing room. The side walls and ceiling are fairly close together, but the back wall seemed to stretch far into the distance. Along each wall is a clothing rack, filled with colorful costumes for any power you could think of.
Just inside the room sat a simple wooden desk with a short little man wearing a tuxedo seated behind it.
As soon as we enter, he hops up from his chair, causing his head to only be a few inches taller than his desk as he walks around to greet us.
"Corsair, I'd like you to meet my friend and personal tailor Mr. Thread Needle. He's been handling our costumes personally for the last few years and has done a remarkable job!" I shake the short man's hand while the doctor speaks.
"It's nice to meet you Corsair, I've been looking forward to making your costume ever since the doctor told us we'd be getting a new member!"
The doctor turned to me. "I'll leave you with Mr. Thread Needle to get you sorted while I attend to some other matters. Make sure you tell him exactly what you want, he can make anything work!"
And with that the doctor left me with the tailor, who led me to a small platform, surrounded by mirrors behind his desk. He grabbed a measuring tape and started to take my measurements as he asked me a few questions about what I might want.
"So, have you decided on anything yet?" He asked. "Or do we need to brainstorm from scratch?"
"I have no idea what I want." I admit. "I didn't even know I needed a costume until just a few minutes ago!"
"No problem! I'll bring out some basic costumes designs for you to try on to see how they look on you and we can go from there!"
With that, he finished taking my measurements and walked off towards the back of the room before returning a few minutes later with a stack of costumes taller than him!
The next couple of hours consisted of me stepping into various kinds of costumes. From glittery tutus, to camouflaged combat uniforms, the tailer had them all, and made me try them all.
I eventually settled on a simplistic design. I would wear a sharp black suit with a bright red undershirt and a black bow tie. My face would be covered by a simplistic black mask with small slits in it for my eyes and mouth. The mask also doubled as protection, being able to stop any small caliber bullets or debris that might come my way, as well as being a functioning gas mask, allowing me to ignore tear gas and pepper spray.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Simplistic, yet elegant. The tailor even included a fake red rose that was sown into my pocket so it wouldn't fall out. It's the perfect balance between form and function.
After finishing my fitting, the tailor led me back to the main room and several whistles greeted me as I entered.
"Woah kid, you really know how to dress!" Spoke Whey with an impressed eyebrow raised. The doctor who was seated on a chair, jumped to his scaly feet and began clapping his hands together emphatically.
"Excellent! Absolutely excellent! I'd expect nothing less from one of my employees! Come, come we're about to have dinner!"
Royal pain and Eye Wash simply nodded in agreement with the doctor and I followed the tailor to see what we had to eat.
On the table in the middle of the polar bear rug, is an assortment of food so impressive, I thought it may have been Thanksgiving.
There were chicken wings, chicken fingers, cheese burgers, hot dogs, whole racks of ribs, giants slabs of bacon, huge corn cobs with butter, garlic buttered potatoes, French fries, grilled asparagus, and a huge rhubarb pie for desert.
Whey seemed to notice my astonishment at the display of food and spoke up, snapping me out of the daze.
"Stop gawking at all the food and eat up kid. I've got to wait till everyone gets their fill before I can really dig in or no one would get to eat anything!"
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Taking that as words of encouragement, I grabbed a healing plate of everything and sat down to enjoy it.
It didn't take me long to finish my plate and go back for seconds, and as soon as everyone had gathered their second plate, Whey started to eat.
It was an amazing yet somewhat disturbing sight. I had never seen someone shovel so much food into their mouth before in my entire life.
Whey was stuffing potatoes into his mouth, handfuls at a time and stripping corn off of the cob like an organic farming instrument. He was genociding chicken wings, as he'd grab a handful and stuff them into his mouth before spitting the bones back out. Nothing could compare to the way he at cheeseburgers though.
He began to stack patties on top of eachother like some cartoonish sandwich until the stack was taller than me! He would then put a single hamburger bun on either side of the stack and cram the whole thing down his throat!
I was somewhat sickened by the sight, but more intrigued at how the man could store so much food in his stomach! He must have eaten nearly a hundred pounds of food by the time I had finished my second plate, and he didn't seem to be slowing down!
After everyone finished, Whey kept eating, until after a short time, the entire table of food had disappeared and Whey went off to sleep, claiming he "had to save his energy for digestion"
I didn't question this one bit, as no one else seemed to think twice about it, so as Whey headed off to bed we began to talk.
I learned from the rest of the henchmen and the doctor that Whey had to eat nearly TWICE his body weight every day in order to stop himself from loosing muscle mass. His power allowed his muscles and bones to grow at an exponential rate, but it was at the cost of need an immense amount of protein and nutrients to sustain them.
Apparently he had originally wanted to be a hero, but the cost of keeping him fed had caused several smaller time hero agencies to reject him, and he wasn't powerful enough to make it in the big leagues, so that led him to the villian world.
The doctor had brought him into his employ early in his career, right after the doctor had fallen into a vat of radioactive crocodiles and had sued the crocodile company for a large settlement, allowing him to hire a few henchmen to help him out with missions that he fancied.
According to the doctor, he didn't really care about the "big time villiany stuff" because killing people or blowing up things was a big no-no in the professional powers world, so he stuck to small time jobs like beating up thugs or robbing banks.
A long time ago, when people first started awakening powers, alot of people got hurt or killed by heros and villians during their fights or scemes, so both sides decided to set the 3 golden rules of powered fighting.
1. Anyone who wears a mask cannot be unmasked by the authorities in order to protect their identity.
2. Anyone that surrenders to the other side will be treated fairly as a prisoner, and will not be harmed unjustly.
3. No bystanders are to be intentionally harmed. If a villian is to conduct a legal scheme, the civilians in the area must be given prior warning of the sceme and be offered a chance to leave the area. If a powered fight were to result in civilian casualties, both sides must cease fighting and help rescue the civilians.
According to the doctor, these rules kept the fights clean and stopped either side from recklessly destroying property and people lives.
This was all very interesting to me, as we never learned about any of this in school. I'm sure kids that went to powered academies would learn some kind of equivalent to this, but it was all new to me.
It honestly makes me feel a bit better about being unpowered. I could surrender and if they hurt me after that point, I could sue the hell out of their agency and pay for my school that way!
After informing the doctor of my plans he merely laughed, before telling me that "heros rarely hurt anyone these days, only the really powerful villians get into fights with heros. They might rough you up a bit, but no one wants to have to pay for medical bills so you be hurt too seriously."
My hopes of a lawsuit were dashed mercilessly upon the sharp rocks of reality. Still though, I could dream.
After our chat the doctor informed all of us that we had a "big job tomorrow so we better get some sleep".
He then led me to a hallway with several doors with the names of all the henchmen on them. Eventually we came to my door, and the doctor opened it to reveal my new living arrangements.
They were modest, yet comfortable, with a one room apartment with an attached bathroom. The floors were covered in white carpet, with a small bed on one wall.
There's a decent sized TV attached to the wall opposite of the bed, and a large refrigerator plugged into a socket on the wall as well.
"I didn't want to have to pay for a full sized kitchen when we have the one in the main room so I put a fridge in everyone's room in case you wanted to store your own snacks in here." Explained the doctor.
I thanked him, and he welcomed me to the lair once more before leaving to let me shower and sleep.
I stripped off my costume before walking into the bathroom. The shower is luckily stocked with a few different kinds of soaps and shampoos and a fluffy towel hangs on a bar on the wall next to it.
I take a nice hot shower for nearly 30 minutes, savoring the warmth of the water, before I get out and dry myself off.
Before I slide into bed, I look at my eyes in my new bathroom mirror, hoping that they might be different, and after seeing no change, I reluctantly crawl under my covers and turn off the light, drifting off into sleep.