"Alright, this should be the place." I said as we stopped in front of a somewhat shabby-looking apartment complex.

Jess nodded and looked around. There weren't really a lot of good hiding spots around. "So, how are we going to play this?" she asked.

"I originally wanted to show up in costume and just do it at his place, but now that you're here we can be a bit subtler." I scratched my head. "At least that's what I would've said, but this is a pretty lousy area for doing things stealthily."

My roommate leaned against the wall, deep in thought. "Well....I guess...." She continued mumbling for a minute or so before snapping her fingers. "You're drunk!"

I turned toward her. "Excuse me?"

"Not literally. I'll act like ya are. Ya do look washed up enough to be a midday drunk." I frowned slightly. "In a cute way." she hastily added. "I'll act like ya are my sloshed bestie, put my arm around ya to help ya walk, and escort your stumbling butt back home. Problem solved."

"Right....But my body will be completely limp. I can't 'stumble back home' when I am incapable of even stumbling." I argued. I looked at my phone. My target, Charles, should make his way to work very soon. We had to hurry.

Jess shook her head with a grin and pulled up her sleeve, revealing her bracelet.

It was possible, I guessed. Still..

"Are you sure you can simulate a person walking with this thing? Bipedal movement is really complex to pull off, you know."

"Oh, ye of little faith. Don't worry about it. It's gonna be a tiddy tad more difficult than my usual stuff, but it's not like I have to copy an elegant strut or something. Drunken waddling should be doable. Trust me. I won't disappoint ya."

I looked her in the eye. Despite her casual smile, I could see both nervousness and determination reflecting back at me. Before I could answer the front door of the building opened and the man of the hour stepped out. I turned back to Jess. "I do trust you. See you this evening?"

Her smile grew wider. "Ya bet. Let's do something. Hang at the BHF or go to a restaurant or stuff."

I gave her a curt nod and focused on my target. "Yeah, let's. Wish me luck."

------------

The walk to Diamond Hills was very uneventful, though I had to admit Charles was surprisingly comfortable to reside in. I usually hated the steep drop-off in physical fitness when I took over a regular person, but he seemed to be someone who worked out quite regularly. He was also surprisingly well groomed, with meticulously styled hair and a neatly trimmed beard.

The inside of the booth was a lot simpler than I expected. A monitor and three buttons, and that was it. With a yawn I settled in and waited for my workday to begin.

It didn't take very long for the first guest to arrive. Well, probably not the actual first. Heroes who went on foot or via their Power could just waltz in the front door. The first to arrive by vehicle.

A fairly modest car drove up to the gate and the driver rolled down the window. The system was fairly simple. Scanners built into the booth were able to automatically detect a membership card within the vehicle standing before it without the hero even having to pull it out. If one was detected, the club profile of the corresponding hero showed up on my monitor. Now all I had to do was check if the membership had expired or was still active, make sure the Hero wasn't banned for some reason, and compare the photo on record with the person in front of me.

In this case, everything seemed fine. The profile showed a hero named Red Tornado. Membership was active, no permanent or temporary bans past and present, and the slightly goofy-looking redhead matched the picture on the screen. This was a lot easier than I expected.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Hey, Charles. Everything cool?" he asked while leaning slightly out of the window.

"Of course, sir." I tried to be as polite as possible but immediately recognized my mistake when Red Tornado looked at me with a somewhat confused look on his face.

"Why are you suddenly so formal, man? Everything alright?"

Damn. I myself had been a member of the DH-Club back then, but I don't ever recall anyone bothering to get to know the parking gate guy. The staff inside, sure. But we spent like 30 seconds per visit in front of the gate. Not nearly enough time to build up even a casual relationship. It seemed things had really changed.

"Sorry. Lots of stress at the moment. Nothing I want to dump on you." I said sheepishly and let out a sigh I hoped did not come off as too exaggerated.

"Alright, if you say so. But if you need anything, just talk to me. I'll set you up."

"Will do." I nodded and pressed the button to open the gate. Once the hero had driven through I wiped some sweat from my brow. Of course, Charles had to be a chatty people person. My luck never failed.

I was going to stew in my self-pity for a while longer but was interrupted by the next car driving up.

The next few hours were pure torture. I had nurtured a silent hope in my heart that maybe Red Tornado had been the unusually chatty one, but that spark was soon brutally extinguished. Every single hero, (Every. Single. One.) who drove up to the gate thought it best to regale me with all manner of inane, superfluous bullshit, and since Charles was evidently the kind of hyper-personable weirdo that thrived under such circumstances I had to pretend to be too.

Now of course, I could've just continued the "I'm stressed right now." ruse, it had worked well to keep Red Tornado from lingering too long, but the risk was too great. What if a hero with mind-reading Powers came through and, worried about him, decided to check what was up? What if a hero with lie-detecting Powers started to inquire about the circumstances? Even if the chances of that happening were incredibly low, the best way to manage this was to arouse as little suspicion and/or unwarranted attention as possible.

Four hours into his shift I felt like I was in some kind of weird mirror-universe with reversed social norms. I had never in my life had this many unnecessarily long and drawn-out conversations in a row. Hero after hero drove up and just started blabbering and blabbering about everything and nothing. Small talk, personal problems, relationship updates, things that happened recently, family drama, blah blah blah blahblahblah. Some of these conversations lasted up to 10 minutes. Honeybadger and I used to get our hair cut in the club, and talking to the hairdresser could take a bit of time when we weren't talking to each other, but the guy at the parking gate booth?

Most of the heroes who came to visit were known to me, but I didn't really know them personally. I was already an Enlightened when I joined the club and we usually just stuck to ourselves or other high-profile heroes. The only silver lining of this whole disastrous experience was the occasional unorthodox ride a hero would show up in.

Cinders came in a pumpkin-shaped car like the carriage her namesake rode in in the fairy tale. Sovereign of the Sea had a motorbike modeled after a seahorse. Sir Knightley rode in on an actual goddamn golden horse.

Just when I was internally begging for someone or something to please put me out of my misery I was thrown a curveball I did not expect.

Driving up to the gate was a car that was very familiar to me. The blinding white sheen of the Rolls-Royce meshed surprisingly well with the golden accents. The hood ornament was a shining sun, flickering and waving like it was actually on fire.

I had ridden in this car many times. Whenever there was an event somewhere or one of the non-fliers was feeling too lazy to walk the Enlightened would use this to move from place to place.

I gulped audibly as the gaudy vehicle came to a stop in front of the gate. The noise signifying the successful scan of a membership card caused me to turn towards the monitor and my stomach twisted into knots, even before the yellow-tinted window rolled all the way down.

"Hey, Charles. How are you today?" Honeybadger asked, looking at me with a serene smile. Next to Honeybadger's profile, there were two more. One for Future Guardian, one of my old colleagues, and one for a hero named Animator, an Enlightened who joined after my time. Those two must've been sitting in the car too.

"H-hey.." I started before mentally slapping myself. I had to keep it together. "Sorry, frog in my throat. Hey there, Honey." From my past conversations as Charles I had found out that he was irritatingly personal and playful. "I'm as fine as a guy can be nowadays. How about you? Anything interesting happen lately? Anything spicy?"

This entire day was already bizarre enough, but this made absolutely no sense. Firstly, Luisa always came on foot. She hated being confined in a car. Secondly, she not only hated being confined in a car, she hated driving one even more.

I frantically pushed down the whirlwind of feelings and questions and bottled them up as best I could.

I was Charles now.

Not Mallory.

Charles is not distraught right now.

Charles is relaxed.

By the time I had recollected myself, I caught the tail-end of her sentence. "...lly boring. You'd think it was the other way around."

I chuckled slightly. "The whims of fate are mysterious indeed." While I was desperately hoping that she would just tell me to let her through and end the conversation I had an idea. It was probably a bad one and not really relevant to anything right now, but the urge to try it was overwhelming.

"Apropos fate, Honey, is there anyone special in your life right now?" I knew Luisa well. She wasn't shy to talk about her love life, but she wasn't eager to share either. My gamble here was that I had to hope Charles hadn't asked her of his own accord in the recent past.

"Come on, Charles, not you too." She rolled her eyes. "I'm happy being single. I am." To anyone else, this probably would have sounded sincere, but I knew that tone of voice. She was anything but.

"Me too? Who else pesters you?" I was genuinely curious.

Lu sighed deeply. "Angie. She is constantly up my ass about how I should move on and live a little, but I'm fine. I'm married to the job." She was going to continue but caught herself quickly and cleared her throat. "Sorry for the rant. It's a sensitive topic for me." She looked inside the car, probably at the in-built screen. "Oh damn, look at the time."

Even though that sentence wasn't directed at me, I did. To my utter shock almost 20 minutes had passed. Had I zoned out that much while she was talking about her day? My musings were interrupted by her voice."We have to go, can you let us through?"

"Anything for you." I said with a smile and pressed the button.

"We'll catch up next time. Bye." she mumbled as the car hurriedly sped through the now-open gate.

"Bye..." I muttered quietly as it closed itself again. I looked up at the sky, lost in thought, still keeping my emotions bottled up. When I took this job I didn't expect it to turn out this weird and uncomfortable.

What the hell was going on here? What did I get myself into?