“Oh shit, Jake, are you okay?” I heard a man’s voice, as if from a distance. A few moments later I realized I was lying on the floor and my nose and the back of my head were hurting.
I groaned and tried to scoot up to sit on my butt instead of lying on my back. I winced as someone pressed a cold, damp rag into my face. I didn’t think my nose was broken, but I definitely had a nosebleed, and hitting the floor, stunned, on my back, hadn’t helped the back of my head any. I had a serious headache, as I glanced blearily upwards at Jerry, one of the guys that was on my floor at the apartment complex.
Like me, he lived at the complex to go to school, but unlike me, he wasn’t hurting as badly for rent and tuition. I mostly tried to refuse to be jealous of his trust fund. He would be graduating with a business law degree, like most of the more affluent students from New Empire State, without the gigantic specter of debt hovering over his head.
You couldn’t help how you were born. As my dad used to say, a man isn’t built, he is made by his own actions. Some people just had an easier road than others. I also couldn’t complain too much, since I had certain genetic advantages too.
“What hit me?”
“Are you okay? We were ahh… doing the medicine ball thing.”
The School’s gym was almost always packed up during the day, between team training and physical electives, but in the evening, students had free use. Jerry liked to say that he was as queer as a paper hammer, and the gym was a favored location for gay hook-ups among the fitness set after hours, with a lot of accompanying grabass and a few weird games, like medicine ball tag.
Still, trying to afford a gym off-campus could cost hundreds a month. If I hadn’t drained my power pool to nothing to try and increase my limits while I worked out, I’d probably have canceled out some of the kinetic energy rather than getting dropped like a six-year-old trying to catch a watermelon.
I nodded, slowly rolling back to my feet with Mister Blonde Ambition’s help. “Yep,” I said, rolling my neck a little. Structural damage is minimal. A slight bloody nose and a bruise on the back of my head. “But seriously, a little heads up would have helped.”
I was straight, but the fitness crew was sort of my social circle anyway. Like I said, I wasn’t an introvert by choice, but rather because I had to be. Empire State was a lot better school than most, and by extension, a lot of the girls that went here were looking for marriage prospects more than a well-rounded education. Hanging out with the fitness crew tended to keep me under the radar of the more predatory types, and I wasn’t going to pretend that an amazing body and gorgeous face couldn’t hook me like a fat trout. It had before.
I hadn’t grown up poor by any means, upper-middle class as a teenager, but I did remember my folks struggling when I was younger, and being glad for any kind of food we got to eat. After my pop lost a battle with cancer just before I graduated high school, though, things had gotten a lot tighter, and there was no way I was going to beg my mom for money to go to school when she still had my little sister to take care of.
I held the wet towel to my face as Jerry pulled me to my feet. I was a little taller than he was, at 6’3” compared to his 6’1”, and was considerably more muscled, but he had a lot more definition to pursue his favorite game. Unlike the aggressive ‘rainbow’ crew that hung around campus, the fitness crew didn’t have anything to prove, didn’t try to start any crusades, and tended not to give a shit about what anyone thought.
Yeah, that meant I got passed at occasionally, but it didn’t bother me any, and when I mentioned that I wasn’t interested, it usually just ended respectfully. As the kids of the upper crust, it was in their best interests to keep their proclivities on the down low and avoid the social justice crowd like a plague lest it bite them in the ass at a later date.
Obviously, if I wanted to come out of the closet as a much higher-category mask, I could have gotten into one of the academies, but that would not only have exposed me. If I thought that predatory hotties were a problem now, that would be a drop in the bucket compared to what I’d have to deal with at the predominantly female academies if I let them know I could use the abilities of a class four or five. Did I like girls? You bet your ass, but I was also self-aware enough to realize that right now I was an easy target, and I was nowhere near socially adept enough to recognize the difference between genuine interest and a girl that just wanted to use me.
And yeah, I had dealt with that before, in high school. It had left me a bit scarred, I will admit, since my dad had his own company. Christine had seen me as the ticket to the easy life, and when my dad passed, leaving his company in disarray, she’d dropped me like I was radioactive. It was an eye-opener at a terrible time, but it also taught me a valuable lesson.
“Tell you what. Spot me for five sets and we are even.” I said, wiping off my face carefully. The bleeding had stopped, but when I was working out in energy debt I really needed a spotter. There was no better way to improve my energy pool, but since I worked out in debt pretty frequently, I’d gotten more of a reputation as overly cautious rather than a whiner.
Jerry nodded, “Yeah, no problem,” he said, waving at one of the guys he was currently flirting with. After I’d cleaned up and stretched, he met me by one of the machines. Sure, I loved free weights, but they were very popular, so I hit one of the cable trainers instead.
“Do I have to bitch about safety?” I asked Jerry, and he laughed a little, “Probably. One of the new guys…” he nodded his head at the one that he’d been flirting with, a wiry and powerful-looking Greek kid with curly hair that was right inside of Jerry’s strike zone, “Is a freshman.”
He licked his lips, “Yummy freshman too, but he’s a little excitable. On a class night, you are probably going to have to lay down the law a little and scare him. I mean, you just got bopped, but imagine a girl had come through the door? She’d probably be in the hospital.”
I shrugged, pulling the crossover. Universal trainers didn’t cap at a very high weight, but I was here to build the energy pool, not muscle. “Probably would have gone right over her head, but yeah. I think you might want to consider going over gym discipline with him a few times. Remember last year’s break? I don’t want to lose this place after hours, and there’s no way the school will spring for a trainer off-hours.”
He nodded, smiling a little, “Right. An excuse to use a little discipline. I got it.”
I chuckled, “Seriously, though. Real discipline, not sex games. Do you ever think about anything but sex?”
He shrugged, scratching the back of his neck below the man-bun he usually sported. When he was trying to look sexy, he tended to load his hair down with enough product to make Fabio wince, but workout time meant hiding the bodice-ripper hair. Honestly, if he’d been straight no girl in school would have been safe, but then again, if he were straight he probably wouldn’t put as much care into his appearance.
“Yeah, every once in a while I think about school or working out. Other than that, not really,” Jerry remarked thoughtfully. “I mean, sometimes I think about the future, but mostly that’s just putting in the time and getting the grades, and then letting the future take care of itself, you know?”
I chuckled, “Nope, absolutely not.” I said, switching over to leg lifts, “but I’m not going to criticize. You do you. I kind of get a rush out of overdoing it.”
He grinned and glanced back at the guy he’d been eyeing, “I’d rather be doing someone else, but I get it. Oh, did you hear about Mindy Pearlance? She awakened a tier 4 power after that ski trip thing two months ago… I bet it has something to do with cold.”
I nodded, having my own suspicions. Glacier Girl was REALLY new. New to the point where I wondered if she was less concerned about getting an in as a local hero compared to getting the chops to attend an academy. It would make a lot of sense to get a public mention of defeating a supervillain and then apply for a scholarship… to be honest, my fee was a hell of a lot less than the fees to attend Trafalgar or even Empire State for a single year, so her investment would make a lot of sense.
If it was Mindy, a girl I barely knew about, I had to keep it under my hat. After a few incidents, where hero identities were exposed by a gossip rag, followed by families getting murdered by a cartel in vengeance and the subsequent murderous rampages, doxxing was a felony. That was the kind of offense that would get you murdered in prison even faster than diddling kiddies or being a snitch, so even a two-year sentence for ‘accidentally’ letting slip a hero or worse, a villain identity might be a death sentence. Not to mention it was unprofessional.
Before that, not jumping a hero or villain in civvies had been an unwritten rule, but some people refused to follow the unwritten rules, which led to it becoming very much written.
“Well, better her than me,” I stated blankly. “With my luck, I’d get a second power and turn myself into an icicle or something. Still, a ski lift snapped, right? I’d bet on something like flight, telekinesis, metal control, or something like that. The ski thing was just incidental. Not like making things colder would save her from falling to her death, right?”
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Of course, being able to create giant snow drifts and protect herself from harm with a shield WOULD help her survive a collapsed chairlift, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I’d like to think of it as a professional courtesy, but a hero getting doxxed would just about wreck her potential to be a hero unless she had no ties, no family, no hostages to fortune. That would mean no sponsors, and an easily manipulated hero, unless they were incredibly powerful, could just about kiss their chances of finding a decent team goodbye.
Glacier Girl had potential, but her real identity getting bantered around would relegate her to a future of making ice sculptures or working for a ski resort making fake snow. Earth needed heroes, not living snow machines.
Jerry nodded, “That actually makes a lot of sense. Power awakenings are weird like that. I was actually thinking of changing my thesis to the arbitrage and legal rights of alphas. I mean, it’s a little uncomfortably close to criminal law, which would make my dad shit a brick, but right now, most powers have to choose between a lawsuit attorney or a criminal lawyer when it comes to legal situations, both of which are kinda stopgaps. Being a specialist seems like a potential goldmine and a way to make my name for myself instead of just being my dad’s appendage, you know?”
I chuckled, “I am not going to run with that straight line, but I think you might be onto something. I know Wisconsin company specializes in alpha problems, but as you said, they are a merger of criminal and business law. I could see you standing in front of the Empire State Supreme Court someday fighting for some kind of alpha rights if you played your cards right.”
A slow smile spread over his face, “I can actually see a good slot right now. Alpha men’s rights!”
“Huh?”
“Alright, well, obviously most alphas are women, right? And traditional family law has always been tilted towards women, for good reason… but alpha men are a legitimate minority. A lot of super teams won’t even accept a male, claiming social or morale problems.”
I nodded, adding more weight to the bench press machine and starting to fight my way through my debt. “Right? That and the chance that under stress they might develop a second power and… you know… level a city block.”
He grinned, “You just gave me the perfect Junior thesis. Why Title Nine should be extended to male alphas. I mean, it’s not like they are rare by choice, which means they are a clear minority.”
I looked at him skeptically, “Title Nine?”
He nodded, “Yeah, any sports organization that accepts federal funding is required to offer minority opportunities. Usually, that means women and other minorities, but in this case, I think I could make a pretty good argument for male alphas.”
I shrugged, “I know what Title Nine is, I just am not sure if that’s necessary. I mean, male superheroes are already celebrities, and if anything they make a lot more money. There are a lot of teams that would tell them no, thank you, but if pressed, their celebrity status probably would get them on a team that doesn’t want them anyway… most of the teams have serious sponsors, and those sponsors wouldn’t throw away the PR.”
He looked at me skeptically, “I thought you were a logistics math major, not communications or legal.”
“Sure, but I am also not an idiot. If you suddenly awakened pyrokinesis and decided you wanted to join the Black Sisterhood in Chicago, Quench-ade energy drinks would put you on the team, to hell with whatever Sister Scripture said. Even if half the team quit because they don’t want a male, the sponsors would tell ‘em not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out, probably including Sister Scripture herself.”
He nodded slowly as I sat up and started toweling myself and the machine off. Weight courtesy, always clean and disinfect your machines after you use them. “Yeah, you are right that that is common sense, but it’s not about common sense.”
I raised an eyebrow, “No?”
He shook his head, “Nope. It’s about standing in front of the courts, on camera, very visible while everyone knows your name, and arguing for fairness. It’s about taking a position that no one has ever seen before, and being armored and ready to fight that position while knowing it’s completely defensible.”
“And it’s about getting rich, famous, and powerful doing it,” I added.
He tapped his nose, “Got it in one. Are you sure you don’t want to switch over to a law major?”
I laughed, “No. I’d probably wind up defending supervillains that beat up old ladies.”
He shrugged, the powerful shoulders under his tank top shifting when he noticed his current interest looking at him. “It takes those too. Everyone deserves a fair shot in court.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I disagreed with him, but he was an occasional workout buddy. It just wasn't worth the fight.
***
It had been a very long day. On the plus side, I knew that my energy pool had increased by two points, just by how it felt, and confirmed it when I got home on my battery detector, two hundred and sixty-two potential points, hovering at right around twelve.
Since my recovery seemed to be based on a percentage of my pool times the stuff I did to increase it, rather than a set amount, I had high hopes that one day I’d be able to consistently match at least some low-level superheroes. Just to match their energy recovery, though, I’d have to have a pool in the tens of thousands, but I had high hopes that someday I’d find a technique or material to either increase the recovery or a way to stay in constant energy debt for long periods.
As I polished off almost a carton of eggs and a big chunk of ham for breakfast, I checked through my Vilnet mail for Strategic Special Simulations. As expected, Hotshot’s people were trying to set up another rematch, and so I sent off another in a long line of emails refusing to work with him. Big paycheck offer, though, two hundred and fifty grand and an offer to retract the one-star rating, but I was done with that douche spatula. Maybe they’d finally get the point since I used the term ‘douche spatula’ this time.
A bunch of the usual bullshit offers, including yet another phishing attempt that I dutifully recorded. Yeah, lots of people try to milk supervillains because they assume we are rich and too stupid to play the hero game, but Vilnet was good about bringing those down, occasionally with extreme force.
A request for assistance with The Titan kaiju on the West Coast. Honestly, if it was East Coast and I had the energy, I’d probably have accepted the offer, but the assistance requests were almost always bulk mail, and they didn’t pay well. If I wanted to build a new villain identity showing up for something like that could safely get my new identity out there without chancing BSA apprehension. Plus, you know, helping to drive off a monster that could kill millions of civilians.
I didn’t have decent long-range transportation, and I’d run negative trying to afford a plane ticket, not to mention that the time-sensitive nature of the request meant that by the time I got there, it would be over. That and I wouldn’t touch anything like a kaiju at less than full energy. Those things were dangerous, and I needed to make sure I at least had enough for a full reset if worse came to worst.
Nothing really worth pursuing, and I needed at least a week to refill my energy to a usable level anyway, but I liked to keep my eyes open for future potential.
Interesting. Black Box Incorporated was sending me mail again, probably because Tunra Inc., Glacier Girl’s publicist corporation, had given me such a glowing recommendation. Their spiel was always enticing, a week’s work for a cool five mil tax-free, federal pardon for any known felonies, and no questions asked.
I had done my research. BBI was a federal front, which was why they could offer tax-free income and a pardon, a fact that they never even tried to hide. The problem is, their jobs were almost always black-bag deniable shit and more than a few up-and-coming supervillains had disappeared from their jobs. Not all of them, of course, but enough to imply that the work was not only murderous but incredibly dangerous.
They weren’t often suicide missions, but a few mentions on the forums implied that they were often damned close, and I had never signed up to be a hitman. I wasn’t a killer. Not that I wouldn’t do it if I needed to, but it had never been necessary and I didn’t want it to be.
Not that I was a pacifist or anything. Did I think people deserved a second chance? Absolutely. Did I believe in turning the other cheek? You bet. But if someone slapped that cheek too, it was time to take their hands off so they couldn’t slap anyone ever again. Unrepentant monsters deserved to die, but I’d rather not spend my own life hunting them down. Someone once said ‘Go forth and sin no more’, and if someone given a second chance broke that rule, well, they were forgiven once for making a rotten mistake, doing it again meant it was intentional.
Then there were a few legitimate supervillains looking for minions or partners. Again, I had to be super picky. Not that I would necessarily turn down a bit of criminal mischief that didn’t involve hurting civilians, especially if their opponents were ‘secretly evil’ like certain governments and corporations, but that was a slippery political slope. I’d rather avoid flying my ideological flag to the world because it was off the beaten path enough that I would attract real enemies that wanted to hurt me rather than people tuning in to whatever weirdness I made up for a hero to knock down a peg.
Was I a coward? Some people would probably say yes, and others would say no. My dad used to say “A real man knows what he is willing to live for, what he is willing to die for, and what he is willing to kill for,” a statement I was happy to back up, I just didn’t feel like letting everyone know what those were until I had to.
Most interesting, though, was a personal correspondence from someone named Hotcocoa37 that had ‘thanks’ in the subject line. I went ahead and decrypted it to a mild, but happy surprise.
Dear SSSinc:
I would like to give your contractor a thank you from the bottom of my heart. I lost control and he kept me from doing something I’d regret for the rest of my life. I just wanted to let you know that I recognized what he did and am eternally grateful. My agent didn’t want me to send this because he said it opened me up a little, legally, but I couldn’t just let it go.
I saw the damage I caused and really regret it. Please let me know if he is okay. I am sorry, I couldn’t afford a bonus or medical liability, but if I could have I would have. I keep seeing all the damage my accident caused, and the blood, and I am terrified that I did something I can’t take back.
I was originally intending to leverage the PR to get into a local workshop part-time while I finished my education, but I realized that I still need an enormous amount of training before I can safely pursue my career. Fortunately, the Kellar Academy offered to assist me both in completing my degree and becoming a certified emergency specialist.
Please let the contractor know that I owe him a huge favor, and I take favors seriously. If he needs a PR victory after my schooling is complete, or anything else, please tell him to let me know.