15) Never pass up a free meal.
Shimmer held up one finger for me to wait and took a long sip of her drink before slowly snapping the top of her bottle back on. "I think we should talk to my Uncle Core before you do this, not because we need his approval, but because he might see some implications, or problems, and can advise us about what we might up against.”
I tilted my head at her, “So it is “We” on this?”
She glared a little at me. “You are on my team. Even if I disagree with you, which I don’t, I will try to support you as long as it isn’t something truly bad. Trust me I-”
I spoke along with her. "-Don't do lies." She gave an exasperated look.
Shrugging I finally got around to asking her. “What is with the I don’t do lies thing anyways?”
She seemed to perk up and took in a deep breath before she began to explain, realizing that I might have let myself in for a lecture, I tried to backpeddle, but she was already going.
“People see me as the first of my generation of Superhumans, some people even think I’m the first one born with powers, which isn’t true. But, I’m still seen as a leader, and if I’m going to be involved in politics I want to be seen in the future as someone who was always upright and honest.”
She stood up and struck a deliberate pose with one hand held up clenched into a fist. "So I'm going to keep saying that I don't do lies as many times as it takes for people to see it as a promise rather than some catchphrase." She turned he head to look down at me still sitting on the bench. "Get it?"
I held my hands up as if in surrender. "Okay, I get it. It's an investment. I can see and even appreciate it, but you do understand, I will lie, a lot. Lying and secrecy have always worked for me and I'm not going to start telling the truth all the time. If I can I'll try to avoid putting you in a position where you have to squeal on, but sometimes things go sideways.”
She shrugged. “You do you, just don’t lie to me. I don’t want to end up looking like I'm an idiot either, to me that's worse than being seen as another self serving liar.”
Then she frowned and grimaced. “Sorry, that wasn’t directed at you.”
Nodding grimly as I stood up and headed for the exit, I reassured her. “I understand. Daddy issues.”
I nearly made it to the door before getting smacked in the back of the head with a damp towel from an angry young woman. “That wasn’t what I meant, you’re a dead man Mort. Pun intended.”
She caught up with me outside the exit from the XX locker room with her hair still damp. She grinned when she saw me being interrogated by the big blue guy from the gym about how I didn’t lift while I tried to explain that since I was a passive regenerater and it didn’t do me any good.
After shooing away the blue tinted teenage boy with an explanation of us having to get to lunch, Shimmer informed me with a barely suppressed grin that Carl had been hitting on me and she thought we would make a cute couple.
"He's a Brute 4 already, so he should age slowly, the whole out aging people won’t be as much of an issue for you with him.”
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I gave her a narrow eyed glare. “One, he’s like seventeen. Two, I don’t think my Regen 2 would hold up to a Brute 4, ouch. Three, guy,” I pointed back at the gym, then at myself. “Me, Hetro.”
She giggled.
I looked around at the stairs we were taking to below the basement level of the gym. “Four, where the hell are we going.”
Shimmer grinned again. "Twilight Rails. It's the semi secret subway line for the Firsts, their families, and emergencies. It won't get up any quicker to the palace, but it will get us past security a bit quicker."
Instead of waiting for a subway car, a smaller set of streamlined railcars with seats for two, four, or ten people at a time sat in recessed alcoves. Shimmer jumped without hesitation into a two seater, but it was fairly roomy. “Don’t be shy, get in, I’m hungry.”
It was only about four minutes before we hit a station with multiple lines splitting off and we pulled into a section ending in a heavy metal door. Another door closed behind us, and I could see what looked like closed panels on the sides of the chamber.
A voice spoke from a speaker at the same time I felt a brief touch on my mind, which suddenly returned for a moment before it faded away. "You and your guest are cleared for entry Emma, but I would like to talk to your friend at some point. His mind has a particular feel to it and I'm curious why."
Shimmer leaned forward, "That's a little creepy Carol, but having confirmed that he's straight I’m sure he’ll be glad to meet you.” The metal door in front of us opened up to reveal a steampunk cathedral looking subway station with four two story tall Mechanical suits standing guard.
As we got out of the car, I mentioned, "What the hell are those?"
She started to grin at me, then looked up. “Oh, those. I don’t think they have an official name, we just call them Mechs. Some of the Geniuses wanted to build them and Uncle Core says a funded Genius is a genius that doesn't go supervillain so he paid for them to build them.”
She waved at one of the Mechs as we headed for an elevator. It waved back. "They mostly used them with remote control to fight in an arena until they got it out of their system." She gave me a surprised look as she turned around in the elevator to look at me. "I'm surprised you didn't see it on TV?"
I joined her and considered that. “I think I’ve kind of kept my head down for the last couple of years. It was easier to not try new things in order to let the years go by easier.”
She carefully kept looking straight ahead. "...You should talk to somebody. Somebody other than me. I'm still a kid in some ways, but I think you should talk to someone. Rank 1s and even 2s don't have to deal with kind of things a Rank 3 or higher has to live with."
The door dinged and opened to a lobby that looked like something out of an old time lavish hotel. "But now we eat."
Off to one side of the lobby, a buffet had been laid out with a pair of servers making subs as requested for a group of several people going back and forth from a large table with an enormous white tablecloth and a full set of plates, glasses, and silverware.
Shimmer’s mom gave us a wave from one end of the table as she got up to get a second serving of sandwiches. Shimmer waved me at the food, “Let me talk to Uncle Core first while you grab some food, could you get me a ham and cheese as well as a club sandwich.”
Yeah, teamwork. You go chat with the founder of the city, while I get the food.
Really, I didn’t mind. While I knew who her Uncle was, I hadn’t thought about meeting the guy who defied the entire US government for nearly twenty years, founded what amounted to an entire nation of Superheroes, and provided anyone who showed up to it with free housing, power, medical care, internet, and a minimum living income.
Of course, if you wanted something better than the minimum of shelter and enough money for luxuries like junk food or your own car, you had to get a job. Part of that medical care included a shot that reduced the effects, and the addiction to any serious drugs you had been abusing, including alcohol.
Core believed in giving people what they needed, and that included a reason to get off their butts. This upset some people. His decision to skip the whole Trans rights thing by renaming every bathroom and locker room under his control XY or XX upset even more.
Anyone who didn’t like his way of doing things had free one way bus tickets to anywhere they wanted to go, ready anytime they needed them.
The Formater 5, looked like a big healthy white guy in his thirties with a reclining platinum blond hairline, and a darker colored thick beard who dressed in the business suit version of a cowboy outfit. Complete with the boots, a string tie, and when not sitting down to eat, a cowboy hat.
He did get up to hug Shimmer as she headed over to greet him.
Me, I got Shimmer her sandwiches. The girl taking my order looked past me and I could see lights moving over her eyes as she read something being projected onto the lens over her eyes. “This is for Shimmer right, I can see what she normally gets on her subs. What about you sir?
I wasn’t that hungry, but it was free food. “Full sized spicy Italian with double pepperoni, and a half BLT, double bacon. Oh, and one of those big chocolate cookies."
Shimmer’s Mom walked by me as she returned to the table with two of each kind of cookie. She advised me, “Get two of the cookies or my daughter will steal yours.”
Then I headed over to where a seat had been cleared on the other side of Core from Shimmer to find out if I could convince the leader of the Super World to help me overturn civilization on behalf of the rodents infesting my attic.