“Tim, I don’t think I can keep you to myself anymore.” Denise said a few days later. “I’ve been talking to Randall all morning, and I think it’s time for you to meet the team.”
“You want me to meet Bluestar 7? I thought they hated us.”
“They hate me, but you impressed Randall with how you handled those pods, and that is not easy to do. He wants to interview you about maybe filling in for Carter, doing a temporary run with a real team until he gets back.”
“You’re telling me I might actually get to join a Bluestar team?”
“Yeah, I knew it was gonna happen eventually, but I’m gonna miss you. I mean, sure, we almost got drowned, electrocuted, and burned alive a few times, but you even made the bad parts fun.”
“Yeah,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I had fun, too.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning to pick you up,” she said. “Dress nice, but wear something you can move in. He’s probably gonna make you jump through some hoops, just to see what you can do.”
“But you’re coming with me?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Denise smiled. “Tim, do not get in your head about this. Enjoy it. Celebrate a little. Bluestar 7, this is real superhero stuff, and you earned it.”
* * *
So, I celebrated with Lydia for a while, and met Denise on my lawn the next morning at 9 a.m. She handed me coffee and a donut as I climbed in the car.
“Uh,” I said, waving the pastry at her. “The cylinder thing complained about my body fat. I’m not supposed to eat donuts.”
“And I’m not supposed to do superhero shit with guys I’ve kissed at a party, but here we are.”
Denise and I touched our donuts together and ate them in the car.
“You’ve been my supervisor all this time, but I’ve got to say I’m a little disappointed,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for you to abuse your power, and you’re running out of time. You want to command me to wash the car or rub your feet or something?”
“Okay.” Denise slipped her shoes off and put her feet in my lap. “This is probably my last day in charge of you, so you better make this good.”
“Jesus! I was kidding! Put those away. We cannot return this car smelling like your feet! We get enough looks already!”
* * *
I thought we were headed to HQ, but the car took us to VBC Tower. I had never been inside before, and just walking in there felt like being teleported into the future.
Baroque blue tile, off-white walls, textured with geometric patterns that seemed to be coded to the function of the room you were headed to.
Floating signs and panels that showed up in your optics if you were wearing them or showed up as visible holograms if you weren’t.
My optics threw up a sign that said, Bluestar 7 Reception and painted a navigation line on the ground. We walked into a waiting area that looked like the luxury terminal at an airport, decorated on all sides with moving video screens featuring footage of the team in action.
They played a memorial for Oleg the Bear, and I got to see some new video of Danny Carter in action, making some kind of ramp out of solid magic to deflect an old-fashioned ground car that was about to run him over.
The car sailed over his head and crashed into the wall of a parking garage, then Daniel used his magic hands thing to rip the door off and place the guy under arrest. So, it wasn’t just magic hands, Danny could make simple shapes out of solid magic, too.
I wanted to meet him so bad, then I realized, this amazing badass superhero was the guy I would be expected to replace.
Denise squeezed my hand once and then put her professional face on as we sat down. I wanted to crack jokes and see if I could make her laugh, but I was too nervous. I had butterflies the size of a river monster in my stomach, and my bladder made me feel like I had to go to the bathroom, even though I just went.
The leader of Bluestar 7 came through the door right on time, dressed in black nanoweave armor, but he wasn’t wearing his ski mask thing, and without it, he looked like a normal guy. I thought he might be deformed or something, under the mask, but he was actually kind of handsome. He could have played himself in a comic book movie, as long as he didn’t have to talk.
He walked up and shook hands with Denise, twisting her hand like a 19th century gentleman. It was rare to see mundanes try to touch witches, and even rarer for witches to allow it. I knew Randall had enhanced reflexes, but was that a real superpower? Did he use magic for that?
He also had the power to conjure guns out of thin air, and that was definitely magic, but Denise didn’t seem to react when he touched her. I was kind of hoping he would try and shake hands with me, but he didn’t.
He chatted with Denise for a minute and gestured for me to follow him. I realized Denise wasn’t coming with us and tried to hang back. “Excuse me, sir. This is my emotional support witch. I’d really like to keep her with me.”
Randall glared at me and then at Hardy. “You’re really vouching for this guy? This guy who thinks he’s funny?”
Oops.
Randall started walking back toward his office like he expected me to follow. I looked back over my shoulder at Denise and hissed through my teeth at her, wrinkling my face in a gesture of acute embarrassment as I followed Randall to the principal’s office, all by myself.
“Oh,” I said on the way back. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call you. It feels weird to call you by your first name when I’ve only seen you on TV. What’s your last name?”
“Randall.”
“So, Randall is your last name? What’s your first name?”
“Randall.”
“So your legal name is Randall Randall?”
“Yes,” he nodded, slightly annoyed. “My dad thought he was funny, too.”
Randall sat down behind a surprisingly modest metal desk and said, “So, Tim Kovak, what’s your origin story?”
“My…”
“I’ve read your DMA file, but I want to hear you tell it. How did you get your powers?”
“Oh.” How much could I tell this guy? What would happen if he caught me holding back? “Well, sir… My magic comes from my family. Whenever a young male of my bloodline turns up with magic, we inherit this giant spellbook and we’re expected to… I guess it says in there, our magic comes from Hell, sir. We’re supposed to learn this book and kill for this demon prince, but I learned to draw magic from the Earth first, and then I learned the book faster than I was supposed to, and then I killed him.”
I didn’t volunteer any information about Lydia, and I really hoped she was not listed in that report.
“And this demon prince, you sure he’s dead? You sure he’s not coming back?”
“Oh yes, sir. I didn’t just kill him. I digested that motherfucker.”
Randall had even less of a sense of humor than Lydia, but I almost got him with that one.
“This file says you’re using magic to do the Captain Cobalt power set. So, you’re a wizard who punches people?”
“Yes, sir. Strength and fortitude spells to make me tougher, wards to make me invulnerable. I mean, not completely invulnerable, of course, but I took a full power hit from this demon prince and stayed on my feet.”
“Can you stop a bullet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you stop a shitload of bullets?”
“Yes, sir.”
Randall nodded like he appreciated the straight answer. “Okay, come on back.”
* * *
Randall led me through a series of beautiful offices and conference rooms, down a magnificent glass elevator, until we ended up in the basement of the tower, at a state-of-the-art shooting range, reinforced to handle god knows what.
Randall ushered me in and immediately broke the most important rule of a shooting range, asking me to walk right in front of him and stand in front of the paper target, so he could practice shooting me.
I remember wondering what Veazey would say if he could see this and had a pang of sadness that he wasn’t here. He would love watching this, even if he thought it was stupid. I decided to send him and the guys my POV at the end of this, if it wasn’t restricted.
“Okay,” Randall said, conjuring a fancy-looking target pistol out of nowhere. “I’m gonna start with the .22. Let me know when you’re ready.”
I said “Ready” and Randall immediately unloaded ten rounds dead center in my chest, inhumanly fast. I swear, it felt like all ten of those bullets would have gone through the same hole.
“Good?” Randall asked.
“Yes, sir. I’m fine.”
Randall went through all the pistol calibers the same way, shooting me dead center ten times each, until he finally shot me with an updated version of Veazey’s old Traylor 10mm. I had killed half a dozen demons with that gun, before I ran out of propellant that was too expensive to replace.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
I had much better control over my wards by this point, so they didn’t even flare in the visible spectrum until Randall shot me with the .45.
“Okay, I’m moving to rifle calibers. You stop me as soon as you start to feel these, okay?”
And then we went through the whole process again. I was really comfortable in my wards by this point, so I didn’t feel anything until he shot me with his ancient AK-47. “Okay, I felt that, but it was no big deal.”
I took one each of the heavy rifle rounds, all the way up to .308, when it hit me hard enough to knock me back into the paper target.
Randall conjured a .50 cal, but I made him stop. I may be kinda stupid, but I wasn’t crazy. Then he hit me with flamethrowers and some kind of acid sprayer, which splashed and bounced off faster than I could worry about it.
He made me stand there while he left the room and came back with Denise.
But Denise wasn’t there to comfort me. She was there to shoot me. She yelled down the range, “Okay Tim, I’m gonna start with sacred wood shards, like we used on those demons. These only really hit hard against demons, so you should be fine, unless you’re possessed or something.”
“Uh, Denise, I’m not possessed but maybe we should…”
But it was too late. I was afraid my time with Lydia would have made me vulnerable to holy weapons, but she launched one of her sharpened holy pellets at me and I was relieved to see it bounce harmlessly off my chest.
“Congrats, you’re not possessed,” Denise said. “I guess I owe Evan twenty bucks.”
“Very funny,” I yelled back, listening to my voice echo down the range.
“And this is Avalon driftwood, dipped in Fomorian dung. If your powers are a faerie experiment gone wrong, this is gonna hurt real, real bad.”
But the stinky black pellet just bounced off.
“Well, you’re not a faerie in a human suit, so now Mom owes me twenty bucks.”
She paused a minute and whispered something to Randall before doing the next one. “Okay Tim, this is a burning shard from the Suicide Wood. This one will probably get through, and it’s gonna hurt like a bitch, but just hang on, okay? I’m gonna be right there to heal it.”
I nodded.
Denise fired her fancy burning shard, but it just bounced off my wards and fell to the ground.
Denise yelled, “Son of a bitch!” like that one really made her angry.
She vaulted over the counter and started striding toward me, sending different kinds of shards at me as fast as she could. Hot ones, cold ones, green ones, brown ones, gold ones, and weird glowing blue ones, like she was firing coldfire pellets conjured from the Wampanoag Rift. But none of them got through.
Denise got right up next to me and turned back to Randall. “Randy, call your team, I want them to see this.”
“You!” she yelled, grabbing my hand. “Come with me!”
* * *
Denise dragged me out of the range into a big open space that was apparently some kind of sparring ring, with soft flooring in a giant octagon under our feet.
I stood around looking stupid while Denise stood across from me with her arms crossed, like she was still angry about something, although I had no idea what I had done to piss her off.
The other members of Bluestar 7 filed in and took their places at the side of the ring. They were in sweatpants and workout clothes, and they all looked kind of tired and pissed off again, radiating annoyance that these fucking adjuncts were cutting into their personal time.
I recognized Jade Katt, Phil Bower, and a really tall, handsome Chinese guy who went by the name Paul Zhang. Paul never went on field ops, but he was supposed to have some kind of mental powers. People said he could read thoughts and move spoons and stuff with his mind.
He and Jade were standing hip to hip whispering jokes to each other, clearly laughing at us, until Denise stepped up and said, “I challenge you to a duel!”
My last duel had been with a demonic, yellow-skinned torturer from Hell, but surely that’s not the kind of duel she meant.
“No serious injury, no permanent damage, falls don’t count,” Denise said. “Do you accept?”
I said, “Uh… sure.”
She immediately conjured vines, wrapped them around my legs, and yanked me off my feet.
I didn’t even have wards up, so I bounced my head off the mat and said, “Ow.”
Then Denise backed off and it was my turn to try something on her. She had vines swirling around her and was back in that fighting stance she had used on me at the grove, triggering a deeply inappropriate arousal response.
“Come on!” she taunted. “Hit me like a superhero!”
“Denise, I am not gonna punch you!”
“Then you’re gonna lose!” she shouted, conjuring some kind of wind thing that knocked me off my feet again.
“Denise, dammit!”
“Ah, there’s my name.”
I staggered back to my feet, and she started wrapping me in vines again, lots more this time, wrapping my whole body up, squeezing and trying to strangle me, as thorns broke off against my wards.
“Fine!” I yelled, deciding I had finally had enough. I ripped the vines apart, grabbed the big vine still connected to her, and yanked Denise off her feet. Then I stood over her and said, “Okay, cut it out.”
But Denise wasn’t done. Still on the ground, she whipped her arm up and hit me with some kind of cold blast thing. She used an air blast from the other hand and tried to knock me back again. Then she fired an explosive pellet followed by an air blast, like she was trying to make her own version of my improvised fireball. None of it worked.
“Oh, breakin’ out the elemental shit!” I teased her. “When’s the last time somebody made you work?”
Paul and Jade were standing on the sidelines just a couple feet from me, close enough that I could hear each individual smartass remark.
Jade looked up at Paul and said, “Are you seeing this?”
“Oh yeah,” Paul said. “These two wanna fuck so bad, they might start right in front of us.”
Denise spent the next five minutes hitting me with everything she had, while I stood there smirking at her with my arms crossed.
Then, exhausted and out of breath, she said, “Okay, you win. Anybody else want to take a shot at him?”
Randall didn’t even say anything. He just instantly summoned a rifle and fired. I staggered back and grunted as a .50 cal bullet hit my chest. I stumbled off the mat, all the way back into the wall, but I didn’t fall down.
Randall gave a quiet nod of approval and Denise said, “Anybody else?”
Jade Katt said, “You think you can hit me?”
“No,” I said. “Do you think you can hurt me?”
Jade stepped into the ring and vaulted over my head, somersaulting until she landed perfectly on my shoulders. She squeezed my chest with her legs while her energy claws skittered off the wards protecting the top of my head.
“Hey, what the fuck!” I complained. “If I didn’t have wards up, you’d be cutting my skull open right now!”
I was kind of enjoying having her legs wrapped around me, but I grabbed her by the back of her bodysuit and threw Jade off, sending her flying across the room. I used too much power and bounced her off the wall way harder than I intended, but she just brushed herself off and went back to stand beside Paul.
She whispered something in his ear, and Paul stared at me with this weird, intense expression, like he was trying to read my mind. But I couldn’t feel anything, and he seemed to be getting increasingly agitated, just standing there.
Then he put his hands to his temples like he was trying to fire a psionic beam or something, until he finally gave up, and let out a breath.
“You have telepathic shields up, who taught you to do that?”
“What?” I said, blinking at him like an idiot.
“Your shields, barrier against mental intrusion. Who taught you to do that?”
“Who taught me to do what?”
Paul shook his head. “Fine. Keep your secrets. Phil, you’re up.”
Phil had apparently spent the last few minutes preparing for his turn, because he pulled out this lumpy homemade pistol and fired at me as soon as he stepped in the ring.
The pistol made an awesome sci-fi ray gun noise, and I was on my ass, flat on my back, on fire. Whatever that thing was, it ignored my wards like they weren’t even there. But I didn’t scream or freak out. I just whipped out Tobias’s healing spell and let the cleansing runes put the fire out.
I did a quick roll back to my feet and launched myself across the room. I smacked the pistol out of Phil’s hand before he could shoot again and slammed him against the wall, again, harder than I intended to.
Phil made an oof noise and said, “Sorry!”
I gently let him down and returned to the sparring mat.
Phil looked over at Randall. “I got him once with a phasing shot that broke through his wards, but it didn’t stop him, and there’s no way I would have gotten a second shot off. I know it looked sloppy and half-assed, but I think he just beat all of us.”
“I didn’t say I was done,” Randall said, looking over at me. “You think you can stop a rocket?”
But Denise answered for me. “He survived a fuel air firebomb, remember? You got anything bigger than that?”
Randall opened his mouth to argue, but Denise walked over and stood between us. “Do you get it yet?” She pointed at me. “This is not a man. This is a wall with legs. You assholes want to start winning fights again?” She thumped my chest. “Put this between you and the bad guys.”
“You two wait on the terrace,” Randall said. “Let me talk to my guys.”
“They have a terrace?” I asked Denise, as she led me through a pair of double doors out into a little open park. The terrace was beautiful. Grass, trees, bushes, and flowers, hanging off the back of this giant futuristic skyscraper. Denise grabbed an apple from a box in the shade and threw it at me. I took a bite and handed it back to her.
“That was amazing,” I said, walking up a little too close. “I don’t think anybody has ever… The way you stood up for me, it’s been a while since anybody…”
And then I kissed her again, tasting apples from both of us. She didn’t get closer, but she didn’t pull away. Finally, I broke off and said, “Sorry. I just… Thank you, for everything.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Tim, you belong here. Maybe not here, with these particular assholes, but you belong on a team like this, helping people, fighting monsters. You were born to do this.”
“I think I was born to kill church officials and rip the wings off angels, but now that I’ve got a taste for it, I would much rather do this.”
Denise’s phone beeped. She said, “Randall’s ready for us,” and escorted me back in.
“Okay kid,” Randall said. “Welcome to your Bluestar 7 training rotation. I’m gonna let you run some ops with us, then I’m gonna pair you off with each one of my team members for evaluation. If everybody signs off on you, I’m gonna make you a full member of the team until Carter gets back. Then I’m gonna get his evaluation, and we’ll see where you go from there, okay?”
I nodded, grinning like an idiot.
“And say goodbye to your girlfriend. You report to me now. Go to bed early and start watching Oleg’s old monster fights. Next time something crawls out of that river, I’m putting you right up front.”
* * *
Denise drove me home and we shared a brief, awkward goodbye, although she assured me it wasn’t goodbye, and reminded me I could come by and see her at the potion shop any time.
“So, is this it for you?” I asked. “Are you turning your badge back in?”
“Nah. They’re just going to drop me back down to animal control and take the car away.”
“Damn,” I said. “It was really nice having our own car.”
“I know,” she nodded. “Seems like we should have had more fun in it, while we had the chance.”
I nodded. She was setting me up to make a joke, but I suddenly didn’t feel funny anymore.
“Thank you for giving me this time with you,” I said. “It really was great.”
She just awkwardly nodded back. “So, are you gonna move into the tower, now that you’re a real B7 trainee?”
“I’d love to, but what’s their demon policy? I probably can’t afford the deposit.”
“Tim, call me if you need help, okay? You’re gonna get dispatched all over the state, and they’re gonna send you out alone a lot. They can’t send a whole team for every little thing, so Bluestar agents do most of their work alone, even if they’re on a team.”
“And Tim,” she hesitated, afraid to piss me off. “You have a tendency to make these little boxes for yourself, but you don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to stay surrounded by this death forever. Maybe VBC Tower isn’t paradise, but there’s a whole city, a whole world out there for you.”
I wanted to kiss her again, but she was talking to me through a car window, and I felt like I could only get away with one “accidental” kiss a day.
* * *
We said goodbye and Lydia ambushed me, as soon as I walked in.
“Timothy, you were under some kind of mental assault today. Did you feel it?”
“Yeah, that was just my new teammate testing me, a telepathic Chinese guy who is totally not a spy or anything. He said he couldn’t read my mind, though. Was that you?”
“Partly. I am able to strengthen your defenses and hide your aura through our tether, but whoever this man was, he was very skilled, and quite difficult to hide from. Please avoid him if you can.”
* * *
I got an email confirming my promotion and Lydia and I watched as my digital badge changed from Bluestar Adjunct to Bluestar 7. The big red TRAINEE block appeared over my face again, but I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.
“It’s really happening, Lydia. I’m gonna be a real hero on a real team.”
“You were a hero from the day I met you,” Lydia said. “You don’t need a picture on a piece of plastic to tell you that.”
I laughed. “I was a horny, sleepy idiot the night I met you. I didn’t get my hero shit together for months.”
“No,” Lydia said, unusually serious. “You were a hero squaring off against a demon from the moment you met the Guardian, and from the moment you met me. You didn’t have the tools to fight back yet, but you started fighting the moment you met us. Don’t take that away from yourself.”
I leaned back and crossed my arms behind my head. “So, are you finally admitting I defeated you?”
Lydia came down from her perch and sat in my lap, leaning down to get in my face. “You can’t defeat me, Timothy, because as long as you live, I’ll be on your side.”
And then she kissed me for a while.