I had finished my evals and been a working member of the team for about two weeks when Jade stormed into Randy’s office and asked him to bring in help from New York. I wasn’t there for this part, but Azael let me watch it.
“Randy, we are not equipped to train this kid,” Jade said. “He’s doing his best, but his power level is all over the place.” Jade rolled her eyes and launched into a deeply unflattering impression of me. “‘Oh, I had a shitty childhood; oh, I’m depressed about my ex-girlfriend; oh, Hardy won’t answer her phone, maybe I don’t feel like being a hero today…’
“He’s moody as fuck and you can’t predict how hard he’s gonna hit from day to day, but when he is standing between a monster and a civilian, he is fucking terrifying.
“You know those rhinoceros-things you sent me and Tim to fight yesterday?” Jade turned around and showed Randy a small hole in the right buttock of her catsuit. “He punched one of those things while I was still on its back! I had to jump off in midair before it crashed into a building!
“An hour later, I’m in the break room and Paul says I’m sitting in a puddle of my own blood! Tim hit that thing so hard, he turned its horns into shrapnel. One of the splinters made it through my suit all the way into my ass!
“He’s doing everything we tell him to do, but there’s only so much he can learn from watching Oleg videos. He needs to train with another anchor, another hero like him, to show him his role and help him regulate, to help him stay cool and keep himself at some kind of consistent level, no matter how he feels.”
“I think he’s friends with Sonny—” Randall began.
“No,” Jade vetoed. “Sonny is a fucking drunk. We put them together, he’s gonna take Tim out to bars every day and he won’t learn a damn thing. There’s only one person qualified to teach him, and that means you need to cut a deal with New York.”
Randy groaned. “You want me to trade for Minerva? Jade, we’re already a man down, I can’t spare any of you.”
“So, trade Hardy. She’s still on the books for us, and maybe if we get her out of town, Kovak will get over whatever stupid crush he has and start fucking groupies like a normal person!”
* * *
And so, a few hours later, I got a call from Denise.
I was pacing up and down the river on my usual route when I grabbed the call. “It’s been a while,” I said. “Everything okay?”
“Tim, they’re sending me to New York so you can train with one of the big guns. You’re gonna train with Minerva, and that means you’re about to get noticed. Minerva is big time, Bluestar 2,
“This is a huge opportunity for you. Minerva is a pro. She’s trained dozens of heroes in her time, but she has a terrible reputation. Arrogant, demanding, hard to work with, but if you can keep your mouth shut and listen, you’ll have a chance to train with the best there is.”
“Wait, you’re going to New York?”
“I just told you you get to train with the strongest hero on the planet, and that’s the part you’re worried about? Yeah, I’m going to New York. Standard trade through the Bluestar Exchange Program. They love to mix us up and see how we work with other teams. Randy can’t spare any of his usual people, so he’s pretending I’m a full member, just long enough to get a trainer for you. Boston’s no picnic, but New York is superhero grad school. I’m gonna have to keep Mom on speed dial just to keep up.”
“I remember seeing some stuff about Minerva, but she doesn’t make the news much. Is she really a god?”
“Demigod,” Denise said. “Demigoddess. Exiled Olympian, powerful as fuck. Rumor is she’s so strong, she can’t even touch normal people without hurting them. But when shit goes down, and they get a New York-level threat somewhere else in the country, she’s the one they call when everybody else has gotten their butts kicked.
“Do what she says and control your temper. Do not argue with her and do not surge out! Minerva’s a professional and she needs to see you as a professional, or they’ll write you off as unstable and send you overseas.”
“All right,” I nodded. “Thanks for the heads up. I really will do my best.” I paused. “And Denise, are we cool? I feel like you’re avoiding me.”
“We’re fine,” Denise said. “But after what happened last time, I think we need to cool off and keep our distance for a while. Always partners, always friends, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, utterly failing to hide my disappointment.
“Good luck with Minerva. Learn everything you can!”
* * *
I was on river patrol again, when I saw something in the water a couple blocks away. I broke into a run and got to the shore as part of a gigantic round shape started to rise up out of the water. It was starting to look like a head.
I got on the radio and shared my POV with everybody on my team. “New monster coming out of the river! But this thing… This thing has a face! I’ve never seen one with a face before! It’s a giant, maybe thirty feet tall, but it looks kind of like a person. Like somebody left a human in the microwave too long! Weird lumps all over and one eye is like a foot lower than the other one, but… It’s got ears. Maybe it can hear me, I’m gonna try and talk to it!”
“You can’t talk to it,” Randall said, cutting in on the radio. “We get humanoids now and then, but nobody’s ever been able to talk to one. Either they don’t understand, or they just don’t care.”
“Hey!” I yelled up at the giant thing, ignoring Randy’s advice. “Can you hear me? Can you understand me? Wherever you came from, whatever this is, we can talk this out, okay?”
The creature turned its head for a minute, clearly registering my voice and my presence on the riverbank, but instead of talking back, it reached out one knobby hand, yanked an entire tree out of the ground, and tried to smash me with it. I dodged and jumped back, so it lost interest and resumed marching on dry land, swinging the tree back and forth like a club, casually smashing cars, buildings, and anything else in the way.
Fortunately, nobody really lived along the river anymore. Those who had to work nearby had already retreated to shelters under their office buildings, or to the big public shelter a few blocks away.
Randy’s voice came on the radio again. “Kovak, we’re scattered. Jade and Phil are in Chicago, and I’m ten minutes away. Do not engage! Help civilians get to the shelter, but do not engage until I get there!”
“Randy, this thing is headed straight for the shelter and that shelter already has people in it! I’ve got to turn him! I’ve got to engage!”
“Negative!” Randy shouted. “Kovak, you are not ready to solo this thing!”
I was about to argue with him when a crisp female voice cut into our channel. “This is Bluestar 2 incoming. Kovak, your file says you’re about half invulnerable. Can you dance with this thing and keep yourself alive for two minutes until I get there?”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Do it. I’m on my way.”
I ran in front of the giant and started waving my arms. When that didn’t work, I got its attention with an artillery spell and yelled, “Hey, asshole! Pick on somebody your own size!”
That turned him around. The creature roared in pain and tried to hit me with his tree again, but the swing was pretty slow, so I had time to jump back and get out of the way again.
I spent the next few minutes ducking and dodging and yelling taunts up at it, slowly pulling it away from the shelter, trying to keep it focused on me.
I thought I knew how to do a hero entrance until I saw Minerva make one. I was keeping my distance, gathering power for another artillery spell when she came down in a perfect three-point landing between me and the giant.
Minerva was gorgeous in a cold, imperious way. Muscled, but sleek, like a female bodybuilder, dressed in black nanoweave pants and a tank top in Bluestar blue, with nothing but a tasteful little B2 to indicate which team she was on.
I remembered her being a lot taller, but seeing us together in Azael’s mirror, I realized that was an illusion, a trick my mind played on me, because of how she carried herself. Minerva wasn’t actually a giant, but her personality, her aura was so powerful, she walked around like she was eight feet tall.
She might be mistaken for a human woman at the gym if it wasn’t for the flaming rope coiled around her waist. It seemed to be moving by itself, glowing with magic like it was on fire.
“Go high while I hit its legs!” Minerva said, immediately issuing commands. “Skull will be too thick to break. Go for weak points, eyes, ears, nose, throat!”
I didn’t know how well Minerva knew my powers, but from the first minute she met me, she was commanding me to fly.
I levitated myself to a nearby building and used it as a launching platform, sending myself hurtling at the monster’s face while Minerva pounded its legs and feet, hard enough to make it bend over and swing its tree at her.
She did not look like she weighed enough to stop the tree, but she braced her feet on the ground and caught it with both hands, then she broke it in half and hurled it into the river, leaving the giant unarmed.
I started to do sloppy, bouncing drive-by attacks, jumping and punching, jumping and punching, trying to aim for weak spots, but it kept turning its head just right to deflect blows with its knobby gray skull.
I hit it five or six times. It was getting slower and weaker every time I hit it, but I was nowhere near putting it down. Finally, I just said fuck it and decided to commit.
I jumped on the giant’s face and grabbed one ear, digging my feet into its chest for leverage while I punched as hard as I could, over and over until I heard a crack, and its skull caved in. I dropped to the ground a bit behind Minerva as it toppled over and fell backwards.
I was doubled over, panting but exhilarated, while Minerva leaned over the beast and carefully examined the dents I had left in its head.
“You cracked the skull…” she observed, looking back at me. “You didn’t hit a weak point; you just cracked the skull.”
I was feeling pretty damn good about the look on her face, right before she strode up and got in my face, forcing me to take a step back. Instead of sounding impressed, her voice came out angry and suspicious.
“You hit way too hard for me to not know who you are. Am I training another goddamn operative?”
“A what?” I said, stumbling back away from her.
“An operative. A black bag hero. A killer for the DMA. Are you another off-book asshole I’m about to send overseas?”
“No!” I shouted, sounding shrill and angry as I tried to defend myself. “I’ve been on B7 for months! Trained with Denise Hardy doing search and rescue!”
“So, why do you have a media block?” Minerva said. “HDI has you locked down so tight I didn’t know what you looked like until I got here. That’s what they do with heroes they want to take off book.”
“No!” I repeated. “Fuck! I don’t know! I thought it was retaliation for beating an HDI executive with a chair!”
“You…” Minerva froze, totally derailed by this. Even her anger seemed to fade. “You beat an HDI executive with a chair?”
“I didn’t kill him!” I added quickly. “It was before I got my powers.”
Minerva shook her head like she wanted to ask questions, then decided we didn’t have time and turned back to the dead giant.
“It looked like it was going straight for the shelter,” I said. “How did it know where the shelter was?”
“This one has been here before. Six or seven times over the years. I think I even fought him once. These river monsters aren’t just flesh and blood. You kill them, their bodies vanish, and in a few months, he’ll be back. No one knows why.”
“So, these things are conjured and bound, like demons?”
“Apparently,” Minerva said. “That’s about as far as my briefing went.” Then she looked me up and down again. “Who taught you to fight?”
“Holograms and training bots, mostly. Had one half-assed lesson with Sonny Mao.”
Minerva rolled her eyes at the mention of Sonny’s name. “But you’ve been in real fights with B7?”
I nodded. “Robots, animals, demons. Lots of demons. Hardy and I are really good at fighting demons.”
Minerva nodded. “Hardy’s good. She sponsored you?”
“Yes ma’am.”
My answer seemed to annoy her, but she let it go. “Okay, let’s get back to HQ. It’s just a few blocks, so I’m not gonna bother calling a car. I go pretty fast; you think you can keep up?”
I shrugged and squared my shoulders. “Let’s find out.”
And here’s a little tip, if you ever find yourself running with a goddess. She doesn’t expect you to keep up, but she does expect you to try, so by god, I tried.
It was exactly like running beside the Captain, when I was first using my Captain Cobalt hologram, learning how to skip rooftops. But Minerva was a hundred times more graceful, and quite a bit faster.
I could barely keep up with my 1960s version of Captain Cobalt, and Minerva could have outrun the 2040 version, when he was at the height of his powers.
She beat me to HQ by a couple minutes, but she didn’t just go in. She stood by the elevator with her arms crossed, watching me approach.
I thought she was going to make fun of me, but as I walked up, she said, “You’re not bad. Is that magic levitation?”
“Some of it,” I said. “Combination of levitation and just plain leaping. I use spells to make myself stronger.”
“And you’ve got some good defenses.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, somehow annoying her again.
I thought there might be some kind of formal debrief, but Minerva just disappeared into Randy’s office and closed the door.
* * *
The weirdest thing that happened on my first day with Minerva was how Lydia reacted when I got home.
She jumped down from her perch and came up to greet me like she always did, but hesitated when she was about a foot away. She started sniffing and looking around like something had just scared the shit out of her, looking up, down and all around, like she was expecting a threat to pop out of the ceiling or the floor.
Then she leaned in and said, “It’s coming from you. Timothy, where have you been today? What have you been fighting?”
“River monster, like a big, deformed giant who tried to hit me with a tree. I think I might have been able to take him, but my new trainer jumped in and helped me finish him off. She’s… kind of rude and weird, but she seems to know her stuff.”
“They got you a teacher? Who is she? What is she?”
“Would you believe she’s an exiled Olympian goddess?”
“A…” Lydia stammered, one of the few times I ever saw her at a loss for words. “Did she touch you?”
“I don’t remember. We got pretty close during the fight, but I don’t think she touched me. I think she’s afraid to touch people. She’s so strong, they say she can break people in half just by patting them on the back.”
“And this goddess, is there any way you could get her over here? Is there any chemistry between you? Any chance you could seduce her?”
“Lydia, what the fuck! What the fuck is wrong with you! No! My life is not a 20c pop song! I am not gonna try and seduce my teacher! What has gotten in to you?”
Lydia shook her head and blinked like she was trying to clear it. “I’m sorry. It’s just… It’s just instinct. Her aura, even just the traces she’s left on you. It’s… Please excuse me.”
And then Lydia popped into the gray, leaving me alone in my living room, one of the few times she left me alone.
She came back a few hours later, while I was popping a frozen dinner in the microwave, but she was all the way across the room, and she held her hand up to stop me as I walked toward her.
“Could you stay over there, please? I think it’s best that I keep my distance from you while you are working with this woman, and I will need to stay in the living room while you sleep. If we tried to share the same bed while you smell like this, I could not resist you, and I might even hurt you, unintentionally, if I forget where I am.”
“Lydia, what the fuck is this? It sounds like you want Minerva the way men want you!”
“Oh, I want her far more than men want me. You have proven that I am quite resistible, especially in this house. But I would not trust myself around this goddess. She might even be able to make me do things.”
“What kinds of things?” I said, grinning slightly.
“Anything,” Lydia said. “The way I am, the way demons are constructed leaves us vulnerable to certain kinds of compulsion. That’s why magic circles work. We are built with certain tendencies to make us easier to control. I’ve trained myself to resist most of these, but a goddess… As old as I am, I have never encountered a goddess before, and I would not trust myself in her presence. She might even be able to compel you.”
“She’s kind of supposed to compel me. I’m supposed to learn fighting from her and do whatever she says.”
“You should delay and hesitate from time to time,” Lydia said, “resisting things she wants you to do, just to make sure you can.”