There was a man in a suit waiting in Randall’s office the next morning, both of them waiting for me. Minerva was a few minutes behind, so I walked in alone and shut the door, ready to say goodbye to the job I had wanted all my life.
Randall introduced the man as director of sales and merchandising for Bluestar 2. Was I really so low rank that they couldn’t even send a vice president to fire me? This man was just another generic suit with tiny round glasses and a bright red tie. At least he didn’t try to shake my hand.
“You’re Tim Kovak?”
I nodded.
“We’d like you to do us a favor.”
This did not sound like the intro to a termination, so I stammered, “What?”
“We need you to make a few more videos with Minerva, and I would… request that you keep it light, please. Just have some fun, avoid any discussion of corporate politics, and try to draw her out a little.”
“I thought you guys hated my video?”
“Oh, we did. The board was ready to blacklist you and drive you out of the country. They were gonna bury you so deep, you’d be in South America working for a puppet state by Christmas.
“But Minerva’s merchandise sales are up five hundred and forty-six percent overnight. We can’t keep anything in stock. They’re even buying stuff with her shitty retro costume, and she’s been trending all night. You turned my biggest problem into my biggest earner with one video, so I put my ass on the line for you and stared down a board room full of people who want you dead. You did a miracle for her yesterday, and I need you to do it again, to convince my boss that Minerva had a whole country full of fans waiting to love her, and all they needed was an excuse."
* * *
Minerva came in Randy’s door ready for combat, but I quickly intervened so she didn’t squish this guy. “Easy,” I said. “Looks like we’re gonna get away with it, and this guy wants us to do another one.”
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“You’re Cavuto, right?” Minerva confirmed. “The guy who does my action figures?”
“Yes ma’am,” the suit said, sounding… just like me.
“And you want another video?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been working for five years to try and do what this guy did in five minutes, and I desperately need him to do it again.”
* * *
So, we did it again.
“Hey everybody, we’re back! Tim and Minerva versus the contents of the Bluestar 7 vending machine! I would hate to be the guy who has to explain this to accounting.
“I am intimately familiar with the contents of this vending machine, but most of it should be new to her. She wanted to get stuff from the good ones in VBC Tower, but I told her that would be missing the point.
“So, first up, raspberry licorice sticks…”
* * *
Denise really did not want to stay in New York, after throwing down with Freya’s granddaughter with no warning and no backup. Denise said the members of Bluestar 2 were incredibly rude and isolated, even from each other.
Individually quite powerful, but almost never together as a team. The team roster changed so frequently; rumor was New York had become a haven for black box heroes returning from other countries.
Everybody was suspicious of Bluestar 2 heroes because they were the only ones in the program allowed to use masks and hide their names. They all had generic one-word names like Blaze, Nitro, Night, Bullet, and Hawk, and it had become obvious that there were different people under those masks from time to time.
They all wore the same costumes so HDI could sell the same merchandise, no matter who they cycled through the team. It also protected the illusion that Bluestar 2 never lost anybody, because whenever Blaze died, they just got a new Blaze.
They didn’t do interviews, and it was pretty obvious that the people who showed up for photo shoots were models in the costumes, using voice changers on the rare occasions when they had to speak.
Minerva had been working with this cast of characters for years, the only real person on the team, while everybody else changed around her.
The guys under the masks seemed very competent and very powerful, often giving the impression that they were much older than the twenty-something and thirty-something heroes serving on other teams.
New York got the best of everything, but if you wanted to fight with the big boys, you had to give up your identity and put on the mask. And there was a good chance the guy next to you was a metahuman assassin in his forties, doing a domestic tour of duty before retirement.
And if these interchangeable heroes got killed by angry demigods on their last tour of duty, well, the program could save a lot of money on pensions.