Aaron, Dave, and Minerva went off to play pool, briefly leaving me alone with Lido.
“No, I’m not made of clouds,” she said. “Yes, there is a physical body under here, and no, you can’t touch it.”
“I did not say a god damn word to you.”
“No, but you were about to,” she said. “I could see you working up to it. How old are you, anyway? Are you even old enough to be in a bar?”
“Oh, fuck you, I’m twenty-five!”
“That body is twenty-five? I would have guessed nineteen. You need to eat some protein and bulk up. How could you possibly go into combat with Jane?”
“I have a spell that makes me stronger.”
“Well then, you’re leaning on it too much. You need to go cold turkey for a month and start using your actual muscles for a change. Let me guess, you’re one of those mind body duality geeks who thinks your body is just a container for your brain?
“But your brain is just the top of a whole nervous system, and when you cast spells, you use the whole thing. Improving your body will improve your magic, I promise.”
I sighed. “I know you’re right, it’s just hard to find time. I work twelve-hour shifts and use my days off to catch up on sleep. It’s hard to fit the gym in there.”
“No, it’s not. There’s a gym in B7 HQ. If you’ve got time to make cute videos, you’ve got time to lift. You’re running with the big boys now, and you need to look like it. You want to convince people to trust heroes again? You gotta look like somebody they can trust. That means taking care of yourself and dressing like a fucking adult. Does B7 even have a PR guy?”
“They keep trying to send me to her and I keep telling them to fuck off.”
“And that’s why you dress like you’re still in high school. Take the meeting, let them give you a trainer and a stylist, and demand a decent clothing allowance. They’ll try to fuck you on that, so don’t settle for less than five grand."
"You want me to demand five thousand dollars for clothes? I don’t think I’ve spent a thousand dollars on clothes, combined, in my entire life.”
“And everybody can tell. If you really can’t negotiate for yourself, I can recommend an agent, but fifteen percent is a big chunk at your level. Cheaper to handle it yourself until you get to the real money.”
“Okay,” I said. “And thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now fuck off, you’re scaring away all the hot guys.”
* * *
I stayed behind to play darts with Dave and Aaron, while Jane and Lido ended up at the bar, watching our last fight on Minerva’s display.
I didn’t hear this at the time, obviously, but Azael had me watch it, as a reminder of what I could have been.
“He really does fight like Captain Cobalt,” Lido said. “Did you teach him that?”
“I’m refining him, but he’s been doing that since day one, studying Larry’s old videos, copying his moves, using spells to match his powers. Some days, fighting with him is so much like having Larry back, it messes with my head.”
“How long did you train with the Captain?”
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“Just a few years, a long damn time ago. Met him when I was eighteen, fought with him for a couple years, but I was never officially on Bluestar 1. It was just the two of us on the night shift most of the time. Larry was scheduling things to get me alone, but I was so young, I didn’t see what he was doing until one night when he finally got me back to his room.
“Don’t tell Kovak any of this, please. If he knew I worked directly with his hero, it would freak him out. He would start making mistakes and he would ask a hundred questions that he is not ready to hear the answers to. And if he ever found out that his hero cheated on his wife with a teenage demigod; he is definitely not ready for that.”
“So, it’s not just a rumor, you and the Captain really…?”
“He was my first. My only one for a long time. We had a couple years together until his wife caught on, then it was five years before I met another guy who could… handle me. I hated Larry for a long time, but I lost my shit at the funeral, inconsolable, to the point where even Abby tried to comfort me. I think that was the last time I cried for anybody.”
Lido reached out and wrapped one wispy hand around hers.
“Those first couple weeks fighting with Tim, it was so much like having Larry back, I jumped him and tried to drag him back to my room.” Minerva grinned at Lido over a swig of beer. “I was already teaching him to fight like Larry, figured I might as well teach him everything else.”
“Jane, that’s disgusting! He’s a child.”
“He is not a child. Everybody treats him like a kid because he looks young, but he’s not a teenager, and he’s definitely not a virgin. I don’t know what he’s got at home, but it’s apparently hotter than me. He turned me down and somehow turned himself into my best friend. I still can’t believe he did this for me.”
“This goofy-looking kid turned you down?”
"He said he was scared of me, scared that his magic would fail during sex, but I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know what he’s going home to, but he really does love it, and it’s definitely not human. The first day I met him, he came in smelling like roses and Eden fruit, like he just rolled out of an angel’s bed.”
"But if he’s working so hard to please you, are you sure he’s not hot for teacher?”
“He’s not into me, he’s into Larry. He’s obsessed with this stupid cartoon version of Captain Cobalt that never really existed. It sounds dumb to us, but it’s working. Trying to live up to this impossible example, this is what keeps him going. This is what drives him forward when other people would give up. That’s why I can’t tell him anything about the real guy. It would ruin him.”
“You really think this kid could replace Larry? I don’t see it.”
“You haven’t really seen him fight yet. And you haven’t seen how hard he works. Last week, he took out a river monster with my diving punch, a move I haven’t taught him yet. He’s anticipating my lesson plan, watching video of how I’ve trained other heroes, making holograms to copy my movements.
“Tim is the best support hero I’ve ever trained. I tell him to stay somewhere, and he stays there. I tell him to do something, and he just does it. I tell him to learn something, and he practices, over and over, until he gets it perfect.
“A couple weeks ago, I told him to dive in the river. He didn’t even know why he was diving, he just did it because I told him to, and dodged an acid attack that would have taken him out of the fight. Larry never trusted me like that. Larry would have hesitated and taken that shit full in the face.
“Tim is the best backup I ever had. Utterly selfless, doesn’t give a shit where the camera is. Doesn’t care if he falls, doesn’t care if he fails. Doesn’t care if he looks like an idiot in front of ten million people. Whatever happens, he just gets back up and charges the bad guy.
“Don’t you dare tell him this, but I would take Tim over Larry any day. Larry didn’t give a shit about what I needed, on the street or anywhere else. He was a fucking diva, zooming back and forth all over the place, stopping in the middle of fights to pose for the camera. I know exactly where Tim is and exactly what he’s doing at every moment during a battle, and I don’t have to spend an hour fluffing his ego after every fight.
“It’s too early to say for sure, but if he can keep this up, Tim Kovak may actually become the man Larry pretended to be. And in ten or twenty years, when he goes on TV and tells people it’s time to take the Earth back, the whole human race is gonna line up behind him, and I’m gonna be first in line.”
* * *
“So, could he beat me?” Lido asked.
Minerva frowned. “He’s never fought a flying opponent before, so he would lose the first fight, but I guarantee he would win the rematch.”
“You guarantee it?”
“Yeah, I can even tell you how he’ll beat you. He’ll make a hologram that moves just like you; he might even rig it to shoot lightning, randomized just enough to make it a challenge. Then he’ll learn a faster ranged attack, and practice with it, day and night, until he can pick you right out of the sky. Honestly, I need him to develop something like that, so if you could take him in the parking lot and kick his ass real quick, we might as well get that ball rolling.”