Azael had me watch in his mirror as Kyle took his shot. I got the feeling that I was getting credit for this, like setting two lonely people up for love counted as a good deed.
Kyle spent several long minutes nervously straightening his tie and cleaning his glasses before he finally hit the buzzer on Minerva’s door. Her face fell as she answered, and saw it was just another suit.
She opened the door for him and said, “What is it now?”
I could tell on his face that he wanted to run. He was just about to mumble an excuse and run out, but he found a bit of courage somewhere and barreled on. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m not here for the company. This is personal.”
That stopped her. Minerva had been walking away from him, now she turned back and looked him up and down, seeing him as a person for the first time. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What do you want?”
“I’ve got a private room reserved tomorrow at the restaurant downstairs, and I’d like you to join me for dinner.”
She was quiet to the point where it became rude, staring at him with a sour, suspicious expression. I would not have blamed him for backing out in the face of that, but Kyle stood his ground, hands in his pockets so she wouldn’t see them shake.
“Are you trying to rope me into some kind of shady business meeting?”
“No,” he said. “This is not business. I’ve worked for you for a long time, but now I’d like to get to know you for real, as a person.”
“But I’m technically your client, are you even allowed to do this?”
“No,” he said again. “I am absolutely not allowed to do this, so we have to be discreet. I’ve arranged to have the cameras turned off, and I’ll be there much earlier than you, so we don’t arrive together.”
Minerva grinned a little. “So, what happens if you get caught?”
“If we’re seen together after hours, I will be fired and blacklisted from several other companies.”
“So, you’re risking your job…?”
“To take you to dinner, yes.”
Minerva’s expression softened as she realized what he was doing. “I don’t even know your first name.”
He smiled. “Kyle.”
“Nice to meet you, Kyle. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
My favorite part was watching Kyle lose his shit in the hallway as her door closed behind him, mouthing “holy shit” as he realized she said yes.
* * *
Azael was being very strange this time around. He had been watching me like a hawk while we worked through the first part of my confession, paying attention to every detail of my interaction with Lydia and Taltorak, like that was the primary thing he would be judging me on.
But now we were reviewing the part of my life I was actually proud of, my first days trying to be a superhero, doing actual good deeds, helping people every day. And if I wasn’t exactly putting up Captain Cobalt numbers, I saved dozens of people that first year, unequivocally using my powers for good.
The Angel of Magic presents as an oversize man, perfectly proportional, with everything about him about ten percent larger than a human being.
Not quite a giant, not just unusually tall, but literally ten percent larger than life. He had white hair, white wings, and swirly blue eyes that seemed to be lit up with magic all the time.
He was frightening, but he could be gentle, even encouraging, when he could tell I was struggling with an emotional moment in my life, just saying little things like, “Take a breath” or “Take your time.”
He wasn’t exactly nurturing or compassionate, but he was remarkably patient, and he was never cruel. I kept expecting him to rush me or make me skip to the end of my confession, but he said he wanted to hear everything in detail, and extract every lesson my life had to offer, even if it took a hundred years.
He kept asking the same questions over and over, stopping events in the mirror to ask me, “Why did you do that?” or “What were you feeling there?” And my personal favorite, “Did you know that was wrong?”
The answer to that last one was always yes, and I was determined to never lie or try to make excuses for the bad things I had done.
That was the most annoying thing about my father. No matter how shitty he was, no matter how badly he hurt people, it was never his fault.
He lived every moment like his emotions were the only ones that mattered, like everyone else was a simulation, and he was the only real person on Earth.
He had a remarkable ability to turn things around and make himself the victim, no matter how egregiously he had hurt someone, even to the point of blaming his victims for making him hit them. He was so good at it, his victims would often end up apologizing to him, without ever quite knowing why.
Easy enough to pull that trick on a child, but I saw him do it to dozens of clerks and bank officials, teachers, and bureaucrats. He even turned the tables on police officers and judges a few times, avoiding so many drunk driving charges, it might qualify as a superpower.
I was determined to never do that, to never dodge responsibility for things I’d done. I might apologize, I might admit regret, but I had promised myself I would never make excuses, and I would never turn away from my life, no matter how destructive or how stupid my mistakes had been.
But I felt like being honest about my mistakes also made me entitled to praise for the good parts, and there was no praise coming from Azael, no matter how many lives I saved or how many people I healed.
He was showing me lots of weird, disconnected stuff this time around, stuff that ostensibly had nothing to do with me, like the personal conversation between Judy and Denise, and the weird courtship ritual between Kyle and Minerva.
It was great to see Kyle stick his neck out and it was great to see Minerva learning to trust an authentic member of the human race, but all I did was give him a little push. He did all the real work himself.
* * *
If Minerva had walked into a date with me the way she walked into that restaurant to meet Kyle, I might have run away.
She was wearing a designer dress that Bluestar PR had purchased for a red-carpet appearance, black and luxurious, cinched at her neck, leaving her arms and shoulders bare.
She had black hair cascading down past her shoulders, and her eyes were doing that blue-gray goddess thing, where they seemed to be a different color every time you looked.
No overtly symbolic jewelry, since she only wore Bluestar gear on the job, and she would never publicly represent Olympus.
Kyle was wearing a severe black suit, obviously expensive, but he was wearing his “casual” gray tie with a subtle pattern. Not red like the tie he used to intimidate people, or the Bluestar blue one he used for official functions, or the yellow power tie he used to navigate between factions in board meetings.
He was dressed well, but he still could have walked into a business meeting, whereas Minerva looked like she was about to receive a fashion award.
“Thanks for coming,” Kyle said. “You look amazing.”
“Thank you,” she said. A normal woman might have blushed. “I hope it’s not too much. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a reason to wear this.”
As promised, they had the restaurant all to themselves, in a private room with a back entrance, and I had helped Kyle make sure all the cameras were off. Some random tower resident might still see them together, but he still looked like more of a corporate handler than a date.
Kyle had short, curly black hair and a long, narrow face, reflecting Hispanic or Italian ancestry - maybe a mix of both.
The only thing that made him stand out were his tiny round glasses, strangely old-fashioned, on gold wire frames. No adult needed corrective lenses in 2058, so this had to be a fashion thing, a little touch of personality in a presentation that would otherwise mark him as a faceless cog in a big machine.
“I usually get wine,” Kyle said. “Do you drink?”
“I can, but it doesn’t really affect me. Get whatever you like.”
Kyle ordered something very specific and very expensive, and they stared at each other nervously for a minute.
“You really surprised me,” Minerva said. “I’ve never seen a suit take this kind of risk before.”
“And I have never taken a risk like this before,” Kyle said smoothly, “but a mutual friend convinced me it was time to try.”
“We have a mutual friend?”
Uh oh.
“At least one,” he said. “And quite a few mutual enemies.”
That seemed to surprise her. “Is it safe to talk here?”
“I believe so,” Kyle said. “I wanted us to have a real conversation tonight, so I have taken great pains to ensure our privacy.”
“If you see these people as enemies, why do you work for them?”
“Everybody sees a corporation as if it’s all one big thing, united for some grand purpose, but when a corporation gets as big as mine is, you end up with feuds and factions and all kinds of powerful people working against each other, all trying to use corporate resources to advance their personal projects.
“I hope I’m not insulting you when I say you are a very powerful piece on this HDI chessboard, and there are a lot of different people fighting for control of you.”
Minerva clearly didn’t like that, but she let him continue.
“Every move you make, every battle you fight and every hero you train represents a victory for one faction and a defeat for another.
“Nobody wants you in Boston. Nobody. We desperately need you in New York. This is not public knowledge, but we’ve lost four heroes from Bluestar 2 this year, and we’ve been making do with tech heroes and conscripts ever since. Two of your current ‘teammates’ are disguised supervillains trying to escape death row.
“You’re the only reliable asset we have in New York, and we need you more than ever, because the bad guys are getting stronger. Not just more organized, but the exiled demigods are getting more powerful, individually, as the level of ambient KMP increases on Earth.
“You’re getting stronger, too, but you may not feel it until you get back to New York. That’s part of the reason we’ve been keeping you away.
“My superiors are afraid you’re going to feel a surge of power when you get back home, and they’re afraid of what that power jump might do to you - of what it might do to you mentally, if you suddenly realized no force on Earth could stop you. So, when our buddy Tim said that out loud, he wasn’t just making a PR blunder, he was giving voice to their worst fear.”
“But why would anybody be afraid of me? I’ve been strong enough to break out for years, and I never have. Why are they so worried now?”
“Some of the New York demis, they’re trying to put a team together. Most of these exiled godlings have been too selfish and too proud to work together up ‘til now, but Magni and Gersemi have fallen in love, and when the other demis saw how easily they repelled a B2 raid when they were working together, some of them have come out with a whole new perspective on teamwork.
“Narfi and Olenus are putting a band together, and they’re about to recruit the happy couple. Narfi wants to take most of New England and split off from the rest of the country, declaring a meta dictatorship like in South America.
“Narfi’s got Olenus making weapons for him, and he is said to be very persuasive, as you might expect, given who his father is. Forgive me for being so blunt here, but half the board is afraid that if we take you back to New York, Narfi might seduce you, and convince you to turn on us.
“So, half my bosses want you back in New York fighting this threat that has already killed four of your team members, and the other half wants to keep sending you to weird training assignments in the middle of nowhere, hoping they can stop this villain team up before the bad guys make their pitch.
“Then, as we’ve got these two factions squabbling over what to do with you, we get this request for you to train some kid in Boston. We’re about to throw it out and send Randall a form letter, when we get a memo straight from the CEO’s office telling us to get you to Boston on the first shuttle we can find.
“Minerva, this has never happened. Our illustrious CEO…” Kyle refused to say his name, as if the CEO of Hyde Defense Industries was a demon he was afraid to summon.
“Our illustrious CEO has never interfered in metahuman management before. He’s made it clear that he hates using heroes and wants to replace all of you with remote-piloted robots, but he’s got some weird fixation on Kovak, and specifically requested that he train with you.”
Kyle paused, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I swear I did not intend to turn this into a business meeting.”
“This is not a business meeting,” Minerva said. “This is the first time anybody has told me the truth in my whole damn life. Keep going.”
“I didn’t bring you here for this, but I have to ask, do you know what this is? Do you know why the most powerful CEO on Earth is obsessed with Tim Kovak?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Minerva frowned and shook her head. “Kovak is powerful, and he’s a good kid, but honestly, he’s too young and he’s too honest. There’s no way he would ever be useful for subterfuge or black bag work, and if you tried to break his spirit and turn him into an operative, I think you would break the whole personality structure that lets him use magic.”
Kyle nodded. “Well, whatever the reason, you are in Boston by the explicit command of the man himself, and he wants your report on Kovak on his desk the minute you sign off on him. I presume you are going to sign off on him?”
“Yes,” Minerva said. “I stretched it out a couple weeks to help him with some weak spots and piss Clark off, but he learns fast and he’s ready to work. I was going to recommend him for a permanent spot on Bluestar 7.”
“What about Bluestar 2? He’s not a god, he works well with you, and New York needs all the help it can get. Is he ready for Broadway?”
Minerva frowned. “He’s strong, but I don’t think he’s ready for New York. He’s good in a straight fight, even against large opponents, but the random, mixed-up shit gods can do? I don’t think he’s ready for that.”
“Your call,” Kyle said, “but don’t be surprised if the boss sends him there anyway.”
“Cavuto, you dodged my question. Why do you work for these people?”
He smiled. “I was really hoping you’d be calling me Kyle by this point. My own fault for talking shop.”
“Will you relax? You’re not boring me. I finally feel like somebody is treating me like an adult. So, thank you. Thank you, Kyle. You can call me Jane when we’re alone. But seriously, why do you work for these people if you hate them?”
“Oh, I don’t hate them,” Kyle said. “I may not like their methods, but the country needs somebody doing what we’re doing here. New York needs heroes. Boston needs heroes. And all these other teams you worked with needed you. You’re the strongest hero alive, and one of the most experienced. Everybody you work with gets better. I just wish they’d loosen their grip and trust you with the real story.”
“Like you just did.”
Kyle nodded.
“But even if I know all this, what the hell do I do about it?”
Kyle smiled. “I have a few ideas.”
“Hit me,” Minerva said. “Show me a brilliant idea.”
“I want to take you to Greece.”
“What?” Minerva said, obviously surprised. “They hate me in Greece.”
“Yeah,” Kyle said, “and I’m gonna fix that. I’ve been talking to Bia, the Greek national hero. Maybe half as strong as you are, but incredibly authentic and popular. You already speak the language, right?”
“An older dialect, but I’m sure I can pick it up.”
“I want to take you to Greece next year, and have Bia teach you about her homeland. I want you to go there, not as a goddess, but as a tourist. Not another brash American, but as a serious student who speaks the language and wants to see the real history.
“I’ll set up a few tours and write a few speeches, but we’re going to keep the tone very quiet and respectful - the opposite of what they’re expecting. And at the end of the trip, Bia’s not going to fit you for a toga and piss everybody off. She’s going to fit you for a proper himation drape, and the whole country will accept you as one of their own.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Minerva said, “but I don’t know how to do any of that stuff. If I go, could you come with me?”
“I…” Kyle blinked. “They don’t usually let me go on things like this, but I’d be writing the speeches, and if you asked for me, I don’t see how they could say no.”
“You really think they’ll agree to this?”
“Yeah, they’ll love it, because I’m going to lie. I’m gonna show the board a fake itinerary that makes you look like an idiot, like just another dumb, loud American. Then I’ll have Bia meet you when you step off the plane and change the whole tone of it right in front of them. They’ll want to stop it, but when the whole world sees Bia take your hand and welcome you to the country, by then it’ll be too late.”
“Are you hungry?” Minerva said. “I think I’m hungry.”
* * *
Then they spent a long time talking about food, as they tried a variety of fresh seafood dishes. Minerva was trying very hard to look normal, trying to eat like a normal person and not consume any heroic quantities in front of Kyle.
But then she shared how much she liked sweet stuff, and the two of them started blitzing through desserts, from apple tarts to Boston cream pie.
Minerva agreed they were all great.
“But nothing compares to generic raspberry toaster tarts?” Kyle asked. “There’s got to be a story there.”
“Yeah,” Minerva said. “It was the first thing I ate when I got to Earth. I couldn’t believe how much sugar they were able to pack into one little bite. But it was symbolic, I guess.
“I was in bad shape when I first got here. Alone, abandoned, literally cast down from the mountain by an angry great-grandfather. He made Earth sound like a prison, and for the first few hours it felt like one, wandering around a back alley in New York City, fending off creepy guys who all wanted to take me home. I only hurt the ones who tried to touch me, but one of them tried to touch me a lot.”
Minerva got quiet and Kyle just let her sit with it. And this is the primary way Kyle was smarter than me. I cannot abide silence in a conversation. It drives me nuts. I would have jumped in and tried to fill the awkward pause in her speech and changed the subject or filled it with some mindless noise.
But Kyle was a quiet guy, and he respected silence. And I think that, more than anything, is what impressed her. Because when it came right down to it, Kyle kept his mouth shut and kept eye contact, inviting but not pushing, as Minerva relived the worst day of her life.
“But right after that, I met a good man,” she said, “a cop who loved me and protected me for the next four years. At first, I just followed him because he gave me food, literally following him around like a puppy who wanted a treat.
“But he was kind to me, and I guess that stupid raspberry tart was the first time anyone on Earth was kind to me. Terry showed me his world wasn’t all bad and showed me I wasn’t alone.”
“So, do you really like the pastries, or do you just like the memory?”
“Both,” Minerva shrugged.
“Do you have any left?”
And that’s how Kyle got himself invited up. I told you he was smarter than me.
* * *
I tried to tap out again, before the two of them made it to Minerva’s room, but Azael made me keep watching, like he was trying to teach me something about love, or something about gods, or both.
Jane still looked incredible in her dress, and I had to admit, Kyle made a suit look so good, he made me feel shabby and poor every time I looked at him -even now, when I should have been way beyond caring.
They walked into Minerva’s suite together, but they didn’t sit down. Nobody offered anybody a drink. Nobody relaxed on the couch or perched on one of those terrible hotel chairs. They just stood there, until I realized… fuck, neither one of them knows what to do.
Minerva knew how to steamroll a guy and throw herself at a drunk like Sonny Mao or jump a colleague she wanted to have a fling with, but she really liked Kyle, was thinking of him as potential boyfriend material, and she hadn’t considered anyone boyfriend material since she was a girl.
I was hoping Kyle could step in and smooth it over, but he was about as bad with women as Minerva was with men. Minerva could usually just get by on her looks, no matter how flat her personality was, but Kyle was not the type to hit on co-workers or pull young women at bars.
They stood there and fidgeted in front of each other longer than I thought possible. If it had been a TV show, I would have hit fast forward just to spare myself the misery of it, but Azael had the remote, and he was studying the couple like he could see things that were invisible to me.
“What do you normally do,” Minerva asked, “when you get a girl back to her room?”
“I reconfigure her main screen and ask her which controller she wants.”
“What?” Minerva said, and the way she said it made me groan in sympathy for both of them. That wasn’t the absolute worst thing a man could have said to an Olympian goddess, but he had just tried to make a video game joke in front of a woman who had never played one.
“Last time I was on anything like a date,” Kyle explained, “I was in Austin launching a new game system, when one of the presenters invited me back to her room. I really did reset her screen and play her company’s game with her a while.”
“How did it go?” Minerva asked, grinning almost like a normal woman as the topic shifted to sex.
“Better than you might expect,” Kyle said. “Certainly better than I expected.”
“Did you score?” Minerva asked, using slang for sexual intercourse that made her sound eighty years old.
“I didn’t get the high score, but I think I did all right.”
I knew Kyle couldn’t hear me, but I stood up and shouted: “Stop making gaming jokes! She doesn’t get them! She will never get them!”
The joke soared over her head like a cheap satellite, and I groaned in sympathy for both of them again.
“What about you?” Kyle asked. “How did your last date go?”
“I had pizza with Tim Kovak, and he said he just wanted to be friends.”
“You hit on Tim Kovak?” Kyle said, sounding so surprised it actually hurt my feelings a little. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”
“When you’re me,” she said, “you do not have the luxury of a type. Tim and I weren’t really friends yet, so hitting on him didn’t seem quite as gross or creepy as it does now.”
Ouch.
“So, what would your type be, if you could have a type?”
“No idea,” Minerva said. “I don’t like effeminate guys and I don’t like macho drunks. That’s about as far as my preferences go. What about you,” she asked. “What’s your type?”
Kyle gave a small smile. “I’m a nerd, Jane, and nerds don’t get a lot of choices, either. I’m an obsessive workaholic introvert who generally prefers board games to women. I have spent most of my life invisible to women, until I jumped up a few rungs on the HDI ladder and started dating ruthless corporate social climbers who treated me like a eunuch with an open wallet.”
“You ask me what I want…” Kyle looked down and away for a moment before softening his tone. “I’m just so tired of the battles, the status games, the corporate alliances pretending to be marriage. It’s all so empty and calculated up here. I just want something real.”
“I think we finally agree on something,” Minerva said. “But what’s real? Do you even know what real feels like?”
“No idea,” Kyle said, so casually, so quickly, he actually got a laugh out of her. “But I think the first sign that it’s real is that you stop worrying if it’s real.”
Minerva was inching closer to him now, opening her posture as he got more honest with her, like she was slowly starting to see the person inside the suit.
Shit, was my boy actually gonna pull this off?
Minerva kept getting closer until she was pushing into his personal space. Leaning in weirdly, pacing around him, peering at him from different angles while he kept craning his neck to look at her, wondering what the hell she was doing, or what the hell he had done wrong.
What started as a promising slow creep toward Kyle was changing into something else, as Minerva started to look… angry?
She seemed to get increasingly agitated until she came back around in front of him. Out of nowhere she yelled, “Dammit! What are you?”
When Kyle was too stunned to answer, Minerva put her hands to her head and yelled, “I swear, if you turn out to be Ares or something, I am gonna drop kick you right out that window!”
Kyle found his voice. “You think I’m a god?”
“I don’t know what you are, but usually when I get this close to a guy and turn my aura up, they start babbling or freaking out, but you didn’t even blink!”
Kyle immediately relaxed and smiled, like her anger was no big deal, now that he knew the cause.
“Jane, your aura isn’t working on me because I cannot possibly worship you more than I already do, and I cannot possibly be more freaked out than I already am, just being in the same room with you.”
She scowled and crossed her arms at him. “You do not look freaked out.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I am trying very hard not to.”
Minerva wanted to stay angry, but his composure had thrown her off. She slowly got close to him, forcing herself into his personal space again, coming around behind him to get right next to his ear. Also in position to put him in a headlock, I guess, in case this seduction went the other way.
“So, if you’re telling the truth, and you really are some secret Minerva superfan…” She put her hands on his shoulder and whispered, “How long have you wanted me?”
It was the first time I had ever seen Minerva do anything sexy on purpose, and I was so proud of her, I almost clapped.
I would have melted and dropped to my knees if she had tried that on me, aura or no aura, but Kyle kept his hands in his pockets and maintained eye contact.
“The first time I saw you, we were both sixteen,” he said. “You were being introduced with a team as part of some Bluestar young heroes program.
“They put you in a costume that was supposed to look like Roman gladiator armor and had you walk out carrying the entire team on a platform over your head.
“Then your teammates jumped down and lined up beside you, and you were the most powerful, most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Then they had you do a juggling act with tank shells and bowling balls, tossing stuff back and forth with some giant Russian guy who was obviously your boyfriend.
“I played that back a hundred times, and I wanted to be him more than I ever wanted anything in my life. I went to bed every night praying that I would get powers, so I could fly to New York and fight by your side.
“But the years passed, one after another, and if you don’t get powers by the time you turn eighteen, you probably never will. I did some stupid stuff, like a lot of guys do, jumping off rooftops and playing with knives, hoping to scare myself or shock my system hard enough that my powers would kick in. But they never did.
“Eventually, I gave up, the way all mundane boys give up, and went to law school. I got my first corporate job and decided if I couldn’t have powers, I could at least make some money.”
Kyle stepped back and carefully cleaned his spectacles with a handkerchief before slowly putting them back on his face.
“So yeah, I’ll admit it, you were my schoolboy crush, but I’m not a boy anymore. I’m a grown man now, and as a grown man, I’ve learned there’s more than one kind of power; and if these assholes are doing what I think they’re doing, then maybe I don’t need super strength to fight by your side.”
Minerva had come back around to stare at him face to face, slowly learning there was a difference between “not talking” and “speechless.”
She put her hands on her hips, glanced away for a moment, and told Kyle, “Don’t move!” She darted for the bathroom, pointed at him, and enunciated, “Don’t. Move,” again, as she slammed the door behind her.
Kyle knew he had passed some kind of test, but he didn’t quite understand what was happening. I shared a look with Azael and realized even the eternally celibate Angel of Magic knew what was happening, but Kyle was paralyzed, unable to accept a moment that seemed too good to be true.
Minerva was making scooting and splashing noises in the bathroom and he was still just standing there. I saw a flash of light under the door and realized she had summoned her owl, and just used the spell I gave her to reduce her strength.
Only Azael could hear me, but I stood up and yelled at the mirror, “Move, idiot! ‘Don’t move’ doesn’t literally mean don’t move!”
Kyle said, “Oh! Oh, shit!” out loud as it clicked for him, the unique mix of joy and terror a man can only experience when a goddess is running water in the next room, getting ready to have sex with you.
Kyle ripped off his tie and jacket, then took way too long smoothing them out and making sure they were hung correctly in the closet, grabbing a small wooden rectangle from his pocket before carefully putting his spectacles in, mumbling, “Sorry, grandpa. You don’t get to watch this part.”
Then he kicked his shoes off and stared at his socks too long, wondering if he should take them off now, or wait for some kind of confirmation before shedding more clothes.
Kyle was still sitting on the bed when Minerva emerged from the bathroom, wearing nothing but a hotel robe.
He took one look at her… and totally froze up.
Look, it’s scary to have sex with anybody for the first time, and Kyle had been building this moment up in his head for half his life. You can’t blame him for losing his shit at the last minute.
And I want to make one thing clear, for people who have only ever seen superheroes on TV. They really are different, okay? That’s not a snarky metaphor, it’s the literal truth.
Some of those differences are obvious. If you’re having sex with a guy who can shoot fire from his hands, you need to be damn sure where his hands are at every point in the process, even if he swears he can control it.
I’ve already talked about how weird it is to swap magic with witches and demons, but even if you’re touching a hero with no powers at all, the things they do to their bodies, the conditioning they have to endure so they can use their weird magic weapons and survive swipes from monsters - it changes them. Even if they don’t become more than human, they become a different kind of human.
Everybody knows the joke that men and women are a different species, but in Minerva’s case, that was the least of it. Her body really was made from different stuff than his.
Not just a celebrity, not just a superhero, but a goddess from another plane, literally distorting the laws of physics with every step she took.
So, I don’t care if you’re a negotiator, or a litigator, or a liquid-cooled corporate badass, the moment you realize you are about to be in intimate physical contact with something this alien, you are gonna need a minute.
I was really worried when I saw him freeze. Knowing the personalities here, there was a sixty percent chance Minerva was about to fuck this up by being dismissive or aggressive or maybe even challenging the poor guy’s manhood by mistake.
But she had one natural instinct that served her well here. She knew how to remain silent, and not ruin any particular moment with words.
She sat down beside him and started unbuttoning Kyle’s shirt for him, helping him take it off before tossing it on the floor. Kyle twitched when she did this, and I was terrified that he was about to ruin the moment by standing up to hang it in the closet.
Kyle and I both expected Minerva to continue helping him take clothes off, but she paused and waited for him, patiently waiting for him to do something that he was too scared to do.
So, she put her hand to his cheek and kept it there, like she was trying to calm a frightened horse. Kyle seemed to unwind a bit, so she took his hand in hers and slowly placed it on her breast under the robe.
I looked over to Azael and said, “Hey man, I don’t want to tell you your business, but I’m pretty sure anything we watch beyond this point is a sin.”
Azael seemed distracted. “Hmm? Oh! Oh, yes,” and turned the image off.
“I still don’t get it, man. It was great watching two of my best friends fall in love, but why did you make me watch that?”
“I’ll need a few centuries to be sure,” Azael said, “but putting those two together may end up being your most significant contribution to the human race.”
* * *
Of course, I couldn’t see anything when all this actually happened, and neither one of them was the type to share.
When I called Kyle the next morning to ask how the date went, he just said, “It went very well,” and refused to elaborate.
Then I asked Minerva as we headed out on our last patrol and she said, “He was really nice. Definitely the smartest guy I’ve ever been with. Once we get back to New York he’s going to take me to this pop culture museum in the HDI Atrium. They’ve been scavenging artifacts from all over the state and bringing them back to the arcology. He thinks I might like some of the old pop music, and he wants to take me to an opera.”
I was delighted. “You’re going to give Kyle a second date?”
“Is that really such a surprise?” she asked. “You know I like brave men.”