Joyce Knightly February 7th,20XX

Today was an important day for multiple reasons. The first was that today marked the fifth day ‘Aaron Cyrus’, the celebrity, had gone radio silent. There had been no social media posts, no television appearances and no news from his team. Although he wasn’t the most popular star out there, he had a sizable and dedicated fan base that had grown used to seeing him everywhere.

Squire was busier than normal due to the news of the ‘Pages’ officially being released and the activity of his fans, who spammed posts on the website in the hopes of summoning some form of activity from him to prove he was alive. More than a few of them even tagged my official account for news.

I should probably post something soon before they crashed my site again.

Aaron was a humble person but he had a poor habit of underestimating the fervour his many fans held towards adoring him. If I was being nice, they could be described as enthusiastic but if I was being honest, scary was a better descriptive term. They respected him and the people around him well enough but would quickly turn rabid if they suspected he was being mistreated in any way.

I shuddered as I remembered the year I’d forgotten to post a happy birthday message on Squire. My account had received so many ‘friendly’ reminders to post it that the site had frozen for a few hours. Ever since then even my team would remind me days before the occasion so it wouldn’t happen again.

A loud thud shook me out of my thoughts as the scientists hurled another weighted junk of metal at my beloved boyfriend. Although I stuck around as emotional support I couldn’t bear to see the process and sat facing the wall. Right now, with Aaron’s approval, they were testing the limits of his indestructibility.

At first, they had restrained themselves to smaller weights but then had gotten carried away and we’re now using forklifts to drop these things on him. Even Aaron, as careful as he’d been recent, had gotten carried away and participated with excitement.

It was only at my insistence that they had incorporated the usage of a bat to hit the obstructions away.

At first, they had resisted the suggestion but once they'd tried it, they had gone down a new line of research that they refused to show me until it was done.

I exhaled heavily and captured the bridge of my nose in between my index and thumb. Even though I was the one that had hired them, they had quickly overtaken the place and would only listen to me if I threatened to withdraw the funding.

But speaking of the funding.

Out of the four kids, I’d found only three of them had applied. Destia, Tillo and Kaja. Archer was only a high school freshman so it was normal to be hesitant about a life-impacting opportunity like this but I didn’t know how else to encourage him. Would I need to send out a scout specifically for him?

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Aside from wanting them to meet the scientists and get help in understanding their powers and controlling them, I also needed to get started on the ‘Page’ project and have them start making money for Squire.

Volui had finally gotten their affairs in order and were now operating again under the new son’s order. It had been less than a month he had been in control but so far he seemed to be doing a decent job.

He seemed to be in the process of replacing the majority of his staff and promised high salaries to competent people that were willing to come over. While Squire hadn’t been hit too hard, Kingdom had lost a few elites over to the company despite them being in different fields.

All that didn’t really concern me but what did was their acceptance of our deal. While I was happy it had gone through and I could host the elusive company’s celebrities on my site, I was also cautious because I had only gotten to see the little prince’s secretary, Aleka.

I caught myself using the nickname the media had given him and wished I could refer to him by his actual name. The problem was that no one knew it.

Using the guise of being a high school student, he hid his identity under an airtight seal and would only contact people through email or phone calls.

But well, all of the cloak and dagger business didn’t concern me. As long as he signed the contract and the deal went well, then I would take the risk and form a lasting partnership with the company.

I was prepared to send out the confirmations to Destia, Tillo and Kaja as soon as next month but I wouldn’t reveal them to the platform until after Volui’s celebrities had made a presence on the site.

I didn’t dare hope that I would get original and creative content from them but even a few general vlogs would be enough to inspire people’s interest. Even at the worst, I would be able to lure their fans away from other sites and onto Squire.

Words began to blur in front of me as a sign that I’d been starring at my laptop for a few hours too long.

I wanted to call Aaron out for a break but one look at the glow on his face was enough to discourage me from the idea.

He lifted an arm to show he was ready and aimed the bat, one of many, at the incoming 20 tons, or 40,000 pounds. The forklift’s arms widened and the large weight began to free fall.

Aaron took a moment and measured the distance before dramatically swinging backwards and letting the bat loose.

The metal instrument crumpled upon impact, but it was enough to send the giant weight flying across the room, into a valley of many other craters he had created on my brand new floors.

That was something else to add to the budget. At this rate, it would be better to make this into a grass field and give up on my shining chromatic floors.

The scientists watched the spectacle with interested but unimpressed eyes, having grown used to such a scene in the past five days. Aaron as well, although he looked proud of himself, didn’t jump up and down with excitement as he had before.

I decided to head out and order lunch for us all from the apartment complex up above. For now, I hadn’t found any staff to work in the underground complex of my ‘dorms’. But there were enough of them upstairs to keep up with the workload.

The goal was to evaluate how good they were at keeping secrets before offering them contracts to work down here with the heroes.

Haa. Again. There was too much to do.

I debated hiring a proper Ceo and retreating behind the scenes as a chairman but decided to hold off for now. There were too many delicate things in the air for me to delegate the work for now.

All my plans were coming to a head and I needed to be on top of them. There was the Page project to launch, I also needed to fully staff this building and worry about luring the other heroes over here.

It was a lot of work but I only needed to hold out for a bit longer. Only a bit longer and it would all come to fruition.