Chương 16: Pinned

Another dreamless night. At least this sleep didn't go uninterrupted. I wasn't sure how long I had slept, there were no clocks. I'd need to change that soon. Fish didn't exactly have daily routines so I couldn't use the giant window leading to what might as well have been Atlantis as a makeshift one. Trudging my way out of my bed, I worked my way up the stairs and out to the little "lobby" that led to each person's rooms, but didn't linger.

I just needed to get to the common area, cups should be there and I could get some water. In the common area sat Christian, reading through a book.

"Good morning," he remarked. I just nodded as I shuffled towards the sink, looking through various drawers and cabinets.

"Do we have cups or anything like that?" He pointed to a specific pantry, to which I opened and found an array of those plastic red cups normally only seen at gatherings and broken homes. I slipped one up and poured a cup, the water deciding to stir up the question.

"Why are there fish in my room?" Chris perked up, turning to me.

"Hm?" I turned towards him to more easily convey my words.

"In my room, there's this big window and on the other side is fish and water. Why is that?" He blinked, before shaking his head.

"Oh, sorry. I thought you meant physically in your room, and I was gonna get really worried. Our base is like a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Rivanna River. It's got a lot of underwater tributaries and stuff, your room and mine sit next to it. They thought it'd make for a neat decoration. Apparently the glass holding it is the kind they use for windows at the Firmament so we shouldn't have to worry about them breaking." Just another reminder of my alternative, how wonderful.

I just nodded, sipping the water I poured into my cup.

"I see. Was hoping it was like a fake screen or something so I didn't have to worry about getting a clock. I have no idea what time it is." Chris slipped a piece of paper into his book, closing it.

"It's about seven in the morning. It's a Sunday, so most everyone's sleeping in." My head tilted. Sunday. I could barely even grasp that it hasn't even been twenty-four hours yet. Yesterday at about noon, I busted the drug den. Couldn't have been more than twenty minutes. Tancred arrested me, probably 12: 21. I got hauled off to a police station at that point. Maybe forty-five minutes of waiting tops. 1: 06. He brought me here, which took about an hour and fifteen minutes by my estimates. 2: 21.

I talk to Chris, get flipped by him, go to try and get a nap. Not sure exactly how long I napped, but after meeting the others, the meetings with Perry and Eliza, stopping in Sam's lab got me an indication it was about 7-ish. I defaulted to 7: 00, I had no other reference. I fought Sandy, got my ass nearly kicked, got my wounds treated. All in all maybe half an hour. 7: 30. I went to the park with May, fought those things that called themselves the Arboreal Senate, and we walked to a pizza place.

I didn't see a time but the sun was starting to set. 8: 00 at the least. Tancred picks us up and scolds us. Team starts discussing composition ideas since we're going to mobilize. 8: 30? Maybe. Way said end of day for her was "about three hours from now." Maybe 11: 30? Or midnight. I couldn't figure out how long we spoke for. Probably about 9: 00 at that point. Then I went to bed. I only had one conclusion at that point, and it was that-"I need a watch," I blurted out. Chris looked at me.

"Huh?" He asked. I noticed the book hadn't opened again. How long was I thinking for? Couldn't linger on that.

"A watch. So I can keep track of the time." Chris nodded, before pulling his smartphone out of his pocket.

"I just use my phone to be honest. I gotta grab hands and wrists a lot so watches would just break for me." I shrugged.

"Don't have a phone." He shook his head.

"That's honestly for the best. I don't like being at this thing's beck and call. I gotta send a text message every hour and a half or else someone from admin's comms room starts calling me to make sure I'm alive." My face scrunched.

"Even at night?" He shook his head.

"Not on nights, and not on Sundays. Government doesn't work on Sundays usually." I crossed my arms.

"Except us." He shrugged.

"We're on call, dude. We're like firefighters or cops." I let out an exhale through my nose, taking one of the seats at that little kitchen island about two stools away from him. Curiosity lingered in me.

"Are all our days gonna be as eventful as yesterday's?" I asked, knowing the likely answer. He shook his head.

"Honestly no, not really. Most of the time it's exercise, meetings, stuff like that. And once next semester starts, college'll kick in. I know we've got an early meeting with the theater program at UVA tomorrow. They probably want to make a custom syllabus for us since, well, we're doing live performance on top of our voluntary law enforcement and crisis control." I squinted at him. He put his hands up defensively.

"Jargon that Perry came up with. But we're like... we gotta make characters out of our alter egos because if people think that character is their real personality, we can do our day-to-day without anyone knowing." My squint didn't go away.

"Is your character going to have as terrible a taste in shoes as you?" I called out. He frowned.

"Oh man don't knock the shoes. They're official merchandise!" I had to almost lean back from that.

"We have merchandise?" He reached down off to his side, before sitting back up holding one of his gaudy orange-and-blue shoes.

"Prototype merchandise, but yeah. We'll be selling a bunch of stuff like shoes, shirts, pins, bags. Perry wants us to also design some of our own custom merch, we can get royalties and stuff for anything we make or is based on us specifically." I could feel a bit of a frown on me.

"Why?" Chris leaned back down to slip his shoe back on. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Perry said surveys suck for reading approval ratings. That you're only going to get answers from the kind of people who want to actually go to polls or fill out surveys. Would you want to fill out a survey?" I shook my head, and he continued.

"Yeah, that's Perry's point exactly. But a lot more people might show their approval if they can do it unsolicited, is the idea. So they can just buy a hero's merchandise, or one that's marked for everyone. Those figures can tell us how much people like us." Leaning forward on the island, I nodded along.

"And those who hate us?" He shrugged.

"Maybe they'll make 'I Hate Flowstate' pins or something." I'd buy the entire stock.

"But it's a better way to get people willing to say if they like us without having to talk or be asked about it. If merch is moving along well, we're probably doing something right. And if we're doing anything wrong, I think we'll see some sort of sign." Another nod ensued.

"Speaking of signs, anything show up from that incident at the park?" He shook his head.

"Nothing new. A lot of the news right now is talking about a zombie thing on the West Coast that the Jungle Brigade are dealing with. Which is kind of funny given they've got Redwood who is literally a tree man. I wonder if he knows anything about that Arboreal Senate." I shrugged, facing the wall across from me.

"It's not impossible. Just so long as no one's picked out who covered their faces and beat them, I don't care too much. Did you hear anything about that cult that Tancred was talking about before he brought it up yesterday?" I could hear Chris humming in thought before he spoke.

"I don't think so. We didn't get to do much actual investigation stuff since this all started. We've taken some basic forensic training courses, like how to pick up or move things without contaminating them, and how to determine the age of spilled fluids. Oh and a course on how money laundering works. They place it, layer it in random stuff, then integrate it with their money. Something like that. Not sure how often we'd be looking into that." He didn't seem to get it. Might as well tell him.

"Because we're going to end up seeing parts of it when we investigate. Old ladies getting calls from grandsons they've never had asking for bail money, or people buying Christmas trees in July." He pointed a finger at me.

"We might see that one for this whole cult thingamabob." I nodded, pretending I didn't hear that last word.

"Not impossible. But it sounds like they're teaching you symptoms early. I was already familiar with a few from my hunt." There was a silent atmosphere for a moment, and when I looked at him he seemed confused.

"Your hunt?" I shrugged.

"Whatever you call me dealing with the scumbags down in Richmond. I still want to look into them, they clearly were getting outside help. One guy had something alien." He nodded, pursing his lips.

"I can ask Agent Tank if we can dedicate time to it, but he's probably gonna keep us locked down here in Charlottesville. The good news is since he was there, he probably has people looking into it." I shook my head.

"Governor's son was part of the operation. Bet they're turning a blind eye right now to avoid trouble." Chris laughed.

"Dude, Tank hates that kind of stuff. I wouldn't have agreed to work with him if he didn't. The Super Commission is a lot more important than the Virginia government, he can tell them to suck eggs and keep investigating. Especially if there was an alien like you said." I shook my head.

"Something alien. Like... liquid metal. Guy called it 'Shivvy.' I threw him out the window before it could do anything to me." Chris laughed.

"I'm not surprised. Well who knows, maybe you'll see it again someday." I hoped not. I didn't think I tasted good.

"I just don't want that time all being wasted for nothing." Chris reached out, patting my shoulder. I could feel the weight of it on me, which I didn't like.

"Man, I'm not blowing any smoke up your chimney when I'm saying Tank'll look into it. He's definitely not a friendly guy but if he didn't believe in doing good, then he wouldn't be so involved in this. Did you not listen to his rant?" Scrunching my face was the only real response I could muster for that.

"The one where he fantasized about me dying?" He shook his head.

"His worst fear for May was that she wouldn't be able to fight. His worst fear for you was that you could've died. You think if he were a bad guy he'd be so upset about that kind of risk?" My lips pursed at that.

"I just don't think we should be seeing a government agent as morally righteous. Maybe he agrees with some of the same things as us, but you have to remember his job isn't to be a superhero. There's no cape on his back. You need to remember that." He shook his head.

"I'm not going to stop trusting my fellow man because he wears a tie and talks about tax dollars. And man does he talk about tax dollars. They bought a toy factory for our costume making so that they could dedicate an entire facility to it off-grounds. He told me it cost them about one-eighth of the tax revenue Charlottesville made last year, something like twenty million."

"All at once?" He shrugged.

"I don't know. I didn't get into finance, I was just gonna run the family dojo." My brows furrowed.

"Those are like gyms, right?" He nodded.

"Gyms need money." He nodded a second time.

"You would need to get into finance anyway." He let out a long sigh, an almost sarcastic one.

"Yeah, my dad told me that too. But I was gonna cross that bridge when I got there. That bridge is going uncrossed for the foreseeable future. They might let me run it once we're actually operating and not locked down in the base until 'further notice,' whenever the fudge that is." I rolled my eyes.

"Can you just say 'fuck?' You're older than me." He shook his head.

"Yeah, so I have to set a good example by keeping my language clean. And besides, people don't need superheroes who swear." He raised one fist in the air while keeping another near his jaw. Must have been his attempt to look like he was miming out flying.

"Here I am to save the eff-wording day!" He then shook his head again, dropping his arms.

"Just doesn't feel right. Besides, it means I'm more creative, I don't get to just rely on the easy sentence enhancers." I rolled my eyes.

"Look, can you at least not say 'fudge' when we're dealing with scumbags? They're gonna be a lot less inclined to drop their weapons if we sound as clownish as we look in the orange and blue. And I'm still not happy with that, we're going to look like a set of bad sports jerseys." He laughed.

"Well if we do good and you get influential enough, maybe you can. Heck, if you can impress at the theater program meeting you can kickstart that influence you can come up with better colors. What colors would you pick, anyway?" I pursed my lips in thought.

"Black and grey." Chris shook his head.

"Those aren't colors, those are tones. And we need an actually distinct set of colors because we're supposed to be able to be seen instead. Besides, just black means it could get mixed up with the Forces of Nature logo." I frowned.

"Why not just blue at least, then?" Chris shook his head.

"Great Lake Guardians have an all-blue logo." I exhaled.

"Blue and green. Make one darker than the other." He hummed, crossing his arms.

"Maybe. You don't think that looks a bit too cop-ish?" I groaned.

"Maybe, I guess. I don't know. What about you?" He snapped his fingers.

"Bright red and yellow." He sounded like he invented the secret to summoning ten billion dollars. I couldn't even begin to describe the confusion on my face at that point.

"Ketchup and fucking mustard?" He took that question like I shot it straight into his heart. The frown was actually almost pitiful.

"I mean if you're gonna point it out like that I guess not." A sigh rolled past my lips as I leaned one arm on the island.

"That could not be your only color idea." He shook his head.

"No, but now I'm worried the rest could get written off like that." I shook my head.

"I doubt you could make that kind of screw up twice." The redhead looked off to the side, before glancing back at me.

"Go for a nice light, woody sort of brown like the Jungle Brigade uses in their logo, and then throw in purple since that's a royal color and we're working for the government, which is kind of like royalty." I rubbed my face.

"That's fucking peanut butter and jelly, Chris." He slowly turned towards the island, leaning forward until he was laying his head against the desk. He laid his hands on the back of his head.

"How didn't I think of that?" I looked off to the side, sipping my water.

"Maybe go for purple and yellow. You can use darker colors for a stealth variation on the costumes if we're doing reconnaissance, and then the brighter versions when we're supposed to be seen." Christian sat back up, his eyebrows raised.

"Leo, dude, that's actually not bad. I think we'd get mixed up with the basketball team, though..." he trailed off. I shook my head.

"Completely different coast. I think it'd work." He nodded, before shooting this big, almost cartoonish smile at me.

"I think we're really starting to coordinate here." I hated hearing that.

"We're definitely gonna have to pitch this to Perry. We can work on workshopping designs!" This was gonna be a long day.