Chapter Forty-One – Meeting

To say that the last couple of days had been less than ideal would be a monumental understatement.

The Anomalous item had been stolen.

That was, obviously, bad. They were now losing, and the fact that they were losing had lit a fire under the butts of the brass. The HRF hadn’t been taking this Endgame casually, but there had been a sort of sense that things were… all according to plan?

They guarded the item day and night, and presumably that’s all it would take to eventually win the Endgame. New powers for everyone! Yay!

For her, that meant daily rotations of guard duty and patrols, and then the occasional ‘showing face’ moment around the large camp still situated a couple of kilometres away from Saint Arie. And that was more or less it.

The best thing to happen to her in that last couple of days was not being there when the object was stolen.

She had been given more time off after that moment where she had spotted something off to one side of the Base. She had snuck a look at her psych profile, and there was a note there pointing out how she might not be fit for long stints of guard duty.

That had rankled.

Then the Villains had broken in, passing right by where she’d noticed something, and while she wasn’t sure anyone would bother going back and correcting her record, the vindication filled her with glee.

Well, more or less. That glee would have lasted a lot longer if the situation didn’t lead to one of the worst things that could happen to a hero: bureaucracy.

It wasn’t instant. The day the Anomalous item was stolen, there had been an immediate all-hands-on call. She’d been resting at the outer facility, just outside of the Endgame when she was told to get to the Base right now.

That had meant putting her costume on while riding in a van with a half-dozen HRF troopers, all of whom were just as unprepared as her. Fortunately, by the time they arrived, they were ready for anything.

Including endless sweeps and patrols that lasted deep into the night.

There had been a lot going on, but mostly it was confusing. A car had crashed after encountering an unknown possible-Villain in the city nearby, injuring three troopers. Signs of an installation right on the roof next to the base was found. Just within spitting range. Hell, it had been on the roof right above the spot where she’d spent hours standing while on guard duty.

For all she knew, the Villains had been there for hours, staring at her, and she wasn’t any wiser about it. It creeped her out.

The next morning, after only a couple of hours of shut-eye taken in a break room, she had been placed in one of the scout teams and told to start looking for more signs that the enemy was around.

Her team wasn’t the one to find the traces of Villain-on-Villain combat, but she had visited the site. It wasn’t super obvious that something had gone down, but the crime scene experts were sure of it.

That day had been a long one as well. When she finally made it back to the outer base and crashed, she was out like a light.

Today was… better, maybe? An investigation had been run, and there was a large meeting with about three quarters of the heroes and most of the sergeants and officers from the HRF, all held in a large building they had requisitioned a few kilometres from the edge of the Endgame. Or the previous edge. The Endgame was expanding at an increasingly fast rate.

Something for others to worry about.

“Hello, Glamazon.”

She jumped a little and turned to see Obscure walking over. The older woman had a very silent tread to her. She also had two cups of coffee in hand.

“Is that for me?” she asked.

“It is, if you don’t mind yours black,” Obscure said.

Jezebelle didn’t, but any amount of caffeine sounded heavenly at the moment. “Thank you. So, you’ve been with the HRF for a while, right?”

“Six years,” Obscure said.

Jezebelle didn’t say anything, but she was a little surprised. Obscure was… forty-something. She’d mentioned her age before but Jezebelle hadn’t taken precise note of it. Still, she expected the woman to be a long-time vet. “That’s long enough to know what’s going on, I hope,” she said.

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“A lot of people become very upset when things don’t go according to plan,” Obscure said. “Even when they had every expectation that those plans wouldn’t work out.”

“Yeah,” Jezebelle said. She looked around. There were a few officers holding off on their own to the sides, but for the most part, little groups and cliques had formed. There were some people by the front of the room, next to a small stage with a podium on it, that looked a little more important than the rest. A pair of higher-ranking HRF officers stood out. No heroes, however.

There was seating specifically for the heroes off to one side.

“Call me weird, but I can’t help but feel like that’s weird,” she said.

“What is?” Obscure asked.

Jezebelle hesitated. Should she say this aloud? She didn’t know this woman all that well… but still, she was a hero too. “That we’re made to sit off to one side. Looks like we’re almost placed so that we’re out of the way.”

Obscure eyed her over the rim of her cup. “Yes. That’s true,” she said somewhat carefully. “If you spend any amount of time in the HRF you’ll start to notice it.”

“Notice what?” Jezebelle asked.

“Hmm… do you think that powered individuals are good?”

“What? I mean, sure, some of them?” she said. “I guess. You don’t get labelled a Hero without being good, right?”

“Presumably, no,” Obscure replied. “But… there’s this idea that the perfect ‘good’ person is someone who is making every effort to do good at all times.”

“That’s… I mean, I get it, but it’s also a bit much, no?” she asked. “You do good where you can, and I guess you make the effort to step up and place yourself where you can do the most good sometimes, but, uh, yeah.”

She wasn’t studying philosophy. She didn’t have the words or the depth of knowledge needed to figure out ‘goodness’ but she had spent a bit of time thinking on it. A little. Maybe less than she should have?

“I agree. It’s why I’m here, and it’s why most Heroes are.” Obscure turned and her eyes tracked across the room. Standing there, talking to a few younger officers with a dopey grin on his face, was Wrap Up. “But some of us are here for other reasons.”

Like avoiding parole, she didn’t say.

“I suppose,” Jezebelle replied. “What’s that got to do with us being off to one side?”

Obscure gestured towards the seats with her mug. “The HRF is over ninety-nine percent normal folk. People trying to do good, sure, but a lot of them are just here because it’s their career. I think most of the people here look on Heroes pretty favourably, but there’s some that don’t like the idea of people with powers.”

“Why not? I mean, no, I get it. There’s envy, and villains are disruptive and cause a lot of trouble.” There had been some short-lived movements to ban empowered people, but those never survived very long, for a whole host of reasons. Least of which because it just wasn’t a very popular idea. Heroes were cool, interesting, and appealing.

There were hardly any ads out there that didn’t have a hero on them, and that was for good reasons.

“I think that it’s really down to two things,” Obscure said. “First, we bypass the normal way things are done. You’re a pretty young woman. Even if you had joined the HRF right out of college–which I don’t think you’ve finished yet–you wouldn’t be much higher in the ranks than an intern. And yet here you are, sitting in on an important meeting.”

“Right,” Jezebelle said. “And the other thing?”

“In an ideal world, humanity would be able to handle most threats with human ingenuity. Even Endgames. And that’s not too far from what’s happening. More and more tech is coming out, and solutions to problems. Heroes, to some, are slowly going to be phased out. Not in the world of advertising and such, but in situations where real professionals are needed.”

“I…” she wanted to say that she couldn’t see that happening, but… yeah, her own power wasn’t all that great, was it? And given fewer opportunities to use it and improve it, she’d just be a mostly-normal girl with a neat flashy trick.

Someone at the front of the room clapped. “Alright, everyone. Let’s get seated. We have a lot to cover this morning and less time to cover it than we’d all like!”

“Let’s chat some more, later,” Obscure said.

***

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