Fluff

Chapter Forty-Nine - Wanna Go

"I think I want to go," Emily said.

Sam looked at the page, then back up to Emily, and Emily knew what the other girl was thinking, even if she would usually consider herself a poor reader of faces. This was probably not a good idea. "How did you even get this?" Sam asked as she waved the page around.

Emily sighed and melted onto the dining room table. "I got it from Glamazon."

"Really?" Sam asked. "This looks like it's from the HRF."

"It is. Look, the HRF knows that Glamazon, or Jezebelle I guess, knows who I am out of costume. Apparently it's pretty normal for heroes to unmask to each other without wanting to unmask to the HRF."

"Makes sense," Sam said.

Emily glanced up. "It does?"

"Yeah. Look, unmasking to something like the HRF is scary. They're a big governmental organisation. They're kind of faceless, and have a bunch of rules and such. Anyone that's not, like, a paragon of heroism probably worries that they might make one small mistake and then the next thing they know the HRF is knocking at their front door with a warrant."

Emily swallowed. That was a nightmare to consider.

"I've been looking into it. Do you know how many of the HRF's heroes aren't entirely heroic?"

"I... don't?" Emily said. She perked up. Was Sam about to tell her that the HRF accepted villains, even inadvertent ones like herself?

"It's probably something like half," Sam said. She waved Emily down. "They're not villains. They're like, a tier or two down from all-out Hero. You know, anything above Anti-Hero."

"Right," Emily said. She'd looked at the ranking that Handshake had given her a long time ago for hours and which Teddy had once confirmed as sort-of-accurate. She was solidly in the black, all the way in the bad-guy section of the chart. The heroic, good-guy section went on for a while too.

People who got powers probably started off somewhere in the middle of the chart's morality. Stuff like Anti-Heroes, Rogues, maybe one of the stranger ranks like Merchant or Mercenary or Defender. There were lots of possibilities, though society at large tended to lump people into five broad categories. They were either Super Heroes, Heroes, Rogues, Villains, or the exceptionally rare Super Villain.

"Okay, so the HRF recruits from the middle then," Emily said.

"Yeah," Sam said. "And the people in the middle probably don't want to get lumped in with those who don't mind being in the middle. It's probably a lot harder to act all heroic and do good when you have the word Vigilante hovering over your head. So the HRF gets it when someone doesn't mind working with them but still wants to keep their ID under wraps."

"Do they think that's what I'm doing?" Emily asked. It had the benefit of being a little accurate.

"Probably. I bet they're assuming that you're somewhere in the middle too. Maybe a Mercenary instead of a proper Hero? Anyway, Masks chatting with each other is normal, and if they chat, they'll grow to trust each other a lot more than they'll trust a governmental org."

"Right," Emily said.

"It's called reciprocation. A hero, like Glamazon, opens up to someone a few rungs down. That person might be worried about the HRF, but they'll open up to a friend that opened up to them. Then bam. The HRF has a way to get to you and send you awful spam letters." Sam waved the letter around some more.

Emily reached out and grabbed it before Sam would crumple it up with her gesturing. She flattened it onto the dining room table, careful not to get it messy. The girls had eaten at the table early, so it had a few stains on it.

Dear The Boss,

The event will be taking place this Friday, at 6:30pm at the Eauclaire Memorial Hospital. Catering will be provided. Please leave all weapons or dangerous implements at home and RSVP at the following address:

The rest of the letter had a bunch of minor legalese expertly disguised as pleasantries by someone who was probably underpaid.

In essence, it was a yearly event where a few b-lister heroes would show up at the local children's wing of Eauclaire's biggest hospital. They'd linger around, hand out merch, maybe take some selfies, and generally do PR stuff.

It was the kind of tripe, boring, do-gooder stuff that Emily had always hated.

She'd actually attended an event like it once. A couple of heroes had shown up at her high school with merch and did signings and the whole thing. Emily had been determined to keep away, so she'd hidden in the library like a sensible person.

She couldn't remember the name of the heroine, but she'd shown up in the library, looking for 'lonely souls' and had pestered a stuttering conversation out of Emily before getting bored and leaving.

The memory of her own fumbling had stuck with her for years now, one of the crowning jewels on her mountain of embarrassing moments.

"I think we should go," Emily said.

"Really?" Sam asked. "It looks like a terrible idea, but you're the boss, Boss. I'll hear you out."

Emily worked her jaw. She wasn't sure how to explain why she wanted to go. She herself knew why, but it was a little... mushy, and she was worried that Sam might not take her worries seriously. "I think that we're maybe... a little too good at being villains."

"I feel like this needs a better explanation than just that," Sam said.

"I don't want to be a bad person," Emily said. "I... being a villain is feeling so easy. It feels good. Maybe if I do morally good things, then that'll offset things?" She gestured to the letter. It was probably the most objectively good thing she could do at the moment. Helping make sick kids feel good? That wasn't villainous at all.

"Huh. Alright, I think I can see that," Sam said. "You want to clean off the karmic slate, so to speak."

"Yes, exactly," Emily said with a firm nod. That's what she wanted. An opportunity to pull back and away from being a villain.

Sam gestured vaguely at Emily. "Is this because of the whole cheated test thing?"

"No... maybe?" Emily said. She'd related the story already. Sam was the only person other than Emily's mom she was comfortable ranting to, and she didn't want her mom to hear about how she'd maybe lost her temper a little.

"You know, that Weasel guy was a jerk, right? He totally deserved all the shouting you did at him."

"Wesley," Emily corrected. "And maybe? But it's not like me to act that way."

Sam shrugged. "If you say so. I think he's got a rep for being a lazy jerk, so I don't see the harm in putting him in his place."

"It's not that it was bad to shout at him, it's that I did the shouting," Emily said. She resisted the urge to sound petulant about it. "I'm going to the event. It'll be good for my sisters to see what it's like to be good. Maybe it'll set a good example?"

Sam didn't look like she believed that for one moment, and Emily secretly agreed with her. "Well, whatever. It's Friday, right? That gives us a couple of days to clean up costumes and get the girls used to saying the right kind of pleasantries. I don't think you want to let them be their normal selves at a hospital of all places."

"Yeah... no."

"Teddy would wreck the room as a bear to show off. Or attack administration the moment she learns that they charge for anything. Athena would want to lord it over the doctors. Maple might turn the machine keeping someone alive into a gun, and Trinity's going to end up diving into a dumpster full of biohazards."

"Oh... oh god," Emily muttered. That all sounded exceptionally plausible. "Yeah, we're going to need to do... like, lessons on how to behave."

"Uh-uh, you're gonna do that. I've got other things to do this week, Boss. Being a minion is fun and all, and the pay's not half bad, but I've got a social life to keep up with and I've been neglecting it for a while. You can probably get one of the other minions to do the cleaning, if you ask." Sam languidly stretched her arms over her head.

"Right, of course," Emily said. She couldn't even muster any disappointment. It only made sense that Sam would have a social life where Emily had none. Besides, she was feeling a little guilty from all the time she stole from Sam to begin with. "I'll figure it out. Don't worry."

She didn't need Sam worrying when Emily could worry enough for the both of them.

***