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“That would… That would really help a lot…”
The hero's name was Round-Up, real name Shuusha Kenya. A heteromorph with a Labrador retriever head, brown fur beginning to gray around the muzzle, and a progressing stockiness of age that cuffed gray slacks and a sports coat hid better than his hero costume.
“The public approval ratings can be so cutthroat, I know. So much depends more on whether there's a camera on-scene than a hero's performance. Increasing your online visibility can be a very valuable investment.” Nemoto smiled, projecting unimpeachable sympathy and ignoring the irritated voice in the back of his mind saying, Would you take the bait, you wishy-washy little also-ran?
Quirk “Fetch,” rank 325 on the most recent Hero Billboard Chart, down from 277 last time, and 264 the time before that. A steep drop after a consistent slow decline—a good indicator for someone who'd be receptive to Nemoto's pitch. Not everyone bit—there were plenty of people happy to continue wearing down their local grooves—but the mid-two-and-three-hundreds had a lot of people doomed by the curse of being average—average quirks, average charisma, average luck. They had some dedicated fans in the form of family or people they'd gotten lucky enough to make a flashy save on or say the right bit of inspirational twaddle to, but for the most part, all they were doing was getting older and slower.
They were people who didn't make enough on endorsement deals or Commission pay to hire real agents, so the serendipitous approach of a friendly face and a professional business card offering very affordable rates to increase their approval metrics was a gift horse very few were going to look in the mouth. Nemoto started with promises to talk them up in the right places online and contact other hero agencies about sidekick work or the odd team-up; if he could get them to pay for that, he'd move up to “proprietary algorithms” to improve their online searchability. For the truly desperate or resentful mark—and Nemoto had a good eye for desperate or resentful marks—he'd confide that he was in touch with a significant number of people under the table who were… Willing, let's say, to put their mouth where their money is. Where your Billboard ranking is concerned, you have to spend money to make money.
It was always good to get people to that stage. Not only was it by far the most lucrative, it was the most obviously illegal, and therefore no one was going to go to the police about it when Nemoto took the money and disappeared.
“Can you give me a day or two to think about it?” Round-Up asked at last, sending up a yellow flag in the back of Nemoto's mind. He let his friendly expression fade into a thoughtful frown.
“Well,” he said after a period of feigned deliberation, “I can only take on so many clients each period, and right after the rankings like this is my busiest time. But I should be open until the end of the week, at least. Would that be all right?” He resisted the urge to ask with his quirk—as well as the strong temptation to ask something much more telling like, You're not planning on reporting me, are you? Acting too suspicious of others made them suspicious of you, and while Nemoto was, he knew perfectly well, a bone-deep misanthrope, he was a bone-deep misanthrope that knew how to behave when he was running a racket.
“That's fine!” The hero beamed with a sunny, open-mouthed relief that Nemoto knew he'd be adding an extra dash of bourbon to his drink tonight to counteract. He kept the business card, said his goodbyes, and left with a promising spring in his step.
Call it seventy percent odds, Nemoto thought. Not terrible.
Not terrible, Nemoto thought, and wished he could go back in time three days and throttle himself.
“I wanted to ask you some questions about your methodology,” the blue woman said with a smile like a pool shark’s. She pulled out the chair across the table. “Do you mind?”
“Some of that information is proprietary,” he answered, “but I’ll answer what I can.” He did not scan the room for exits. He didn’t conduct meetings in places he didn’t already have exits from memorized. He did, however, glance towards Round-Up, finding his expression—what of it Nemoto could read through canine tells—to be much more neutral than last time. Not angry or outraged, though, so…
“So you told Round-Up that you’ve helped other heroes jump up the rankings before.” He refocused on the woman, who’d introduced herself as Kizuki Chitose. “Who are some of your success stories?”
A manageable question. The mid-tier rankings of heroes changed much more dramatically than the top ten, or even the top twenty-five, so it was never hard to find some hero with poorly fronted contact information and a hole-in-the-wall office who’d jumped ten or twenty spots with no obvious explanation. One solid rescue would do it, especially if it happened peripherally to a hero from the top ranks. It could happen for reasons that had nothing to do with any given spandex-clad wonder, like if heroes ahead of them retired or under-performed or got caught up in some scandal. It could happen because of internet memes, it could happen because of an office pool; it could even happen because some senile old baggage in a nursing home remembered something that your run-of-the-mill Major Marvel did twenty years ago and recounted it to their fellow invalids with enough spark that some useful percentage of them went to the Hero Commission’s database for the sole purpose of leaving Major Marvel a perfect rating.
You couldn’t predict the mid-tiers of the charts. That was what made them useful.
“Well, there was Blue Heron,” he said, picking a particularly useful random occurrence. “When she was visiting Nevaro last year, we reached out to Yoroi Musha’s people for advice on the local beat, just in case—heroes don’t get vacations, so they say!” Kizuki nodded, still smiling, still sharp, at his enthusiastic delivery of the aphorism, so he went on with, “That’s why she was able to respond so quickly to the attack on the steel mill.
“We also helped Boardwalk capitalize on his success against the marina assault villain. We put together a website, ran testimonials, and reminded the local newspaper about it when they were running year-end roundups.”
“Your rates are very low compared to others in the same line of work.” Kizuki changed tacks. “Any comment on that?”
Reporter phrasing. It was time to bail. Nemoto kept his smile plastered on as he answered, “It’s a competitive field, Kizuki-san. We try to keep a low overhead. Are you implying that there’s something suspicious about our pricing?”
“Yes, obviously,” the woman responded, and her eyes widened in familiar surprise at the sound of words she hadn’t meant to say so plainly rolling off her tongue.
Nemoto let his expression go cool—more easily done than holding the smile, though part of him itched to let it turn into a smirk. She’d spent the entire time smirking at him, after all; it seemed only fair.
“I see. I think we’re done here,” he said, standing up. “If Round-Up decided he wasn’t interested in my services all he had to do was not reach out to me again.” He riffled through his wallet and dropped a few coins on the table to pay for the tea, then turned on his heel and strode out.
Behind him, the other chairs pushed away from the table. He accelerated towards a side exit that let out to a patio and hurriedly let himself out through the gate. A few quickly paced meters took him past the customer-use doors of the businesses on either side of the mouth of the alley and into the labyrinth that was the back streets of the shopping district.
He made three more turns at a speed just shy of running. He couldn’t hear them, but the man had a damned dog head; who knew how good his sense of smell was? I got cocky. Stupid. That’s how they get you in this kind of work. But how should I have known that he’d come back with a reporter? Who does that? A plain-clothes cop, he could have recognized from clear across the café, but someone from the media? What was he expecting to do, stage a capture right then and there? He’s not authorized for that!
He was three turns away from a subway entrance when he heard the clicking of boot heels. Overhead, a creaking of metal heralded Round-Up dropping off of a fire escape to land in front of him, ears cocked forward and eyes narrowed into stern slits.
“I don’t think Miss Kizuki is done asking questions yet.” A growl of menace underscored the words.
“You’re right,” said the voice at the end of the alley as the blue woman turned the corner behind Nemoto. “I’m not.”
Alarms screaming, Nemoto glanced between the two of them. He didn’t know what her quirk was, but it was almost sure to be a safer bet than trying to strongarm his way past Round-Up. Or he could talk his way out. Both were bad options—outrunning a pro-hero was a longshot, and while his tongue was sharp, his quirk unforgiving, two people could bolster each other in the way one alone couldn’t.
Assume the worst: running away from a hero was as good as admitting guilt, but using his quirk more and then not being able to run would get him charged as a Villain. Could he manage to talk his way out without using his quirk?
“Let me set your mind at ease,” the woman said, coming closer. “I’m not planning on turning you in. Neither is Round-Up.”
Oh, is that so? No one’s really that generous. What are you actually after? The questions itched on his tongue, burned hot in his mind.
“Turning me in for what, exactly?” he asked instead—only a question, empty and meaningless, when he longed to compel, to tear this woman apart with Confession.
“Oh, I don’t know the exact legal charge for fraudulent representation, but I’m sure the police would. I do know this one, though: unlicensed quirk use.”
“I haven’t used my quirk on you,” he said flatly, hating the taste of the lie in his mouth and hating her more for laughing at it.
“Au contraire!” She walked closer, arms folded over her midsection. “I’m very careful with my words, you see—I know how powerful words are. So I know I didn’t just happen to confess to being on to you. That leaves a few options: one, you can make people say what you want them to say; two, you can force people to tell the truth; three, you had an accomplice back there who can do one of the above.
“I mean it, though. I’m not trying to get you to confess to anything incriminating. You’re out here trying to bilk mid-rank heroes out of their hard-earned salaries, but with a quirk like that, there’s so much more you could be doing.”
Turn them on each other, his mind whispered. That’s how you get out of this.
Tensing, he angled a glance back up at Round-Up. “Does it bother you that she talks about you that way?”
“It does bother me, but I know it’s true.” There was the telltale widening of the eyes, and the alarmed flash of the man’s gaze towards the woman. Nemoto edged away. “I’m doing my best for the cause, so it’s frustrating.”
The woman made an indecent sound, part cheer, part breathless laugh. “There it is! How does it work? You must tell me!”
Nemoto narrowed his eyes, feeling his lips drawing back from his teeth despite his attempts to keep calm. “You’re just going to ignore him telling you his true feelings? So you’re just using him, then?!”
“His efforts are for the cause and I honor them as much as I expect them.” The words snapped out of the woman’s mouth, a gleam climbing into her eyes at the sound of them.
What in hell are they talking about? Heroes don’t talk like this—police definitely don’t talk like this. And the woman was almost on him now, and he was out of time.
He bolted, ducking past Round-Up’s left side even as the hero yelped in dismay and grabbed for him. His hand closed in the back of Nemoto’s jacket; Nemoto shrugged out of it with barely a missed step and kept running.
Behind him, the woman pealed out another laugh. His ears, on high alert, picked up the slick rustle of her jacket moving, and then he looked up as something came spinning into his line of sight—a thrown coin, glinting silver in the uneven light.
The explosion sent him staggering backward, light and smoke flashing strobing afterimages across his vision. He misstepped on the uneven cement, turned in place trying to keep his footing, and then his shoulders slammed hard against the wall and the woman was there, centimeters in front of his face, close enough that he could probably smell her if it weren’t for the acrid reek of burning metal in his nose.
“Our cause—” she rolled the words in her mouth with open relish, color high in her cheeks as she planted one hand on the wall behind him “—is metahuman liberation. Go on. Make me say it again.”
“Metahuman—?” he coughed out. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the right of all metahumans to use their abilities freely and without oppression from the law and from society, as proclaimed by Destro.” She barely paused as the grip of his power released her tongue, pressing on with, “And I’m also talking about offering you a real job.”
“A…” He had barely managed to connect the Destro to mostly forgotten high school history lessons when the follow-up caught up to his brain. He stared down at her, drained empty of his fury and resentment by bewilderment. Shocked into submission by this woman asking—challenging, imploring—Nemoto to use his quirk on her again. What kind of job? he could have asked, but instead, what came out of his mouth was a feeble, “Do you really mean that?”
A great deal would happen later on. Later, he would meet the leader of the movement and a horrible truth would pivot into renewed awe that yes, they really did mean it when they claimed to be glad of his power. Later, Re-Destro himself—a noble man, and weary in ways no one before Nemoto had recognized—would name Nemoto Testament, and he would swear to himself in that moment that he wanted nothing more than to help carry some portion of this man’s burden. Later, he would be assigned to Kizuki Chitose—Miss Curious—indefinitely, and together they would see her company’s publications dripping with accolades for their merciless, incisive exposés.
Much later still, he would help her pull a schoolgirl killer’s deepest truths out of her self-deceiving throat, and very soon after that, Testament would pull the woman who found him into his arms as the ground sped towards them, and hope with all he had that he would be enough to break her fall.
But that would all come later.
Right now, she smiled, a light in her eyes like benediction, and murmured her truth into the stillness between them.
“I mean every word.”