Internally, I sighed. Why can’t people here just give straight answers? I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, since it seemed like his job to actually explain it to me, but I was rapidly starting to lose patience.
“So what does ‘whatever I feel like’ mean?”
“Well let me ask you this. I’ve seen you in action, Darklight. The power to manipulate death is a powerful one, surely the staple of a villain if I’ve ever heard of one. So why did you save people?”
“It’s not like I’m raising undead armies or anything,” I countered. “Not that I could if I wanted to. I draw on the power of those who haven’t moved on yet, that’s all. When I started hearing the voices, they all asked me to help them. That’s all the dead want, someone to do for them what they can’t do themselves. I tried, so hard, for so long, but there were always more requests, always more than I could do. That’s why I use their energy to help the living. I see first hand what it’s like when souls pass on unhappy. I couldn’t help them all, so I just focused my efforts into saving the living instead.”
“And they gave you no gratitude?”
“I don’t do it for the gratitude. I do it because it’s the right thing to do. It doesn’t stop everyone I walk past from slinking away from me in fear, though. Like you said, power over the dead is something a supervillain would have. I can’t walk the streets without people looking at me like I’m one origin story away from killing them all.”
“That’s definitely something we can help with. What Thunderhand has created here is something of a hero’s guild, as Miss Vallin likes to put it. We take commissions, and anyone here can accept them. The nature of your work will be entirely of your own deciding, the jobs range from taking down mob bosses in corrupt cities to farmers who want us to keep an eye on their livestock. We had one last week for a dear old lady who just wanted us to find her late husband’s missing ashes. Thunderhand grew tired of the expectations that society places on the empowered. This method of dealing with trouble ensures we only take on what we want to take on, and that we’re fairly compensated for doing so.”
“So you’re mercenaries.”
“I suppose technically, yes. We don’t do it for the money, though. We just want to be able to say no. Look at it this way, we have a good few in our employ. If you don’t want to head over to Metropolis to stop Lex Luther from rampaging, then fine. You can rest easy knowing that it’s not your obligation, that we’ll just send someone else out, someone who wants to play Superman. Mercenaries is one way to look at it, insurance is another. We simply take on a shared risk, knowing that we have the right resources to allocate.”
I sat down on the chair in front of his desk and stared at my feet for a little while. He made a convincing pitch, that much was for sure. Over the years, I’d become so sick of the responsibility. With great power, and all that. None of this addressed the reason I was on the roof though.
“I’ve been saving lives for ten years now, and parents still drag their children away from me. Just last week our local paper had the headline ‘Robbery stopped by Darklight’ and yet I walked into the bank the next day to see the tellers tap the bulletproof screen, just to check how hard it was. The lady who gave me my money practically threw it at me to get me out of there. I help people because they can’t help themselves, but one look at a shadowy tentacle and everyone assumes I’m here to take the city for myself.”
“PR is everything,” was his response to that, and he seemed very matter-of-fact about it. “It’ll take some work, but I’m sure we can clean up your image. We have some good media connections, we’ll make sure your story gets told right. I’m sixty eight years old, and one thing that’s as true now as it was back in my day is that what people read about you is what people believe.”
He didn’t have me convinced. Death is not something anyone wants to see meddled with. My own mother had tried to have me exorcised at ten years old, what hope did I have of convincing the populace?
“Of course you don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to. Thunderhand’s invitation to you was extended because he saw your strife. We’re all in the same boat here; supers who want an out. Thunderhand wants to build a community here, not a workforce. If you take jobs, we take a cut to pay the rent, but you’re more than welcome to pay it yourself and stay with us. We have quite a few tenants who just rent rooms to enjoy the company of others like them. As I said, there are no obligations here. Work as much or as little as you want.”
It was a lot to think about. Admittedly I was intrigued to meet other heroes, and to see what kind of jobs were on offer. I’d never been paid for my work before, I was just fortunate enough that my mother had died before my old man did, so I had their savings to live off. This was certainly a better way to handle that; at the very least I could take a few small jobs and just never step out into society again. No expectations. That would certainly be nice. Let someone else play superman if they wanted to. I bit.
“So what kind of jobs are going right now.”
The Botanist’s face lit up with a grin.
“I was hoping you’d say that, I have the perfect one just for you and Miss Vallin.”
[offtopic]Too much exposition? I feel like this was a bit of an infodump, and any and all tips on cutting that feeling back would be appreciated.[/offtopic]
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Topic: Something Every Day - Daily Tracking Thread (Read 11172 times)