After losing Kora as our babysitter, the rents finally decided it was time for us to get a proper (tax-deductible) education with tutors hired through Heroics Incorporated.
No primary or middle school for us, just the best education that money could buy...
This wasn't saying much for me, since I had to stick through the inane classes that were at Fiona's level because arguing for a grad-level tutor as a seven-year-old would have only made them suspicious.
By age seven, I'd settled into a state of perpetual indifference to Asshole and Destiny. I complied as much as I was willing to endure and no further, all while researching more about the duo who'd ended my former life.
What sucked about doing that was that the more I read about Destiny, the less inclined I felt towards killing her. She'd been a nobody from Montana, of all places. A place where the average level of villainy was corrupt oil execs, the alt-right, and petty thieves.
The early vids of her taking down the first of those showed a moral backbone I only got to see when she was protecting us from Asshole. She'd been a typical charity-supporting masked metahuman in her off time, at least according to her documentary and her tax statements - I found the latter by cracking their one-ton multiphase security safe one day when I was bored and they were off "saving the day." Seriously, who keeps tax records from when they were eighteen?
After busting the local Above Standard Oil exec, she'd skyrocketed in fame as a champion of the people. Montanans- Montanians? -anyway. Two years later she was punching, or rather dodging, it out with some two-bit villain who called himself Fingerguns because, surprise surprise, his one Talent was being able to fire energy bullets based on what kind of guns he was mimicking at the time. Hearing him make his own sound effects was so cringe-inducing that I grimaced through the entire fight. Especially when Crusader showed up with his camera crew and asked her out on a date.
That had been Golden Age Crusader. Silver Age started either when Fiona and I were born, or when he married Destiny, depending on which rabid fan you asked. Looking things up from truly unbiased sources, his popularity had dipped after Asshole accidentally pulped a bus driver. It was likely Heroics Inc. had decided he could stay on top with a sidekick.
It was a made-for-TV romance that wound up with him cornering her on camera to propose. The startled and unwilling look in her eyes before she said "Yes" wound up being the new face I projected onto her in those quiet moments when she would stare off into the future or into the garden.
It felt like she needed someone to save the day for her, and that made me pity her.
But there would be no saving the day this week because we were coming up on Fiona's and my 8th birthday. And that meant a week of "Princess Training" with daily visits from Heroics Inc. staff and acting instructors.
I had no particular interest in makeup- skincare is far superior anyway -but I did make concessions to wearing eyeshadow, especially since Asshole said I looked like a "coon". Seriously, where the hell did they find this guy?
It was a legitimate question because about twenty years ago he appeared out of nowhere, starting in Knight City, which ate up rookie heroes and villains so often such deaths were called "Knightfalls."
Truth be told, I made my start in Knight City as well, but for the first couple of years, it was mostly making things for freedom-fighter anti-villain eco-terrorists whose politics and methods I agreed with. That reputation gave me my anti-villain name, The Engineer, and part of me missed creating bespoke devices for principled outcasts.
After six days of enduring PR speak and arguing my way out of all makeup aside from eyeshadow, I was at the last night before the birthday, which by the way fell on Halloween, my second favorite holiday after Groundhog Day, when I prayed every year for a closed time loop that would let me learn all the things I wanted to indefinitely. My third favorite is the Alliance of West Asia's Communal Victory Day, which happens to fall on the middle day of Channukah.
So anyway, that night I was up a little late in the living room, working an article arguing in favor of extraplanetary colonization (even an aspiring eco-terrorist anti-villain freedom fighter needs an income) and terraforming- and thoroughly rebutting some bastard who named himself FixItFirst54321 -when I noticed Asshole yelling into his phone while holding a bottle of Old Jane in his hand.
"If my poll numbers are down, then it's your job to fix it." He pauses for the reply. "Oh, you expect me to handle it?" Another pause. "Bullshit! I made this company billions. You can compromise with your head up your ass when I'm done with you! Get Clarkson on the fucking line."
Wow. Asshole has to be big-mad if he's reaching for the top. Kent Clarkson was from a legacy hero family and was the controlling shareholder of Heroics Inc., the Western world's foremost hero media and hero-product maker. His word in the North American and EU herospheres was pretty much law. And if it wasn't, it soon would be.
True to form, he led with angry entitlement, but his argument quickly descended into fear-tinged language after his boss got a word in. I'd never seen him so pale...
"Now now, there's no need to threaten my supply. Y-yes. I'll take care of it. Cash only. Anonymously, yes. I still know where to go."
Supply? What did he mean by that? What the hell was he going to "take care of."
My scrutinous gaze drew his attention, and his face hardened. "One moment, sir." He held his cell away and coldly told me "Go to your room!"
Carrying my tablet, I walked the distance and closed the door behind me.
"Did you make Dad angry?" Fiona asked, clearly so excited for tomorrow she couldn't sleep.
"He was like that on his own," I reply, truthfully enough, as I quickly make for the corner nearest to the kitchen and turn the recorder app on. I hold the tablet against the wall and press my ear to the space above it, just below a shelf hosting a herd of unicorns, alicorns, seahorses, and "land ponies."
"What are you doing?" Fiona asked.
"Shhh. Quiet. Christopher is up to something."
The one mercy granted by our moment of solidarity against Kora's firing was that Fiona was less inclined to tattle on me. Especially since I was the only one with Kora's contact info. I didn't trust Fiona not to get caught talking with Kora.
I couldn't make out anything, but it sounded like Asshole was talking, so I kept going until I heard the garden door slam shut.
Once that was done, I stopped recording and held the tablet speaker to my ear, replaying and upping the volume until I could hear what Asshole was saying.
Unfortunately, all I heard was him muttering to himself and swearing.
"I'll show them a fucking surprise party," were the last words he said before the door slammed shut.
"We're getting a surprise party?!" Fiona said right next to my ear, causing me to jump and bash my skull into her pony shelf.
After yelping, I chastised her, "Don't sneak up on me like that!" I thought through the scenarios. Was it all just Asshole trying not to spend a fortune on our birthday?
Then it hit me, Fiona and I were as socially adept as a hermit in a cave. Me because in general I loathed busybodies even before I died, and Fiona because... well... Let's just say she had full-fledged debates with the ponies on her shelf.
The only people in our lives for the last eight years had been adults.
"I think Christopher is going to hire kids to come to our birthday tomorrow."
"Oh..." Fiona's face fell a little.
Even she knew that sort of thing was sad and pathetic.
All I could think was:
There might be hope for her yet.