Chapter 177 Done.

Chapter 177: 177 Done.

"Shills?" I echoed, raising an eyebrow behind my visor.

Rick frowned down at the table, tracing the wood grain, before slowly looking up at me.

"Do you know how many of our current batch of sidekicks will actually stay on the active Bureau roster once they finish their apprenticeship programs?"

"Not really," I admitted.

He shook his head.

"Few," he said sadly. "Very, very few. It’s a changed world now. Very few kids get into the business of heroism to actually be a hero anymore. The ideal means little to them. Far more often, it’s a highly calculated springboard. A way to buff a resume. Corporate talent predators lurk around the Bureau every single day."

"I thought the Predator was currently in jail for grooming?" I said.

"Not the supervillain. Frankly, it would be better if it was him," Rick said with a dismissive wave of his massive hand.

"No, I mean sports agents. Marketing PR reps. They just swarm around the plaza. No sooner do we have a hero who’s grown experienced and competent than some massive lifestyle brand wants to sign them to push their energy drinks or athletic wear. It’s the entire point for so many of them now. Not many people want to become heroes because it’s the right thing to do. They want to do it because it’s the profitable thing to do."

Quite the heavy confession from the literal poster boy of modern heroism.

"There are still plenty of street-level capes out there," I pointed out.

"Nihilistic, unlicensed vigilantes operating outside the law are hardly what we aspire for the profession to be," Mystic noted dryly, not looking up from her plate.

"Nope," Mister Invincible agreed.

He sighed, leaning back against the leather booth and gazing wistfully over my head, lost in thought.

"It wasn’t always like this. No. Not at all," he murmured. "I remember when it was enough to just fight for good. For right. For the freedom and safety of the city."

"When was that?" I asked genuinely.

"The nineties. And that’s not just nostalgia talking. Ah," he said whimsically, his eyes misting slightly with remembrance. "We had true purpose in those days. Deep conviction. Unity! It was exactly why we started the Bureau in the first place. Did you know? It was just me, Michael, and a few others when we first grouped together. And look at us now!"

"You’ve certainly built an impressive corporate body," I said delicately.

"We have, haven’t we?" Rick chuckled, but his face dropped again almost immediately. "Funding was a bitch but once Cloudfire and his castles entered the picture there was nothing holding us back."

"But the new generation isn’t coming into the business with the same mindset. They’re completely disjointed. Entirely out for themselves. Mark my words, Miles. In a few years, you’ll have heroes actively fighting heroes for prime endorsement slots. And where do you honestly think the superhero industry will be in twenty years?"

"Uh..."

"The trend is crystal clear," he said mournfully. "By then, every single hero will be exclusively backed by big-money brands. They’ll be funded by multinational corporations strictly looking to turn a profit on their merchandise rights. They’ll be used up, and then quietly discarded as soon as they get too old or their Q-rating drops.

"And those who aren’t corporate-backed will become little more than deniable, localized weapons for government bodies. Heroes will become ever more risk-averse. They won’t risk life and limb in a real fight because their backers will cut them loose if they get too badly injured to do press tours. There’ll be absolutely no real incentive for protecting the weak. Unlicensed villains will run rampant. Those heroes who can actually fight will either be angry street-level brawlers, or they’ll only work for hire, strictly protecting those who can pay their retainer. No one will be fighting for the greater good."

I picked up a heavy silver fork, rubbing my thumb along the metal for lack of something better to do.

It’s not that Rick wasn’t right—that was the worst bit. It was entirely true.

Private, corporate-sponsored superheroing had certainly become the dominant model in the last couple of decades.

But I wondered how much of this was just pure nostalgia talking. Not a lot of heroes were exactly pining for the brutal, chaotic days of WW2 or the Golden Age. Sure, everyone theoretically wanted to punch a Nazi or defend a coastal city from a Category 5 Kaiju, but going to total war on a weekly basis wasn’t exactly something to actively aspire to.

"I think you’re giving a bit too little credit to the new heroes," I said finally. "Whenever rogue aliens invade or a really massive, city-level emergency happens, the heroes still band together and fight them off. And the streeters are... well-intentioned," I said, and even that was hard for me to get out.

Though I’d be the first to admit most streeters were highly self-righteous idiots and absolute fucking pests, their entire schtick was that they completely refused to become paid shills for corporations. I’d give them credit for stubborn conviction, if not operational execution. Mainly because their efforts at execution usually involved trying to blindly put a bullet in the back of my helmet.

I wasn’t exactly advocating for the corporate anarchy he clearly envisioned, but times changed. It was what they did.

"I suppose you do have an... interesting perspective on it," Rick said with a tired smile.

I twanged the prongs of my fork with my thumb.

"Fighting for truth and justice is great and all," I said. "But you can hardly blame the kids for wanting some real cash out of the deal. The cost of living in Metropolis is insane. Someone’s gotta pay for all the thematic underground caves, the giant super-computers, and the eccentric cars. Not to mention the fuel costs. When you strap a literal jet engine onto the back of a convertible, that eats up a lot of money very quickly. And there are only so many billionaire trust-fund babies looking to put on a mask and brawl with working-class guys who fell into a vat of atomic sludge."

Rick shook his head, leaning forward and looking across the table at me, his expression wistful.

"I suppose you may have a valid point. Though I can’t say I’m sharing your economic optimism. It’s a little ironic, considering who we both are."

I shrugged, picking up my steak knife and slicing into my dinner.

"Well, I do have a vested economic interest in the whole thing, I’ll admit. I fight corporate heroes for cash, not fun. If the heroes stopped working for the corps, then the marketing budgets would dry up, and I’d lose my primary income stream."

A genuine smile quirked his lips.

"You’d make a very good hero, Miles," he said softly.

I had to laugh out loud at that.

"If you say so." I took a bite of my steak, savoring the rich flavor of the meat. Damn, that was actually really good. "Mm. But if you honestly feel that way about the corporate side of things, then why was Micheal trying to hire me under the table for the Superstars gig?"

"Micheal seemed to believe we might be able to successfully retain more of the younger heroes if they believed we’d be able to actively build their personal brands within the Bureau faster than going private," Mystic answered smoothly, and the icy disdain in her voice indicated exactly what she personally thought of that idea.

"Hey now. Don’t be so rough on him," Rick said softly. "He was just doing what he thought was best. For the greater good."

"The phrase ’greater good’ does much heavy lifting," Mystic said grimly, the red glow in her eyes pulsing. "And inevitably, it leads only to absolute ruin."

Damn straight. I never trusted anyone who casually threw around the phrase ’greater good.’

"So he was trying to secretly partner with Firefly to keep some of the new blood in the Bureau’s ecosystem?" I asked, piecing it together.

Rick shrugged his broad shoulders.

"So he said. I choose to believe him, at any rate." He gave me a very close, assessing look. "Is that partly why you didn’t report this... Brain Trust to us originally?"

It wasn’t, but that was an incredibly useful opening, and I took it.

"Not really. I just wanted to make absolutely sure they left Psyren and me alone. But it seems like the Mind wiped his own brain to protect the data before we could find out where he hid the Override Array."

"A deeply troubling machine," Mystic said, her voice grave. "Do you have any further information on where it might have been relocated?"

"If there was any digital trail, it was buried under a million tons of concrete with the Mind’s lab," I said smoothly.

"We will investigate the rubble personally," Mystic said firmly. "We will discover exactly what this... Brain Trust was up to, locate the Override Array, and dismantle it before it can be used for widespread subjugation."

"Sorry if I’m not entirely convinced you’ll find anything," I said.

"I already have some highly promising leads," Mystic said softly.

That was a genuine surprise. And not just for me, judging by the shock on Rick’s face.

"You do?" the Invincible hero asked, blinking.

"Perhaps ’suspicions’ best describe them currently," Mystic corrected smoothly. "But yes. I do. And rest assured, Polaris, the Bureau will resolve this matter. And soon. I will personally inform you once the case has been securely closed."

Hm.

Well, she sounded incredibly sure of herself, at least, though I wasn’t quite sold on it. Still, the BSA had a historically very good track record for thwarting complex evil plots. I should know.

"There. You see?" Rick said, turning his sunny smile back on me. "You can still rely on heroes."

"I guess I’ll have to," I said, not entirely convinced.

But hell, they’d clearly taken the investigation completely out of my hands regardless, so I supposed I didn’t really have a choice on this one. They’d dig up the collapsed lab with heavy machinery, and if there was a surviving clue down there, the heroes would handle it now.

And with the active members of the Brain Trust dead, that hopefully meant the Mind had simply stashed the terrifying machine in some forgotten deep storage facility.

"Let me know how it all works out," I said, finishing my steak.

"Of course," Mystic said, her glowing eyes never leaving my face.

Rick shook his head again.

"It truly is a profound shame you remain a villain, Miles."

Afterward, the conversation mostly meandered around remarkably comfortable, mundane topics. We discussed the new municipal dockyard project (I liked the logistics of it), to the latest blockbuster movies currently showing (Mystic politely but chillingly hated them all), and Rick had some very choice, exhausted words about the new dramatized biopics regarding various heroes’ big events.

It was bizarrely comfortable—which was far more than I expected a dinner conversation between two S-class heroes and myself had any right to be.

Afterward, we politely said our goodbyes, and I drove my rental car back home.

It was an evening odd in its sheer normalcy, in my opinion.

But I was incredibly relieved to finally be done with them.