Paragon to Pavement 3

“Now, I’m not one to mince words…”

“You? Mince words?” Robert Robertson III had a way with words of his own, something Blonde Blazer was beginning to realize; at least, now that she was sober. “I’d be surprised if you bothered to dice them.”

That way just happened to be extremely acerbic and nonchalant, but entertaining all the same.

“Uh-huh.” Chase Felix raised his head of white hair from the whirring tower of ancient technology that was an SDN computer, the thing sitting atop a particleboard desk. “Fuckin’ dickhead.”

The aptly-named ‘Black Einstein’ grunted the insult from where he stood at the corner of the dark records room, the old-looking man putting his glasses on as the yellow knit of his sweater shined brighter in front of the screen. “Now, if I’m being entirely honest…” Thick white eyebrows pitched together behind those same wire-rims, his physical movements slow even as the voice came out quick and paced like the young(er) man he was.

The computer whirred just that little bit louder as Chase shoved a square floppy disk into the workstation, the drive swallowing it with a loud clack. “I thought and still think we should have canned these rotten tunas months ago.”

Robert didn’t even blink at the harsh words, though Mandy didn’t doubt he was already used to Chase’s attitude. Her newest dispatcher shuffled forward, the cotton of his baggy blue SDN work shirt wrinkling around his shoulders. With a grunt to match Chase’s, he dropped his weight into the rolling chair directly in front of the bright and humming monitor.

Mandy stepped up right behind him, her golden-yellow cape settling down her back as she leaned down just a little bit. The magical fabric was almost always a physical reminder of exactly how much space she took up, whether in this room or any other. Taller, blonde, nigh-indestructible. 

All the things that made up Blonde Blazer.

Amanda Myers took a low breath as she planted her boots shoulder-width apart, one blue-gloved hand resting on Robert’s chair. “And you might get your wish.” She did her best to keep her voice light as she talked about the end of the program she’d fought for. “Because if we don’t see improvement soon, everything’s going down the drain.”

“Just like that?” Robert stared blankly at the loading bar crawling across the screen, dark bags under his eyes heavy enough to be a bruise. “Scrapping the whole program?”

Blonde Blazer offered him a smile. “Unfortunately.

“Cool.” All the grit in his voice scraped the single syllable clean as he let it free. “No pressure.”

Great job, Mandy. Demoralize your last hope before his team can do it for you. Blazer shut her eyes for all of a second, bright blues opening up a second later. Idiot.

The drive spun, monitor flashing blue, and before she could chastise herself further, a profile appeared on-screen; a mugshot and a splash photo of a lanky man with a black bat-head appearing right next to each other.

“Oh!” Mandy blinked, ready to jump into her prepared intro. “This here is Sonar. He is a Harvard graduate wh-”

“Who will not shut the ever-loving fuck up about being a Harvard graduate like all Harvard graduates.” Chase didn’t even bother to look at the screen, arms crossing over his yellow sweater. “Fuckin’ pricks.”

Pivot. Mandy’s smile froze on her face, expression still as light as she could make it. Keep moving. “Who also orchestrated some of the most effective Silicon Valley investment frauds in US history. Also…”

“Also sometimes he transforms into a giant fucking monster.” Chase harrumphed every single syllable. “Bat bastard would eat you ass first after he emptied your pension plan.”

A sigh slipped free from her lips. “…That too.”

The cursor hovered over the screen. Robert offered a noncommittal hum deep in his chest, his finger tapping the mouse to shift to the next file in the row.

A man with slicked-back dark hair grinned back from his splash photo, holding up hands wrapped in fire as he stood there in a flame-emblazoned bodysuit. 

Mandy’s lips parted to start her pitch, but the twitch in Robert’s jaw was hard to miss; enough to make her pause for a second as she recognized his recognition. “Flambè, he—”

“Let me guess…” Robert cut her off, voice pitching up as he pulled on words from memory. “He controls the fire and the flame and his skin does not burn.”

“Yeah.” Mandy found herself nodding despite herself. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

Robert grunted back. “Apparently, his hair isn’t included in that.”

“Right, you met him the other night at the bar. I heard about that one.” Chase leaned against the edge of the desk, voice hitching into a laugh. “Wasn’t he the same pyro fucker you took down years back at the mall?”

“That was him, yeah.” 

Mandy blinked at that information. Question for later.

“So you know he’s a certifiable dickhead of the highest degree?”

“Trust me.” The plastic mouse clicked under Robert’s finger again. “I do.”

Just my luck. If it wasn’t Visi being Visi, it was the simple fact that Flambè had been himself around Robert long enough to leave a mark. Her pulse picked up, blood cold with a line of anxiety shooting straight down her spine. Being strong enough to fling a city bus like a frisbee was nice and all, but it didn’t do a damn thing to stop her stomach from tying itself into a knot over retention metrics. If Robert has bad blood with the roster, he might walk.

“Fuck.” Chase spoke the single word on her mind. “Just don’t let him figure out who you are any time soon. Least not without your suit ready.”

“Will do.” The next file opened, a familiar face with dark hair and tan skin snapping out with a kick toward the camera. 

“That’s Invisigal.” Mandy leaned in again, tone careful to keep out any sign of stress. “Who you… met this morning.”

“Oh, the one who called me dad bod.” Robert hummed to himself. “Almost didn’t recognize her without the inhaler.”

“…yeah, she turned herself in months ago, entering the Phoenix Program on the condition that we…” ” Mandy sighed low. “Well, basically, ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’ is the name of the game.”

“Oh, she’s a lesbian?”

“Funny, but no.” Mandy rolled a pair of blue eyes, the darkness of the room effectively daylight to her as she let her gaze drift. “Discovering where her interests stop would be a bigger problem than finding out where they lie. But in all seriousness, she just requested we not ask questions about why she turned herself in.”

Robert’s head tilted toward her. “Little suspicious there, no?”

“Suspicious?” Chase let out a scoff as dry as the Sahara. “A criminal that goes ghost and doesn’t like questions? What tipped you off, Sherlock Roboto?”

“I’m just saying. It sounds…” The new dispatcher’s shoulders rose and fell. “Well, you know…”

Mandy tilted her head, the heavy blonde hair shifting against her cape, because she did know. 

It was a common thought circling the back of her head that Torrance Branch seemed to be running a halfway house for felons who’d only been vetted for thick rap sheets and nothing else because Corporate wouldn’t allocate them the resources to do proper intake. 

Which was exactly what was happening.

The fact that they cared enough about PR to do splash photos for the Z-Team’s potential advertising was just another headache. Just in case one of them gets popular, apparently.

“Well…” She stretched the syllable as she held the smile, offering absolutely nothing else because there was nothing to offer. The screen changed again with a click and Mandy Myers bit back the sigh of a lifetime.

A dark-skinned woman appeared next, her sharp features angular under her silver mask as she spread dark metallic wings out behind her. “Here we have Coupé.” Mandy leaned into the trivia as best she could to keep things moving, voice a chime. “Which I recently learned is a French ballet term that means to cut, hence the knives.”

Robert raised an eyebrow. “Very clever.”

“Yeah, but it sounds dumb to say.” Chase made himself heard again. “So everybody calls her Coop. She was an assassin for the mob, then went independent.”

“Which mob?” 

“Fuck if I know. French?”

“Corsican Mafia?” Mandy blinked as Robert rumbled with a low hum. “ Tasteful.”

“The fuck?” Chase scowled over at the man in the ill-fitting uniform, the small man adjusting his glasses. “How’d you know the name of the French Mob, kid?”

A single brown eyebrow went high. “…I was a superhero.”

“So was I!”

So am I. And Mandy hadn’t known that either.

“One of us was a superhero who had to use his brain instead of powers.” Robert tilted his head again, a small smile creeping up his face as Chase scoffed back at him.

“…fucker.”

With a snort, Robert clicked again.

“Punch Up.” Chase announced this one before Mandy could even form the words, the image of a rather rather short man with burly arms and a barrel chest to go along with his carefully curled mustache standing out on screen as he flexed one of those bulging biceps. “Finally someone in this whole fucking branch I can look down on.”

“He was a carnival strong man before he made a deal with a sorceress.” Mandy leaned in in an attempt to smooth the sheer stupidity of the origin story, by trying to make it sound more tragic than anything else. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure she was failing there too. “A sorceress with an interesting sense of humor. She gave him the strength of ten men. Unfortunately, it came with a price.”

“Yeah, his muscles grew, but his body shrunk.” Chase didn’t miss a beat. “Charm and brains went with his height too, apparently. Guy’s got as much of both as a greasy bowling ball does.”

Stop helping, Chase. Please stop helping. Mandy nodded to herself as Robert clicked on yet another folder in the line. 

The screen filled with crimson, the man at the mouse openly blinking at the sight of a massive pair of… horns. They belonged to a red-skinned, yellow-eyed woman taller than anyone in this room, a large amount of flesh on display as she wore nothing more than a tight white tank top and daringly-short daisy dukes. Her image caught her mid-leap from a jagged red portal, a giant scarlet sword held behind her back.

“Malevola…” Mandy breathed out, eyes trailing down the woman’s body. “Terrifying.”

For at least two reasons.

Robert squinted at the monitor. “Demon, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That her actual name or…?”

“Far as we can tell, yes.”

“Comforting.” 

“That’s a word for it.” Mandy matched his tone, offering him a bit of solidarity. “Whatever kind of demon she is, she’s got a magic sword and creates portals that let her bounce around wherever she wants.”

“And somehow shows up late for every fucking meeting.” Chase spat the words, one hand adjusting his wire-rims higher up his nose. “Every. Fucking. Meeting.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she does that on purpose.” Mandy let out a laugh she almost felt as Robert clicked the mouse again, a vaguely humanoid hill of topsoil and mud stared out at the camera. “That’s Golem.”

Mandy didn’t even bother to dress this one up, no point in even attempting. “He’s a construct.”

“A construct?”

“Yeah.” Chase shifted closer to the monitor. “Bunch of mud and magic brought to life.” The old man’s heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. “Pretty sure he’s lonely.”

Mandy blinked at the bit of kindness Chase showed, unable to deny that. The mud pile often sat in the corner of the breakroom when he wasn’t on a dispatch, staring at the vending machine for hours. 

“Hmm.” Robert just stared at the dirt pile.

Click.

A dark-skinned black woman in a multi-color bob wig and neon-pink outfit, her tight and bright bodysuit visible from space.

“Prism.” Chase beat her to it again. “Michigan born and raised. A weird one, power-wise at least.”

“Weirder than the construct?”

“To me, yeah.” The old man grunted. “She weaponizes light rays or some shit. A lot of this stuff is a guess.”

Robert finally turned his head, looking over his shoulder at the two of them. “And why is it a guess again?”

“Because we’re the Superhero Dispatch Network, Robert.” Mandy shook her head, blonde hair swaying before it perfectly restored itself. “Not the Superhuman Census Network. As much as we’re all about liability mitigation, we don’t get all the information on almost anyone past what they tell us. Or what we can figure out. “

“And most of these fuckers are more powers than brains, so they ain’t know shit about fuck  they can do either.” Chase grumbled out his frustrations. “Especially not how they do it.”

“Uh-huh.” Robert turned back to the screen. “And she’s dressed like a pop star, why exactly?”

“Well, she is one.” Mandy answered quickly before Chase could do it for her.

“…is she?”

“Trust me, she’s actually super talented.” She is. She really is. It’s just buried under a lot of criminal charges and attitude.

But Robert would figure that out on his own, the man nodding once as he dragged the mouse over the ninth and final folder in the directory. 

“Our newest member…” Mandy’s voice thinned out as she sped up the words, all three of them staring at the file.

Like all the others, he had a splash photo and a mugshot. 

In both, a young dark-skinned man stared at the camera with a face, neck and arms covered with a thick roadmap of ropy burn scars and waxy patches of flesh. The splash photo itself showed him with arms up, blue light flaring over his knuckles as he stood there with electric blue eyes and a matching martial-arts gi.

“The fucker in the kung fu outfit, hm.” Chase leaned in, white mustache twitching. “Haven’t made my mind up on him yet.”

Mandy stared at the screen at her pet project. “This is Sky.”

Robert raised an eyebrow, staring at the scarred face like it was nothing strange. “So, what’s the deal with him?”

“He’s very… polite and respectful.” The words were loaded, Blazer well aware that his manners weren’t all that well-meaning. “He’s actually new to all this.”

“And by this, she means our universe.” Chase, like usual, simply dropped his words like a sledgehammer flat on the desk. “Kid’s a fucking interdimensional terrorist.”

“He’s not a terrorist.”

Chase didn’t flinch at the bite in his manager’s voice. “Tell that to the State of California and the Circle K company.”

Chase… The woman held back a grunt, the sound low in her throat. “As far as the SDN can get from him, he’s a hero from another universe who had an unfortunate entry into ours.” The skip over the twelve million dollars in property damage was necessary, a quick move before Chase could manage to throw it in. “Things spiraled, unfortunately.”

“Things spiraled.” Chase’s laugh scraped on its way out. “You could say that for every fucker in the Z-Team.”

Robert let the mouse go to swivel his chair around, plastic wheels dragging slow against the carpet. “Wait, so uh.” His brow furrowed, brown eyes meeting Blazer’s blues. “The Z-Team, my team… they’re Phoenix Program?”

“That is… correct, yes.” 

“Your own motley crew of dangerous fuck ups.” The muttered verdict came from no one else but Chase, the old man turning away from the desk.

“We’re not looking for miracles…” Mandy leaned in closer to Robert as the other man stared back at her, eyes not leaving hers. “…but we’d love one if we could get it.”

“Well,” Robert turned away with a sigh, eyes back on the screen. “At least one of them is gonna be easy to deal with.”

Mandy blinked. “What do you mean?”

Robert looked back at her. “I mean, if this Sky Guy was already a hero, then working with him should be the easiest, right?”

Mandy pursed her lips, the Blonde Blazer smile finally failing to reach her eyes.

“…yeah.”