Sydney had been looking back at Camille, but in response to Camille’s question, she turned to look past the closet next to the door and into the main room.
Tall and thin with long blond hair and pale skin, anyone who saw Sydney with Sean assumed that they were brother and sister. Sean knew this. Seeing Camille with Sydney made him wonder how he’d ever missed that Camille was also his sister.
Even though Camille had long, dark brown hair and tan skin, courtesy of her mother, her face had the same oblong shape and lips as Sean and Sydney. Her height was only a little shorter than Sydney’s.
He could see an echo of his father’s face in both of theirs. It wasn’t the only way his father had disappointed him, but that wasn’t Camille’s fault.
For reasons known only to themselves, Sydney and Camille wore blue jeans and matching t-shirts. Sydney’s pink shirt labeled her “the quiet one,” and Camille’s white shirt said, “the loud one.”
Walking over to the couch, Sydney said, “Sean? I didn’t know you were already home. How did your internship go?”
“Boring,” Sean said, “but it’s done and I can get back to the rest of my life.”
“There’s the mandatory government service,” Sydney began.
“I know,” Sean said, “but the way they talk about that, it’s emergencies and projects where they think I can help. It’s not 24/7 like my internship. That sucked. Not much happened, but in case something did, I couldn’t go anywhere. For the next few years, I could get called in at any time, but I’ve also got the freedom to build up my team and do our own stuff. Being called in by the government gives us a chance to build up our reputation without having to sit around in the base all the time and train.”
Camille grinned, “The way I hear it, that’s what the top teams do.”
It felt weird to have her here, knowing who she was. He also knew he should be over it by now, but he’d barely seen either Camille or Sydney these last few years—his fault but still…
“Well, yeah, they do, but they can leave when they want. When you do your internship, you’ll know what I mean.”
“If it’s anything like Nick’s, I can guess. It sounds like he lived in the Motor City Heroes’ base and it was worse than the Heroes Leagues’ base before the cleanup and renovations. Except for the end, though, he had a good time. I’m hoping for a nice, boring internship somewhere fun and warm—like Miami or Los Angeles.”
Sean shook his head, “You won’t see any of the fun parts if your internship is anything like mine—not unless you have to go undercover and they didn’t let me do that at all.”
Camille laughed, “You’re not an undercover kind of guy. You’re the kind of guy who destroys electronics everywhere for blocks around you.”
Keeping an urge to tell her that she wasn’t any different, Sean said, “I’m a lot better now.”
Was she trying to needle him? First bringing Nick up and then reminding him of how badly he lost control sometimes. He shook his head. Maybe he was being oversensitive.
Sydney looked over at Camille and Camille nodded. Sean didn’t know what he’d missed, but he’d missed something.
Her tone light, Sydney asked, “How is everything going with the new team? You told me that the investors were coming here? Like to the condo?”
Sean shook his head, “No. I don’t want to get Mom involved with superhero stuff. We’re going to rent a space in Grand Lake, but it’s only going to be a little office. The Heroes’ League has Grand Lake sewn up. No one’s going to call us in if they’re around. We’re thinking that we’ll put our main office in Lansing, Battle Creek, or Kalamazoo, whichever city sounds most interested. I wanted to put us in a big city, but big cities attract big teams. Our investors said that the best thing we could do is be big fish in second or third-tier cities and make connections in Chicago and Detroit. That way people will pull us in when things get tough and we’ll get more exposure.”
Sydney frowned, “Are you going to move to Lansing or wherever your main office is?”
Getting off the couch, Sean said, “I don’t know. Maybe. I think we’ll want to be close to our main office. We were thinking about trying to recruit a teleporter if we could find one. That way we could be wherever we need to in a blink, but those guys are expensive. They can write their own ticket anywhere. So my bet is yeah, we’re probably moving.”
Stepping closer to the couch, Camille said, “Who are these,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “‘investors’. You make it sound like a superhero group.”
Sean laughed, “They kind of are. They don’t have powers, but it’s a business called, ‘Future-men Capital.’ The name is a little weird, but they’re the biggest capital organization that invests in superhero groups. They help new groups that they think have potential and with everything that happened here in Grand Lake, that’s us.”
One of the thing I get a kick out of is thinking through stuff like, “how does a superhero team get going if they don’t have a rich guy who can fund them?” And thus we have a group that invests in superhero groups. Bearing in mind the potential for merchandising for well-known teams, I think it might work.
Top Web Fiction:
http://topwebfiction.com/listings/the-legion-of-nothing
It certainly makes sense.
This is Sean we’re talking about. It will go wrong.
And will probably end up as a meeting with the Dmoniators.
Am I being paranoid thinking that kind of business is a perfect recruiting cover for the Nine?
Not paranoid enough.