This part was actually named after me, you know?

  It was probably the only thing in this building that I could truly call mine. Well as much as that word meant anything these days.

  Fount Perseus.

  Right in the middle of Lobby III. A magnificent fountain that looked more like someone had carved out a chunk of Icelandic waterfall and teleported it intact into the middle of Utopia Tower than anything man-made. And knowing the resources we commanded, maybe that is what happened. It was held up by shatterproof glass that split it into multiple tributaries so you could walk under it and be swallowed by the quiet power of the stream.

  I will say that for all of Dirk Domino's questionable tastes, he never missed when it came to water features.

  I always loved watching the water. I envied it, really, the smoothness, the formlessness, the way it just moved where it was supposed to, shaped like whatever was around it. I think I might genuinely prefer to live a life where I was at least a little bit wet at all times. Wetness made everything blurrier and harder to discern, it softened and thickened sharp lines. And there were just too many hard lines and 90 degree angles in my life at the moment. Far too many.

  Fount Perseus was my 14th birthday present, a true marvel of aquatic architecture, and I remember at the time asking why a present to me was in Utopia Tower and not in our house.

  “Well, Percy, because if you’re anything like me, eventually you’ll be spending more time there than at home.”

  Ha.

  Ha ha.

  That better not be true.

  Fucker.

  I had gone to the lobby to catch my breath. I didn't want to be alone, I'd had enough of that for now, but I wanted to be left alone and surrounded by noise at once.

  And being here, I guess it made it a little bit harder to scream at him. And it's not that I wanted to stop for any ethical or spiritual reasons. It was just exhausting to keep feeling like that.

  So many people worked here. For my father. For me. They were bustling about, and it didn't look like a barracks; if you looked past the unusual clothing and space-age technology, it could look like any old office building. It was almost normal. And I suppose that at this moment, I wanted to be as close to normal as I could.

  I was tired and restless at the same time. I’d had enough. I didn’t even have the ability to name what I’d had enough of. I’d just had enough.

  I didn’t even want to ask Sebi what tasks I had left in the day. Obviously there were more. But I felt like hearing them listed right now would just make me scream and try to crack the glass of this fountain with my head.

  So right now, like a normal person, I was going to walk to the lobby’s cafeteria, get a bottle of water and some lunch, and carry on with what passed for My Day. I headed over to the colorful and well-populated food court and I-

  I, uh. Fuck. Oh.

  Oh please forgive me for what I’m about to describe here.

  The first thing that hit me was the taste of nectar on my tongue. The air had become nectar, sweet and sharp and mouth watering but not overpowering, a guide to further sensations rather than the prime sensation itself.

  That would come later.

  Then the smell. The smell of life itself, raw, virile life. I smelled flowers and sunlight and fruit juice and warm flesh and woman-sweat and just the smallest hint of wet soil to make it feel all the more real. That let us know that we were not in Heaven. We were in Paradise.

  And then I saw her and I wondered if I had been blind my whole life prior to this moment. I couldn’t tell how far away she was. All I knew was that it was too far. That any distance at all was too far. Even the spaces between our atoms.

  Hn. Ah. Fuck.

  Oh fuck me this can’t be real. Good God.

  She was beauty, hunger, desire made flesh. Her golden sun-kissed skin shone like plump ripening fruit beckoning to be picked off the vine. Her white-gold hair, strung with a crown of pink petals, flew behind her in wild curls that still looked more graceful than the most elegant stylings a human woman could ever wear. Her rainbow-iridescent eyes, big and bright and wild, enthralled you in a way that felt like you’d wither into a husk the second she took them off you.

  She wore a caped dress woven from flowers, some of which had never bloomed on mortal earth, for they would’ve started wars. More flowers bloomed from her body, not at random, but in some resplendent pattern that my feeble man’s mind would never be able to grasp. Beneath her dress I could see the outlines of her rosebud nipples, pointed like thorns, and her rounded tulip-bulb hips that cried out to yield to the touch of fingers and teeth.

  They needed to be more than outlines, more than suggestions. I needed to-

  I need her I need her I need her I need her I need her.

  I felt myself crying, choking, gasping for air and water and nourishment like a dying man only I felt like I was seconds away from being alive, truly alive, for the first time since I left the womb.

  Fuck I need her. Come closer. Oh.

  Oh.

  I was helplessly drawn towards her like an underground plant twisting itself in the direction of the tiniest beam of sunlight with all its might.

  An indescribable pressure throttled my body like I was being buried alive.

  There was a nuclear warhead in my pants. I needed to detonate, dying instantly, into a fount of raw liquid life that would dribble into every corner of her body.

  I needed to become a dress, a full body dress, covered in tongues, so she could wear me and I could taste every centimeter of her at once.

  Ah. Ah. Ah. Mmf. Oh?

  Her hand was on my cheek. Who knows how long it took me to register that. Her shoulder was pressing under mine. I was falling to my knees, whimpering. She smiled at me. Oh God. That smile was for me. All mine. Every cell in my body screamed to be joined with hers.

  And for a few moments of clarity Percy’s brain somehow started working again. My brain. I was Percy.

  And this was— I knew who this was.

  Liptunia, the Flowered Princess. Lady of Central Park. One of those god damned faeries that had infested Manhattan since the Treaty of the Looking Glass. Liptunia had an interesting relationship to Utopia. She was-

  Oh fuck fuck fuck. Now. Stop playing with me.

  All of you. Now. Take me.

  I don’t give a fuck what happens next.

  Now fuck now now now.

  Auhn.

  But when the feeling reached its peak, it became so much more than that. It was more than lust. It was bliss. Euphoria. I felt all the stress, all the bitterness, all the pain inside me begin to float away like petals on a soft breeze. She was sex and medicine and dessert and home. I should just lay my head on her chest and never wake up. And that would be the greatest peace I could ever know.

  No. No wait.

  What is happening to me?

  My body, my mind, they weren’t obeying me. Didn’t belong to me.

  This was an intoxication even I had never felt. I was as helpless as a bee in a flower.

  “Mm-hmm-hmm,” she laughed a devastatingly unfair laugh. “Beautiful man. Beautiful, broken man.”

  Yes. Yes that’s me. Oh your mouth can do more than speak. I know it can do more than speak.

  “I can tell you’re eager to have a little fun. Eager for sweet release. Look at how they toil you. It is only your right.”

  “Yes,” I think I said.

  I pulled her hand off my cheek to start sucking on her fingers when -

  “That’s enough, sister,” said a man’s voice, airy and fierce and as lovely as a ringing bell.

  A clean high note rang through my head, and imbued it with a sharpness and clarity unmatched by even the strongest of amphetamines. I snapped out of it and the whiplash almost broke my neck.

  This would be Ildorian the Feathered Prince, Lord of Central Park. Nearly as beautiful as his sister, and looking almost identical, save for his lithe warrior frame, sharp beaked nose, straighter hair, piercing avian eyes, long taloned fingers, a mallard’s colors shining beneath his skin, and feathers in place of her flowers. An array of feather-hilted knives hung from belts slung across his tunic like bandoliers.

  “My apologies for my sister. She sometimes forgets that not all mortal men are toys,” he nibbled on one of her long ears in a gesture that looked at once affectionate and reprimanding, and she yelped in a way that made her whole body ripple.

  And then I just laughed. I wasn’t mad. Scared out of my mind maybe but I wasn’t mad.

  Oh, that was a good trick. That was a good trick. We should try that again sometime.

  “Oh Ildorian! The boy is so much weaker than his Lord father,” she giggled again. “That had never swayed him.”

  Holy shit, Dad. I don’t know if I should respect you or look down on you.

  “It’s lovely to meet you two as well,” I said, recovering my faculties little by little, “though it sounds like you know who I am already, I haven’t been formally introduced. I am-“

  “Percy!” A mildly familiar voice called out from behind me, and then a friendly hand clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Were you two harassing him? You know he’s the Lord Chairman now, you pests. Mind your manners.”

  “Oh, we were simply playing. We are always simply playing,” Liptunia answered musically.

  “Nora, hey!” I turned around and gave her the kind of sterile half hug you usually give to men. Partially because I was unsure what our relationship was at the moment, partially because I was still hard.

  Nora was Lila’s ex-girlfriend, but in the messy confusing no-boundaries way that queer women were exes. Same social circles, still hung out as friends, probably still hooked up from time to time, but there were probably at least five conversations they urgently needed to have and never would.

  I would absolutely kill at that by the way. I’ll admit that I wouldn’t call myself good or even okay at relationships, but I would be so good at being a lesbian ex. Maybe I should’ve been a lesbian. Sorry, Lila was a bisexual which contains a lesbian inside of it, I think, but I don’t know if you’re supposed to call them lesbians. I filed that under my notes page entitled “things to ask Lila later” which she made me create so I wouldn’t be asking her inane questions like this at all times.

  We were casual friends and I genuinely liked her company but hadn’t seen much of her since she and Lila broke up and Lila left the Skyscraper Sentinels to join the Covenant.

  Oh right.

  That must be a bit of a sore spot here.

  Okay wait. That was kind of sexist of me. Being Lila’s ex girlfriend wasn’t her main thing. Let me rewind that.

  Nora Nunez, better known as City Girl, was the regional Captain of the Skyscraper Sentinels, the tri state area’s superhero team, and one of the most powerful and beloved superheroes in America. She was almost New York City’s mascot at this point.

  She was as Real New Yorker as they came. A 29 year old Afroboricuan firecracker from the Bronx with a big Afro, diamond-tipped hoop earrings, a wide infectious smile, and a voice that ran at coke-speed at all times. Like me, she had a signature pair of sunglasses, only they were big and orange and she actually took them off indoors. Like Lila, she wore normal clothes to work, today an army surplus jacket, white tank top, and high waisted designer jeans with Jordans. She had invented at least three viral TikTok dances and saved New York from at least six more 9/11s.

  “Long time no see,” I said, “you’re in my house but I’m more in your house, so I’m not sure who should offer a drink first.”

  “Ha! You don’t have to worry about things being weird because I broke up with your bestie, by the way. We’re totally still friends.”

  “Okay but all you sapphics say that. Some of you have to be lying!”

  “Okay true! But no I promise. Word to Utopia.”

  I let out a small sigh of relief.

  “Maybe I’m projecting. Usually when I see my friends’ exes I kind of get ready for war because I assume they hate their exes as much as mine hate me.”

  “Oh shut the fuck up!” she clapped my arm again. “So how’s the first day on the job? I thought I was tripping when I saw the news.”

  “Oh God now you shut the fuck up. Babe I feel like I’m tripping still.”

  “You probably are. Princess Pussy over there really does a number on you.”

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  “Whew. Yeah. Not just her but… God damn.”

  “I didn’t even know you were interested in this kind of thing. Or anything but getting fucked up and looking cute.”

  I laughed.

  “I wasn’t. I’m not supposed to say this but yeah I really wasn’t. It’s a long story. I’m-“

  “Hey. Have you had lunch yet?”

  “No. No I was just getting-“

  “Great. Come back to the garrison and eat with us. I’d be offended if you spent your first professional day in New York in this tower all day. And yeah. I guess I'm the one offering the drink first.”

  I smiled.

  “Yeah. Sure. Yeah that sounds nice.”

  “Daichi! Alex! We’re leaving!” Nora called from across the lobby, and of course her voice was loud and commanding enough to carry.

  Two young men dressed in different variants of monochrome streetwear jogged over from a service kiosk to join us.

  Daichi was a stoic, buzz-cut, muscular Japanese-American man with a plethora of tattoos, who wore a sleek black flared rain jacket and Japanese joggers. He carried himself like an urban samurai, and across his shoulder and on his belt were black cylindrical quivers full of umbrellas, probably over a dozen in total, that were fastened like katana. Alex was a bleach blonde skater twink who evidently couldn’t stand still for a single second, wearing an oversized white t-shirt and a backwards baseball hat. He would have been adorable if he covered the bottom half of his face, whose grin betrayed something insatiable and messy, a mouth that looked like it should be smeared with chocolate or tomato sauce at all times. He glided over at truly reckless speeds with the chunky maglev boots that he was wearing and had the audacity to turn on indoors.

  More Skyscraper Sentinels, I took it. They looked vaguely familiar. We exchanged superficial greetings.

  We left Utopia Tower through a window.

  I saw Liptunia turn into a single rose, which Ildorian then placed in his mouth, like some kind of Golden Age French gentleman, then leapt out of the window, upon which he rotated in his cloak midair and transformed into a gorgeous prehistoric-sized swan, flying away at airplane speeds with the rose in his beak.

  Uh.

  Alright. Okay.

  Surely there are other ways for them to travel quickly, right?

  City Girl then took my hand and pulled me out with her and my stomach lurched as I went into freefall over 30 stories in the air. Daichi and Alex dutifully jumped out behind us as if they’d done this a hundred times before.

  As soon as we were about to hit the ceiling of the closest building beneath us, and where anyone else would have splattered, the building instead gently unfolded beneath us in pleasant geometric swirls, a portal edged with newspaper clippings and asphalt and cigarette ash and steam, and we landed harmlessly in a lovely red brick hardwood floored converted warehouse which I took to be the Skyscraper Sentinels’ New York base.

  City Girl was something like a divine avatar of the spirit of New York City itself. The streets and structures of the world’s most important city moved like they were her own limbs, and she could teleport anywhere in the city as well as sense almost anything that was happening in it at once if she focused. She’d totally be Covenant material if she wasn’t powerless outside of New York, not that she’d want a job up there anyway, but inside the confines of the city, she was almost unbeatable.

  God, she was so cool. Nothing like most Utopia capes. Lila really fumbled this one, I hated to admit.

  Oh this was way more normal than I would have managed in Lobby III of Utopia Tower. They had a basketball court built outside of their base. They had a tastelessly chic bar installment in their kitchen with craft beer on tap. The furniture was too yellow. None of their couches matched. You could hear arguments and ill-advised superpower stunts and surround sound-amplified video games ringing throughout Hang Street Hall, as they called this charming artist's loft-cum-fire station that functioned as a superhero base.

  This was chill. This was people. Thank the Lord.

  Clink. Glug. Sizzle. Rip.

  This was more relaxing than a spa, today of all days.

  We ate kebabs City Girl literally summoned in from the best halal cart in the city on an elevated unfinished wood countertop with uncomfortable backless seats that you could break your neck if you fell off.

  There were eleven of us in total, eating kebabs and throwing back a few lunch beers in this lived-in monument to the human spirit. Nora introduced me to the room. I was sure I had met some of these people before, they were Lila’s former teammates and I was in New York often, but probably when I was either not sober enough, not attentive enough, or both, so I just rolled with universal re-introductions.

  The faerie nobles, Ildorian and Liptunia, flitted about, shoveling handfuls of artisanal candy into their mouths in between eating their actual food. Several times I thought I saw one of them scoop a candy out the other’s mouth with their tongues.

  “Hey Nora,” I murmured at one point, “aren’t they brother and sister?”

  “Yes. But yes.”

  “Oh. Ew?”

  “It’s another culture from ours, Percy. Plus they’re royalty. I’m pretty sure that’s okay when you’re royalty.”

  “You know what? Sure. That makes sense to me.”

  Daichi Ryusuke, who stood up, leaning against the wall and speaking little, as if always scanning the perimeter for threats, was called Rain Carver, and apparently was the son of the famous Japanese superhero Kusanagi.

  Alex Wayhigh, who shoveled food like a goat despite his rail-thin frame and talked even faster than Nora, was called Fare Jumper, less a superhero as much as an extreme sports enthusiast who loved railgunning himself across New York on his magnetic boots and saving people from falling to their deaths.

  Alex was delivering a truly manic gay-best-friend pestering to the girl next to him, freckled and auburn haired Gillian Ginger, a.k.a. Engine Girl III, whom I actually did know from Utopia Academy but only vaguely as she was four years younger than me. She was a tech heroine from a long line of them dating back to World War II, and wore a charmingly retro science adventurer ensemble complete with spiked shoulder pads, a retractable space helmet, a jet pack, bright red boots, and a ray gun on her belt. She weathered Alex’s ranting and food-stealing with a slightly exasperated smile, and threatened to stop making equipment for him if he didn’t drop his chosen topic of conversation.

  Making sure everyone’s food and drinks were ever-flowing was Fareed Obayed, a.k.a. Bossman. Everyone knew Bossman. Within New York City, he was almost as popular as City Girl. A bodega superhero with a gentle smile, thick eyebrows, and a winning attitude, he was powered by hospitality itself, and was artfully rearranging the furniture, busking and washing dishes, pouring drinks, and occasionally repairing broken segments of this rowdy base to suit our needs without even lifting a finger. He gently placed his hand on the shoulder of a frazzled and stone-faced looking girl, younger than the rest, who was scrolling through her phone on a nearby couch, and asked her a question in a soft voice, to which she gave a reassuring nod and a weak but honest smile.

  The perpetually stressed NYU student, a striking too-skinny blue eyed brunette with a resting bitch face accentuated by her obvious lack of sleep, dressed in full Gossip Girl revival swag and owning it, was Vanessa van Heisman (who they called “Liv” for some reason even though that was not a nickname for Vanessa?), a.k.a. Flicker, who was apparently juggling college, superhero work, and an internship at a magazine at the same time. Poor girl. She really should have been at the club.

  The unnerving figure sitting at the far head of the table, a good distance from everyone else, who would occasionally crack jokes that made me feel like I should go to jail for even listening to them, was Mycroft Drain, a.k.a. Ratfucker, whom Utopia insisted on officially calling “Ratboy” for the purpose of respectability, to his endless frustration. He had severe, naughty features, wore a dark brown trench coat and a random assortment of bandages around his arms and face, and had black eyes whose pupils glowed a sickly green that told me he was some flavor of supernatural being.

  Bounding in fresh from the basketball court, greeting me with a furry hug, was Bengal, a jovial tiger person with no memories dating before six years ago, when he suddenly showed up in Hell’s Kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of indestructible metal bands of indeterminate origin on his wrists. He was totally owning it though, without a trace of amnesia angst, not letting his tiger physiology stop him from dressing like a Brooklyn bisexual draped in loose flowy shirts and chunky jewelry and becoming a fixture of the city’s DIY and coffeehouse scenes.

  They were friendly, but not too friendly. The kind of friendly you’d expect to be afforded to Percy Domino pre-ascension to the throne. Exactly who I wanted to be right now. Like I was obviously important and kind of cape royalty but they didn’t give off the impression they thought they’d get in trouble for being rude to me, or they needed my approval. Good. Who the fuck needs my approval?

  "Wait,” Bengal said, “you didn't even want the job and your dad is making you run Utopia like it's a family owned hardware store he doesn't want to be bulldozed and replaced with a Sweetgreen? Man that's fucked."

  “Literally! Thank you! I know everyone our age calls our dads narcissists now, but come back when yours has an ego that might cause trillions in damages.”

  No one had expressed that to me before, somehow. Even though it was the most sane takeaway from this whole ordeal.

  “Well, I’ll have you know my father is in Hell,” Ratfucker said snidely.

  “Yeah, but not because he’s a demon or anything. He’s a sinner, he just molested a lot of kids. Which they say is hereditary, by the way. Mycroft is just wearing colored contacts,” Fare Jumper said in between bites of gyro.

  Nervous laughter erupted from the table and Ratfucker shook his head he lunged forward, shoving three fingers forward in a sickening double-jointed claw motion, snarling an incantation, and from beneath Fare Jumper’s seat erupted a squealing black mass of shadows and teeth that he narrowly avoided by pointing his maglev boots at the exposed scaffolding in the ceiling and shooting towards it hanging upside down.

  “Not while we’re eating, you clown-ass bitches!” Nora called out as the boys started fighting.

  “Girl, you’re always eating!” Alex called down, still on the ceiling.

  She blew him a kiss and then a middle finger.

  “For real though,” Nora turned to me, “I never thought I’d feel sorry for a billionaire white boy getting the opportunity to be even richer, Succession never moved me for that reason, but this? This shit is coming close. Cause he about to be fucking all of us.”

  “I appreciate your condolences,” I said. “And yes. Exactly that. I told the Board my dad fucked us all like he was a tentacle monster and we were a bus full of Japanese schoolgirls. I don’t think they appreciated the analogy.”

  I could see even Daichi’s stoic face cracking up after that, and he spoke up for the first time in a while.

  “Wait did you seriously say that in front of the fucking Board? In front of Gladius?”

  “Dude everyone on the Board who isn’t ex-Covenant fucking hates me, I swear,” I snorted, “Which is fair, me too, but it feels aggressive coming from them.”

  “Yes. Clock it!” Fare Jumper called out, now returning to the ground floor.

  “Telling me shit about bylaws like I have to do their fucking job for them,” I ranted, to murmurs of sympathy.

  I knew what I was saying was immature and reductive, but right now I was so pissed and exhausted that I didn’t care, I just needed the release valve.

  “If you’ll forgive me for getting a little off topic, my brother,” Bossman said, “I will be cooking dinner for this pack of monkeys tonight, and I have to ask. That risotto recipe is actually yours? And is good?”

  I walked up to him and gave him a firm hug out of nowhere.

  “I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me that all day. Yes it’s mine, but it’s the wrong recipe. I’ve updated it. And I haven’t been able to post about it because everyone would be mad at me for doing that on the first day of work.”

  Nora almost spit out her drink at this.

  “You crazy, you crazy,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Do you want to link me the updated recipe and I can post it on my page saying I already knew it because we’re friends?”

  “That would mean the world to me.”

  “By the by, Lord Chairman,” Liptunia called out to me in her honeyed voice, “Our Most Precious Alice expects you for tea next Tuesday at three o’clock. Best not be late.”

  Oh God. Right. This.

  “Tell her I appreciate her invitation, Princess,” I said diplomatically, and turned back to the rest of the normal people in the room, “Not that I have the best performance record with sudden meetings lately.”

  “Oh that call with Jacob Bowdin was nuts,” Engine Girl III said with the kind of casual confrontational confidence that could only come from the voices of people as rich as we were, “what the hell were you thinking?”

  “Okay yeah that wasn’t my best work, but he had it coming. Not the last part, that was fucked up, but he was pissing me off so much with this whole ‘Political Agenda’ narrative like I’m some kind of political figure-”

  “Babes, you are literally a political figure,” Nora said, “I’m with Lila on this one.”

  “Oh we’re allowed to say her name again in here?” Ratfucker said with a sneer. She mimed crushing his throat from across the table.

  “Okay yeah yeah I was also several lines of coke deep at that point,” I admitted sheepishly.

  “Girl, you’re literally a mess,” Fare Jumper said, scooting up next to me, “I’m obsessed. Are you bi?”

  “Way too many of you have tried to fuck me today. And I hate being a professional, Because that sentence should not be coming out of my mouth.”

  “You didn’t answer.”

  “Alex,” Bossman said chidingly.

  “Even Lila resorted to offering to let me touch her tits if I gave her my phone for the day. Glad HR standards are so lax at my company. That’ll benefit me in the long run too.” I said.

  Cackles.

  “Nora,” Fare Jumper sang, voice getting even higher and twinkier, “would that offer be worth it?”

  She cracked a slightly fake looking smile.

  Oh shit I probably shouldn’t have said that, should I?

  Speaking of - Liptunia took this opportunity to circle back to me, flashing me a tender smile that would put a weaker man in an asylum.

  “This… reporter. He crossed you? Insulted you?”

  “Oh yeah totally. He’s a genuinely bad dude too. Sexually harasses interns. Should have been fired a while ago.”

  Several gasps.

  “Not in the cool way you do it though, sweetheart,” I clarified to Liptunia.

  Wait, was that true or something I made up?

  No. No, I was pretty sure it was true.

  “Then would you say he should be punished for such uncouth and piggish ways? Shall we run some mischief on him?” Liptunia asked, her ripe lips curling, her dripping tongue pushing them open.

  “Ha! I love this freak. Oh of course, baby. Run all the mischief you like.” I blew her a kiss.

  “You heard him, brother,” she called back to Ildorian, and they vanished.

  Daichi covered his face in his hand.

  “Percy you can’t just say stuff like that to the elves,” Engine Girl III groaned. “They take everything either not seriously at all or way too seriously.”

  “That sounds pretty relatable actually.”

  “No,” Bengal said diplomatically, “you probably shouldn’t do something like that again.”

  “Alright alright. I’m pretty sure the Treaty of the Looking Glass forbids them from killing any humans in New York City, so I’m sure it’ll be fine. But Nora, stop them if it gets too bad.”

  Nora sighed.

  “Glad you’re having fun.”

  “Is that all you guys do in here?” I asked cheekily. “Seems like a pretty sick setup.”

  “It can be surprisingly chill,” Nora said, “when you got Utopia Tower hovering above the city, we often don’t really get first dibs on the real flashy problems. Not when you have the Covenant on retainer and like 80 Utopian Knights patrolling this shit. Sometimes you wonder if I didn’t have so much clout if people would even remember their city is being protected by us first.”

  “That’s a great deal,” I said.

  “Sure,” Nora said, “sure.”

  “We do a lot for this city, Chairman,” Ratfucker said. “The people need more than just cape dick-waving. Powers aren’t just weapons. They’re tools. Those slugfests with giant mutants might keep the city intact. But it takes more to keep it alive. Maybe if you come down from the tower and keep your ear to the ground more than your daddy did, you can learn something about that.”

  A few seconds of uncharacteristic silence for Hang Street Hall followed.

  “Yeah. Yeah I think I’d like to. You’re a good dude, Ratboy.”

  He bared his teeth at me.

  “Still not calling you that.”

  “I’ll get through to you eventually.”

  Through my watch, Sebi told me I had a meeting in 20 minutes.

  One more thing though.

  I saw those looks that preppy little bitch was throwing when she thought no one was looking. It was adorable how subtle twenty-one year olds thought they were.

  “Hey Liv, come here,” I beckoned Flicker to a corner of the kitchen near the bar taps.

  She stiffened, clearly bracing herself for some kind of creepy boss behavior on my part, which I felt a little awful about, but she came forward anyway.

  “Um, yes. Chairman?”

  “You know I could make up some bullshit task force that I put just you and Daichi on right? So you'd have an excuse to spend time alone? You seem like you'd do better in a more structured social interaction like that. They can be like dates!”

  That put a flush on her detached little face. Bingo.

  “What? What are you talking about? No. No that's -- ugh.”

  “Alright, never mind then, hon. Sorry I misread the situation.”

  A beat. I started to walk away.

  “Wait. Can you actually?”

  I almost died of cuteness. I’d be an older brother to every bitchy brunette fashion girl in the world if I could.

  “Only because you asked.” I winked.

  I called out to the rest of the group.

  “I better get going back to that tower. But thanks Nora, really. This was the only enjoyable part of my day so far. Let’s all do this again sometime, when you’re free.”

  “We have lunch here almost every day, brother,” Bossman said, “you’re welcome any time.”

  Nora teleported me back to the tower and hugged me goodbye.

  As I was readying myself for my next appointment, I was notified of a peculiar news story.

  Apparently, the apartment of New York Times Reporter Jacob Bowdin, who had risen to instant international fame this morning for his shocking recorded conversation with new Utopia Chairman Percy Domino, had been all but swallowed by overgrown vegetation, and was swarming with thousands of bees.

  I laughed like a schoolgirl.

  Ah. Whoops.

  Well.

  That had nothing to do with me.