*Warning! Chapters 19-23 were all posted back-t0-back. Returning readers make sure you pick up where you left off!*
Chapter 23: Formal Recruitment and Remodeling
It had taken over an hour to deal with the GCPD, and even than they’d only been released because Commissioner Burns got involved. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were a significant number of GCPD officers who were unhappy with Star Knight, Nocturne, and Black Canary. Though most of all with Star Knight, as it was really Alyssa who had started the chain reaction that saw roughly fifteen percent of the police force fired or arrested. The set of officers that had first shown up had, as a result, tried to pull any number of nasty tricks. Such as trying to blame Overwatch for damages, despite their being federal laws that covered collateral from villain attacks.
Thankfully, Commissioner Burns had put a stop to the issue and outright apologized the moment she became fully aware what was going on. A good sign that they might be able to work with her and a revitalized GCPD in the future, once she got it properly sorted out. Enough of a good sign that Alyssa had quietly slipped the Commissioner a panic button. After all, there were still plenty of corrupt people in Gotham, including its mayor, that might want her to have an ‘accident’ before she could make serious progress on sorting the GCPD out.
After being released by the police, Talia had teleported them all, two at a time, back to base. With their pair of recruits having at least tentatively agreed to join, it was decided they deserved a tour of what was already available. Both Nico and Victor had been impressed, even if they agreed that the base facility would need some expansion for their now-larger team. There was good news regarding that, however, as Nico admitted she could easily help them expand down with magic. So long as they could provide instructions on where and how it was safe to dig without destabilizing the building supports, she could apparently fairly easily vanish the dirt into the space between dimensions.
As for doing it safely, between Alyssa’s knowledge from Major Kusangi on demolitions, which included a lot of structural building basics, and Cyborg’s general engineering know-how, it should be possible. For the immediate moment, however, they had other details to iron out.
“So, you two have seen the paperwork now, such as it is. As well as the facilities, such as they are. Any questions or doubts?”
All of them were chowing down on fast food that Talia had gone out to retrieve while the tour was ongoing, and Victor and Nico had both looked the basic team charter they’d need to sign over. Each of them had their own reasons to be paranoid about that sort of thing, but that paranoia also meant that both of them were actually quite well-versed in contracts. Nico because Magical contracts and deals were dangerous to not be able to parse the intent of. Victor because many people had tried to screw him while attempting to get ahold of his technology. It was Victor that answered first.
“No. If anything, you’ve left the charter a bit too broad. If it were for anything but a Hero Team, I’d be worried about the team being abused via loopholes. Since anyone trying that shit internally with a Hero Team would just be fisted into a wall in the not-fun-ways, though, it looks good.”
Alyssa nodded at that. The sort of language used in Hero Team Charters was deliberately loose, favoring freedom of action for the Heroes. It wasn’t corporate contract law, so much as a more formal social contract. A few things, like stipends and usage of patents, could and would be formalized through proper legal contracts. But not membership in a Hero Team, particularly not a new one with no official remit yet.
Technically, their lack of remit meant they didn’t even need to do this much, but Alyssa had wanted to start out on a firm foundation. Nocturne, the only one of the group with legitimate experience working within a formal team, had encouraged the idea as well.
“Hmmm, there’s some bits and pieces that should be tightened up a little, to prevent certain types of magical issues with permissions. But nothing major stands out, and we can handle that with an update since you made it modifiable with a vote. It won’t matter much until I put up wards, anyway, and doing that before the expansion would be stupid. I’d just have to redo them afterward.”
Talia, looking hopeful as she grinned at Nico, asked the critical question.
“So? You’re going to join? It’ll be awesome to have you, Nico…and you too, Victor!”
Cyborg, far from offended, merely chuckled and waved away Talia’s sheepish look. He was also the one to answer first.
“I think I am, to my own surprise. I was pretty skeptical when you contacted me but…” his eyes slid to Alyssa and he nodded, seemingly to himself, “…crazy or not, the stuff Alyssa was saying is similar to what I’ve thought for years. I haven’t wanted to just sell my tech to the highest bidder, because I want it to help people. But there’s no way to do that without getting dogpiled by the people that stand to lose out. I admit, I never thought of having a hero group sponsoring a science arm as the solution, but it honestly sounds like it could work. Not easily, but if I wanted easy I’d have just sold my designs to Arasaka or Militech.”
Alyssa perked up, smiling broadly at someone buying into her larger, long-term goals. She knew that Nocturne and Black Canary, while they were okay with the idea, hadn’t really gotten invested in it. They’d agreed easily enough that Winston and Angela Ziegler should be funded, but the two of them were working on tech that would be practical for Heroic usage. The X-men and a few others had advanced medical tech for their own people, and Slaughter Swamp would never stop being a problem if the pollution wasn’t sorted out. Victor was the first one to buy into her bigger ideas, about the distant possibility of a much larger organization in the future.
“I already said, unless there was something seriously wrong, that I’d be onboard. Even saying that, though, I admit I have a good feeling about this, beyond it just being a final Journeyman Challenge from my mentor. After seeing how well we were able to work together to take on a pretty major attack earlier, I think there’s a serious chance we can make a dent in Gotham.”
A grin split Nico’s face as she added a bit more.
“Doubly so since you’re actually covering all the bases properly by bringing in a magic user! The Bat never has and never really will make headway without someone to help offset the curses. No matter what he thinks. The city will just make more issues happen, if you don’t work on untangling those, too.”
Talia bounced in happiness, which nearly distracted Alyssa as the blue girl had changed into a casual t-shirt and said bouncing did interesting things to her chest. Thankfully, she managed not to get caught in boobie gravity too deeply, and addressed Nico’s comment.
“Right. I was actually kinda afraid that would be the case. The pattern I could see in Gotham…it was obvious that something more than just a natural crime cycle was going on. Add in the amount of known magical bullshit about this city, and I figured it might be something like that. You’ll be able to help?”
Nico nodded firmly.
“Yes. Even just warding our Lair and spending time here will cut some of the problems, as it will strip the curse that tries to counter good karma off us. That one is broken, partially, but not entirely. In fact, the way it’s breaking down, I’d bet the Bat at least had someone do similar warding to his own base. So he’s been chipping away at the effects indirectly.”
Nico pursed her lips at that, possibly reconsidering that Batman might be marginally aware of the magic issue, but quickly shrugged it off.
“Add in our own, larger group doing the same thing and that curse will break down significantly faster. Some of the others won’t be as easy, but that one is honestly one of the biggest problems, since it affects even just regular people trying to help. Cops, doctors, aid workers, that sort. It’s no wonder the various programs trying to help clean up Gotham aren’t making any progress, honestly.”
Victor was looking a bit uncomfortable at the talk of magic and curses. Pretty much everyone knew there was something to such things, because of the number of magic-based heroes and villains running around openly using it. That didn’t make it overly easy to accept for most.
“Err, these curses aren’t going to like, turn me into a newt or something, right? Or, you know, the magic won’t screw with my electronic bits like in that Merry Potts series, right?”
Nico’s lips twitched, either at the idea of a city-wide curse turning people into newts, or at the mistake in the series name. Somehow, she managed to keep her grin small when she answered.
“No, nothing like that. Large scale, long-term curses are usually subtle. Take the Karma curse that’s half-broken as an example. What it does is target people doing ‘good’ deeds and builds up a negative counter reaction. Once it builds up enough, it would give you a bout of something like bad luck, or possibly just nasty nightmares. Nothing super overt, but if it happens for long enough, and only when you do good things…” Read the latest chapters at novelping.com.
Nico trailed off leadingly and Cyborg scowled as he got it.
“Pavlov. It would ‘train’ someone out of a tendency to do good. Or, if they stubbornly willed their way through it, would just make them miserable until they broke.”
The magic expert nodded, expression sad. She brightened a moment later, though.
“Right! But, like I said, it’s already halfway broken. Once I make wards, we’ll start impacting it with our actions and it will break down a lot faster. How fast, I’m not sure, I’ll have to be here at least a few weeks to estimate that. The wards will also protect us from the other junk magic and any sort of indirect curse, too. Once I get a better feel for Gotham, I can try a few things that might help more, as well. Though it’s obvious someone with a fair bit of power already at least attempted to offset some of the nastier stuff.”
Liking the sound of that, but also wanting to get off a topic that might make Victor change his mind about heroing in the city, Alyssa clapped her hands together to draw attention and shifted the subject.
“Right! Well, since the paperwork is just about handled, how about we talk renovations? If we’re adding another level, we might as well go whole hog and make more, which means talking about what sort of things you two would really like to have added! After all, now that you’ve joined, I can show you why material isn’t really an issue for us!”
The expressions on their faces as Alyssa used her ‘creation’ ability to make detailed figurines of both of them, out of ruby for Nico and tungsten for Victor, were absolutely worth the effort...
… … …
Thankfully, the total failure of the ambush against them had resulted in a period of uneasy equilibrium. The team did orchestrate a single raid against each of the four factions that had taken part, but only a single raid on a target of middling importance. They had to make it clear that any such actions would have consequences, but the underworld of Gotham was sufficiently unstable at the moment that they didn’t want to push too hard.
That was something which Commissioner Burns, busy trying to bring the GCPD back up to properly functional, was in wholehearted agreement with when they contacted her about it. So the team, aside from the single retaliatory strikes, stuck to doing a handful of patrols while they worked on getting the new team members integrated and the base upgraded.
Victor and Nico, the former deciding to stick to ‘Cyborg’ despite how relatively common cybernetics were, and the latter having decided on ‘Gloom’ as her heroic handle, had made a few patrol debuts…but then stuck mostly to team training or working on the base. The pair had used the two bedrooms there currently, while Victor and Alyssa worked with Nico to excavate the material below the building safely. They’d gotten lucky that there was nothing directly below the warehouse far enough to expand another two full floors, though at that point they’d gotten close enough to an old series of tunnels to stop.
Still, that had been enough.
They’d converted the entirety of the first subfloor into suites for the team and training space, using the space freed up from moving the training down a level to create a working space for Nico and a ‘war room’ on the original level. The actual footprint of the warehouse, despite the way Alyssa had been using it, was 20,000 square foot, plus an extra 5,000 for a parking area she technically owned from the original purchase but which wasn’t currently in use.
They used fully 15,000 square feet of high-ceilinged space for an expansive training area, heavily reinforced so they could do combat simulations inside. Yet that still allowed them to divide up space for ten, five hundred square-foot lofts, with the loft easily adding another hundred square foot or so, with plenty of room left over. The extra space they filled with an industrial kitchen, food storage, and so on. Even if only six of the rooms would currently be in use, they wanted the extras in case they eventually brought on more teammates. Or, for that matter, if they ever had allied teams or affiliate heroes they trusted enough to let stay at their lair during joint operations.
As for the second subfloor, that was turned entirely over to storage, workshop space, and research and development. The garage remained on the original floor, but the more advanced tooling both Victor and Alyssa needed for working on high-tech gear was moved down to what was now their most secure floor. The original garage was supplied with another four of the motorcycle design Alyssa had originally created, while Victor asked to be allowed to design a larger team transport. Thankfully, everyone currently on the team had riding skills, so any immediate vehicle needs could be covered by the bikes.
Well, that and one of them could teleport and two of them could fly.
Three, if Laserdream ended up joining up, with remote exchanges making that look promising.
With a few extra additions, like an armory on the first subfloor and expansion of the ‘entertainment’ options on the ground floor in place of the original overnight rooms, the entire base was looking good. Just in time, as it happened, for their sixth potential member to finally return stateside and join them for more than just remote interviews…
… … …
“Wow. Okay, you guys have been seriously busy. This is all impressive as hell for a brand-new Hero Team. Like, to the point that it is waaaaayy better than New Wave ever had. We just operated out of two family homes that had been quietly reinforced to hell and back. Even for training, we just used an empty warehouse we got for cheap and reinforced a bit…”
Crystal Pelham was blonde, beautiful, and recently tanned from vacationing in the Caribbean post college graduation. Unlike the majority of those in North America, who still hadn’t gotten on board with much in the way of cybernetic augmentation, it was possible to tell she had at least a neural port and agent from the lighter patch of RealSkinn on the back of her neck. This close, Alyssa at least could also tell that one bright-blue eye had been replaced, though it was an incredibly good prosthetic. To the point that only her Force senses let her know it was a fake.
She was also peppy, friendly, visibly impressed with her tour of the base…and her feet had barely touched the floor since arriving. Something which amused Alyssa, but she did get it. Flight was amazing and she tended to abuse her own a bit more often than was probably good for keeping her civilian cover properly hidden. Since New Wave believed in accountability, publicly declaring their identities, Crystal didn’t need to worry about that. Alyssa supposed that she’d never bothered trying to remember to keep her feet on the ground as a result.
“I also looked at the Hero Charter you sent along, including the recent addendums Miss Minrou made to close out magic loopholes. Honestly? Seriously generous for a small team. You’ve also got the makings of great starting PR. You’ve made major busts in a city known for long-term corruption issues. The new Commissioner is actively trying to smooth over the sting of the snubs you made toward the GCPD, there’s subtle signs the Fed agencies are pushing your team…and you’ve even got some diversity.”
Crystal cringed at mentioning that, but powered on.
“I know that shouldn’t matter and everyone hates bringing it up. But, trust me, not having a team of all-white pretty boys and girls helps avoid some flak. New Wave still has issues with that, even mostly inactive as the team is now. We only ever managed to dodge the issue at all because we were a family team.”
Victor, far from being offended, grinned and forced a falsetto, holding his hands to one side of his face ‘cutely.’
“What, you don’t think I’m pretty?”
Crystal grinned right back and winked at him.
“Hell no, you’re handsome! You free this weekend? Oh, and what’s the rules for team relationships, by the by?”
That threw Cyborg visibly for a loop, which caused the rest of them to grin. Smirking, Alyssa answered while Victor was busy looking poleaxed.
“Honestly, there’s no policy on it, but I don’t have an issue with it. So long as you can keep any drama out of the team dynamics. That would make me put my foot down.” This story is hosted at NovelPing.
Crystal smiled widely, giving Victor a smoldering look that said she hadn’t been joking about that date offer, before nodding and getting back to her actual points.
“Right. The point isn’t that you have ugly people, you honestly don’t and powers tend to come with ‘pretty or handsome’ more often than not, just because of the fitness needs for going about serious mayhem. The point is that you have both non-white,” Crystal gestured to both Cyborg and Nico, “and non-traditional,” another wave at Cyborg. “Which is enough to cover you from dipshits screaming about ‘inclusiveness.’ It’s a stupid thing to have to consider and I’d never put it ahead of recruiting what a team needs, but it does make PR easier.”
That got a mix of grimaces and nods all around. Even if it hadn’t been remotely intentional, they all had enough exposure to that sort of thing being paraded around social media and the news to know it was a thing. Even when you really shouldn’t care about the skin color, gender, or politics of the guy or gal that just saved you from an out-of-control car turning you to paste.
“Anyway, PR in Gotham is going to be a challenge, but the starting point you have makes it a good challenge rather than a nightmare. So I’m totally willing to tackle that aspect of things. You did say that there might be additional work doing the same sort of thing for a cover company, though?”
Alyssa fielded that question, since she’d really been the only one handling that side of things so far.
“More just general social media handling and such for a couple of companies that I own, which are or will be helping funnel money into the team. You also wouldn’t need to wholly cover that, if you don’t want to, so much as just being the one that manages that part of things. One of the companies recently released a translation app better than anything on market, the other is currently just a shell but is intended to cover whatever we end up using the factory floor up top for. Victor and I have been working on ideas for what it could manufacture with just one or two employees and solid automation.”
Alyssa paused, then added a bit more.
“That’s actually separate from the Team stuff, mostly. How to keep it separate with you having a known civilian ID is an interesting question, but one that probably only matters until we get recognized as a team with official remit. It also pays separately. The stipend is just for the Hero stuff. So you’d get an extra salary for taking on PR management for those companies, just as Victor will be getting a cut of profits from whatever the factory ends up making.”
Crystal blinked, then hummed.
“Keeping it separate shouldn’t be that hard, actually. I can just brazenly admit I took a flexible PR job in Gotham since I got an invitation to Overwatch. The details of Heroic Stipends aren’t public until you get an official remit, so people will just assume I’m supporting myself while working with a newbie team. It’ll come out eventually, but I assume you’re expecting that?”
Alyssa shrugged and nodded. She and Nico were literally the only two out of six of them who maintained a ‘civilian’ identity. She’d accepted at this point that her attempts at concealment were likely going to collapse eventually. At least as far as the lair went. She was hoping to hold onto a separate civilian identity as long as possible. She seriously didn’t want to deal with crowds forming when she went out to shop or something.
She’d also already separated the app development into ‘games’ and ‘useful apps.’ She was using the former to set her civilian self up, and the latter to start a proper revenue stream for Team Overwatch. The games portion for the civilian ID took advantage of the fact that a number of IPs she was familiar with didn’t exist in this amalgam world. For example, while Nintendo existed, Gamefreak did not, and it had been incredibly easy to remake a mid-generation pokémon game as a smart phone app.
Meanwhile, the translation app she’d mentioned was based on neural-tech from Ghost in the Shell. With the ability to tap into her Ghost and use data from that to give a translator the ability to discern context, any language she was native-level fluent with would near-perfectly translate using the app. Including identifying idioms and how context changed language. Given that she was native-level fluent in eight major world languages because of Major Kusanagi, and it wasn’t surprising that the app she’d released was already starting to raise eyebrows after she’d orchestrated an ad campaign. The rest of the languages it handled were ones she’d picked up via her knock-off-Tamaranean touch-based language copying. Translations of those languages were still incredibly solid, but didn’t pick up idioms and context quite as well.
“The base is going to leak eventually and has built in defenses for when that happens. I’ve also split my civilian ID away from the companies in question, running them under another name, so when they inevitably get connected to Overwatch it won’t matter.”
It meant she was going to have to find someone else to help run the civilian side, but she had a few people in mind. Including a mutant who was stupidly good with languages, including programming languages, but not that interested in fighting. She’d already quietly put out a generous offer to Cypher to work for her civilian self, maintaining the various games and such she released.
Eventually, if he worked well there, she might have him work on the apps attributed to Overwatch, too. Like Alyssa, he would be one of the few capable of changing up his programming style to not make it obvious they were being developed by the same people. Alyssa could do it mostly because he had been a programmer in his first life, with a style very different than the Major’s. Well, that and the fact Major Kusangi had just been that good, able to change her own programming style at will.
“I take it you’re going to try and maintain a civilian ID in the long-haul?”
Surprisingly, given that she’d been a part of New Wave, there wasn’t any accusation in Crystal’s question. Alyssa shrugged and explained in just a few simple words.
“I’m an introvert.”
Crytal blinked, then grinned.
“Yeah, that would do it. My brother practically hides in his streaming stuff for the same reason. Being a Streamer actually keeps people at more of a distance than being a Hero did. He’s always been super uncomfortable with people throwing panties at him and such. The time a guy did that was traumatizing enough that I don’t think he’s gone out in costume alone since then.”
Shaking that thought off with an amused smile, Crystal turned slightly more serious.
“Well, I’m convinced. We’ll have to negotiate the extra salary and such for the non-heroic social media and PR stuff, but that’s just a bonus, really. You’ve got a good, solid team here and are offering me a way to combine Heroics and my degree, which is actually what I wanted the degree for. Mom handled PR for New Wave, but stumbled a lot even after years of experience. I wanted a better background so I could help both myself and any team I joined do it right…”
Smiling, glad she’d guessed right, Alyssa held out her hand.
“The welcome aboard, Laserdream. Let’s get you settled in before Gotham explodes in some new and creative way…”
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: I originally wasn't going to expand the base so quickly, but realized that they needed to at least build it out for more people to be able to stay there. The only way to really go was 'down' so doing it all at once made sense. They won't expand it again until after becoming an official city team, and possibly not even then.
A/N 2: You probably know this bit by now, but I need to say it anyway ;-)! Once per release, Chapters 24-28 of Why Was There No Truck?! are already available there, adding roughly 14,000+ words which will remain in Early Access until the next release. Check my profile for the address, or search the web for 'Novus's Fanfiction Works.'