Chapter Text
It was a testament to the Commission’s poor planning that Mighty Glory’s top three were poised on stage with TREEMAN’s . The other half of the top 4 agencies had been given their very own time slot, decorated to suit their most popular heroes in between, without the weight of having to share with their competitors or rivals.
DOS, as the most popular, had been allotted the ideal hour after 10AM; FOMO, despite being third, had been given the next hour since they had the fewest heroes to showcase.
At noon, it was supposed to be Mighty Glory. She knew that because it had cycled through Dragon Boy’s head a few times, vitriolic even confined to his skull. Rock had pasted a smile to his face, eyes squinting, and kept his mind serenely empty as the other agency’s three heroes slipped onto the opposite side of the stage.
It was her, E-Soul, and Dragon Boy on the left side.
Nice, Blankster, and Firm Man stood in that order on the right.
The announcer’s thoughts trickled about how comforting it was for them, in-between Nice and Kaguya, to have Dragon Boy on the outs. Safe, he thought. Should anything happen to set the hero off, he had a few more steps to take to get to the host or to the competing heroes reflected across from him. And, the announcer side-eyed Kaguya and E-Soul, the other heroes would be able to restrain him easier.
Kaguya didn’t—couldn’t—correct him.
E-Soul would sooner leave the room entirely than put hands on Dragon Boy.
Anything that hurt Dragon Boy’s reputation in a room full of his fans was in E-Soul’s favor, and anything that affected the other side of the stage negatively was icing on the cake. He didn’t care much for the host; he barely cared for the civilians beyond the stage itself, for the employees bustling in the wings.
Part of him might acknowledge how poorly it’d look for him to stand by. That part of him was very small.
The host lifted up his cue cards with a bright smile and a thin microphone to his mouth.
“Welcome! To the Hero Convention! Paid and staffed by the Hero Affairs Commission for you, the adoring fans, to find all of your favorite heroes in one place,” he declared. His voice rose and dipped like the tide, practically injecting his tone with the excitement of a roller coaster. When he finished the last syllable, the crowd shrieked their happiness at the stage.
“For the next hour, you’ll get to hear about and ask questions of the top 3 heroes from Mighty Glory—” the host’s eyebrows twitched, a flicker of a furrow, before he stiltedly added, “—and TREEMAN! Dragon Boy—”
The crowd yelled for him. Most of the fans that screamed were wearing some form of purple: shirts, hats, a few scattered mohawks dyed purple. Through Dragon Boy’s own conceited glance, she caught a few t-shirts that had printed off the image of his abs on the front.
Kaguya didn’t quite have her grimace wiped away by the time the host continued, “E-Soul!”
More people screamed. It forced the poor man to pause, though she knew it wasn’t written on his cards.
“The Seer,” he added, dramatic with a tinge of false shivering.
There was one kid in the front, one that screamed the loudest for her with her dad’s arm keeping her from lunging onto the stage itself.
Kaguya pressed a kiss to her fingers and blew it out to her before wiggling them in hello.
Oh my god, the girl said shrill into her dad’s ear. Oh my god, she waved at me!
The host carried on, “Nice! Blankster! Firm Man!”
It took 15 minutes to get through introductions, what with the screaming between each call. She knew because she could hear the drifting reminder from the stage manager where he hovered in the wings. She also recognized the curt displeasure in Rock’s mind when he looked at the face of his watch—45 minutes would barely be enough for 3 of them, let alone 6.
It was a kinder thought. To include her, for once. However, she knew it was borne of his pride. He was being disrespected with this combination slot, his work was being disrespected. It had nothing to do with the actual convention, with the limited question time, or the publicity they would garner from this when recordings were posted online.
Kaguya blinked.
The host had drifted to the far end on the right side of the stage. He held up the microphone to Firm Man. Kaguya had missed the question poised, but she didn’t miss the low timbred answer. She also didn’t miss the tight edge of Firm Man’s mouth, looking through the host’s gaze, when he stiltedly bent down to speak into the microphone head.
Drifting down, Blankster answered a different question than Firm Man.
What’s your favorite move in the boxing ring?
Kaguya’s attention drifted. Her hands were folded in front of her to keep them still, and she couldn’t let her eyes wander too far for fear of looking bored at another hero.
So she looked at Nice. Well, she looked through the eyes of the crowd to look at Nice.
He wasn’t new so much as unfamiliar. She’d heard of him when he was signed onto TREEMAN, along with two others that had been harder to find in the articles about it, but he hadn’t started truly climbing ranks until the last year. No tournaments under his belt, but his trust values had jumped over hers in the last month.
She knew that because Yan Mo had been very stiff about the whole thing. Unsure if he wanted her to climb the ranks to keep Nice from rising above his ranked heroes, but afraid that if she began to truly participate in their little hero’s race, she might get too high to bring down. The train incident had been a ghost between them as he worked his way to a conclusion.
His outfit was almost reminiscent of hers. The white, the gold. He’d stuck a pretty blue bauble in his chest, put a white cape on, and his identity had been firmly removed of hers. Flying or otherwise, he was sharply cut by the slick outline of his suit, draped in gold wings over his clavicle. Gaudy, if she let herself make such a strong opinion, but he was standing on the stage when she couldn’t.
Before she could drift onto her next distraction, the host slid in front of him.
“Nice,” he said, good-natured rather than awe-struck. As if they were friends.
Nice smiled, but it was reflexively. Instinct. Kaguya’s head slanted.
“Mr. Suzuki,” he greeted back.
The host flushed, pleased.
“If you’re going to ask me my favorite move in the boxing ring,” Nice said, teasing and charming and paused, heavy, for a humor affect.
The crowd chuckled, writhed with their pleasure, and the host wasn’t much better by the warm, gooey trap of his mind.
“I mean, if you have one,” he responded. When Nice shook his head, hair shaking some strands loose over his eyes, the host carried on, “That’s alright, I’ve got a different one for you anyway.”
Who is your favorite hero?
Kaguya wasn’t surprised at the answer: Smile.
She was, however, a little curious at the scattered memories that came with it. The perspective of a little boy, staring up at the pure sunshine that was Smile, and the warmness of his hand against her—Nice’s—spine. A thread of words about smiling authentically that she let filter out of her head because they weren’t for her; none of the memories were.
Rather than continue down the line, the host went beyond, to the very end of the left side to work his way back towards the middle.
Dragon Boy, brutally, admitted his favorite video game was God of War III.
E-Soul stared through an eyeless mask before he answered, No. I’ve never measured, when the host stuttered through his question.
Kaguya, who had seen him test the limits of his speed before with the precise intent of measuring, rolled her eyes where the host blocked sight of it.
Microphone stuck between the her and the host shortly after, she watched her own expression smooth out. The thoughts in the host’s head were still frazzled after speaking with the gruff E-Soul and the tumultuous Dragon Boy, but when he really settled into the final question, when he drew up his attention for her, it started to level back out.
“Seer, forgive me,” the host started with a creeping grin, “but I have to ask. What am I thinking, right now?”
She let her eyes hone in on his and stared into her own gaze from the backs of his thoughts.
It was disconcerting. She knew it was because the feeling washed through him after she’d done it.
“Your shoes,” she answered. His eyebrows drew up, drew in, and she smiled sweetly. “They’re too tight. You keep thinking that if you shift just right, it’ll fix them. It won’t, but you’re doing a good job at hiding it.”
A big smile breaks through in the swelling relief. He pulls his microphone in to laugh, to cast a teasing one-liner back at her, but he’s settled fully now. Back in his seat in the middle, perched on a stool with his microphone rather than on display.
With that, an employee skitters into the crowd. His thoughts circle around the sweat in his own armpits, but he’s got a secondary microphone clutched in his hand.
The host announces to the room that they’ll be able to ask their own questions for the next—half hour.
It starts strong. What are Firm Man’s motivations? What shampoo does Nice use to get his hair so fluffy? How often does Dragon Boy work out? Does Blankster watch anime, and if so, what’s his favorite one?
Of course, the crowd might as well have been warming up, same as the host, for the way a petite teenage girl steps up to the employee with the microphone.
“This is for E-Soul and Nice,” she announced, first. The host, who had been walking his own microphone to each hero, laughed nervously.
Nice, being nice, stepped from his line up to meet the host on the other side of the stage. It set the rest of the crew on edge, this crossing of boundaries, but E-Soul barely flicked a cursory glance at him, at the host, before his mask slid idly to the girl for her question. Dragon Boy eyed Nice, the TREEMAN heroes on the other side eyed Dragon Boy—Kaguya sighed quiet enough to be ignored.
“If you two were to fight,” the girl carried on, “who do you think would win?”
If the host had laughed nervously before, the croaking chuckle that comes out after the girl’s question was distressed.
Kaguya felt more than saw E-Soul’s attention slide, sharp like a blade’s edge, to Nice.
Nice politely met his gaze, but it swiveled back to the teenager at the microphone when his mouth twisted into a gentle smile.
“Well, considering he’s higher ranked than me,” Nice started, trailed off.
It should’ve finished whatever it was. A very polite non-answer to keep things civil, a humble response rather than something incite violence amongst competition.
E-Soul, however, was staring harder. His mind had gone finite, taut, sharp. It made her head pulse, once, at the sudden change.
“What?” he rasped with his non-voice. “Afraid of a challenge?”
Nice kept barely glancing. Not afraid of addressing E-Soul head on, but too caught up in a spiral of publicity, of duty. A voice that wasn’t quite his kept repeating to be mindful, to answer the question and smile at the crowd and play the part of the perfect hero. The word ‘perfect’ had an echo, warped under the weight it carried, and it didn’t sound like Nice’s voice when it reverberated.
E-Soul, at the same time, was gritting his teeth with every passing look.
“Not at all,” Nice laughed on a breath. “Just willing to admit you have much more Trust than me.”
When his eyes settled back on the girl, when he curled his lips up in a crooked self-deprecation, something on the precipice of E-Soul’s thoughts fell.
“Trust has nothing to do with skill,” he snapped.
It was angry, demanding, and it sliced through the spiral of Nice’s thoughts.
They met each other’s gazes—Nice, wide-eyed and struck like a doe in headlights, and E-Soul’s though his dark helmet.
Something like vindication slithered in, cooled off the rage, as Nice stared and stared.
The host, in a surprising act of strategy, slanted the microphone towards Kaguya.
“What do you think?” he blurted. Then, slower and more poised, “You can see the future, yeah? Who’d win in a fight between E-Soul and Nice?”
Her attention had been too precisely split between her coworker, who was loosening up in something akin to satisfaction with Nice’s eyes on him, and Nice himself, who seemed to be circling a drain internally, to answer immediately. It was a storm of anxiety and tension toiling about the relaxed, firm presence of E-Soul, that only Kaguya could hear, could endure.
“Depends,” she answered, voice ghostly. “If Blankster were the referee, I think it’d go to E-Soul. He’s scrappier than he looks.”
The host laughed. It was loud, boisterous, and absolutely fake.
It was what the crowd needed to laugh out of tension, and what he needed to slide back to his stool.
Nice, as haunted as she felt, drifted back to his spot on the stage.
E-Soul’s teeth grit when the eyes were gone, and they only unclenched when Nice, in his confusion, looked at him again.
Kaguya said a soft and involuntary, “Huh.”
It was unintentional, but it was enough for E-Soul to straighten up. A soldier, alerted. He didn’t look at or think about Nice for the rest of the half hour.