“What’s ‘kayfabe’?” Mark asked.

  They were in the elevator, riding down to some floor down below, and though they would technically be within Blackthorn’s protection while they were inside the tower, they would soon be outside of his direct protection, and inside the ‘protection’ of the Hero/Villain Program. They had been riding down in silence for the last ten seconds, but then Mark broke that silence with his question.

  Sally instantly muttered, “There were so many questions I wanted to ask.”

  “You’ll never get to ask them now, Sally,” Eliot said, giving Sally a Look. “And not because we won’t be going back.”

  “I know! Fuck,” Sally said. “I should have… have not gone there so fast.”

  “Or at all,” Eliot stressed.

  Isoko replied to Mark, “ ‘Kayfabe’ is the official term for the atmosphere of heightened realism around the HVP and all other fake-realistic drama— And holy fuck!” She allowed her enthusiasm to show in full force, now that they were outside of Blackthorn’s direct view. “We’re going to be part of a Weekly Showdown!”

  Eliot said, “We have no unified costumes. Sally and Mark have no internet presence at all, and you barely showcase your stuff, Isoko. We have the chance to write the public impression of ourselves right now, to set the stage, and it matters a lot, even in the face of these trumped up charges against Mark. No matter what the outcome actually is, if we can get the public on our side then we’re golden.”

  Sally was deeply unsure. “But we’re still villains, right? We have to lose?”

  “Not necessarily,” Isoko began—

  And then the elevator hit whatever floor it was meant to hit, the doors opened, and there was a large open room with lights and side rooms and some big contraptions that looked like 3D printers and racks on racks of blank webweave suits. They were all white webweave, and there were 4 sizes, with the ones that were supposed to fit Sally easily visible among the rest. Sally’s prospective webweaves were massive. Of course, webweave suits just looked like hanging flops of cloth when they weren’t stretched over a person, but Mark recognized the sheen to them, and they were separated into four sections, and one of those sections was very large.

  Also, there were screens behind the webweave, each of them with different images of Mark, Isoko, Eliot, and Sally, wearing different things and in various standing positions. People were designing their costumes right now.

  Noel Oliphant was there tapping away at a tablet while three other people ran around the room and he was shouting at no one in particular, “Why the FUCK couldn’t they send us black webweave! I wanted—”

  Some guy shouted out, “I can change the color just fine, Noel!”

  But Noel only saw Mark and his team right now, and his eyes went wide. “Oh thank the gods you’re here! OKAY! We got 5 minutes for discussion, 10 for setting, and then 5 before go-time! OKAY! EVERYONE!” Noel shouted to the room. “5 minutes to building costumes!” He looked back to Mark and his team. “I’m gonna run through the biggest questions we usually get, and hopefully that will answer most of what you need to know, but we still have time to talk afterward—”

  Mark interrupted, “Hello again, Noel.”

  “Yes yes, hello to you as well,” Noel said to all of them, “It was a horror show to be whipped around the world to get through Tokyo’s Gatehouse and then come all the way back over here and I posted all about it on my blog. You read my blog, right? It’s BigHeroWriter—” Noel moved on, “One: Preparedness doesn’t matter. You’re fine with how you are. The starting lines are very simple but you can improvise as much as you want. If you’ve seen one villain’s perspective on a bank heist you have seen them all. We’ll go over that in a bit.

  “Two: It’s real fights, but don’t kill. The whole goal of this program is to introduce new heroes to getting their asses stomped until they’re good enough to actually deserve the win. Your case is special, because usually a person is only allowed to be a villain after they’ve established themselves as competent enough to be trusted in that way, and maybe, if the heroes were good enough, you’d take the fall. But you’re all paladins —close enough— so we don’t expect any deaths, and you can’t lose. You have to win. Otherwise the Collective is collecting Mark.

  “We’re not getting into that.

  “They promised to stay away and I have words from my superiors that they believe them. So we’re believing them for now. Still need to expect shit, but… I can’t help you with that.

  “Three: Remember to have fun with it!

  “The setting is this: Mark is wanted by the Collective for questioning regarding illegal adamantium sales, specifically violating the ‘being a dragon intermediary’ part. You all escaped the trap last night but now you’re stuck on Earth and you need spending money to hire people to attack the gate and get back to Daihoon, where the Aluatha Empire is backing you. That is why you are attacking this bank. You need money.

  “Hiring mercenaries to help with the assault is on tomorrow’s program. I think Blackthorn wants to take you to the Villain’s Association for a party. I don’t know. That’s tomorrow’s problem. Today’s problem is this: A bank assault.

  “You will have 5 minutes to get in, grab whatever you can, and get out.

  “It’s a pretty standard scenario: 4 guards on duty, big open vault in the back that you need to get inside however you can —I suggest you put Eliot on that and make it look like he can’t get in that fast, and then you rip into it, Mark— and 10 civilians. Subdue the civilians. The heroes will show up 4 minutes after you breach the doors.

  “4 minutes! Got it! It’s an established schedule.”

  “Then you fight and hopefully you win and we can continue this charade, otherwise you’re getting hauled in by the Collective, Mark.

  “The Hero/Villain Program is only doing this massive undermining of the judicial process and tanking your violation of international treaty because they want you to be kaiju support for Earth and Memphi, forming some of the basis of their gate program. Okay? Okay! Now questions, fast please!”

  Mark’s head had been spinning, just a little, with the litany of words tumbling out of Noel’s mouth, but upon hearing the HVP’s reasoning for helping him avoid this shitstorm —and implicitly understanding that, while the higher ups might know he was adamantium blooded, Noel and the people here certainly didn’t, and they were going along with it anyway— Mark only had one question.

  Mark asked, “Can you make us look like a cohesive team? Black base color.”

  Sally instantly said, “Dibs on Gold!”

  Noel shot back to Sally, “You’re not an archmage; that combo is forbidden. Pick again.”

  Sally muttered, “Dammit.”

  Isoko grinned, sarcastically saying, “Fucking archmages!”

  “They take all the best color combos,” Eliot added, his tone light but his heart beating nervously.

  Noel found nothing funny as he said, “Save the quips for the fight! And don’t do straight fighting. Draw it out. Give other people time to shine back and forth. You’re the villains. You’re expected to grandstand. But 10 minutes is the hard end to the fight. If you don’t get out of there before that time limit then you’re giving up all the money in the vault and you might not be able to hire people tomorrow at the party.” Without giving anyone else a chance to talk, Noel continued, “Now let’s talk webweave and cohesive costumes..”

  Way faster than Mark thought possible, and only because a whole squad of people were working on all of this at the same time, Mark got herded off into a dressing room apart from the others, but only separated by a thin wall. A part of Mark freaked out when he was separated from his team, but that part was rapidly drowned out by the demands of the designer who was now looking Mark over from head to toe and Mark was just wearing his boxers.

  Boxers were not good.

  The designer, a guy by the name of Jean-Joel, or just ‘JJ’, walked around Mark once and then stepped in front of him, clapped his hands together, and then looked to the sky, saying, “Thank you for the challenge, Freyala!” And then JJ looked at Mark. “We’re going skin tight. Do you want a thong or jock? This is a family friendly show so we have to make certain things look much smaller, but your butt needs to be on display. Butts are great for action figures, too.”

  Mark’s face heated up. “I was hoping for full body armor.”

  JJ put his hands together, breathed, and said, “Trust me please. I have been doing this for 30 years and 50% of this business is sex and power appeal, and you have it all, but you have to display some of it or you lose out on half of your draw. We’re leaning more toward the power appeal side of the equation for you, since you are male and that’s how things sell best in this world, so we’ll be trimming down the waist and emphasizing the shoulders with whatever design we go with, but female audiences are still a large part of the demographic. A very large part. You will do very well if you follow my advice.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Mark had a moment, and then he said, “Whatever you suggest.”

  “Good choice.” JJ plucked some twists of fabric out of a bin and handed it to Mark. “I can leave the room if you care.”

  … Mark took the ‘clothes’, stuffed himself into them, and soon JJ was fussing over him with diagrams on a screen and getting him into the appropriate base webweave, which, fortunately fit him quite well. It was white, though, so Mark took it off again and JJ took it in hand and flicked it out—

  JJ’s Power activated, and the white webweave transformed into black.

  Mark pulled the head-hole wide again and stepped into the fabric, and when he put it on it looked a whole lot like the ones he usually wore, but… There was something about it. About what JJ had done to it, that made Mark feel some kinda wonderful, as he looked at himself in the mirror. It fit like a second skin of course, but softer.

  It made Mark look, for perhaps the first time, like a hero. The underwear helped a lot, actually. Mark was usually nude under these things because that’s how his old webweave was designed, but this had a nice fit to it. Mark touched the webweave and it felt softer than usual, too.

  Mark asked, “This is the really expensive webweave, isn’t it?”

  “PL 50, so about 350k on the open market but 80k per suit for the HVP.”

  Mark just about gasped. “Holy f… crap.”

  JJ noticed the hitch in Mark’s words. “You can curse on the camera, but you are right to be cautious about that. The sound guys don’t like to edit around those words unless they have to.” In a more serious manner, JJ said, “Curtain Protocol also applies to what you can say, of course. The AIs get pissy when they need to do a lot of work around that, and the end result is your words are always shifted around and possibly away from what you intended. So only say what you mean to say, and try to stay under Protocol.”

  Mark settled himself, saying, “Understood.”

  “You’re doing your helmet yourself, and all the rest of your kit is your floating weaponry,” JJ said, as he glanced up at the adamantium Mark had floating around himself. “And now we do the rest of Mister Oliphant’s outfit plan.” He touched the mirror, which was a screen, and then he touched buttons here and there, freezing Mark’s image and flashing a pre-made outfit plan onto him. “I can adjust the whole thing since it’s a texture overlay and you’re going to use your metal for most of the normal accents, so make your desires known now. As I said, we want to trim the waist and sides and emphasize the shoulders and muscles. Power sells on males.”

  Mark was doing the ‘tyrant dragon’ thing, and his armor reflected that, and it looked so, so good on him.

  His outfit was completely matte black from head to toe except where it was shiny black diamonds layered on his shoulders, down his chest and back, and on his knees and lower legs, like he was wearing greaves. They were ‘scales’. A tattered black cape wrapped around his neck and fell to the middle of his back. It looked like a normal cape that some monster had bitten half off. It looked good. If Mark needed to, he could pull the hood of the cape over his head, but mostly he would be wearing his adamantium helmet.

  Mark found himself staring at his adjusted image in the screen-mirror, and he was comfortably okay with all of it, including the body-hugging fabric. He really liked the design of the scales on his forearms and—

  “SEVEN MINUTES TO PLACES!” Noel called out from the room beyond. “Eliot is ready! Sally is ready! Isoko and Mark?!”

  Mark said, “I need cutouts for where I can put my adamantium against my skin without it tearing the cloth. I usually have my wrists and ankles free, but this thing is full body.”

  JJ said, “We’ll cut it off at the mid-forearm and lower calf and make liberal use of black body paint. We have black shoes you can wear, too.” JJ did some adjustments to the garment on the screen then he pressed ‘finalize’, and the 3D printer to the side started whirring and printing in fabric. “The cape will take a minute. Hold out your hands and I’ll color the garment. How visible do you want the scales?”

  Mark held out his hands. “Highly visible; still black.”

  “Supershine it is, then.”

  And then JJ touched Mark’s hands and the fabric flickered. And then it was done, for the most part. Mark stared at himself in the reflective screen.

  JJ rapidly started talking about lengths of ‘battle torn cape’ and then attaching the tattered shoulder cape, and while that was going on, Mark kinda stared at himself. He needed a little bit of a shave and a haircut, and he almost shaved his face like he always did, with his adamantium, but he stopped. His hair was a little unkempt. It was still short, though. Should he grow it out?

  Mostly, Mark looked at himself in the mirror.

  That’s when it hit him.

  He might not be a hero like he wanted to be, but he was still wearing a superhero’s outfit and he was powerful enough to wear it and not look like a poser. He had a cape, for gods’ sakes! It was tattered and evil-looking, but it was still a cape. Mark would be going out to stand in front of a camera and act a part, and there were a lot of politics happening around all of that, but so what! His entire life from here on out was going to be a whole lot of politics, because that’s what Heroes and Villains did. You couldn’t be strong and a man alone; you would just die. And Mark was not going to die. Not here, not for a very, very long time, if at all.

  He was going to get everything he ever wanted and more.

  The emotions of it all slammed into Mark like a bulldozing monster. Right in his gut. Right in his heart. A tiny laugh escaped him. A tiny tear fell down his face.

  JJ grinned as he fixed the collar of Mark’s cape, saying, “You’re going to do great out there, Blackvein.”

  “Thank you.”

  And then JJ opened the door and it was time to step out and meet the team.

  For all of 2 seconds, Mark was uncomfortable, but then he saw his team, he felt their vectors and saw their faces, and he knew this was going to be okay.

  Sally, of course, said, “I’m surprised you made it all fit!”

  Mark smirked. “It’s very tight.” And then he shot back, “Love the boob window.”

  Sally was wearing an outfit like Mark’s, of mostly black, but instead of having scales in the texture of the fabric, she had invisible parts of the webweave shaped like Vs. Sally had that Drakarok Retribution thing going on, and the invisible ‘cutouts’ gave her a form-fitting porcupine look, showing off skin underneath. Her thighs and upper chest were almost completely visible, along with her arms. So yeah. Boob window.

  Sally seemed to like her boob window, too, since she touched it and happily said, “It’s pretty great, yeah!”

  Eliot was dressed in ‘operative clothing’, which was a combo of wartime uniform but with supervillain aesthetics. It was black. His ‘cape’ was a cross between a trench coat and a mage’s robe, and it fluttered around his body. There were clearly electronics layered on the inside of the outfit. He looked like a technopath of some variety, and he kinda was.

  Eliot was also happy, as he said, “This is so awesome.”

  Isoko’s voice was a soft thing, her eyes full of unshed, happy tears, as she looked at everyone and said, “It really is.”

  Mark grinned a little as he looked at Isoko and saw Platinum Princess. Isoko wore a black miniskirt, a crop top, and thigh-high leggings. No cape. Dark makeup. She was dressed for speed, which was appropriate since she had a 2x speed and strength modifier to her Platinum Body… Though it might be a little higher today. Mark wasn’t sure when Isoko last got a scan.

  He wasn’t sure of the last time he had taken a scan, either.

  Mark made a mental note to go do that eventually, and then he said, “You look great, Isoko.”

  Isoko confidently said, “I’m gonna move sooo much merch.”

  Sally asked Mark, “You still have your spellbreaker, yeah?”

  Mark patted his neck, where the cape bunched up, and he pulled out the spellbreaker. It was still glowing softly, so it had one charge. “Yup!” And then he floated his helmet down onto his head, and Quark wrote on the lenses in front of his eyes, ‘Ready for full operational action.’ Quark blinked the message away, and Mark centered himself. He looked to his team, and said, “I’m gonna start at half strength and then rapidly ramp up on Tartu—”

  “There is a little bit of a program,” Noel said, interrupting. “If you could stick to the script for the first half, then that would be great. Okay?”

  Mark made a decision, “Sure, as long as everyone else does, too.”

  Noel sighed. “We can only pray. Now let’s go over the whole thing...”

  Isoko was practically giddy as she hopped on her feet and clapped her hands.