By the end of the week, I had seven solid job interviews, which was how I liked to think of them. Generally, they were in dark and gloomy locations in the middle of the night, which was how cowls rolled, although considering that over the decades I had been here I’d seen or been in most of them before, they weren’t really intimidating.

I had a tough time being intimidated, especially since two of the meetings were in the abandoned sawmill… I had used to work in that sawmill nearly 25 years ago before they went belly-up, and probably knew every nook and cranny of it, including the places where they might try to stash my body if negotiations went south.

My rule was simple. These were unknowns. If they tried to off me, I’d let them, and come out when they left. If they tried to take off the mask, I’d do my best to return the favor. Every mook job with an unknown cowl had an element of risk, and I was pretty good at assessing that risk. I just hoped I didn’t have to spend too long at the bottom of the sawdust pit… it was full of spiders.

There was a rule among mooks and masks. You don’t mess with their secret identity, because everyone had one. Just like not messing with someone’s family, because that starts wars. That rule had actually become federal law and was part of how kayfabe worked. Cowls were a lot more likely to surrender if they knew that their civilian identity could be kept clean, even if that identity had to disappear for a few years for the cowl to do time.

A couple of decades ago, before the mask law, a shlock reporter had managed to doxx a class C superhero named Gatling, one of the Protectors. Within two hours a cowl who didn’t play the game, a real nutjob, had taken out his wife and 6-year-old daughter.

Sixteen hours later, the National Gazette building was riddled with energy-bullet holes, and every single person inside, including the shlock reporter, and been turned into a messy pile of meat. Over 300 people dead because one ‘journalist’ felt his artistic integrity and listing Gatling’s girlfriends along with his real name was more important than common sense and respect.

The other journalists, of course, tried to play it off as a crazy super slaughtering innocent reporters, but the ball had been set in motion. Within a year, Proteus had mandated international mask laws, and most UN countries had followed suit, making doxxing masks a federal offense on par with kidnapping, for both capes and cowls.

Of course, as an unpowered mook, this law didn’t really apply to me. I usually got unmasked 5 minutes after I got to the police station, and then claimed I had been coerced… easy in and out, with usually less than 48 hours in a cell. I always left hungry, but that was usually the only downside.

The reason it was important though, was because the colored girl… person of color? Had asked to meet me unmasked, with no superhero identities. I didn’t know who her cowl identity was, which was almost as much protection as not knowing her secret ID. No masks, no names, we were going to meet at Mama’s at my suggestion, it almost felt like a date. Right now, two of those meetings worried me a little, although the rest seemed pretty normal.

I wore a nice, clean tee shirt with no stains, one I had picked up at the consignment shop for less than a dollar that advertised a ski town in Utah I had never seen. I also wore clean, if worn, jeans that had never seen the inside of a mine and fresh hiking boots. I would be paying for dinner tonight for both of us, but unless she ate like I did, I was fine with that. She seemed cute, and her mask had been a generic one, so spending a meal with a cute girl was worth the price of admission, especially since I guessed she had flown out to meet me.

I was technically flush from getting thrown off a building, and for me, a clean tee was like an Armani suit. Seriously, have you ever tried to buy a suit when you weighed close to 250, all of it muscle? I couldn’t afford tailored, and off-the-rack made me look either seriously overweight or exactly like the brainless thug I usually simulated.

I wasn’t stupid, but I wasn’t particularly brilliant either… to be honest, most of the Mook crowd would have trouble figuring out a jigsaw puzzle without a tutorial. Not being very bright kind of went hand-in-hand with regularly exposing yourself to lethal danger and possible jail time for barely over minimum wage.

I was waiting for her to arrive at Mama’s, perusing the same menu I had looked over about a billion times, and trying not to get hungry. I sighed as my stomach growled, and hoped that I didn’t make too bad of an impression.

Fortunately, Sunday night at Mama’s was not considered a decent date spot, so mostly it was just a couple of regulars. Dave Nunn was here, in uniform, like I had expected him to be, and in truth, the presence of a uniformed cop was sort of a test to see how cool she could be. If she got all uptight at the presence of a uniform, playing the identity game was not going to work.

She was running a few minutes late, and I was starting to seriously consider ordering something to tide me over when the door tinkled, letting someone enter.

I had told her ‘don’t dress up’ intending neither a costume nor fancy clothes. She seemed to have tried to take me at my word, but in Charleston, her 250-dollar fur-lined leather jacket and Jimmy Choos were the same things as showing up in a cocktail dress. Her worn-tight jeans and light-colored peasant blouse with appliqued flowers might have toned down the effect a bit, but for people who knew fashion, she blazed like she had a ‘mug me’ sign in neon on her back.

I stood up when she walked in, and smiled, and noticed that she started a little bit when she noticed me.

Okay, Like I said, I am not what you would call handsome. Before my powers popped in, I was a half-starved kid in Siberia. I had a lot of those scars you get from growing up without enough food, and they stayed even when I regenerated. My mug more closely resembled a young Lou Ferrigno than Ryan Reynolds. I was muscular, and it showed in my neck and chin, even though I didn’t exactly have an adenoidal jaw.

But at least I had perfect teeth. My gift saw to that. Honestly, I’d rather be healthy than handsome, and it’s not like could have ever afforded plastic surgery even if I wasn’t more or less immune to it… I’d actually tried once when I was flush. My appearance as a 20-something thug was as set in stone as my bones were.

It could be worse, though. At least I was able to shave and have my hair cut normally, unlike some famously tough heroes. Trying to shave with your own fingernails would suck.

I tugged out one of the beaten-up wooden chairs that had once been painted white, or maybe pink, as she approached. “Coraline?” I asked the name she had PM’ed me.

“Yes, Hi. You must be George?” she asked, and then sat down while I tucked the chair in behind her.

I had used the name ‘George Reeves’ as a joke, suspecting most people wouldn’t get it. After all the names I have had, responding to a new one I had set my head on was pretty normal.

I sat down across from her at the tiny table and nodded, “Yep. First, we have to eat. I am totally starving. Are you hungry? If so, there are some ground rules.”

She looked nervous, “A little bit. My last meal was on the plane. What ground rules?”

She was even more attractive up close than in her pictures. She looked more Jamaican, at least from my history than inner city, and I suspected she had a lot of islander in her heritage and pale brown skin. She looked like she’d be more at home in a music video than at a street party. Way out of my league, if I were looking, which I wasn’t. Her hair was bound behind her head in a ponytail with a golden-colored ring, and she seemed to have minimized the makeup, just a little blue above her eyes and gloss on her lips rather than the full-blown city-girl look.

“First ground rule, no matter what you do, don’t order anything with fish in it. The burgers are decent, especially the mushroom and swiss, but the bacon is left over from breakfast. Good then, not so good now. Secondly, if you like fries, Carlos is making them. They are really, really good, and won’t make you sick. Anything Mexican is decent, but after noon I’d just not even look at the breakfast side of the menu.”

She opened her eyes more widely and then smiled a little. Good teeth. Apparently, she expected a different set of ground rules, so I explained, “I don’t think well when I am hungry, and I eat a ton. We can get down to brass tacks while we are eating. Hungry discussions are bad-tempered discussions.”

She looked agreeable, and I slid her the menu. She quickly looked it over and then chuckled, “Well, I’d certainly call this a perfect example of a diner.” she said qualifyingly.

I nodded, “That’s exactly what it is. Mary generally makes the soup of the day, and she’s kind of amazing at it, so that’s worthwhile, but the special is usually whatever’s left over from yesterday. Unless you have an iron stomach, I wouldn’t trust it even if it looks good.”

I grinned, “I have an iron stomach, and a limited budget, so that’s what I will have. It tasted good yesterday, so it should be okay today.”

She looked at me curiously, “Do you?”

“Do I what?” I asked.

“Have a cast iron stomach?”

I chuckled and tapped my torso beneath the shirt, “Not literally. One of the reasons I am in demand is that I am not… umm… if you shoot me, I get hurt like a normal. None of that blood pack or pretending to get hurt stuff.”

Mary wandered over, “Are you kids ready?” She raised an eyebrow at me and then looked at Naomi with a gimlet eye.

I chuckled, “No worries, Mary, it’s business.”

“That’s what I am worried about.”

I shook my head, “No, not that kind of business. Normal business.”

Mary sighed, “I would try to play the don’t hurt him game, but with his business, it’s going to happen no matter what.”

I ordered three of the specials, Roast beef, and potatoes, knowing that Mary would load them up for me. After looking at me, Naomi hesitantly ordered a mushroom and Swiss and a basket of fries.

It took a few minutes, but it was rather quick. Carlos was a dab hand with the grill and usually pet a basket of fries over the fryer, and with the lack of customers, we were soon eating.

Naomi smiled a little, “You were right. These fries are surprisingly good. As for the rest, well, I have to admit...this place is really a… place.”

I chuckled, shoveling down layers of overcooked roast beef that was nevertheless divine. That’s the thing about slow-cooked meat. As long as it doesn’t dissolve completely, it just gets better and more fall apart as you cook it.

“So, Brass Tacks?” she asked after finishing off a mouthful of fries. I noticed that after a few bites, she had kind of pulled the bun off the hamburger and was just eating it like cube steak and mushrooms. I approved. Filling up on bread didn’t help me heal.

“Well, here’s the deal. I am willing to move to where the job is, but I kind of need to know if it’s a short-term deal or a long-term one. Are you looking for someone disposable that you can use to make an impression? Are you needing someone that can die for you and give you an excuse to fend off the thirsty? I need a little of your situation to go on, it will change how I act.”

Naomi shrugged, looking around. “Well, I am not actually big league, but my pop is. He’s a big-time distributor of illegal substances, so he’s not technically in the game, but he’s careful to avoid the killer addict stuff, mostly lightweight meta stuff like Rapture and, you know, vegetation. No Echo, though.”

I nodded, that was good. If she wound up getting into the family business, I would have to bail if they played with Echo, that was some enormously nasty shit. Most meta drugs, if they are not intentionally designed to addict people, had pretty much zero horrible side effects, although the ones that they did have tended to be weird, like levitation or blowing bubbles from your nose, or turning purple for a while.

“Are you going into the family business?” I wondered.

She shook her head, “No. It killed my mom and my pops is way too deep to pull out. My sister is there, but she’s not going to be in the business, she’s a little…. Handicapped.”

I asked, “So what is your shtick?”

“Pops is a summoner, and my sister is a normie… but you know it’s weird, powers don’t usually run in the family, but we have it on good authority that she is probably latent. This is kind of a super new thing, the idea that having powers can run in a family.”

“You are a summoner?”

“No, I am a disintegrator,” she stated, shaking her head.

Damn. Disintegration was a tough deal. You really couldn’t play as a hero, unless, like me, you were a bullet soak or strictly support role. No team wanted someone whose default power involved turning people into particles, mush, or air. It’s kind of hard to arrest a pile of sand, after all.

“Is it under control?” I asked.

She nodded, “Yeah, and it mostly makes me impossible to hurt, but when I turn it on, anything I touch gets ruined. The biggest problem is, It’s reactive. I start a pillow fight with someone, and in seconds they are left with a scorched chunk of the pillowcase. I can choose to turn it on or off, but the default state is on when I get stressed, surprised, or something touches me I am not expecting.”

I ummed. “Damn. That’s a tough break. Does it affect everything? Or just what’s hitting you?”

She sighed a little, “Weirdly it affects everything except silk, pretty much. My Dad said his loas claim that it’s a dead thing. They call it the touch of death, and only things produced by death are immune to it.”

I spoke slowly, “So… that means anytime you get excited, by anything?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow.

She said, “That’s exactly what it means, what you are thinking. I haven’t killed anyone with it, yet, but I know that it happens when… that does. The problem is the fact that I have powers and who my father is has gotten around. Not what my mask is, but that’s bad enough.”

I hemmed, “So you are constantly getting approached by the biggest and the toughest, who are sure that they are the cure to your problem, and want super-powered babies with a bloodline?”

“That’s pretty much it exactly. Plus, my pops is pretty rich and powerful. The capes all want to make me into the evil princess stereotype, to use me to get at my pop, and the cowls are all convinced that they represent the next dynasty backed by Kjootoo’s legacy.”

I dropped my fork. “Kjootoo is...your father…” I said slowly as I started to carefully pick up the fork again and use it on a potato on plate 3.

She smiled, “Exactly.”

I thought about it carefully. I might be slow, but if I took the time I could puzzle things out. “So you need… a jealous boyfriend or nanny type. Someone who can play human boyfriend, and maybe play a mook at the same time, who will be more-or-less safe from the game because the wannabes won’t want to kill a normal.”

She nodded slowly.

“And also who, if things get a little rough, you can pretend to get all intimate and poof! Human boyfriend gets messily splattered, but your conscience is clear because I can probably survive it. That will steer off the majority from the ‘out of control power girlfriend’ thing so you don’t have to do it for real.”

She chuckled a little until she realized that I wasn't joking. "If you can survive it, then I swear you will be very well compensated if we have to pull it off."

I smiled and polished off the last of my meal. “It sounds good, but there’s a few things we have to deal with. First off, my identity will be hosed. Like your father, you are known. That means that if I play the role, I get known too.” I held up my hands, “That’s not a deal breaker.” as she started to look worried. “But it will impact my ability to work, and if I get caught, I get to spend some quality time in a detention facility, depending on what your line of work is.”

She shrugged, “Property reassignment. I haven’t been linked to anything yet, so I also do legit work as a beta tester for meta-defense networks at prisons and the like. Since I don’t have a record yet, the prison system likes to think that I bring a unique viewpoint to the issue.”

I chuckled, “Damn. Smart and multitalented. Would you care to go for a walk?”

She looked around, “What about…”

I shook my head, “I eat here a lot. With the way I eat, it’s either this place or pizza. I give Mary tab cash so she doesn’t pester me to pay. She just takes the money, and a fair tip, out of that.”

She cleaned her hands off with a napkin, and I did the gentleman thing with her chair.