They’d given the ‘official’ story, and now Amber Hardy was just tossing them questions, as was her prerogative as an interviewer.

Perry couldn’t help but notice a tiny bit of favoritism.

“Chemestro, the recent allegations of misconduct against you have, and I mean, every single one, have been reversed by the actresses in question. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were part Minder. How did you manage to convince these women to risk their reputation to help you infiltrate Neuron’s organization?”

Amber Hardy watched Chemestro expectantly, practically salivating.

The musclebound Catalyst leaned into the mic and awkwardly searched for words.

“Um, ma’am, I asked nicely?”

Amber began laughing like Chemestro had said the funniest thing all week, leaving Perry to stare wide-eyed at the farce unfolding in front of him.

This is total bullshit!

Amber sighed and played with her hair a moment before re-orienting back on Perry, losing all the warmth she’d displayed a moment earlier.

“So, Paradox, We haven’t heard from you in a while. Tell me, is your business in the junkyard still able to suck money out of the slums without you being there?”

“The highest profit margin we get comes from rich assholes whose kids totaled their Christmas BMW, and most of that profit goes back into the slums.”

Perry said this because he knew Amber’s daughter had done exactly that. It wasn’t common knowledge, but it paid to keep an ear to the ground.

The T.V. personality’s eyes narrowed nearly imperceptibly.

“You’re not afraid that the influx of cash is going to wind up gentrifying the area, and displacing all but the ones working for you?”

“No.” Perry said flatly. “By and large, the people working for me are using Oberon’s scrapyard as a springboard to buy the advantages they were born without. Gentrification implies rich people from outside moving in and displacing the residents. I don’t know what you would call an entire neighborhood paying enough in taxes for the municipal government to finally fix the damn potholes.”

Having failed to make him an easy target and desiring to move away from dry subjects like municipal taxes, Amber switched tactics.

“So, Chemestro,” Amber said, turning her attention back to the blue-eyed poster boy for steroids. “Are you seeing anyone?”

Perry could hear a collective inhale as dozens of girls in the audience held their breath. He massaged his temples.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Chemestro said. “I see people all the time.”

“I mean, are you dating anyone?” Amber asked, her expression softening.

Chemestro paused, frowning. He glanced over at Perry, who buried his face in his hands.

“I’m still not sure what you mean. What’s ‘dating’?”

“Well, umm…” Amber said.

Perry glanced up and he could see the cogs working behind Amber’s eyes. How much of the birds and bees could she get away with explaining to the doofus on national television?

“It’s when two people…spend time together to get to know each other.” She said, diplomatically.

“What, like a team-building exercise?” Chemestro asked.

“Kind of. But romantically.” Amber clarified.

“Ah, I have no training in that discipline.”

“Really?” Amber asked.

“No, ma’am. But I will approach it like every other skill I’ve sought to master. With intense focus, and hours and hours of study. If there’s one thing I’ve cultivated over my life, it’s the ability to slam against a problem over and over until I’ve mastered it. I don’t stop until I’m completely satisfied.”

Oh, come on, that had to be on purpose!

The rest of the interview proceeded more or less to plan, with Amber tossing Chemestro the softballs and giving Perry leading questions designed to trip him up or make him look bad.

Honestly, Perry was starting to think the woman was having more fun talking to him than Chemestro, because Perry represented a challenge. It was flattering and infuriating at the same time, an interesting cocktail of emotions Perry had never really experienced before.

Once the interview was over, the two of them went backstage, shook Amber’s hand, exchanged vague threats, then walked through the field of reporters and flashing lights and climbed inside a limo heading back to The Workshop, finding themselves back inside within minutes.

They separated shortly after they arrived, Perry heading for the poolside.

…After about fifteen minutes of lying down doing nothing, Perry started getting antsy. He stood up and walked around the edge of the pool, but it didn’t’ subside. He needed to lift something.

How long has it been since I worked out? Two days? He’d been pumping iron daily for so long that it felt like something was missing after going a day without it.

What time is it? Four thirty? I could use the XP, and get to bed early afterwards. Dear god, I’m becoming an old-man gym bro.

Perry and Chuck followed the signs to the fitness center, where he was immediately convinced that he was not a gym-bro.

No less than twelve inmates and three murderous scumbags were grunting as they lifted weights, their muscles bulging like they were going to bust out of their bodies.

Scrape, Feather, and Bloodrage. Perry mentally I.D.ed the ones with a reputation for killing civilians.

Just because The Workshop was a country club did not mean the people inside were all harmless. There were some genuinely evil men and women contained within, who simply limited their killing to civilians, knowing the leadership of the city valued them higher.

In short, assholes who punched down.

Not really my scene, Perry thought, turning on his heel. I can do pushups and pullups in my bunk.

“What, are you too good for us?” Feather asked, his voice stopping Perry in his tracks. Feather was the slenderest of those working out, a brown-haired man covered in whipcord muscles. His power allowed him to make feather-like manifestations which could inflict pain or straight up chop people into bits.

“Nah, I think we scared him off.” Bloodrage said between grunts, the mammoth of a man was doing abductor pulls with a thousand pounds on the super equipment. He was a Bruiser who got further boosts from being soaked in blood. Hence the name.

Scrape had a more average height and weight. He was a Tinker with a reputation for using bio-weapons. The ‘Scrape’ moniker was because he would wound an opponent, then run off and use their bio information off his weapon to create a tailored disease. Nasty guy.

The three of them ran together because they were some of the only people who could stand each other’s presence.

There’s not really any good solution to this, is there? If Perry continued walking away, they would seek him out and pester him wherever he went. If he came back they would know taunting him worked.

Perry shrugged and turned around.

“Ooh, he’s coming back!” Feather said with a sly grin.

Perry smiled and started working out, directly across from Scrape, following him to every new machine and slowly invading the man’s personal space.

“The hell are you doing?” Scrape asked as he noticed Perry’s gaze, which had been locked on the Tinker the entire time.

“Just working out,” Perry said with a shrug, maintaining hard eye contact while doing slightly less weight than Scrape. Perry was really hamming it up, pretending to struggle with fifty-pound bicep curls. Scrape glanced down at the weights in Perry’s hands, then back up to meet his gaze.

“You better turn your eyes somewhere else before I rip ‘em out and shove ‘em up your ass.”

“You’re welcome to try,” Perry said, grunting with fake effort. He was leaner than Scrape, also registered as a Tinker in the Nexus registry, so Scrape would assume he was human baseline without his armor, and weaker than him.

This worked in Perry’s favor.

Scrape took a step forward and reached out with his hand, and Perry juiced his Body.

Body 8 -> 12

Perry grabbed the extended arm with his left hand, shattering Scrape’s ulna and radius with the fifty pound barbell in his right, before kicking out both the Tinker’s kneecaps in the blink of an eye.

Dead silence reigned as Scrape gasped and sank to the ground, a low wail building in his throat.

+50 XP

Perry eyeballed Feather and Bloodrage as he continued lifting the fifty-pound barbell, dropping the struggling act.

Feather chuckled and shook his head, continuing his workout. Bloodrage looked interested for a moment, then shrugged and kept lifting. He had demonstrated that they had no idea what Perry’s limits were, and neither of them wanted to be the one to find out.

The two supers didn’t bother to help their ‘friend’, demonstrating exactly how much camaraderie there was to go around. In less than a minute, security came and hauled Scrape away, taking him to the infirmary.

In true Workshop fashion, nobody was punished, no lockdown was declared. Life just went on.

Nobody bothered Perry after that…Except for Chemestro.

“Spar?” the oversized Catalyst asked, approaching Perry. Because of course he’s been working out this entire time.

“I might break your kneecaps, you okay with that?” Perry asked.

Chemestro gave Perry the first hint of a smile he’d ever seen.

“You’re welcome to try.” Chemestro said, throwing Perry’s earlier statement back in his face.

They spent the next ten minutes trying to maul each other.

Perry had never ‘sparred’ with Chemestro. He’d never had the leisure to stop and study what the catalyst was doing, so he was interested to note that Chemestro had a highly disciplined fighting style that transitioned smoothly from one strike to the next, keeping Perry off balance by focusing on maximum efficiency, combining attack and defence, controlling Perry’s movement and breaking his stance.

It was wickedly effective, but predictable because he always chose the best option.

Not unlike that old duelist, Andre Demetre. Except the old man was better at feints. Perry thought as he rolled out of the way of a heel strike and threw up a forearm where he sensed Chemestro’s follow-up would land.

A heavy impact landed on Perry’s forearm and he snaked his hand around it, attempting to pull the Catalyst in for an eye gouge.

Chemestro leaned forward, catching the eye-gouge with his chin and forcing Perry to lean out of the way of the headbutt.

Now off-balance, Perry was easy to leg-sweep, leaving him floating in midair for an instant.

Rather than tuck and roll, Perry tweaked the muscles in his back twisting in midair to place his right hand on the ground and kick out with both feet before he even hit the ground.

It was a wildly awkward move, but it caught Chemestro off guard, and landed a solid hit to the super’s stomach.

Chemestro recovered fast, grabbing Perry’s right ankle and pulling him in for a punch to the groin.

Perry mostly blocked it with his hand, then used Chemestro’s grip as leverage to deliver a strong kick to the face.

Chemestro leaned out of the way, but in the process, put himself off balance for a fraction of a second, giving Perry the time he needed to spring back to his feet.

“You fight like a monkey.” Chemestro said, massaging his stomach.

“You fight like a robot,” Perry countered, wincing as his testicles retracted into his body from the previous impact.

The two squared off again and went back to pummeling on each other.

It was cathartic, in a way.

Perry could feel Chemestro getting better as they fought, improving in real-time as the Catalyst loosened up his style and began taking small victories in their exchanges, occasionally sacrificing the most predictable move to inflict a bruise against an unguarded location, gradually slowing Perry down.

In response, Perry tightened up his guard and paid more attention to Chemestro’s balance, trying to methodically stack small advantages on top of each other to topple his enemy.

The world seemed to narrow down until the panting super across from him was the only thing that existed.

Finally, Perry was able to employ just the right combination of a feint and a leg pull to send Chemestro toppling to the ground. Perry was about to jump on top of him and turn him into a smear on the rubber mat when a voice cut through his focus.

“Paradox!” Role shouted, his tone making it evident that this had not been the first time he’d been called.

“Eh?” Perry grunted, holding the stitch in his side and panting. He hadn’t realized it, but most of the supers had paused their workouts to watch Perry and Chemestro fight, forming a semi-circle around the rubberized sparring mats.

Partly for entertainment, and partly to size up the competition.

“You’ve got a conjugal visit,” Role said, handing Perry a piece of paper.

“Oooh!” The surrounding supers made animal noises and elbowed each other like children.

Natalie Smith

Room G-145

I haven’t seen Nat in what…three days? Hope she’s doing okay.

Perry offered his hand and hauled Chemestro to his feet, satisfied with knocking the blonde Catalyst down at the end of their spar.

“Too bad I don’t have time to finish you off. It wasn’t looking too good for you.” Perry preened.

“I was about to catch you in an arm bar and snap your elbow.” Chemestro said, shrugging.

“Sure, sure,” Perry said with a smug grin. He brandished the visitor slip. “Well, I gotta go take care of this. I’ll see you back at the cell in…four hours or so.”

“Oh, right, I forgot. Silly me.” Role said smacking his forehead. “Here’s yours, Chemestro.” Role made hard eye contact with Perry as he pulled out a massive stack of conjugal visitation tickets from his front pocket and began deliberately handing them over to Chemestro one at a time.

The hooting prisoners went completely silent.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Chemestro asked, rifling through the forty-seven tickets in his hand.

“You could fucking share!” one of the inmates shouted.