[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

Kathy was often used as a delivery mule by the various Hero departments that she maintained a connection to. It wasn’t particularly surprising - she was significantly faster than UPS could ever hope to be. She didn’t even mind it that much. Transporting small items was no more difficult than teleporting was normally, and even larger items only brought mild discomfort. Not that they’d ever asked her to transport anything even approaching her practical limit, but as it stood, moving something between the programs tended to be the work of perhaps ten minutes.

She was doing that now, carrying a parcel containing… something. She hadn’t checked. It didn’t feel particularly heavy, and hadn’t been much of a hindrance to the trip. Nor did it appear to have any security beyond the cardboard box, so she doubted it was particularly valuable. Ah well, not like it mattered.

She appeared in the San Francisco Hero building in a flash of shining steel, striking what was an admittedly preposterous pose, especially considering the cardboard box she was still holding.

There was some half-hearted applause, and she straightened, grinning. “Come on, no whoops? No cheers for the hero?”

No one seemed particularly impressed. Normally there was at least one person who hadn’t seen her arrive before. Obviously she’d been coming round too often, if this was how they were reacting. She slipped the parcel onto the table and laughed, waving a hand to brush aside their apathy. “You’re all so boring. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to be more impressive on my next visit.”

She caught something out of the corner of her eye, and twisted slightly to bring it into view. A girl, a little younger than her, half wearing what looked like a suit of bone armour. The new hero! Kathy paused for a moment as she thought, trying to remember her name. It was… Menagerie, that was it. The skeleton animal girl.

She crossed the room in the blink of an eye (she’d always been fast on her feet, even without her power), and was shaking the girl’s hand before she even had the chance to respond, flashing a grin that was positively luminescent.

“Hi, don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Celerity, hero extraordinaire. You must be Menagerie, the new skeleton summoner/master/thing right? I’ve heard about you, and quite frankly, it sounds awesome.”

There were sparkles in Kathy’s eyes. She always loved meeting new heroes.

aeron at thq

[Megan Daniels]

Hero Program offices were the sort of place where seeing people popping in wearing bizarre outfits was fairly normal, and while Megan loved the sheer variety in styles and powers in the Heroes, she was rather caught off-guard by a woman in armor appearing out of thin air posing in a way that might have been dramatic in some scenarios, but certainly didn't manage it while holding a cardboard box in the middle of an office building.


Megan wasn't the enthusiastic Hero groupie type some of her friends in Film School had been, but Celerity was a Hero noteworthy enough to be unmistakable. As Celerity quipped her way around the room Megan couldn't help but focus on her armor, which was clearly far more decorative than functional, considering the shape of the chest piece would actually direct the force of any blow straight into the center of the chest. In the time it took her to think this she suddenly found the subject of those thoughts had moved directly in front of her.

Pausing for a moment to catch her breath, during which her hand was vigorously shook before she could react Megan replied "No... Yes... Hi... sorry, let me try that again. Yep I'm Menagerie, the new skeleton person if you couldn't guess from my cloths, and since I'm not sure if we've ever even been in the same city as each other before, so no, we haven't met. Are you busy? because if not I would love to talk to you some more. There's a couple of really nice cafes near here. I figure that as a new Hero it's a good idea to hear what lots of different people have to say about heroing" said with the conviction you might expect of someone non-ironically using a word they made up specifically for that sentence. Only a small amount of the jaw area had exposed skin on Megan's armor, but her grin was clearly visible through the gap.

[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

It took only a moment of listening for Kathy’s smile to return to its luminescent shine, the kind of smile that would have been creepy if her joy were any less evident and all-encompassing.

Finally, a hero enthusiastic about the job, who could save people with a smile. Of course, Menagerie wasn’t the first person she had met who fit that bill. Paladin came to mind; Alice could be a little shy, and didn’t tend to perform quite as well for a crowd as Surge, or even Kathy herself, could, but no one could question the depth and strength of her spirit, and her commitment to heroism. But too many were cynical, or darker in their outlook. Tank was Kathy’s premier example for that; she would never question his commitment to justice, but it was a darker, more brutal persona than Kathy preferred. Aaron was vengeance, rather than hope.

The skeleton pets might make presenting a positive and child-friendly image a little more difficult, but Kathy knew that enough enthusiasm could make anything possible.

More than that, this was a young woman asking for advice on heroing. Kathy always enjoyed getting to play the old wise mentor, even if it was always slightly out of character, and didn’t make much sense, considering she was only 27 and the Hero Program was less than 5 years old. Still, she had joined in the very early days, and so could proudly claim to be one of the longest serving heroes in the States.

“I’ve always got time for a new hero,” she said, smiling. “Can’t make any promises on how long I’ll stay, but it’s not like it’ll take me very long to get back to New York if they need me, so they tend to give me plenty of leeway. It’s one of the nicest things about being me. I can be in New York one minute, in San Francisco the next. I can pop over to Chicago for a spell, and still be back in time for tea.”

From another the words might have been boastful, lording one’s own advantages over others. But Kathy’s exuberance took the sting out of the words, turning them into something else - an expression of joy, a celebration of life.

“We should probably get out of our costumes first. I’ll meet you at the front door in ten minutes?”

aeron at thq

[Megan Daniels]

While she had seen some videos and heard or read a few things about Celerity, the sheer exuberance and brightness was still rather startling, though of course completely welcome. Hero seemed to be one of the sorts of jobs so demanding that many people who stick with it do it from loving the work, not surprising considering it combined the peril and high stakes of failure that come with law enforcement jobs with the difficulties that come from being publicly well-known figures.

Megan laughed at Kathy's comment about her schedule. "Yeah, that's true, and pretty cool to be honest. It always interests me to hear about when someone uses a power to perform some utterly mundane task in an awesome way. Like, say, delivering a package from New York to San Francisco is usually not the most exciting thing, but doing it in seconds is pretty crazy." Having the attitude of some sort of almost Disney-type mentor figure seemed rather odd for someone who couldn't have been much older then her, but she decided to go with it. Thinking about it actually a lot of famous heroes seemed quite young. Of course it was hard to surmise an age from someone in costume, but that was her rough guess, and the one hero she (or just about anybody for that matter) could name with a public identity was slightly younger than her. She supposed that made sense in such a recently formed program but it still felt odd.

"Sounds good, see you then" Megan retreated to get changed. Looking at her outfit in the mirror, it was certainly made with a very different sort of design philosophy than the one Celerity's used. There was some styling and slightly closer than strictly necessary cuts to give it a distinctly feminine shape, but it wasn't precisely flattering and had the advantage of lightly armoring someone who otherwise had no advantages over a normal human in taking hits. Of course sufficiently fast or agile heroes didn't need to worry about that. Her mask covered almost her entire head, save a small gap in the chin for easier breathing. Megan's skin reddened and burned easily and she didn't want to get oddly distributed patterns of redness.

Taking a few moments to put her costume back into the box it had been in before and making sure her hair wasn't tangles together again, Megan stepped out into the lobby, moving to meet her fellow hero. She wondered if she'd recognize her. Maybe, after all domino masks really don't cover much of the face at all. Then again, people could be terrible at noticing these sorts of things.

[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

“Absolutely,” Kathy laughed. “We have another hero in New York, Glacia, who has ice powers. When she’s in charge of the drinks they’re always cold. I’m super jealous - I have a bad habit of forgetting to restock the fridge and end up drinking lukewarm coke.”

“I’ll see you in a minute,” Kathy said, raising a hand in a half wave. Then she winked, and disappeared.

The armour went on a mannequin deep in her closet. Kathy’s house wasn’t particularly large, and in the early days she had mostly just stuffed her costume into a corner. Unfortunately, that wasn’t particularly conducive to keeping it polished and gleaming. Another hero might have let that go, and simply dealt with their costume being matte. Not Kathy. Celerity was a shining symbol - that was the whole point. But she didn’t have time to polish the metal every time she was called. Hence, the mannequin.

Now clad in jeans, a t-shirt and a light jacket, she gave her hair a quick brush, turned on her heel and strode back into the San Francisco hero department. She took the stairs two at a time, reaching the lobby quickly. She scanned the lobby, wondering if she’d beaten Menagerie there or if she was the late arrival.

She spotted the hair first. Bright red, so red that it had to have been dyed. The woman with it had the right height and build too.

Kathy bounded over, grinning.

“Hi, I’m Kathy. I was asked to meet here by someone who looked a lot like you, we were going to go for a coffee or a drink, we didn’t really specify.” She was pretty sure she was right, but there was no harm in being at least a little cautious rather than blurting out her identity to a woman who just happened to look the part.

aeron at thq

[Megan Daniels]

Megan certainly still needed to get used to spending time around other people with powers. The armor-clad hero literally vanishing into thin air caught her very off guard. She made a little 'eep' sound before recovering to get into normal clothes, returning to the lobby in athletic pants and a rather faded purple t-shirt. There were a great many people milling about so she started looking around.

Her searching the lobby was rather fruitless for a quite simple reason- there were a lot of twenty-somethings of average height with brown hair, whereas in her entire time in the building she had only seen two others with red dyed hair, both entirely different reds as well. Fortunately, the other hero still managed to find her alright, and while she could have spent hours flutily staring at people with similar features to Celerity, from this close it was a fairly sure identification. The smile was certainly the quickest identifier, she had one of those faces that it was hard to picture without a smile plastered across it.

Giving an impish grin she replied "I'm Megan, and I do believe I asked someone who looked rather like you about that. Have to say I'm not really much of a coffee person, but there's plenty of places around here with both that and the kind of things I usually go for. It's good to meet you Kathy."

[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

Kathy knew she wasn’t the most identifiable of folks. Brown hair, hazel eyes that looked brown at a distance, average height, not particularly muscular. She wasn’t entirely nondescript, but certainly didn’t particularly stand out in a crowd. Not like her newfound friend Megan did, with that bright red hair. Kathy had never dyed her hair as a teen, and now that she was Celerity she couldn’t, but she could see the attraction. It was certainly striking.

She returned Megan’s smile with her own megawatt grin, only for her face to smooth out into a blank mask upon listening to the other woman’s words.

“It’s lovely to meet you too Megan. But I’m afraid we can no longer associate. I only speak to people who have more caffeine than blood in their veins.” The straight face lasted all of about 5 seconds before collapsing into another grin and an airy laugh. “Just kidding, that’s no problem. I’m just a bit of a caffeine addict.”

She leaned in a little, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “One of my old roommates used to say I had more caffeine than blood, especially during exam season. I think my mom’s still not sure whether Celerity was a deliberate choice or just a fever dream from not having enough blood in my caffeine stream.”

They stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Kathy spun on one heel to face Megan. “So, where are we going? Host’s choice.”

aeron at thq

[Megan Daniels]

Megan had met a few people with Kathy's general personality type before but not all that many, and they always tended to be a breath of fresh air. She was right around Megan's height but had enough excitement to fill a room, giving her the impression being much larger, while not especially physically distinctive she was unmistakable once you'd met her. She could recognize all this mostly because it was the sort of effect she tended to have on people too, just not quite to Kathy's extent. Well the non-distinctive part wasn't true currently due to her bright hair but with her natural hair color she would have fit the same bill as brown haired, brown eyed (actually rather than just from a distance for her though), with a fairly normal height and build.

At Kathy's brief attempt at a serious tone Megan couldn't help but snort even before the woman's attempt failed utterly "I'm a tea person myself. Just don't really have much of a taste for coffee, I have to admit that's a good one by your roommate though, though as much havoc as it's possible for caffeine to cause it's pretty useful" and outright laugh started after the comment about her mom "Caffeine Stream, nice. I mean the Celerity persona is frankly rather over-the-top but it seems intentional at least to me. It's ridiculous but it works, don't know why people think those are mutually exclusive though". Classic heroicness like that was very grandiose and usually seemed rather out of place in the real world, but often enough it was just what people needed. There were a lot of Heroes for a perfectly good reason, different situations required different personality types just as much as it did different powers. 

Walking out into the sun and brisk sea breeze Megan stretched, taking in a deep breath. It was a mild sunny day, which was practically the only kind of day the city seemed to have though was perfectly fine by her "I haven't lived in San Francisco for long, but I've scoped out the area around here and found a pretty nice café about a block from here" she said gesturing vaguely.

[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

Kathy chuckled. “I can promise you, Celerity was a choice. Everyone was so grim and glum about it in the beginning. About heroing I mean. Even Paladin, paragon that she is, is more symbol than person. For her it’s all about bringing hope, and that’s great, but still so serious.”

This was a topic that Kathy was passionate about, and that passion shone through in her voice. “Being a hero should be fun. It should be about saving people and bringing hope and stopping bad guys, and having fun doing it. When people see a hero, they should know that everything’s going to be okay, not because the threat will be neutralised, but because there was never anything to worry about.”

Her eyes turned serious, her smile thinning, if not vanishing. “So many people are scared, about so many things. Fear and darkness, all the time. If I can help by giving them something to laugh about, make the world a little less grim, that’s just fine with me.”

The grin was back to full luminescence in an instant, and it was like the darker moment had never been as Kathy leaned in, whispering conspiratorially. “Also, you’d be surprised how mad it makes villains when you refuse to take them seriously. They’re all ‘cower in fear or die’, and getting called evildoers and miscreants and treated like naughty schoolboys really tends to take the wind out of their sails.”

She checked herself, smile turning rueful. “Sorry about that. This is a conversation I’ve had a lot, and I tend to get a little passionate.”

Kathy turned to follow Megan’s gesture.

“That way?,” she asked. At the affirmative she locked arms with Megan, practically dragging the other woman along with her as she started strolling in that direction.

aeron at thq

[Megan Daniels]

Now that her helmet was off Megan had an identifiable playful glint in her expression as she listened and nodded as Kathy explained her motives behind her persona. Hearing somebody speak about the subjects they were passionate about was always an interesting experience and Megan enjoyed hearing the fire in a person's voice when they were doing it. "Yeah I see what you're saying, I mean while I'm entirely sure that Metahuman Law Enforcement could be done without drawing inspiration from superhero stories there's a reason why it was done for sure, a certain psychological element added. Heroes have the potential to be the sort of.. well the sort of lowercase-h heroes that so many people used to wish really existed, so why squander that opportunity?"

With a shrug and chuckle at Kathy's impression of a villain she said "I've only been in one actual fight with villain types myself and they weren't the sort that said anything at all, I have to say it's definitely difficult, stressful, and rather frightening, but saying it's not fun would be absolutely lying"

Megan had not lived in San Francisco all that long but she had managed to find and was now being energetically pulled to a small local café, jut a little bit around the corner from a wide and somewhat busy street but nonetheless a pleasantly uncrowded place. Walking into the brick building's door Megan led Kathy up towards the counter ordering herself a mint tea, taking a seat at a wooden folding table by the window.

[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

Kathy nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. Too many people are obsessed with the cynical side, where heroes are just law enforcement in silly costumes. We’re Heroes, we have to be more than that. Or what’s the point? If I wanted to be grim and dour and cynical, I’d be walking around in a uniform, not a suit of armour. Tank is a friend, and I love him, but deep down I think he’s still fighting a war. That’s not the kind of person I am, or the kind of hero I would ever want to be. If we can be a shining example, then we should. Give people something to hope for, not something to be frightened of.”

Walking arm in arm with the younger woman, Kathy giggled a little at her later words. “Most of them take themselves way too seriously. They’re all trying to be grim and intimidating. I mean, yes, they’re criminals, but they’re supervillains. In much the same way heroing should be fun, what’s the point in running around calling yourself a villain if you’re not going to go the whole way.”

She sighed. “Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who really enjoyed Saturday morning cartoons as a child.”

She turned a little more serious, though only marginally. “It can be scary, and dangerous. Difficult and stressful. But, for me at least, it’s almost always fun. And even when it isn’t, you have to behave like it is. That’s what people are looking for, when they see me in costume. Fun.”

They arrived at the cafe, a quaint little place, and ordered their drinks. Megan went with a Mint tea, the heathen, while Kathy ordered a drip coffee. Taking a seat opposite Megan, Kathy laid her hands on the table and smiled. “So, we’ve talked about philosophy. How about personal life? Got an eye on anyone? Met any interesting characters lately? Or work, if you’d prefer to stay a little professional. How has San Francisco been treating you?

aeron at thq

[Megan Daniels]

For somebody who came across as rather silly Kathy could deliver a point quite well, Megan mused at her speech. It was true that the world had gotten rather crazy and a lot more dangerous, but that was distracting some people from the fact that the sort of heroes millions had  idolized and loved stories of now existed. The very choice to do the whole costumes and code-name thing showed a recognition of this. There were plenty of things out there to be frightened of, and not nearly enough to be a source of hope. Doing the right thing was great, but inspiring others to believe in doing the right thing was a much bigger task.

Megan grasped her hands together absentmindedly, leaning into the conversation with her enthusiasm once again rising. "Somehow I end up getting a lot of my conversations sidetracked with discussions of philosophy. But to answer your questions I'm still really setting up here as far as personal life goes, I don't really know many people outside my coworkers yet but I'm getting along with most of them. San Francisco is... different than I'm used to, more chaotic really but it kind of feels more alive because of that" she smiled "So how about you? It's been a while since I was last on the east coast, anything interesting going on over in New York recently?" 

[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

Kathy nodded, still smiling. “I get that. It always take a while to settle into a new job, even for me. Even moving around in the same city can throw you off, in my experience - I’m sure it’s much worse when going further than that. And I do love the Bay; I don’t think I could ever really leave New York behind, but if I did I’d probably come here. Even then, I’m not sure how well I’d do. I’m pretty familiar with some of your colleagues already, but it’d be strange to be so far from my friends back in the City. Even when I can just pop around for a chat anytime I please.”

She leaned back in her seat, taking a sip of her coffee.

“We had that awful ferry attack, around the same time you had the mall attack.” She shuddered a little. It had been days before she stopped remembering the feeling of blood on her hands. “It got stopped though, and the passengers were safe. Those thugs picked the wrong city to mess with, if they wanted any hope of getting away with it.”

Then the smile was back. “It’s been pretty quiet since then though. I think most of the troublemakers got scared into keeping things on the down low. The ferry attack wasn’t just public, it was a public failure. This was a serious group with serious resources, who planned out the kind of attack that really should have worked, only to get humiliated by a single hero and a couple of good samaritans. Current thinking is a lot of people in darker circles got scared and went a little deeper underground.”

She shrugged. “It’s good and bad. It’s given us a bit of a breather, but it’s made it harder to track them down. There’s quite a few cases that went cold after that - they started being more careful about covering their tracks.”

aeron at thq

[Megan Daniels]

Megan smiled broadly. Kathy was just... overwhelmingly nice in a way that seemed to be getting rarer and rarer. No wonder she had managed to win over even such an intently metaphobic city. Megan knew the 'intently positive from experience instead of naivete' personality type,  her old friend Emily had it, Paladin had it, and she was starting to realize she had it too. "For sure, it's a great place and I've only had a chance to talk with two of my colleagues so far but they seem good people. Mostly. One guy's a bit creepy but even he seems to mean well. I'm sure it's easier to keep in touch when crossing the country is such a simple task of course."

Her expression darkened very slightly at the talk of the attacks, she took another sip of tea and said "I heard about the ferry, and that Mall thing was literally a week after I moved. I had just going through the physicals when it happened. You'd think people would try targeting New York and San Francisco less, but I guess most of them aren't thinking of that. I used to think that it wasn't realistic that after a couple times the supervillains in comics would just keep working right around the Heroes that keep beating them, but apparently I needed to give those writers more credit" she could only think of three names for NYC Heroes but she knew the program there was very solid, and San Francisco was the effective hub of metahumanity these days with Paladin, Gravity Girl, and a bunch of less famous but still highly effective Heroes always on call.
 
Finishing her tea Megan grinned once more and said "I know we have great people on both coasts ready to pounce once something turns up. It's what I joined for, I saw I had a part to play, I could actually do something to make people's lives better with my powers. And it's a pleasure to meet anyone else united in that goal" she said giving a rather overdone Shakespearean bow "Pleased to make your acquaintance M'lady"

[Kathy Howard]

WRITE A STORY OF A HERO!

Kathy shrugged. “People don’t want to leave their home turf. What we said earlier applies just as much to criminals as it does to heroes. They’d rather stick around in a town they know and just get better at avoiding us than move out to a smaller city and have to rebuild their network. Being run out of town without even putting up a fight would be too humiliating for people with that kind of ego.”

Her gaze hardened slightly. “Besides, I’m more than happy enough to knock them down whenever they show up.”

Kathy grinned and laughed at Megan’s bow. “Hey now, I’m supposed to be the gallant knight, sweeping the beautiful ladies off their feet. It’s not fair when you do it to me.”

***

Kathy appeared back in New York in the time between breaths, a smile on her face and a song in her heart. She always loved meeting new heroes, even ones that were grim and dour like Tank, but especially ones that shared some of her views on heroism as Megan did. It was one of the things that kept her going, that let her continue facing every day with a smile.

She’d have to visit again in a while, check in on how Megan was doing. It’s not like she needed much of an excuse to pop round to San Francisco, and it might be a good opportunity to catch up with Paladin again as well.

aeron at thq