WIP excerpt - "Paragon" (Patreon)

Today I'm sharing the currently-trunked partial draft of a superhero novel I started and then set aside. After writing a bit of it and chatting with my agent, I took some of the ideas and thematic interest and started a new novel, which became "Between Two Wars". 

I genuinely don't know if I'll do anything with this novel, as superhero fiction is a pretty tough sell in the traditional market, unless you're writing an official Marvel/DC tie-in. But I really liked a few of the pieces in here. This is an un-edited first draft, so know that going in w/r/t typos, some <notes> and general roughness.

--

Chapter One

At night, the Five Cities came alive in a hundred different ways - the joyous sounds of music and dancing from rooftop concerts, the hidden crackles of back-alley sorcery, the chrome-and-neon spectacle of super-science innovations inspiring humanity to ever-greater ambitions, and the countless crooks that would prey on people just living their lives.

With a population of nine million and growing, the Five Cities had dangers to spare. Houston Yards was one of a hundred neighborhoods with its own specific troubles - gentrification the latest to flare up, with MaxCorp bidding to buy out several city blocks for new development.

But it was much harder to punch gentrification in the face than InfiniShark or the Nega Clique. Dan "Paragon" Douglas breathed deep and tapped into the well as he ran across the rooftop and jumped, arcing through the cool evening sky. He reached out with his senses in all directions for sirens, cries for help. Ever since the accident downtown, he'd gained another sense, a feeling of depth, power, of hands holding him up, a deep well of power that could make him faster, stronger, tougher, and more. And the power was still new to him, still revealing its mysteries.

But for now, it led him to...

Fire. The crackling of flame consuming wood, the smell of smoke, the muffled cries for help. Paragon flipped off a roof, pushed off a fire escape, then swung on a rail to hurl himself across the street toward the fire. Even with his powers, Paragon envied flying supers like Prism and their ability to just fully go over things rather than deploying a combination of leaping and parkour. Even if the parkour looked fun and would have impressed his fifteen year old self.

He tapped the comm stone on his collar and said "responding to a fire on fitieth and Dutch. Anyone around to help?" The comm stone connected him with his roommates Rigger and Gnosis, both still on patrol for the night, though they were miles away.

Following the cloud of smoke, Dan spotted the building. A five-story brownstone, smoke flowing out of the top three floors and from ventilation on the roof. Old construction, probably last renovated twenty years ago. One of the side effects of working as a superhero was getting intimately familiar with the construction of buildings, from the types of warehouses with Die Hard-capable air ducts to ways that apartment buildings would collapse on you in a disaster. There was a reason so many supers worked as architects as their day jobs. Paid better than publishing, too.

Paragon leaped up two stories at a time and climbed inside a fifth-floor window.

He stood inside a bedroom with bed, dresser, and floor ablaze. The collective toughness he tapped through the well would protect him, but only for so long. No time to waste. "Is anyone there! This is Paragon, I'm here to help!" State law required supers to identify themselves during disaster response so residents knew they weren't fire department or another type of EMS. Insurance, liability, so on. It also helped make you into a person to the survivors, you weren't just a shadowy figure. Every little bit of connection made a difference.

Paragon heard faint voices several rooms away. He shouldered his way through the door into a smoke-filled hallway. The floor burned, which meant shaky footing. Caution paid off as a section of floor collapsed, so he leaped over the hole, not bothering to look through the floor because he didn't need any more nightmare fuel thank you very much.

The other bedroom was empty, so he checked the closet in case the survivors were hiding under hastily-soaked blankets. No luck. Which meant that the hall was even hotter and smokier as he made his way through the kitchen toward the third bedroom. He was going too slow. He'd need to take a break after getting this group out, and there could be twenty more people in the building. Maybe if he was lucky, someone else was nearby, EMS, his roommates, anyone.

Slagged tile and charcoaled cabinets bit at his nose as he pushed his way through the kitchen, weaving around a blazing pyre of an island prep station.

"Hello?" he called again, air thick, visibility almost non-existent. What he wouldn't do for some wind control or a power suit right about then.

"In here!" came the voice, broken by coughs.

"Stand back from the door!" he called, then ripped the door off its hinges, casting it aside behind him. Smoke rolled into the living room. Moonlight silhouetted two figures against the open window. Smart to keep their heads outside, but without a fire escape on that side, they'd have no real way out.

"Can you fly?" asked a voice.

"It's going to be fine. I jump with the best of them. Is there anyone else with you?" He approached with arms open, trying to be as unthreatening as possible while also holding back a couch from the smoke.

"There's other people in the building," said one.

"I'll be back for them soon. Now grab hold and don't let go."

Two sets of arms wrapped around him, and he gingerly crawled half out the window, eying a nearby three-story building as his target.

"Okay, here we go!"

Dan pushed off the building and window, leaning to direct his path. One of the people wrapped around him screamed. Fair.

He stumbled forward as they landed, but stayed on his feet.

"You're safe. Do me a favor please and make sure the fire department is on the way." he said, turning to look back at the building. The survivor's faces barely entered his memory as he planned his way back in.

"Thank you so much," said the taller survivor, with short hair and many piercings.

"Which one are you again?" Asked the other, mermaid ombre hair tied in a loose knot.

He tried to ignore his disappointment and instead mustered his best hero voice.

"I'm Paragon." Then he ran off the side of the building and leaped back into the fire.

#

Chapter Two

Hours later, his suit reeking of smoke and feeling woozy, Dan checked the angles before climbing inside his apartment. Gnosis had enchanted the doors and windows of the building to make it easier for the three of them to come and go without notice. People just didn't look up around their building, didn't bother to take the leap from "a person in a super suit just climbed in the window" to "who lives here and how can I profit from knowing that they're a superhero?"

Dan closed the window, drew the curtains, then collapsed on the messy chair. The "I'm bleeding but I need to sit down before I can do anything about it" chair, the "I desperately need a shower but that can wait just a second" chair. They picked up a new one every few weeks from toss-aways on the street, since the messy chairs accumulated blood, ichor, and assorted smells faster than seemed possible.

"Hey," said Arielle from the kitchen. Their apartment had an almost living-room-sized living room, a small open kitchen, and the bedrooms off in the back. It wasn't the smallest place he'd lived in since coming to the five, but it was smaller than the one-bedroom he'd lived in his years as an upperclassman in college.

Arielle "Rigger" Butler wore her gray-on-black suit without the mask, holding a glass of water in one hand and a plate with deli meats in the other. Arielle had medium-brown skin, piercing eyes, and wore her thin dreads up and back to keep them out of her face. Arielle was a gadgeteer and her power was, from what Dan could tell, the willpower to train harder than anyone he'd ever met. She hit the gym hard, hit the books hard, was a social worker and handywoman in their apartment to get them a break on rent. She was intense at work but relished spare moments to relax: the wind-down period after patrols, the meals after victories, and when the building's residents staved off a buyout by MaxCorp through six weeks of sustained protest.

Ari handed Dan the water as he breathed slow, focusing his power on strengthening his lungs to filter out the smoke. "Thanks. May need to hit the O2 here in a minute."

"Of course." Ari pulled over a chair from the small dining area to sit with Dan. She offered the plate of food to share. "Sorry I couldn't make it up for the fire. There's a new alliance between some of the Alt-Right gangs, they were harassing a protest at the downtown ICE office."

"How'd it go?"

"Strangely, none of those courageous heroes of the West wanted to rumble with a little black lady and her big toys."

Ari was shorter than Dan, but not by much. And she was both in better shape and carried far more weaponry. Dan was a bruiser, while Ari rolled with a deceptively spacious utility belt and an array of pockets built into her suit.

"How were the cops?"

"Okay. Ish. They weren't obvious in their support of the red hats, at least."

For a large, liberal city, the police were frustratingly regressive. Some said it was because they were tired of being upstaged by the capes.

"Or maybe they're just racist," Ari would offer.

"Do you have parts to spare to make me a rebreather? Taking breaks to clear my lungs nearly got some folks killed. I can't have that on my conscience."

"So you'll put it on mine if I can't make it?" Ari asked. But with a smile.

"Of course not. Sorry. It was just too close out there. I still feel like I'm flailing. But not like I have the spare time to train more, or like anyone has answers for what's going on with my powers."

"Not for lack of trying," said Gnosis, floating down the hallway from the bedrooms. "But I am not remotely close to giving up." Alex "Gnosis" Johnston, the third superheroic housemate, was the shortest and slimmest of the three, white skin pale from even less time in the sun than Dan and his office life day job. Alex's power lay in magic rather than machinery or whatever gave Dan his abilities. Alex's costume was grandiose, with brocaded robes in brightly contrasting colors. At home, they stuck with robes, but far simpler. This one was soft pink and well-loved, hem not quite touching the floor as they arced over to the couch to join the conversation. "Delving into the realms of the hidden has given me many questions but few answers regarding your powers. Without dedicated time to journey with you, work will continue to be slow."

"I just don't know when we can take the time off," Dane said. "The red hats are on the move, we're just starting hurricane season, and half of the Watchers are still missing after the Ydaer Realignment."

"The CityCapes forum is full of people posting away messages and not-so-veiled complaints about burnout. It's everywhere. Ever since the Sam Scion rolled into office..." Ari said.

The room fell silent. Sam hadn't even got his powers when the last election happened. The time before felt like yesterday and an eternity ago. Even in supposedly left-leaning cities, hate crimes were up, protests became skirmishes, and failing infrastructure led to more derailments, more sinkholes, and worse. The friction of day-to-day life was higher, like swimming through the humidity of summer but all the time in the little ways that the social order was being torn apart.

"Not like we can be everywhere," Alex said. "There aren't enough of us, even with the lifer legacies like Prism and Atlas. And the living legends - Amazon, Protector. They're ageless, inspiring, and totally out of touch in the 21st century. They think it's still 1955 and that the biggest things we have to worry about are natural disasters and scheming villains with obvious costumes."

"Why wouldn't they? They haven't lived in the same world with the rest of us for decades. That's why we have to start taking the lead."

"For right now, I'm taking the lead in going to bed." Dan hugged his roommates, threw himself into the shower for a minute, then collapsed in his bed, falling instantly asleep.

***

Dan was snatched from dreamless sleep by his alarm. 7AM came very quickly when you were regularly out until 2. His commute used to be longer, crossing an entire borough to get to work. But that was before he got his powers, before he took on his second job with even worse hours and no pay.

Only the big heroes got sponsorships worth mentioning.

Twinges of jealousy or possibly back pain accompanied Dan as he put on the day's slacks and collared shirt. He ran a comb through his hair, which still smelled like smoke.

"I burned my breakfast and had to put out the fire," his subconscious supplied as soon as he realized people at work might wonder.

It turned out that one of the skills you had develop as a superhero was coming up with contextually-appropriate lies on your feet.

Ari and Alex were still asleep, so he soft-footed his way around the apartment, grabbing a protein bar for breakfast and stopping for a coffee before getting on the subway.

He could run and jump along rooftops and get to work in half the time, but there was a good chance he'd get sidetracked by something and even if he didn't, Dan liked traveling like a normal person sometimes. The legends lost touch with people, keeping themselves apart, above people, like zookeepers. Dan wasn't a zookeeper. He barely felt like he knew what animal he was. Bad metaphor.

Plus, the subway made for good people watching and rumor-collecting. Most of the riders were commuting like he was, suits and messenger bags, business wear and statement necklaces and purses big enough to hold the heels you change into at work or the gym bag for using the company rec room. A pair of office worker-looking folks stood near him, arrayed around the train car's central pole. One was tall, white, wearing an expensive suit, and sporting an intolerable smirk. The other two were shorter, one with light brown skin and a newboy cap, the other white and tanned, sporting a flag pin in a way that usually meant "votes for bigots and claims total ownership of patriotism." Great crowd. Dan felt tentatively bad for the probably-south asian member of their group. Dan watched them out of the corner of his eye while listening to his commuting mix of relaxing songs in one earbud.

"Can't wait until the new buildings are up. It'll cut our commute in half. I'll never have to set foot in Kingston again,"

"I grew up in Kingston," said the one with the cap.

"So you know how much of a shithole it is," said the third. The smirker threw a fist-bump to the third, and Dan physically restrained his eyes from rolling all the way back into his head.

Cap-wearer changed topics. "Did you guys catch the match last night? Gladiators totally killed it!"

Q-Ball. The other way for a super to make a living. Rather than let supers play in normal sports, they channeled the metahumans into Q-Ball, which was sort of like MMA meets Quiddich.

The cap-wearer's distraction bid paid off, and the bro-y office workers spent the rest of the trip talking about Q-Ball. Dan noticed the MaxCorp ID badges on their lanyards as they all filed out for their stop. He recognized them thanks to MaxBooks, the megacorp's expansion into publishing, with a small office down the block from Dan's. Also, the MaxCorp logo was an obnoxiously orange box with the letters MC on every side.

MaxCorp was everywhere these days. They made phones and tablets and home admin computers, they ran the world's largest online retailer, and they were moving into bricks and mortar and appliances and probably another half-dozen industries just since last week.

The owner, Theo Max, was the new hotness among tech zillionaires, getting lots of press for his space program, for his feud with the asshole president, and more. Locally, that included his power play to base his new corporate headquarters in Fuhrst, pushing the city to give him a whole neighborhood near Dan's apartment. It was a big fight and not at all resolved. Or did these guys know more about how it was going than the papers let on?

The rest of his commute passed in a blur, his focus returning as emerged onto his floor and entered the offices of Metal Phoenix Books.

Game face, he told himself. Facing down muggers and super-criminals was one thing. But at work, he couldn't be paragon. He had to be super all on his own as Dan Douglas.

#

Chapter Three

He walked past the closed (always closed) door of Derek Patel, the publisher/owner and the open (always open even when reading) door of Elissa Edelman, senior editor and de-facto actual Person In Charge.

Dan had a few minutes to check his email before the weekly meeting, but his coffee still hadn't kicked in and instead he zoned out until a friendly face and a halo of curly blonde hair appeared beside him.

"Good to go, Dan?" Kaycee Mitchell was only a couple of years younger than he was, but she was new enough to publishing that she felt even younger. She hadn't had her heart broken by publishing. Yet. Dan had already known the anguish and frustration of shepherding a beloved book out the door only to see it sink like a rock or totally eclipsed by another house's blockbuster debut du jour. Kaycee rocked the Geek Girl Chic style, with a rocket ship-pattered dress and assorted pins on her denim jacket from a half-dozen properties across the universe of speculative fiction - dragon enamel pins, space amazon ranger corps badges, and more.

Every Monday, the team assembled in their conference room to set the agenda for the week. Kaycee and he were the last to arrive. Since Elissa was running the meeting, there were donuts and bagels. Derek never brought in food. Or coffee. Except when he was firing people. Derek's uncle Hiran had been a lifelong fan, an editor and publisher first and a businessman second. Dan grew up reading Steel Phoenix and had lept at the opportunity to join the team three years ago. Once Dan got on the inside, he saw the downside of operating a business like a reader. The company did fine, thanks to his great eye for personnel and fiction, but they struggled with profitability. So when Hiran died of a heart attack two years ago, his nephew Derek took over and brought his MBA ruthlessness to the company. More than a little bit of culture clash, and things were still settling into their new shape.

Victor Kim was the second newest member of the team, running publicity since he came over from the blogger side of the industry. He still had strong ties in queer publishing media from his time making videos for the Trans Dimensional Lit channel on MaxTube. He had light brown skin and hair done up in a mini pompadour. Victor also had the coolest floral patterned shirts from places Dan had never heard of like Wildfang and Dorothea's Wardrobe. Victor waved hello with half a raspberry basil donut, covering his mouth as he chewed.

Azmi Lakhani sat beside Victor, a spiral notebook by one hand, tablet by the other. Azmi had just come out to the office a few months ago, and sported a pronoun spinner pin pointing to 'Him' attached to a prohibition-style red vest, his medium-length hair slicked back with pomade. Azmi was the other editor at the house, more junior than Elissa but with an impressive and growing list, including some award finalists.

And by the head of the table, the end seat left empty, was Elissa. Elissa was older than the rest of the team, having fought her way through the ranks at three different houses before finally landing the Senior Editor position at Steel Phoenix. She knew everyone in speculative fiction, worked tirelessly on her list, served as the art director for the whole imprint, while also making time to mentor everyone else on the team, and did an amazing job of running interference when Derek decided to take a counterproductive interest in some minutia of the business.

"Okay, let's get started," Elissa said as Kaycee and Dan took their seats. "We've got sales conference in two weeks. Dan, what do you still need for your presentation?"

Sales conference. Both the best chance to pitch the distributor's sales reps on Steel Phoenix's books and the most terrifying time of his professional life. He'd given five seasons of presentations and they had yet to get easier despite assurances from Elissa and others that they would.

Dan looked up toward the ceiling, checking his memory. Then he swiped through his tablet to double-check his spreadsheet and confirm.

"We were going to revise the sales copy on <title> and re-do the BISACs to match, the cover for <Title 2> is late but I can slot it in if we get it before the presentation, and we need to decide between <title 3> and <title 4> for the last lead slot."

As an independent distributed client Steel Phoenix was distributed by but not actually owned by Biblio Tech, who handled sales and distribution and more (including renting Steel Phoenix office space in their building), the house was given a short presentation slot. Each sales conference, Dan had twenty minutes to pitch the sales team on Steel Phoenix's highest-priority titles for a third of the year, be they the debut darling aiming for a commercial knockout or the literary award-bait title targeted at the book clubs. A good sales conference pitch was like nailing a rocket launch, lining up a hundred things to maximize a book's chance to take off, the author and publisher's enthusiasm transmitted to the sales team and magnified to the buyers, who then choose between thousands of titles per season to fill their limited shelf space.

<expand and dramatize>

Victor and Kaycee piped in about the sales copy, Elissa gave the update on the cover art, and then moved on to other topics for the week, including an editorial board meeting that Thursday and Derek's expected return the week after. Which would then be followed by the yearly reviews.

The same reviews where the year previous, Derek had fired their old publicity manager and their art director.

But the sales conference came first.

Elissa wrapped up the meeting and everyone returned to their stations to get back to work.

Dan loved nothing more at work than disappearing into sales data and copy. He found his focus in long chunks of working time, making sense out of the patterns, brainstorming the perfect way to talk about a given book to highlight what made it special that also synced up with the cover and the current trends in the market. Any given novel could be turned into several different books when packaged and positioned for the market. Lean on the romantic subplot and put the beefy love interest on the cover and you turned a book from space opera with romantic elements into a crossover space opera/science fiction romance. Some books were more flexible than others, and it was up to Dan and the team to identify the strategy that would give any given book the best chance to succeed in a business with ever more competition from the blisteringly fast self-publishing authors and the shrinking margins due to pressure from MaxBooks and uPom.

"Earth to Dan, raise your blast shields."

Dan looked up from his screen to Kaycee with her jacket and purse. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was 5:45 already. Had he eaten lunch? His stomach rumbled in the negative.

"Drafts & Draughts?"

Dan stood and cracked his back, realizing just how long he'd been sunk into his chair without taking a break. One of the downsides of being superhumanly strong and tough? You could put up with a lot more without noticing. But he'd gotten as much done in one day as would have taken three when he started. Some of that was due to experience, but not all of it.

"Yeah, of course. I just got really dialed in on those reports. Still trying to anticipate all of Derek's questions before he can ask them."

Kaycee looked up and down the lane of cubicles before saying conspiratorially, "Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that anyone really ever needs to know the exact proportion of self-published books in the MaxBooks top 100 every month for every speculative sub-genre?"

"You'd think. So about those beers..."

#

Chapter Four

Drafts and Draughts was a monthly meetup of speculative fiction publishing professionals from across the Five Cities. It was organized by a local author and the art director at Photon Books, which was the 800-pound gorilla of the field, putting out as many books in a month as Steel Phoenix did in half a year. It was mostly folks on staff at the various publishing companies, literary agents, plus some of the buyers at big retailers and some local authors. Dan tried to time his author's pre-publication visits to line up with Drafts and Draughts whenever possible to introduce them around, especially if they were getting ready to change agents or needed to make some connections to sell their next series after striking out with Steel Phoenix.

This month, the event was being held several neighborhoods downtown and in a ritzier, hipper, (whiter) neighborhood. The place was called High Hrothgar, a Beowulf-themed mead hall with long wooden benches, an A-frame roof with exposed wooden beams, and totally shit acoustics.

It was still early, so the place wasn't too noisy yet. The Steel Phoenix contingent was Kaycee, Azmi, and Dan, with Victor headed to the gym and Elissa on the train upstate to her family. A one-hour commute each way on transit was one thing, but Elissa did two hours each way so she and her family could live in a cozy suburban neighborhood rather than the unlivably expensive city. "Joshua needs land and trees," she'd always say. He was a programmer by trade and woodsman by passion.

There were about ten other people already assembled, some sitting with dinner, others chatting along the near wall below the decoratively displayed wine horns, spears, and creature shop-made monster heads. Dan came to the event every time he could, though about half the time he ducked out to go on patrol instead. And if Kaycee hadn't been the one to bring it up on her way out, he would have skipped this one, too.

But since he was here, he might as well enjoy himself. He ordered a trio of appetizers to make up a dinner to share while Azmi ordered the first round for the three of them.

"There's no way Derek fires anyone else this year. The place would fall apart!" Azmi waved his pint glass in sweeping gestures, his vest unbuttoned and tie loosened now that they were a beer in and away from the conservative office environment. Azmi was the first bigender person Dan had known (to his knowledge) and was still working on not automatically supplying 'her' pronouns to anyone with curves like Azmi had.

Dan shook his head at Azmi's disbelief. "I don't know. He's come down hard on me in the last couple of monthly reports. I'm not taking any chances."

"I'm sure you'll be fine," Kaycee said. "Nail the sales conference presentation and he won't even think about dropping anyone."

"How's the derby team doing?" Dan asked, changing the subject.

Kaycee took the signal, though Dan caught a look of worry from Azmi over the pint glass. Kaycee was excitable, but Azmi didn't let things sneak by that easy.

By eight, the crowd had grown to thirty people and Dan was mingling, moving from group to group to check in with friends, meet new hires and visiting authors, and had settled into a conversation with his old colleague Janvir Singh, who had taken a job in publicity at MaxBooks, which came with a big raise and benefits, including soon-to-vest stock in MaxCorp. Jan was tall and slim, with a Van Dyke beard and dark brown skin that looked great in his royal blue suit.

"What are you hearing about the new HQ?" Dan asked.

Janvir shrugged. "Nothing solid. Just trickle-down frustrations from upper management that they're getting bogged down. Two months ago the plan was for everyone in the books division to be moved in by next fall, but now we don't even know if it's going to happen."

Jan had left Steel Phoenix not long after his former boss in publicity was let go. "Better to leave on my own than wait for the other shoe to drop," he'd said.

"That's wild. I can't remember a time when they didn't get what they wanted."

"We'll see, I guess." He scanned the crowd for a moment and his eyes lit up. "Sharon!" He stepped forward and waved over an elegant middle-aged black woman wearing black-and-red dress with geometric patterns in gold. She wore gold hoop earrings and wore her hair in a small afro.

She looked familiar but he couldn't place the name. Jan and the woman hugged, then Jan turned to Dan.

"Sharon, this is Dan Douglas. He's the sales manager at Steel Phoenix. Dan, this is Sharon Qualls, founder-partner at Fractal Twin."

"Nice to meet you," Dan said, shaking hands with Sharon. "Sorry, I'm not familiar with Fractal Twin?"

"The announcement just went out today," she said. "We're a worker-owned syndical publishing house. All worker-owned, working with Hprizon for sales and distribution."

"That's fantastic!" Dan said. Sure he didn't know what a syndical publishing house was, but the worker-owned part he got. There was a worker-owned grocery in his neighborhood, and there'd been a co-op grocery store back in college. But he'd never heard of one in publishing.

"Yeah, it's all happening very quickly. I was talking with Xander Siino at Horizon a few months back and he put me in touch with their Incubator Program. The business plan got us the kick-start funds and the team is coming together pretty quickly. Normally we'd wait to announce with some launch titles, but Horizon wanted to show us off as soon as possible."

"You said Horizon was distributing, so you're not a new imprint with them?"

"The incubator funds don't come with an ownership stake. Just asking for right of first refusal on distribution. And since there the only unionized Big Four house, the founding partners and I didn't see a reason to go anywhere else."

"That's super-interesting," Dan said. He remembered himself and stepped off the "This is new and different so I will ask lots of questions train. "Do you want a drink?"

"I'm good, thanks. I don't have new cards yet, but if it's okay, I'll connect with you via Jan? We're still building the team and we'd like to talk to a wide range of folks as we staff up."

He scanned the room quickly to see if Kaycee and Azmi were in earshot. Not that he was especially worried what they would say, but who knows what could get back to Derek. All clear.

"Of course. And good luck!" he said as he excused himself to get another drink. Better do water first, he told himself. Or tap into the well to super-charge his liver for a bit.

As he crossed to the bar, the room got much noisier almost all at once. He looked to the door for a large party or for something, but no, the sea of people had just turned the volume up by two notches like it was a coordinated effort.

Dan approached a totally full bar with a double-parked row of people standing and hoping to get service from the fast-but-way-outnumbered bartenders.

"Good luck. I've been here for ten minutes," said the person beside him. He turned and looked down to see the person attached to the voice. She was maybe five six, with amber-brown skin and long hair pulled back in a simple pony tail. She wore a sleeveless black dress and had a clutch cradled in one arm, the other hand up trying to catch a bartender's attention.

And she was gorgeous. Like, he knew he'd already been staring too long but he couldn't stop himself from taking in the lines of her cheekbones or the depth of her brown eyes or the way she fit the dress.

Dan forced himself to speak so he'd stop staring. "The height advantage may be useful here," he said, turning back to the bar, holding a hand up and leaning in. A few moments later, he caught the bartender's attention, then waved the woman in.

"Go for it."

"Thanks," she said with warmth. To the bartender, she said, "Can I get a Canchanchara?"

"Sorry what?"

She sighed. "Nevermind. I'll take a Moscow Mule."

The bartender turned to Dan. "And for you?"

"The Five-Fingered Amber, please?"

"One tab?" asked the bartender.

Dan was about to say no when his neighbor presented a card. "Yep."

And with that, the bartender vanished.

"I'm Dan," he said.

"Nicky," she answered, presenting a hand to shake.

"Nice to meet you."

"Thanks for leveraging your height," she answered with a smile that just about made him swoon.

"What's a canchanchara?" he asked, repeating the word slowly to make sure he didn't fuck up the pronunciation.

"Old traditional cuban cocktail. My great uncle wouldn't drink anything else. Today would have been his birthday."

The mix of sorrow and fondness playing out across her face told him he'd passed.

"Sorry for your loss. I hope you have good memories to hold on to."

"Many, thanks."

The bartender returned with the drinks.

"What was his name?" Dan asked.

"Enrique."

"To Enrique, then?" Dan offered his drink to toast.

"She nodded. "To Enrique." The she rattled off a saying in very rapid Spanish that he totally failed to follow. She tapped his glass with hers and they drank.

"I should get to the party," she said, gesturing back where he'd come.

"Nice to meet you, Nicky. Have a good night."

Nicky chuckled, eyes filled with amusement. Dan almost swooned again.

"Night's not over. I see Azmi waving at you, so you must be the Dan from Steel Phoenix. Let's grab a table."

Muggers? Easy. Blazing fires? Not great, but doable.

But standing in this woman's presence felt like having a thousand spotlights on him from every direction in the most terrifying and electric way.

She offered a hand and he followed.

But three steps later, his phone buzzed. And the only way it was allowed to buzz was if a news alert hit tagged within a mile of his location. A big one. Ari had set the system up, some advanced geo-tagged algorithmic stuff that went over his head.

He checked his phone and saw the alert from Ari.

"Proud Boys harassing a LGBTQ cultural center: 37th at Rivera."

He slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket.

"Sorry, something came up with my roommate. I have to go. It was nice to meet you."

He read surprise and disappointment on her face. Or he hoped it was that combination and not something worse. Dating was extremely hard in the five cities, even without being a superhero.

"Okay. I hope everyone's okay," Nicky said.

He wanted to stay, to explain, to tell her right then about everything even though that was ridiculous and they'd just met and knew nothing about her. But there was a different version of this night that could have been the start of something and he was afraid that if he turned and left that he'd never see even a shadow of what that world could have been.

But he had to go.

"Thanks, I hope so, too. Have a good night."

Walking out, he thought about the half-dozen other dates he'd had to abandon since becoming Paragon. The friend's parties he'd left early or never made. The time when he'd failed to pick up his little cousin at the airport because InfiniShark hit an armored van. He'd heard about that one from his parents for months.

But beating himself up wouldn't protect anyone. He looked for a changing spot and prepared for a fight.

#

Chapter Five

37th and Rivera was a crossroads intersection, connecting a Latinx and black neighborhood to a rapidly-gentrified white tech-y neighborhood. And because the blocks west of Rivera had flipped quickly over just a handful of years, plus the rising rents, meant that even though maybe it made sense defensively for the LGBTQ community center to move, they didn't, or couldn't. And they should have to.

It was the Proud Boys making the scene. Ten of them, ranging from maybe twenty to forty-five. They wore the Asshole President's uniform of a white polo, ill-fitting khakis, and those fucking red hats. Two of them had baseball bats, one an extending baton, and one particularly on-the-nose asshole carried a tiki torch.

The window of the community center was broken, hand-painted rainbow shattered. There were people huddled inside and just three facing the Proud Boys directly. A tall black woman in a maxi dress and fierce makeup, a big guy with a well-trimmed beard, and a short Latina in flannel with a knife.

Paragon pushed off with all his strength. Ten to three was bad odds, and from what he knew about the police in this precinct, they wouldn't be the kind of backup needed here.

Dan had grown up thinking well of the police. It took moving to a big city and living with Ari and Lex to understand the layers to policing and criminal justice he'd grown up not having to see.

He landed just outside the group, projecting as much power and confidence as he could as he drew himself up to his full height.

"Get out of here," he told the Proud Boys.

The one with the torch sneered back at him. "Fuck off, cape. We're just cleaning up the neighborhood."

"You're full of shit," he said. "Get out of here, now."

The pair with the baseball bats swung for him.

Thank you, he thought, catching one bat and using it to clobber the other red hat.

Another four of them dove on him, and he embraced the joys of moral clarity.

"Never feel bad about punching a Nazi, Dan," his grandfather had told him as a kid when he got suspended from school for punching a kid that told a classmate to "go back to Mexico." The classmate was Guatemalan and her family had been in the US for four generations.

Sometimes he worried about being a vigilante.

This wasn't one of those times.

He held back, knowing full well that he could kill any of these assholes. But he for sure did not need manslaughter charges. He punched them hard enough to hurt, to knock one off his feet, to send another crashing into the bro behind him. But not hard enough to kill.

The DAs were much less forgiving if people got hauled off in body bags. Which was the difference between what Dan did and what his grandfather did in World War II.

The Nazis were already waging war on the country, but the government didn't recognize it that way. So Paragon had to pull his punches.

And then one of the Proud Boys hit him and he went flying.

He smashed through the front window of a car and landed in the seat. The world spun for a moment, and when he got his bearings, he saw the guy that had clocked him. It was tiki torch guy, though he'd haded that one off to someone else. He had tattoos on one arm that made him out to be a veteran of some sort. The high and tight added to that look. No guarantee, given the way the Proud Boys operated, but it was likely.

He was strong. But was he fast?

Paragon dove deeper into the well of power at the edges of his perception. Something rippled through him like the warmth of just-drinkable hot pouring down his throat and he leaped out of the broken car.

"You like that?" the red hat said. "Try me, sissy."

Stopping to roll his eyes at the mediocre banter wouldn't help him, so instead he crouched into a flurry of body blows. The red hat took them in stride and kicked Paragon aside. This time a street light caught him, folding in half.

Those were going to hurt in the morning. So he was tough enough to take body blows in stride, but not fast enough to stop them.

Paragon grabbed the mangled street light and swung for the fences. He knocked the super-nazi off his feet, landing hard and cracking pavement thirty feet away. Paragon brandished the lamp post at the others, who fell back to their super-friend. The trio of defenders took this opportunity to shuttle their friends out of the community center and down the street.

High-and-tight pulled himself up, and stared at Paragon for what felt like forever. He still hadn't gotten used to these staredowns, when a crook would size him up, play out the fight in their mind, and then strike or back down. Bully-punching aside, Dan didn't grow up eager for conflict. He'd been pushed into playing Basketball because of his height, but never really took to it. He played because he was good, and because he liked his teammates.

"We're good, purple guy!" said someone behind him. The flurry of sounds told him the community members were getting away.

"That the best you got, sissy?" Only he didn't say sissy. He said something far worse.

The red hats fanned out, getting ready to surround him. As a few moved in on Paragon's left, they collapsed under a flexible steel net.

A familiar flexible steel net. Paragon grinned.

"Thanks for the assist, Rigger!" he called into the night air. Another net wrapped itself around a pair of the red hats on the other side, leaving just five of them on their feet, including the strong one.

"You got this, Superior!" shouted one of the red hats still standing.

Of course his name is Superior. He was almost surprised the guy wasn't going by Ubermenschen.

"Not man enough to take me on your own?" Superior said.

"You're terrorizing people. We don't have to play by your rules," called Rigger, still hidden by shadow. Her voice sounded like it came from everywhere and nowhere. He had no idea how she did it. Years of practice, probably.

Superior ripped the nets apart like they were plastic, allowing his buddies to pull their red hats to their feet.

Three forms stepped up beside Paragon. It was the community's defenders from before. Ten to one was now ten to five, with two supers on their side.

The flannel-clad Latina spoke up in a sharp alto. "This isn't your city. It's not your borough, not your neighborhood, not your block,"

"The marketplace of ideas sent your garbage packing seventy-five years ago," added the tall black woman.

Superior sneered. "Next time we come back, you better be gone."

"Walk off, khaki boys," said the burly bear.

It looked for a moment like they might charge again. But when Superior pulled out his phone and started walking away, it was over.

"Your Aryan hero Superior here. We just scared off some sjws..."

"Get fucked, Nazi scum!" shouted the Latina. The other queer folks turned up the roar to ruin Superior's audio.

He remembered another of Ari's lines from an anti-fascist march. "Beat them in the tweets, beat them in the streets."

A wave of delayed fear and exhaustion hit him all at once. He walked over to the curb and sat, holding back the shakes.

The red hats were all out of sight, and he let the fear pass through him.

Arms wrapped around him. He looked up to see the burly bearded guy.

"It's going to be okay, hon."

Ari dropped to the street beside him, retracting the line on her grappling hook.

"Let's get out of here, Paragon. Cops will be here any minute."

"Doesn't that mean we should stay?"

The bearded guy spoke up again. "We can handle the police, Kansas. Been handling them our whole lives."

"Plus the guys in this precinct hate capes," added the tall black woman.

"Thanks for showing up," said a small white guy in a tank top and close-cropped hair. "That doesn't happen a lot for us."

"I'll be here whenever you need me." He handed them a transponder, another of Rigger's inventions.

The burly man took it and slipped it into a breast pocket on his leather jacket. " Thanks. See you around."