29 Soaring High

"Ah son of…" I stopped myself before saying the B word as Ryan looked at me. "..gun?"

He rolled his eyes at me. "I know what you were going to say…B!tch"

"Yea, well I get to say it because I'm the adult and I'm frustrated. I was in third and now I'm 9th, you see how it feels when you get hit by the ghost and the lightning…and I'm also tiny!"

"We all got hit by the lightning!" he responded as his body twisted with the turn, hoping the controller would add a little edge.

"Yea but you stayed in first."

"That's because I'm awesome! I'm going to win."

"Don't be so sure. I may not beat you but the computer could get lucky, there's half a lap left!"

It took us over 4 hours to fly the over thirteen hundred miles back to New York from Minnesota.

I took my time and we had some father and son bonding moments while I taught him how to maneuver through the air.

Dads teach their kids how to ride a bike I teach mine how to break the sound barrier.

Honestly, we could have made way better time but we took the scenic route as we were both enjoying ourselves. Plus Ryan simply wasn't dressed for supersonic flight, air drag was a bitch.

The elevator chimed indicating Ashley and Deep were about to enter. I heard them coming from a mile away, figuratively speaking, since they were only a few dozen floors below me when I tuned in, but I was more interested in the other figure that was also making his way up the tower, Noir.

"There you are!" Ashley said all excitedly. "We've been looking for you the whole morning!"

"Yea" Deep nodded.

I didn't bother standing and addressed them from the couch.

"Well as you can see I was busy." I said and launched the red turtle shell that would put me back in fourth place. "With my son." I finished, and put the controller down on the coffee table.

Ryan won, by a decent margin as well.

"Ryan, say hello to Ashley, the CEO of Vought, she's very important, she's the boss of everyone in this building." I said with a smile.

"Hi!" he said shyly.

"And this is Deep, Lord of the seven seas."

"Hey" Deep responded.

They were both looking quite awkward unsure what to say so I took the lead.

"So what is?"

"Your speech from yesterday…" Ashley started.

"If you're going to ask me to go on talk shows again to explain myself, not going to happen. Starlight should have been enough for that…"

"No, no that's just it!" she cut me off. "It worked, they loved it, the people loved it! Uh, not everyone but mostly everyone!"

My brow rose signaling my curiosity and for her to elaborate.

"Working class white males 24-60 both rural and urban loved it. Blue collar folks loved it, working class moms loved it. Black Americans loved it. I mean 'Truth, Justice and the American Way!' you scored high even with college educated white collar workers. You nailed it out of the park!" She said with a giant smile plastered on her face. I could see the excitement in her eyes.

"That whole bit about taking responsibility was fantastic. Women and mothers specifically loved that. Even 'Our Country, Our People' polled well though some are saying that was a dog whistle to, well, you know who." She said as though whispering, putting her hand to the side of her mouth.

"But we can work with that. The rural folks ate it all up. Your ratings have never been higher, combined you and Starlight are now probably the most influential people in America if not on the planet!"

"But the stock price dropped yesterday?"

"Yes, yes, but it bounced back towards the end of the day and it's almost at parity now to what it was before. Look the marketing team thinks we should…"

She didn't have a chance to finish as the new guest interrupted her. My features became stone cold.

"Noir, hey, Noir!" Deep said surprised.

I could tell the determination in his footsteps.

"I think, we should, uh, go." Ashley said.

"Wait!" I halted their tracks.

"Ryan" I said trying to sound as apologetic as possible to my son. "I need some private time for a while to take care of some sensitive work things. Why don't you go with Deep, he can show you the Crime Analytics Lab and all the cool computer stuff there. Right Deep?"

Deep looked at me and then at Ryan and luckily he caught that my question was actually an order.

"Yea, yea of course. Crazy stuff, they can like predict crime almost before it happens."

Ryan looked at me with a questioning look. "It won't be long, I just need about an hour and I'll catch up with you guys."

He nodded and left with them.