Photoshoot

[Otto's POV]

"My God," Alex said as he held out his hand for her to see. It was trembling visibly. "I don't think I've ever been this nervous before."

Otto quickly took his trembling hand in hers, not caring for the paint they'd both covered themselves from head to toe with earlier, half expecting it to feel cold, but it didn't. Well, it was to be expected since the paint had dried a long time ago. She knew Alex didn't want to do this photoshoot, but even thought Francis had done a wonderful job of acting as the angry and stern police officer in front of the press, they still needed to cover up the rest of his little accident a few days before.

"It's unsettling to see you like this. I've never seen you nervous before," she said as she shot him a worried glance. "It's just a photoshoot. I can't possibly imagine what's gotten you so rattled. Certainly not if you keep into account all the dangerous things you've done in the past months."

"It's not the photoshoot that has me worried. It's the first time I'll try to influence a large number of people through social media," he said. "If we do this wrong, I might become a world-famous relic, a religious crowd-puller…"

Yeah, they'd both gotten a taste of that barely a week ago. She'd been astounded by the crowd Alex's little outbreak had caused. And most of those people had been drawn to nothing more than a rumour. Who knew what kind of crowds would show up if the rumours were confirmed.

A shiver ran down Otto's back but she violently shook the feeling. Now was not the time to feel disheartened.

"If we do this right, you'll be known worldwide as the young genius who re-invented technology as we know it," Otto said as she gave his hand a little squeeze and offered a reassuring smile when he looked up. "The difference isn't all that big."

Alex barked a laugh.

"It's all the difference to me," he said as he looked down at their hands, squeezed hers and then looked up to meet her eyes again. "I might need to alter time if this goes wrong."

"There is that," Otto chuckled. "Or you could just be your charming, brilliant self and give Lindsey the material she needs to dazzle the crowd."

"You make it sound so easy," he said with a chuckle as he leaned over to place a small kiss on her lips before he adjusted his get up and nervously checked the little switch with the newest generation of Bright inc. batteries that he kept hidden in his pocket.

Not that he needed the switch or the battery to activate his newest invention. He was a walking power plant himself after all. But this helped to keep the illusion up.

"Are you ready?" Alex asked, one hand on the door handle to Lindsey's newly installed professional photo studio and the other reaching out towards her anxiously. It made Otto chuckle. He clearly wasn't going to enter that room without her.

"As ready as I'll ever be," she chuckled and placed a quick kiss on his cheek while she grabbed his hand and followed him inside.

Otto blinked her eyes at the change of light as they entered the room. There were no windows and all the walls were painted black.

To her right, she spotted Mar standing by the door. He was wearing a suit that looked very pricey and his hair was combed backwards in a tidy fashion. She nodded her head towards him in greeting and he returned the gesture with a smile.

High on the wall to their left, a large roll of thick white fabric hung and was rolled down far enough to cover a few meters of ground. It served as a backdrop. Above and below the white roll, hung another black, grey, blue and green rolls of the same fabric that weren't rolled out.

In the centre of the room stood Lindsey's darling camera on a tripod and a number of large lights, all pointed towards the white backdrop, making it shine brightly.

Lindsey's new photo studio at Bright inc. looked like a normal, very well equipped studio, but Otto knew it wasn't just that. It was a technological highstand. Not to forget that Lindsey's camera was a one-of-kind device, created by Alex himself. Lindsey absolutely adored the thing. She never went anywhere without it anymore. Rumours had it she even snuggled with it as she went to sleep.

Alex steered the both of them straight towards the white backdrop and turned towards the camera. Or perhaps he wasn't looking at the camera itself. When Otto squinted against the light, she could see Lindsey behind the camera, almost hidden by the cover of darkness.

"You two ready?" she asked. A big grin split her face. This whole situation must be a dream come true for her.

"Not really," Alex replied in a sulky way as he held up a hand to shield his eyes against the bright lights.

"Don't the two of you just look adorable!!" Otto heard Jessy squeal from the shadows, but couldn't see her. She was undoubtedly talking about the peach-pink tulle dress and pink heels Otto was wearing. It reminded her a little of a princess dress.

"Shhh!" Jasper shushed her, also hidden by shadows. "Don't distract them! I want to see what Alex has planned this time."

Jasper's comment made a lopsided grin appear on Alex's face. Otto noticed Lindsey press the camera button secretly, but no snapper-sound followed, simultaneously not clueing Alex in on the fact that the shoot had started. Otto guessed most of the shoot would happen without Alex knowing about it. And he probably preferred it that way too.

"Shush yourself! You're much noisier than me!" Jessy whisper-yelled back. But Jasper ignored her.

"Hey Alex!" he yelled from the shadows. "I can join in later too, right?"

"You haven't even seen what I'm about to do," Alex laughed. "What if it's something dirty? Or painful?"

"Ha! We all know it's nothing painful. Otherwise, you'd never allow Otto to join you," Jasper countered. This time it was Otto's turn to chuckle.

"It's electrifying!" she laughed.

"Shhh! No spoilers!" Alex shushed her with an angry scowl. "You'll ruin the surprise! But first Lindsey, is there something particular you need pictures of?"

"First some normal pictures," she followed up as she took her precious camera from the tripod into her hands. "We need some for the Bright inc. website, not to mention we need a decent profile picture for your linkedIn and don't forget that the people of that one magazine asked to hold a photoshoot too. That counts for you too mr. Black."

"Mister Black?" Alex asked incredulously. "Why does he get an honorary title and I don't? I'm the one who's paying you, not him."

"I still am your superior, Alex," Mar grumbled in dislike. To Otto, it looked like he was still angry with Alex for inviting his girlfriend and a friend into the interrogation room, but not his own father. And even though Alex had clarified later on that he couldn't exactly invite everyone to the interrogation room and that he'd been in full crisis handling modus, it still had been a heavy blow to Mar's ego. "But please, call me Mar."

Otto let go of Alex's hand and took a few steps away from him so Lindsey could get a clear full-body shot of him and Mar.

"PC Gamer Magazine?" Jasper asked with a note of curiosity to his voice. For some reason, his comment made Alex chuckle.

"Wired," Alex corrected.

"That's the one!" Lindsey confirmed enthusiastically.

"Wired? What's that about?" Jasper asked, clearly confused.

"It focuses on new technologies and how it affects life," Alex explained briefly. Otto could tell he was kind of proud that they'd asked him for an interview. Jasper whistled in an impressed manner.

"Agreed, that is more impressive than PC Gamer," Jasper said. Alex grinned in confirmation.

"Ok, I have a few good pictures of you separately. Alex, could you move closer to Mar? So that I have a few pictures of the two of you together? And one with just Otto and Alex? We could use a couple's shot. God knows the media has been begging for it," Lindsey said.

When Otto looked towards Alex, he met her eyes, grinned fondly at her and held out his hand for her to grab again. As Mar distanced himself from the white screen, she gladly stepped towards him and took the hand she'd let go of earlier.

Once their hands touched, Alex surprised her by twirling her around, which made her dress flutter around her legs. After spinning her around once, he pulled her close against his chest and wrapped his arms around her middle. Otto found herself staring into the lens once she stopped spinning and wondered for a brief second if Alex had planned that beforehand.

"Perfect!" Lindsey breathed as she bit her lip to keep herself from squealing like a fangirl and quickly snapped some more photos. Otto leaned into his embrace, loving the feeling of security it brought with it and looked up at him over her shoulder.

"Show off," she whispered to him, as she had now made up her mind that his earlier action had indeed been on purpose. She was rewarded with one of his disarming smiles.

"Beautiful!" Lindsey yelled contently. "That should be enough to satisfy the social media for a while. Ok, you can start whatever it is you have planned for today."

"Oh, come on Lindsey," Alex said, smiling mischievously. "You know what we're going to do. We're going to test that precious camera of yours to its full potential. And to do so, we must first turn off the lights."

Alex snapped his fingers, and instantly all the lights turned off, simultaneously shrouding everything in darkness. Except for Lindsey's face, which was illuminated by the only device in the room that hadn't turned off by Alex's command.

"Alex, I know you said 'to its full capacity' but I think this is too dark even for this camera," Lindsey was the first to speak into the darkness. Alex chuckled.

"Of course it is. Photography is the art of capturing light with a device. But when there is no light, there is nothing to capture," he said. Otto could feel how he soundlessly let go of her in the darkness and made sure they weren't touching anywhere. "That's why I invented this."

When he said "this", he activated the switch he'd kept hidden in the pocket of his hoodie and immediately his clothes and the paint they'd covered themselves with lit up in flashy neon colours. His hoodie lit up midnight blue with neon green highlights and the paint on his skin lit up to a warm white.

"Wooow!" Jessy and Jasper gasped in amazement. Lindsey would have gasped too if she hadn't been too busy taking pictures of everything.

"It's illuminating paint," Alex explained. "I was thinking of the best way to explain all the pictures that people had tried to take of my god-form with science and it resulted into two aspects. The first one being the camera you are holding, which isn't prone to high light-dark contrasts. And the second was a cover-up story to why we needed a device like that, which gave me the idea of this paint."

Alex paused for a second and started walking in a circle around Otto. She'd half-expected Jasper, or perhaps Jessy, to say something, but everyone was too eager to hear the rest of his explanation to interrupt him. So he continued.

"I needed a form of light source that would stick to the form of my body closely and would allow me to move freely. So what better medium to use than some form of liquid? Which made it easy, because liquids also conduct electricity in fluid form. But being wet all the time wasn't exactly... desirable, so the idea shifted towards paint instead of liquid. A liquid that emits light when it comes into contact with electricity, even in dried form."

Then he took the little switch with batteries from his pocket and showed it to the camera.

"These two batteries are enough to, not just light up my entire get up, but also," Alex said as he reached over to where Otto was standing again and when he laid his hand on her shoulder, she lit up too. "... everything else it touches."

"Wooow!" Jessy en Jasper yelled again in amazement. Lindsey snapped pictures like a madman. Otto had to give it to him. Alex had a knack for showing off. She looked at herself. Her peach-pink dress and shoes had lit up to a neon pink, just like her skin, and her hair was shining a dark red light.

She'd been joking about it to Jasper earlier, but she had been afraid the paint would electrocute her. She was glad to notice, that the energy in the batteries didn't seem to be interested in human flesh, to the point where it would have left an ugly dark patch in her get-up if she'd forgotten to paint some part of her flesh.

"Oh my God! That's freaking amazing! Otto, you are so beautiful! I barely recognise you anymore! So cool!" Jessy rambled as she came close enough for Otto to see her with the light she emitted herself.

"Now I need a volunteer," Alex continued.

"Me! ME!" Jasper yelled and Alex chuckled.

"I thought you'd say that," he said as he let go of Otto, which caused her lights to dim slowly, took a pot of gel from his other pocket, dipped his hands in the gel which simultaneously lighting up the pasta to a toxic green, and scooped a generous amount of it from the pot. With that generous scoop, he moulded Jasper's hair into a toxic green ken-style hairdo.

"Be kind," Jasper complained as he'd noticed what Alex had been doing to his hair and ruffled it up to his usual intentionally-messy hairstyle. But the second Alex stopped touching it, the gel turned dark immediately.

"Baw, … You don't have some of those batteries to spare, do you?" Jasper asked. He sounded terribly disappointed to Otto's ears.

"Of course I do," Alex laughed as he handed Jasper his own battery with switch and stuck a connector to the back of Jasper's head.

"So cool!" Jasper Marvelled as he flicked the switch off and on a few times before proceeding to draw glasses around his eyes, Z's on his cheeks, and shark teeth on his chin, with the gel, all in one fluid line. To Otto, he looked like some radioactive skeleton ghost.

"It is, isn't it?" Alex asked Jasper gleefully who nodded enthusiastically.

"Well, then. I guess it's time for the official sales speech," Alex said and walked over to the now barely visible backdrop. "Except for the obvious use of making pedestrians and cyclist more visible in the dark, it can also be used to illuminate spaces that are difficult to instal classic electrically wired lights."

As Alex explained he touched the white backdrop they'd posed before earlier and it lit up to blind everyone in the room.

"Woops, that was A LOT brighter than I thought it would be," he said as he let go of the backdrop, leaving just himself and Jasper illuminated. Once everybody's eyes had re-adjust to the change in light, he asked Lindsey: "How did the camera handle that brightness?"

Lindsey dutifully showed the last picture she'd taken on the device's digital screen and Alex hummed at the screen. Otto quickly checked the screen over his shoulder and saw a white picture where Alex's blue figure could vaguely be differentiated.

"Hmm," Alex hummed in thought as he checked the picture. "That might need work if it would be used for surveillance cameras. Either way, that concludes my demonstration. I expect you to tell the press that we were trying to shoot an advertisement for this technology on the day of the incident and that we'd been taken by surprise by the intensity this liquid can reach."

"Understood," Lindsey said as she was already looking through all the pictures she'd taken.

"Can somebody turn on the light? I have trouble moving around in this darkness," Jessy asked to which the normal light promptly turned on again.

"Thank you, mom," Alex said to the room. It was funny to see that he was still illuminated in his white skin and blue clothes and hair even now the room was illuminated normally too. He looked like a cartoon figure. "Now, who wants to try out some more paints?"