Spark

"James! Wiles called!" I heard from downstairs."

I took a moment to finish up the last of my homework before heading downstairs, "Yeah mom?"

"Wiles called, he just heard back from the PRT, they have accepted the Exceptional Service Application you put in."

"Yes!" I pumped my fist.

She shook her head, "Come on, have some lunch, Wiles is going to be meeting you at your new office in a couple of hours."

I chegged down my food as fast as possible, and grabbed my backpack dashed out of the house, jogging towards one of the wooded areas in the park. Hopping into the storm drains, I flew over to one of the larger cisterns and got changed, reshaping my body into Halcyon, Bringer of Peace!

I looked around to make sure that no-one saw me posing after I changed and hid my bag on a little hook I had stuck on the ceiling of the cistern before taking off towards the old mall. My Mental Computer guiding me to a small drainway in the basement of the mall.

I took a moment to turn my Biokineisis against the slight smell that had soaked into my costume and clean myself up, before walking out towards the houses I now owned.

They were all still pretty run down - worth more for the land than anything really, according to Wiles. Apparently it would be cheaper to tear down a lot of these places and just build something new instead of trying to fix the houses.

I eventually came to my office. Well, what passed for an office in this part of town at least. It was an old movie rental store, built from better materials than the houses around it, so with some repairs and some new furniture, it was ready for me to use.

The first floor was more or less empty right now, just benches forming a line leading up to a long table and a door leading up to the second floor, as well as one leading to the backroom with the employee entrance and the ADA compliant lift that was back there.

I simply floated up the stairs to my office proper. Wiles wasn't there, and the place was still pretty barren, the old linoleum flooring torn out to be replaced with some basic tile, sloped to make it easier to clean in case of any accidents.

At the far end was my desk, and a few cabinets, as well as a large safe which was apparently for more important documents. He had invited me here a couple days ago once the major renovations were complete, and shown me the various deeds and the information surrounding the various contracts and sworn statements. We had even gone to a notary to make copies of the statement that he weas holding the properties in trust for the cape identity of Halcyon.

I couldn't keep the property myself, unfortunately, so that was how things were. Maybe someday, when I was powerful enough, I could reveal my identity and I could take over the LPEC.

For now, the corporation was held in trust, with my identity remaining a secret, via a set of three legal documents that we had gotten notarised separately. One says that he was holding this information in trust of Halcyon, who'se information was kept in a notarised paper, the second pointed Halcyon to another name, with a specific identifier, and the third, which only mom and I had copies of, which linked that name and identifier to me.

We had all gotten them notarised separately, at three different independent notaries. Wiles knew of the second notarised statement, which had copies stored in a safety deposit box in New York, among other things, while the documents with my name on them were kept with mom, in her safe, hidden under the bay, and hidden inside a few trees I modified with my power. As far as I could tell, they were safe.

So, we had a paper trail that would let me take over the company if my keeping my identity a secret was no longer a problem. But until then, we kind of just had to trust him.

Eventually, the door opened, up, revealing the greying man in a suit, coming up through the elevator and walking over to me. "Halcyon, nice to see you. Lets get started."

We quickly worked through the documents that the PRT provided surrounding my company. The LPEC, or Legal Parahuman Enabled Corporation under the name Halcyon LPEC was now legally allowed to take payment for parahuman services. There was a section that specified my healing power, so I couldn't sell tinkertech, or other stuff, but there were forms that would allow me to expand my offerings in the future. I had looked into the way Corporate teams worked, and we were already working to set up some of the connections that I would need to do hero work.

"With that out of the way, we can talk about clients. I've reached out to certain associates, and I've managed to find several people who require those services. Mainly Arthritis again, but several with AIDS and another with son who's blind."

I took a look at the papers he was giving me, "I can't promise anything for the son, nor right now at least. If his blindness is due to an issue with his brain, I won't do anything, not with my level of experience. I know what eyes and everything are supposed to look like, I'm not going to be messing with some kid's brain."

He nodded, "From what I understand, the blindness is a result of glaucoma, as opposed to anything neurological."

I nodded, "in that case, we should probably work out prices. All look fairly well off according to these, so… let's say two years of their current treatment schedules. That's roughly sixty thousand dollars for each of them, and eighty thousand for this guy here. I'm willing to go a little lower for this guy, so, let's say forty thousand."

He nodded, "I'll forward the quote to them, are you willing to negotiate?"

"On a case-by case basis, I'm not going to go under forty thousand for any of these, and I'm not going under sixty for this guy." I pointed at one of the profiles. "He's blowing tens of thousands on travel just to see professionals, I think he can manage sixty."

Wiles nodded, "When can we do this?"

"Well, classes start tomorrow, so I'm going to be busy until about five, but I'm assuming that they are going to need to arrange travel and everything so it might be a while anyways. The weekend would be better though."

He nodded, "And when do you intend to open up the general sign-ups?"

"I'll probably start in two or three weeks, once school lets up a little. We still need to build up enough funding to hire a receptionist and an accountant to set pricing for the others to vet the people signing up. Until then, I think I'll build up a little buzz by popping over to Brocton General after school and doing some charity work, and handing out fliers."

"That sounds good, If everything goes well, we should have enough by next week to start proper expansion."

I looked over the papers, "Do we have any news on the PI and Private Security licences?"

"There's a few issues, mainly due to the fact that you are operating under a cape identity. Once we have set up a little more, we can expand operations and hire a few people to act as security forces and investigators, but for now, I'm going to have to ask you to limit your heroing to patrols."

I sighed, "Eh, we need more people for that to work anyways. How goes the work for the more mundane operations."

"Well, assuming the healings go well, we should have enough seed capital to to hire people. The only problem is that we don't really have the jobs for it all. We can hire seven or so people, between the receptionist, the attendants and the price-setters. But outside of that we don't have too much right now, the area just doesn't have the market for too much right now."

"Anything we can do to fix that?"

"Nothign right now. Once healing picks up, we shoudl b able to sponsor some more business around here, a few restaurants, a few stores, stuff like that. Actually, I've got a deal on some of the surrounding land. The old school nearby is abandoned, and we should be able to pick it up for two hundred thousand, and there's a lot fo foreclosed properties that we can get off the city for pretty cheap. It will take up pretty much all of the first round of healing, but we should buy now before property values go up."

I took a moment to check things online and against what I had been studying. What he made made sense but… "What are we going to do with the land. We are getting a lot of money out of this."

"Well, you wanted to be able to house people right? I know a couple of contractors, and with your goals, it's going to be prime real estate for a lot of the people who don't want to deal with the gangs. We will have to get someone actually in real estate or something like that in, but I think we could go with some high-density residentials. It's probably not going to be the best, but it's going to bring in a lot of funding."

I considered it, "I'll see what I can come up with too. Now, I was looking online, and employee benefits are a pretty big deal. I can do healing fine, wbut if we are already settign up a whole bunch of stuff here…"

We went back and forth, discussing various parts of my plan as we figured out what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to make sure that my part of town was safe and cared for. Defending a smaller space would be a lot easier, and I think, between some decent apartments, and getting that mall up and running, I should be able to do a lot of good, and make a lot of money.

Probably not as much money as I could have, but the Brockton Bay economy was pretty shit to begin with, so it was going to take some time to get past what I was making from healing.

Eventually, I signed off, and headed home, packing up for my first day back at school.

It was just before first period when I got a text from Jenny.

> JAMES! THEY SHOVED HER INTO A DISGUSTING SMELLING LOCKER!

> THEY WON'T LET HER OUT

> WHAT DO I DO?

My mind flashed through all the legal information I was learning… I think I could do something.

Stay calm for now <

Do you have video of the event? <​< p>

> Umm… No? Why does that matter?

It would be easier to do something. Still, your word should cound for a lot <

I'm going to call 911 now, they should show up relatively soon. <​< p>

> Okay… can I help?

Do you know anyone who would be okay to testify? <

Blackwell probably won't do shit, so she needs to go to the School District, probably sue <

Mom knows a lawyer, so we can probably take them. <

When I hear sirens, I'm going to be there to get them pulling her out on video <​< p>

> Um… I think I know a few of Taylors old friends that don't like what Emma is doing.

> But they might not if Sophia can find out who told.

Don't worry about that. <

Lawyers can do a witness protection thing <

I mean, technically, the judge would still know who it is <

But it's not public <​< p>

> That would work.

Yeah, so later, after school, go over to Taylor's house and tell her dad what happened <

He needs to know there are people on your side, even if you want to stay anonymous <​< p>

> Yeah

Err… so which locker is she in? <​< p>

After she told me where it was, I used my powers to link up to the phone out in the office and called 911.

Unfortunately, this being Brockton Bay, 911 still took forty minutes to show up.

Still, the sound of sirens was enough of an excuse to get out of class, and be ready to record Taylor being pulled out of the locker and into the hands of some waiting paramedics.

I made sure to check which hospital she was being taken to, and once school let out, I headed out as Halcyon. Brockton Central was still a pretty big hospital, and after healing a few dozen people I was already drumming up a lot of excitement for my clinic. I did, also make sure to fully cure Taylor along the way.

She was still out of her mind, but since she was sedated, I was able to encourage her mind to naturally process some of the panic, so by the time I was leaving, she was getting ready to leave.

When I got home, Jenny was grinning.

I looked at her strangely, "What's going on?"

"So, turns out that when you can be anonymous about it a lot of people want to help out. Mr. Hebert won't have any issues proving this happened. He was not happy to find out about this."

I blinked. "Was she that bad?"

"She shanked Tom last year. He's empire so she didn't get into trouble, but she's a crazy bitch, and if we can use this to get her gone, then a bunch of people are willing to turn on her, as long as she doesn't find out it's us. All of the people I talked to plus Greg, Sparky and a couple of other guys."

I blinked, "Damn."

"Yeah, I talked to mom about it, and she's already talking to Danny about a lawyer she knows."

And with that, the week turned on its head. With the anonymous statements gathered the next day, we were treated to the sight of the cops arresting Emma and Sophia in front of the school on Thursday.

There were reporters there and everything.

With Sophia locked away, Mom and I drove Jenny over to hang out with Taylor, who was still pretty weirded out that someone actually helped her. That was kinda depressing. Still, between everything, the case was going well, and with the whole thing being on the news after Emma and Sophia were brought in for questioning, things were blowing up into a huge media shit show.

This actually helped me a lot, since Halcyon healed Taylor, which brought my name into the news as well. By the time I was done healing the first batch of people, my website was already getting tons of sign-ups.

Filtering them took a while, but at least I could respond to the ones that didn't fill the form correctly with instructions on how to fill the form, which was a form letter. The ones that didn't apply for 'Adjusted Rates' went into one pile, and the others were put in another. But there were a lot of them. Hundreds. I just didn't have the time to keep up.

I sent all of those people a message saying that it would take some time to evaluate their applications, even as I began to look for secretaries. Wiles had already helped me set up a job listing, looking for the sort of people with experience in hospitals, so mainly I was reading resumes.

Apparently, a decent working wage was really nice in Brockton.

I worked through the background checks, and eventually found one that wasn't somehow linked to the various gangs. Debra Allard. A young black woman, who had somehow managed to get a business degree from Brockton U. If she could do that I wanted her on my side.

I had Wiles confirm her position and set up access to the pile of requests and told her to run background checks on them.

By the end of the week, I had processed enough of the full-price orders that we had already gobbled up the land we wanted really, grabbing a bunch of space around the mall and the school, to the point that I basically owned a neighbourhood. A run-down, shitty abandoned neighbourhood with basically no one living there, but a neighbourhood none-the-less.

We were even in the black, having paid off our debts to Mr Wiles and our start-up loan. Still, for now, I was mostly concerned with keeping up the momentum. I was healing people sure, but I needed to make sure that I starting to set myself up as a more active cape.

I was nearly to the point where I could spend charges on defensive powers, but honestly, I was starting to think I didn't need one.

Or, at least, I didn't need one for the moment.

Using some of my filters and my Mental Computer, I was able to set up a simple reactive barrier around myself. It only really worked on physical things, so I was still worried about getting blasted by Purity, but I should be good beyond that. The barrier was still dependent on Sensor, which wasn't perfect since I used Sensor for a bunch of different powers.

I still wanted a better brute power at the end of the day, and somehow, forcefields seemed a little… limited.

I mean, glory girl's power was nice and all, but I managed to catch her in a fight a couple of days ago, and it took several seconds for her force-field to recharge after getting hit with a baseball bat.

I guess there was a sort of problem in how her power was made? Because it used way more energy than it needed to when it stopped the bat, basically emptying out her reserve, when the same field should have held out against a car crash or worse.

My cobbled-together force-field was better about that, but I couldn't see how it would work with lasers. As far as I could tell, there wasn't a clean way to scale my defences against an attack moving that fast. I'd have to spend a bit more time studying New Wave's powers, I think.

Still, it was going to be time for my first patrol soon.