Grind 4.2 The Interview

The atmosphere in the conference room was a mix of tension, and suspicion, at least in terms of the heroes. Despite having a pair of troopers armed with foam launcher stationed directly behind them Uber and Leet acted completely unconcerned with their surroundings, and pointedly ignored the glowering Armsmaster.

The tension in the room spiked as director Piggot entered, and took her seat at the head of the table. Piggot took a few moments to idly flip through a folder, before throwing it down onto the table with a snap of paper on wood. From how quickly she flicked through it she obviously hadn't really stopped to read anything. Looking down the length of the table she fixed her standard glare on Uber and Leet.

"Uber and Leet." Piggot said as she lay her hands on the table in front of her. "You two, want to be heroes." The director made her statement sound like an accusation.

The gaming duo shared a glance before giving the woman an emphatic nod.

"Why?" The director all but spat.

"Lots of reasons." Uber answered calmly.

"Such as?"

"Well the largest reason would be the chance to work with Player. It's no secret that Leet and I have a great deal of appreciation for video games. We actually enjoy most forms of fiction based entertainment, gaming just happens to be our favorite. The chance to actually go into games and play them out while making money is what our web show was always about. Working with Player is simply the next step up." Uber explained.

The director hardly seemed surprised by this, but she seemed far from happy.

"That's it? The chance to live in a made up world, and your suddenly ready to give up the life of crime? I find all this highly unlikely. How do I know that you are not trying to corrupt our newest Ward, or infiltrate the Protectorate as some kind of special spy game episode for your show? Don't think I've forgotten the incident where the two of you broke into the PRT with that ridiculous cardboard box."

Cardboard box? I know these two could be good when they wanted to be, but how exactly did a cardboard box let them break into the PRT? I bit down on the question though as I did not really expect Piggot to be in a sharing mood.

"Oh right! Metal Gear! That was one of our highest rated episodes ever, did you know that? Man, people flipped for that one." Leet exclaimed.

"Piggot's already dangerous scowl tightened further. "You airlifted a half dozen of my troopers across the city and offered them jobs as your henchmen." She accused.

Fighting off a fit of laughter I couldn't help admiring how calm they managed to stay in the face of the angry director. I could already tell that the pair would get along just fine with both Clockblocker, and Assault.

"In our defense director, we didn't actually take anything, and none of the troopers suffered anything more serious than motion sickness." Uber pointed out. "Besides, none of your' troopers accepted our offer."

"You haven't answered my question yet. Why should I believe that this is not another stunt?"

"Do you want the whole list, or just the most obvious ones?" Uber shot back. "If Armsmaster is half the tinker he claims to be then I expect him to have a lie detector somewhere in that suit of his. You know we have not lied. If we did double cross you then we would lose the chance to work with Player. Finally we never really wanted to be villains in the first place, so now seems like as good a time as any to switch sides."

The first two arguments made sense, but the last one caught me off guard. I had no trouble figuring out why they wanted to work with me, and I know Armsmaster did in fact have a lie detector because Kid Win had told me so himself. The last bit however was actually confusing. Everyone knows that Uber and Leet are villains, small time villains to be sure, but villains all the same.

"What do you mean you never wanted to be villains?" Pigglot shot me a glare the moment the question was out of my mouth causing me to sink down into my seat. What could I have possible done to piss the woman off now? Was I expected to raise my hand when I had a question? Was the look because I'm new, or maybe the director does not like teenagers speaking up during meetings? But then what had she invited me to attend for.

"Well most of our early videos were all in good fun. I think the only crime you could actually pin on our earliest videos is disturbing the peace, and possibly reckless endangerment. Nothing really serious happened until episode twenty." Uber responded taking the question in stride.

"For those of us who have better things to do than watch your, show, what made that particular episode a turning point?" Piggot seemed to sneer even more. I almost expected to see fangs soon.

Leets' hands which were previously clasped lightly in front of him seemed to be heading more towards a death grip ever since Uber had mentioned episode twenty. Uber meanwhile maintained his impassive façade.

"That would be our most notorious episode director, our Grand Theft Auto reenactment." Uber said it with a completely straight face but beside him Leet seemed to cringe.

I frowned behind my mask. The Grand Theft Auto episode was well known. The footage of two capes beating up hookers had spread like wildfire, boosting the tiny web show into notoriety a year or two ago. I remembered watching the footage, and feeling disgusted with the duo. They had the power to cause change, to do something truly great, and instead they assaulted women who were already beaten down to the most desperate of measures to make ends meet.

The director stared down the duo like a cat eyeing a bird. "Ah yes, that would be the incident in which the pair of you, assaulted a pair of prostitutes who needed to be hospitalized for internal bleeding. Would you care to explain your actions that night? I highly doubt the parents of our Wards would be keen on the idea of you two working with their children given such past actions."

A slight frown tugged at Ubers' lower lip, while Leet outright scowled for a moment before slamming his fist onto the table.

"Damn it all, that was not our fault!" Uber pinched the bridge of his nose as Leet began shouting. Obviously this was not a new argument to him. "We never intended to go out and beat up a pair of hookers, and we have a completely logical explanation for why we did that!"

The directors' face went still and impassive in the face of Leets' outburst. "And what pray tell might that explanation be?"

"We were suffering from paranoid hallucinations brought on by a gas leak from the engine of the tinker tech car we were driving!"

Everyone fell silent.

That couldn't possibly be true… Could it? The idea was just so ludicrous. Their car had malfunctioned causing them to hallucinate leading them over the line into actual villainy. That was just so… idiotic. Yet it made a twisted sort of sense. The two were well known for their plans going awry, often explosively. As ludicrous as it sounded it actually made sense.

The director appeared far less accepting of this explanation than I. "Is this a joke. Your expect me to believe you committed assault because you were high as kites on some kind of engine smoke."

"Well, it is true. The last thing we both remember clearly was cruising down the boardwalk firing off blanks. After that things start to get hazy. I vaguely remember the impression that there was some kind of tuna fish monster." Uber said somehow managing to maintain eye contact with the irate director.

"Besides, I'd like to see you build a car that can hit 130 and runs on milk without something going wrong." Leet grumbled. "Anyway we spent the next couple of days sweating whatever that stuff was out of our system. Meanwhile the video auto uploaded, and we got millions of hits. It was too late to pull the video and any attempt to explain would have looked like denial, and only made things worse. So we shut our traps, and just got used to the idea of being villains."

"It has actually happened more than once to be honest. When it fails Leets' tech normally goes out with a bang, sometimes however we get much less conventional results."

"Like Neptr." Leet interjected.

"Neptr" I asked, voicing the question for the rest of the table. Before the word had even finished leaving my mouth I could feel the directors' eyes boring into the back of my skull, and cringed. I honestly had no idea why the woman had allowed me into the meeting. I had assumed attendance meant I was allowed to ask questions. One glance at the director from the corner of my eye told me I had been mistaken.

Uber finally breaking out of the stoic image he had been cultivating since the start of the meeting actually chuckled warmly. "Most people remember it from our second annual thanksgiving special. We got inspired by the pumpkin chucking special, and decided to combine the chucking aspect with the true meaning of thanksgiving, pie."

At the mention of pie Armsmaster noticeably tensed, and scowled.

"I basically whipped up a food synthesizer from Star Trek, and attached it to a highly specialized launching mechanism, so that the pies would stay intact during flight. Only problem was our initial test had a leak. We ended up watching pretty butterflies for a few hours after eating the first pie. We patched up the leak with some duct tape later, but by then I'd christened the contraption N.E.P.T.R which is short for never ending pie throwing robot."

Leet paused and frowned.

"That reminds me, Armsmaster I know you were upset we nailed you so many times that episode, but did you really need to destroy that synthesizer? That thing could have lead to solving world hunger."

From the look Armsmaster was giving Leet he was not convinced.

Director Piggot cleared her throat bringing the attention of all those in the room back to herself.

"Are you two trying to tell me, that all of your more damning escapades were the result of you being drugged out of your mind by failed tinker tech."

The duo shared a glance before answering simultaneously.

"Pretty much."

"Yes, director."

Scowling more fiercely than ever the director almost disgustedly flipped shut the folder she had earlier tossed onto the table. The director glanced to Armsmaster who nodded, despite scowling almost as hard as the director.

"Since you have not lied, and your explanations negate most, if not all, of my primary concerns, I'm willing to accept the two of for a probationary period of three months. During that time you will live at the protectorate HQ. You will only leave headquarters while supervised by a member of the Protectorate. During this period you may work with Player, at her discretion. Should she choose to bring one, or both of you along on one of her… outings, I will assign another member of the Wards, or one of the PRT troopers as an escort. If at any time you break any of the terms of your probation, which we will go over in full later, I will not hesitate to lock either, or both of you up. Is all of that perfectly clear?"

Once again the gaming capes shared a silent glance before nodding and saying in unison, "Crystal."

"Well then, welcome to the Protectorate."