Agnes pressed her index finger and thumb into the bridge of her nose. Ratings were down, had been down since the Maverick incident. She had taken over as not only lead producer but temporary CEO of Apollon Media until someone else could take her place. So far they had been unsuccessful in finding someone, and she was stuck doing two full time jobs — during a companywide crisis. To top it all off Apollon's only Heroes both retired during said crisis leaving them holding the bag.
She had tried making the second league more prominent, their volunteer work and helping local citizens with more mundane jobs had helped ratings for a while, but none of the second leaguers had any kind of interesting power or personality. They were young, camera shy, and often made more mistakes than fixed problems. She had shifted away from them and back to the main league, but without Barnaby and Tiger viewers could see the rift between the Heroes capabilities, the points so skewed it was a joke. Poor Bison was at the bottom of the rung with a measly 800 points and the season coming to a close in a week, while Sky High and Blue rose were neck and neck at 12,340 and 12,420. Fire Emblem, Dragon Kid, and Origami Cyclone had kept up for a while, but the next closest number was Dragon Kid at 8,225 and she only had that because Sky High and Blue Rose had both been forced to take a week vacation mid-season.
Agnes was at a loss for what to do. Without another powerhouse like Barnaby to break up the points, and without a helpful team player like Tiger — who more often than not sacrificed points for himself in order to help people, allowing people like Bison and Origami to grab more points — Hero TV would air its last season within the new year.
It had been almost three weeks since she spoke to Barnaby, and after checking with Bison she learned the two of them had actually made it a habit to frequent a local pub together at least once a week. She had been surprised to hear that, and even more surprised to learn it was the club Karina played at, Bison having encouraged her to take up playing again so that Barnaby could hear her. It had explained why Blue Rose was once again neck and neck with Sky High, she hadn't been doing nightly patrols like him anymore.
What really astonished her though was that Barnaby had been frequently going to his therapy sessions, not that she had learned this from Dr. Harjan or her secretary, but by monitoring the building cameras. Barnaby had been coming to sleep in the labs at night, courtesy of Dr. Saitou, and been coming up to the 15th floor to meet his therapist. Some of his meetings only lasted a maximum of fifteen minutes, while others had lasted nearly two hours. He had been a total of eight times in three weeks. Agnes felt bad for keeping track this way, but the boy wasn't one to share, and someone needed to keep an eye on him. Barnaby had left the building from Saitou's lab about two hours ago, which sparked some intrigue in her. She dialled down to his lab on the inner building system. Saitou's face lit up her computer terminal.
"YES AGNES?" came the very loud, very sudden response to the call. Agnes immediately lowered the volume on her console.
"Saitou I need a favour, I'm coming down to talk to you about something," she didn't give him a chance to respond before hanging up. She stood from her desk, walking out of her office, she didn't even glance at her secretary as she said over her shoulder, "hold my calls, I'll be back in an hour," and got into the private elevator that was provided the CEO of the company going down to the labs.
As she entered the lab Saitou walked over, his tiny voice whispering out some form of greeting that she didn't catch. "Sorry, you really need to speak up doc," she said as she marched up to him. "I wanted to ask you about how our favourite freeloading patient is doing," she said as she threw herself down into one of the lab chairs, taking her left heel off and massaging her sore foot. She would never show this kind of weakness in front of her other employees, or even chance it being caught on camera, but the labs were on a private camera system, triple encoded security designed by Saito himself.
"Ms. Agnes, I don't know if I can share that kind of information with you," he whispered. She barely caught half of it but got the gist.
"Have you signed the Hippocratic oath all of a sudden? You are not that kind of Dr.! also, Barnaby isn't an official patient of yours, he hasn't been coming for any kind of official treatment, so as head of Apollon Media I demand to know what my resources have been used for," she said throwing her shoe down on the floor and shoving her foot back inside.
"True, I just wanted to rile you up. Come take a look at all of my charts, I've been recording his brain waves and there are some really cool things happening," the little man said as he wandered over to his computer chair, sitting down and then pressing a button to raise him up to a high enough level to reach his keyboards. He started typing furiously, his short pudgy little fingers flying across the keys like a trained pianist.
"His readings are not unlike the ones I took of myself and yourself, but more amplified. He dreams more deeply than either of us. It might be why he has struggled to get past the dreams, they seem to control his psyche more," he started rattling off facts and figures that she didn't understand, but the charts, graphs, brain scan images with multispectral coding, all pointed to one thing: Barnaby was slowly getting better the more time he spent resting in the chamber and seeking help. The images glowed less intensely on days that he had gone to see his therapist or on days she knew corresponded to his meeting with Antonio and Karina.
"Doctor, these images here, the less intense ones, this is a good sign, right?" she asked pointing at the screen.
"Yes, he still dreamed those nights, but the dreams didn't leave him disoriented like he had been before, he came out of the chamber well rested and able to tell me the day, month, year, and even time without hesitation. When he first started coming he had to focus, think about it, sometimes even sit down and take a break before he would respond," Saitou had swivelled in his chair to face her now, his tiny voice barely audible over the slight whir of the machines.
"Good, so then the treatment in the chambers is the cause? Or is it something else?" she had to confirm her theory, that Barnaby was getting better because he wasn't bottling himself up, that being around friendly faces had triggered his recovery.
"No and yes, the chambers allowed him a proper rest, which was greatly needed, but he doesn't always rest easily. I suspect there is another variable, but Barnaby is not the sharing sort, and I don't really know what the cause is."
"I think I do," Agnes said pointing to the calendar. "Those dates, Barnaby sees his therapist pretty regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but sometimes makes pit stops other days of the week. He also has had a standing invitation to drinks with Rock Bison the last 3 weeks, all on Saturday nights, see how small the glow is after those visits?" she said pointing to the last few Saturdays.
"I had wondered why weekends were so much better for him, I suspected he may have taken a job somewhere and that weekends were his days off and thus he was more relaxed, but if what you say is true about therapy and speaking with friends, then I would recommend that he spend as much time in the company of others as possible. His brain waves after those days are not only closer to a normal person's brain, but show a huge increase in oxytocin. I believe that may be a major factor for his mental health, he wasn't producing enough before a few weeks ago, I thought from lack of sleep, but it may have been the more simple answer: loneliness."
Agnes looked over the files in front of her once more, the wheels spinning in her mind as she processed this new information. She glanced around the lab as she thought, her eyes catching on Tiger and Barnaby's old suits, standing at attention in the corner.
"Doctor! Would it be possible to upgrade that suit?" she said pointing over to the suits, a wicked grin spreading across her face, yes… this would do nicely.
The doctor looked over, a similar grin came to his own face "of course I can upgrade it, what do you need?"