My Latin may be a little off, seeing as how I went the whole summer without studying my declensions, but as far as I know, "minime fortis" means "not strong enough".
Chapter Ten – Minime Fortis
"Agatha, put these papers into the Ingerbritzen file, would you?" Mr. Paladino asked her. Agatha nodded and quickly put the documents away. Odd, it seemed, that her life as a super never crossed over into her life as a normal human being. Despite her eventful encounter with Crescentia, Agatha's alter ego's life was getting more and more monotonous and mundane. Right when Agatha was about to fall asleep out of boredom, Mr. Paladino dropped by again. "Hey…are you free after work today?"
"Yeah, it's," she paused to make sure nobody else was within earshot, "Phylange's turn to keep watch. Why?"
"Oh, I was wondering if you wanted to go out to dinner with me or something," he smiled, though he didn't seem too confident. She couldn't blame him, of course.
Agatha laughed. "Or something? Ok, Casanova. It's a date." Brightening considerably, Mr. Paladino waved at her genially and walked out. When he was gone, Agatha was confused. She wasn't exactly desperate for a date; on the contrary, her blond hair and blue eyes earned her many a suitor. So why had she said yes to him?
--
At promptly seven o'clock, The Boss swung by Agatha's office to pick her up, knowing full well that she had no car. Thankfully, by the end of the week, the news media had become less obsessed with their charismatic, corporate evil-fighting lawyer, so they were now leaving him well alone. Agatha got into Mr. Paladino's car, a (probably expensive) black corvette, and they drove off. For one reason or another, they sat in companionable silence, unable to pull a conversation together. Soon enough, the call pulled in front of a fancy-looking Italian restaurant and Agatha gasped. "You can't take me here! This place is so expensive! I hear that some of the dishes are 150 dollars per!"
"Do you have any idea how much money I made off of the Washington Energy case?" he asked quietly. Agatha stopped babbling. "Agatha, I'm a lawyer. And a good lawyer, at that. I hardly have to worry about money, you know?" Though she could no longer argue, Agatha still was annoyed. Above all else, she hated feeling like a damsel in distress. Being pampered bothered her deeply.
Once they had been seated, Agatha tentatively sifted through the menu. She at once decided that she wanted to order the cheapest dish available. Mr. Paladino must have noticed this, because he sighed, "I'd rather you order something with an outrageous price and eat it, rather than order a cheap dish and waste the food."
Again, she could not deny his logic. Agatha was getting under the impression that Mr. Paladino was accustomed to getting his way and settling arguments with mere sentences. She frowned, and started going through the whole menu. Like most image-conscious women of the day, she liked to eat foods like chicken and fish. Beef was too heavy to her, and large pasta dishes were much too filling. After a few minutes' of glossing over the menu, Agatha decided on the vegetarian lasagna and told Mr. Paladino. He flagged down a waiter and said suavely, "Desideriamo il lasagna di verdure e gli spaghetti con le carne."
"Sì signore, grazie." The waiter said with a bow, scribbling their orders down onto a little notepad and hurrying off. He had seemed slightly intimidated, probably because Mr. Paladino was wearing his dark sunglasses again.
Agatha looked at The Boss, impressed. "I didn't know you spoke Italian," she confided.
"There's lots of things about me you don't know," he grinned in reply.
"The same can be said of me," Agatha shrugged. "Everybody has their secrets." Though she inwardly agreed that she didn't know too much about Gazerbeam, there was no way she'd ever tell him that. At this point, she still liked to disagree with him out of spite.
"Oh, I know plenty enough about you. You're pretty easy to figure out, really. You let all your feelings show right on your face." He pointed out, chuckling.
"I resent that!" Agatha replied, offended. She liked to think that she was good at concealing her emotions, and had done a good job of it in the past, as far as she knew.
"Resent it all you like, my dear, it doesn't change the truth,"
"Mr. Paladino—"
The Boss abruptly cut her off. "I have a name, you know. You always call me 'Mr. Paladino' or 'Gazerbeam'." He said the latter very quietly.
Agatha swallowed the lump in her throat. "Simon, isn't it?"
"Yes, so why don't you call me that instead? Are we that formal?" he chuckled, trying to lighten the mood a bit.
"No, I suppose not. We've fought 'side by side' for several years now," she conceded. Agatha paused to take a sip of her complimentary glass of water. "Though...it doesn't seem right calling you anything but Gazerbeam, I guess." She lowered her voice, quickly glancing around to check for eavesdroppers. Agatha needn't have worried, though, there were very few people in the restaurant to begin with (it was very expensive), and the few that were there were happily chatting away.
"Do you think that we're normal people that have a super alter ego, or supers with a normal alter ego?" he asked seriously, at ease after Agatha shook her head to show that there was nobody listening. Sge considered his question for a moment. Obviously, she was usually Apogee by day and Agatha by night, since her power used sunlight. But most other supers only used their powers and dressed in costume when absolutely necessary. So it was a fair question, and she wasn't quite sure of the answer.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I think that I'm Apogee, otherwise known as Agatha. I feel like I can be myself more with my goggles on."
"Do you? Don't you feel more pressured as a super? When you're a 'super hero', every one expects you to win over evil all the time. Good always triumphs over evil. Whereas if you make a mistake as a normal person, it's expected and nothing really happens to you," he sighed. "Sometimes I wonder...if we're out there saving people all the time, who's there to save us?"
Agatha stared at him for a few moments, taking in what he'd said. "Your life isn't like that, though, is it? You're pressured in both lives."
Simon laughed. "I suppose that's true." It was funny that Agatha had just been thinking about that very subject just a few hours before.
"But...I think that if we're always out there saving people, we have to rely on each other. No super can win wars by themselves, and we always need someone to watch our backs." She decided. "It's what we do...we're a family." And she truly felt that way. All the supers from Blazestone to Universal Man...they were all connected by their common powers and interests: to protect the hope of mankind.
"Apogee." Simon took a deep breath, breaking her from her thoughts. "I promise. If you ever need me, I will be there for you. I guarantee it." She had never heard him so serious before, and she knew that he could be pretty serious.
"And," Agatha said slowly. "If you're ever in trouble, I'll back you up, Gazerbeam." They shared a smile, and Agatha could feel a connection forming between them. She was just about to say that when the glass window next to them shattered. Agatha thought that she heard him say her name, but it was just a whisper and in the next second, it was gone like a vanished puff of smoke, hidden underneath the loud yells of surprise from the people around them. Instinctively, Agatha did a sideways-somersault out of her chair and onto the ground. She snuck underneath the table and removed her outer layer of clothing, quickly slipping on the head covering and goggles. She rolled out from under the table again and stood up. Agatha looked to her left and saw Gazerbeam, fully costumed. She took slow steps towards the broken window...
"So, we meet again, Sunshine." An amused voice said in a sultry tone. Agatha winced, quickly connecting the voice with its owner.
Agatha checked the gauge on the wrist-side of her right glove to see how much solar power she had stored in the suit. It wasn't too high; she'd probably last for about 10 minutes, at most. She turned around to the people behind her. "Everyone, I suggest you evacuate the vicinity." There was a long pause, people unsure about whether they really wanted to leave. "I SAID 'LEAVE'! OR DO YOU NOT VALUE YOUR LIVES?" she yelled at them when they didn't immediately run. She had to admit, though, that it was rather amusing watching the Metroville upper class scramble to leave the restaurant. Agatha knew she wouldn't have liked running around in the high heels that the women had. She slowly turned back to the window. In a tone suggesting fatigue, she said "I was wondering when we'd meet again...we had so much fun last time, Crescentia."
"I figure," Crescentia said with a shrug, "That we were made for each other, Sunshine. You use the power of sunlight," The air around her started to glow, and Agatha tensed in anticipation. "And I use the power of moonlight." The air stopped its glowing, and Agatha relaxed. Crescentia looked as if she were enjoying tormenting Agatha.
"My name is Apogee." Agatha responded, teeth clenched. She thought back to the conversation about names that she had had with Gazerbeam just minutes before.
"Oh, I know. I just like calling you Sunshine. In fact, I'd even let you call me Moonshine, except that has a pretty negative connotation,"
Again with the I'm-Better-Than-You attitude. Agatha thought bitterly. "What do you want?"
"I'm here," Crescentia laughed, voice clear as bells, "For the Italian jewels. They used to belong to Queen Isabel, you know? Worth a fortune."
Agatha furrowed her brow in confusion, though this could not be seen due to her goggles. "What jewels? Why would they be here?"
"Oh, so you don't even know? What's the use of having those big, ugly towers smack dab in the middle of the city if the city doesn't even tell you anything?" Crescentia smiled pityingly.
The comment stung, and Agatha felt as if she had been slapped. And how did Crescentia know so much? She was about to open her mouth to say something when Gazerbeam interrupted, "The jewels aren't here...Crescentia, was it?"
Crescentia turned her head to face Gazerbeam. She brightened, as if happy to have found someone at her mental level. "You remember well. So...you're Gazerbeam, right? You know about the jewels, of course. What do you mean they're not here?"
Gazerbeam glanced at Agatha, who had her mouth open at him in disbelief. "We...we anticipated your coming, so the jewels were re-located,"
Crescentia hmmph'ed in frustration, stamping her foot against the floor. "Damn! I suppose that means that I'll have to do some more poking around to find them, huh?"
"Why go through all this? Wouldn't it be easier to do it more stealthily?" Gazerbeam demanded.
She seemed to give this some serious thought, at least for a moment. "I suppose...but conquest without effort is like victory without glory." She looked Agatha right in the eye. "It's more fun to annoy little Sunshine here. Bye, little Sunshine!" Crescentia started to glow, and then she floated up and away into the night sky.
Even when she was gone, Agatha could not move from the spot she had been rooted to, and her blood felt like ice swimming through her veins.
"Apogee." She heard Gazerbeam, but he sounded far away.
"Why...why wasn't I told about any of this?" she asked, her voice hoarse. Gazerbeam sighed, hearing her hurt tone. She asked, but she knew the answer. Agatha wasn't exactly a "dumb blond", she knew when she was being left out of the loop.
"I...told Dynaguy not to say anything. Well, we both agreed. You can't fight her, Apogee, she's very powerful, and she can attack you with full force when all you have is stored energy!" he explained, trying to make her understand. "We didn't want you to get hurt."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that Gazerbeam was being logical, but she didn't care. Beneath his words, he was trying to say that she was weak. She persisted, "I could attack her when the sun is out...at noon! I'm strongest at noon—"
"Don't you see?" he interrupted her again. "The moon is always out! The sun sets, but the moon...it never dies. Even if we can't see it."
Agatha was stunned into silence, unable to fight against his reasoning, even though she knew it couldn't be totally true. Gazerbeam was always like this, always getting his way. "When...will I stop being the damsel in distress? I...I'm a super, aren't I? Why do you have to protect me all the time?"
In a flash, he was at her side. She felt his warm, strong arms around her, and her head was against his chest. It was a strange feeling Agatha had; she wanted to beat him, make him get off of her, but at the same time, she was wishing that he would never let go. "I made a promise. I said I would always protect you, always be there for you."
"You can't always be here for me; I can't become dependent! What if one day you're not there, what would I do? I have to be strong!" she argued.
"No! You don't have to be strong, not with me. I know you don't feel the same way, but I don't care. I will be here for you no matter what, Apogee!" They heard the sound of police sirens in the distance, and he reluctantly let go. Gazerbeam calmly explained the situation to the police officers, who warmly thanked him for getting rid of Crescentia with minimal damage to the restaurant. Once everything was in order and things had been totally taken care of, Gazerbeam walked her home. (if they used the car, it would run the risk of people finding out about their secret identities)
As they walked and Agatha gazed up at the moon that would wane and wax forever, she felt her spirits rise a little. Even if she wasn't an invincible hero, even if she wasn't able to best Crescentia just yet...she was happier than any other super in the world. Yes, she was weak. Gravity control wasn't exactly the most powerful skill among supers. But every time the sun sets, it rises again. Agatha was, in essence, the sun. And she was not going down without a fight.