"This time there are pictures," Barnaby passes Kotetsu the International Journal of Applied Robotics, with a little sticky-tab marking a page. Kotetsu sets aside his coffee and opens to the page. There's color in it all right, but it's all color-coded diagrams of computer systems and graphs of inputs and outputs that Kotetsu can't make heads or tails of.
"These aren't pictures," Kotetsu complains. He can't even interpret the title in any meaningful way, only that under it, the article credits a team of researchers including Dr. Barnaby Brooks Jr. "But you're published again! That's awesome!"
"True," Barnaby said. "Though I can't say I had much to do with this article, compared to the ones before. I'm a bit distracted with another project."
"What sort of project?"
"Private sector. Corporate secrecy. Sorry."
"Well, if you need a hero to advertise the company, may I suggest Wild Tiger?" Kotetsu shoots finger-guns at Barnaby, half-serious, half-joking.
Barnaby smiles and shrugs. "The Crusher for Justice selling delicate robotics? Something about that picture doesn't seem quite right." He sips his coffee, and then asks, "How is the hero business right now? The first league seems a bit weak at the moment. A wave of rookies preoccupied with posing."
"Weren't you a rookie like them once?"
"Weren't you? What I meant is, we caught the criminals while posing, rather than just looking pretty for the camera."
"They're not that bad," Kotetsu defends them vaguely. "There aren't many serious crimes…"
Barnaby frowns. "That's not like you to permit sloppy heroism. What's wrong?"
"It's nothing, nothing. So what's in this article, anyway? What's 'pro-pree-o-cep-shun?'"
"Kotetsu," Barnaby cuts him off. "Tell me."
Kotetsu sighs and stares at the magazine on the table. "I had to tell the public about my power."
"Yes, I saw." It started with the fashion magazines, wanting to know Kotetsu's secret to a youthful face and body, what hair dye he uses to hide the gray, what cream he slathers on to smooth the wrinkles. Suspension of disbelief stretched, so Kotetsu explained his evolution: longevity replacing Hundred Power. Then Hero Monthly did an article on it, and the post-game shows talked about the meaning of this new power, and people generally came to accept the new Wild Tiger.
"Well… Apollon wants to bump me up."
"What?"
"They want to bring me back to the first league. I'm not a Hundred Power fighter anymore, but this power's so rare, they want to associate it with sponsors."
"That sounds wonderful! They're offering you a promotion!"
"It's not the same anymore. It won't be like it was before." Kotetsu said. "Everyone else has retired. Even Agnes left."
"Left?"
"Hero TV had an episode with a 100% rating. You can't make an episode any more exciting than that, so she went to find a new challenge. She's still working with reality TV, I hear, but she's not with Hero TV anymore. Saito's gone, too."
"I heard that one. He's tenured at a university in California, right?"
"Yeah. Ben's still at Apollon, but he's the CEO. He can't spend all his time hanging out with me. It's just not the same. And so long as I'm okay in the second league, I should just stay, right?"
They grow quiet. Suddenly, Barnaby reaches across the table and takes Kotetsu's hand. He feels age, wrinkles and knobs in his knuckles, but his hands feel so soft, and still strong. He almost cradles Kotetsu's fingers in his warm hands.
"Take it, Kotetsu," Barnaby says. "Take the promotion."
"What?"
"Trust me."
Kotetsu does, absolutely. And with Barnaby's hands around his and his eyes staring straight at him like he's the only person in the world, he can't refuse.
Apollon is absolutely different—a new soul in the old shell. The marble lobby, the gilded columns, the winged lion on the roof are all the same, but Kotetsu doesn't recognize a single face. He meets employees in the Hero Division, a collection of smart, appropriately respectful people under the direction of the young Evan Edelman, basically Lloyds' successor. He's altogether too bright and enthusiastic, more like a salesman than a publicity agent, and he makes Kotetsu miss Lloyds with all his pompous nagging more than anything.
Edelman takes Kotetsu through the grand tour of the new-old Apollon. The coffee pot in the break room is right where Kotetsu left it, but they threw out Barnaby's desk. The gym has all-new machines to match its all-new heroes, a slew of young hotshots with gorgeous bodies and dull eyes. Supermodels with superpowers, and for better or for worse, little else.
"You're Wild Tiger?" a ginger teen with a pixie cut asks. Kotetsu doesn't recognize her from TV; her makeup/costume team deserves a lot of credit.
"Yep, that's me."
"So your power is, like… being old?"
Kotetsu puts up with his insensitive new coworkers, but quickly convinces Edelman to move on. "How's my suit?"
"Fantastic! You've got a whole new look!" Edelman brightens. "Come with me!"
They continue walking through the halls, into an elevator, out of the elevator, back into halls. On the way, Edelman discusses their new campaign to rebrand Wild Tiger, again.
"Age, and the value it brings, has cycles," Edelman explains. "When something is really new, it's cool. Then it gets old, people don't care as much about it, but then when it starts getting really old, it's impressive just that it's still around."
"So you're all impressed I haven't given up?"
"Not like that at all! We're marketing you as someone who never gives up. You're almost as old as heroes themselves, and you debuted just as Sternbild's first Golden Age was taking off. We can bank on that… that, that what-do-you-call-it, that association. Wild Tiger is the soul of Sternbild, its guardian angel. You're here to stay. You're Wild Tiger: Eternal."
"Eternal? I remember when your department branded me One Minute."
"You were a second league hero then. Now we're selling the first league you." Edelman's voice glitters.
"So how am I going to compete for points when I don't have any combat powers?"
"Engineering said they'd take care of that."
Engineering. Kotetsu sighs. His third suit in almost forty years, but he can't imagine wearing a suit designed by anyone but Saito. He wonders if the new head engineer is going to put up with his nostalgia. Lloyds and Saito had no tolerance for it, and for the better.
Almost reading his mind, Edelman adds, "The base built on as Dr. Saito's designs, so it should operate like the suit you're used to. But there's a whole slew of new features, you're going to love it."
The doors to the lab swoosh open, and a few technicians skitter aside to reveal the new Wild Tiger suit: similar shape to his old design, face plate and all, but slightly narrower shoulders, white and silver from head to foot, broken only by thin, black stripes on the arms and legs, with sparkling green eyes.
"Sleek, right?" Edelman says. "See, we never went with a literal tiger theme before, because orange can be an obnoxious color under the wrong light, and we can't control the light on live TV. But with your new NEXT power, we can play the white Bengal route. Makes you more mystical, spirit-like. Cool, right?"
Kotetsu approaches the shining armor. "I don't know. It's… a lot of white. I feel flat when I wear so much of the same color."
"I told them you wouldn't like the color."
Kotetsu whipped around, looking at the source of the familiar voice. Casually leaning against a wall, Barnaby smirks at his partner, and Kotetsu's heart skips in joy.
"Bunny!"
"Nice to see you, too, old man," Barnaby teases, and he crosses the room, each step clicking on the lab floor.
"But what are you doing here?"
"This is the corporate project I told you about. I'm the head engineer. I knew about your promotion before you did."
"Oh, that's no fair!" Kotetsu's mouth says, but his brain is doing happy cartwheels: Bunny's here! Bunny's here! He's here with me! He's here to stay!
Barnaby just smirks, the Wise Man smile that he's slowly perfecting. "With my retirement and your promotion, I thought it was time to put the best from both of our suits into one, and then throw in a healthy dose of the latest advances. Besides, I want to see you trounce those little posers."
"Is that so?" Kotetsu grins.
"Yes. And the only way to make sure something gets done is to do it yourself. Consider me your partner once more, Wild Tiger."
"So you think I can't handle the first league without your help?"
"That's exactly what I think." Before Kotetsu can protest that callous but good-natured insult, Barnaby goes on, "This is an excellent suit, if I do say so myself." He gestures to the face. "I'll start with the eyes; green. They only come in one color, actually. It's just convenient it matches your second suit. You see, they're still experimental. My lab has been developing them for about three years, combining work from—"
"That's really interesting, Bunny. Like, so interesting. But, y'know…"
Barnaby smiles. "Omni-optics. They see everything. The feature I think you'll most enjoy is tracking and object recognition. Once you have a lock on a target, the system can trace up to thirteen visual, chemical, electrical, and radioactive cues. With those cues, you can not only see where someone or something is, even in heavy fog or smoke, but the system can identify where it's been by following its trail. The ultimate criminal-hunting tool."
"Ooh, I get it! No criminal will escape… the eye of the Tiger! That sounds cool, right?"
Barnaby rolls his eyes, but the lame pun makes him smile, and that's all Kotetsu wants to see.
"For the first time, you have claws," Barnaby taps a button on a console, and with a shnk, the suit's gauntlets sprout four silver talons, a little bit longer than his fingertips. "Fortified nanosteel, patent pending, laced with surgical diamond. Ordinarily indestructible, so you can use them as hooks for climbing and gripping, but then, if you activate microvibrations, they'll cut through anything, using the same principles as a chainsaw. We sliced through steel bars like butter in lab tests."
"Hey, I thought you weren't cleared to put those on!" Edelman protests. "The damages—"
"If you didn't want damages, you wouldn't have hired Wild Tiger as your hero," Barnaby cuts him off. "A hero's job is to save people, and it's my job to equip our hero to the best of my ability. Unless you want to wear this suit and keep the peace yourself, I suggest you step down and let the professionals work."
Cowed, Edelman whimpers and ducks back, letting Barnaby and Kotetsu continue.
Barnaby keeps explaining features of Kotetsu's suit—new wire gun with three types of cable (a standard but much improved wire, heavy-duty stop-an-oncoming-train wire, and ultralight, nigh-invisible tripwire), hyper-jump boosters adapted from Barnaby's old suit, oil slick, oil-slick resistant boots. Though Barnaby dumbs it down for Kotetsu's sake, the hero knows he'll need another explanation later, because he's too busy staring at Barnaby, drinking in his presence like never before. Barnaby is here. Here to stay, a permanent fixture of Kotetsu's life. Not a long-distance phone friend or a lunch buddy. Here, by his side.
And if he leans in a little closer than strictly necessary for conversation, Kotetsu can see Barnaby's long, gorgeous eyelashes are still luscious as ever. The details of Kotetsu's new anti-EMP systems goes in one ear and out the other as Kotetsu gazes at his partner, happier than he's felt in ages. Without a doubt, Barnaby rejoining Apollon is the best thing to happen to Kotetsu in the last ten years, since Keene told him about his evolving power. He tells Barnaby so when he drags his partner out for celebratory drinks…
…Then he doesn't remember much after that. But he wakes up bare-chested beside a similarly half-naked Barnaby, so Kotetsu assumes that he's happy, too.