“Okay, one more load should do it!” Krystal announced happily, her face sweaty but beaming. Bubba and I looked around her apartment with considerable doubt. There were still at least ten boxes remaining, and even with two us sporting enhanced strength, the unwieldiness of such burdens made lugging them down the stairs of Krystal’s apartment a highly suspect proposition.
“If you say so,” Bubba muttered at last, pausing to take a drink of his beer. “What all you got in these boxes, anyway?” Bubba spoke with the sort of twang one would expect from someone sporting such a moniker. His frame (massive, with ample muscle), wardrobe (Baseball caps, jeans, and flannel), and occupation (truck driver) also fit well within the bounds of appropriate stereotypes. These small conformities only highlighted the unexpected bits: his wisdom, gentleness, and unashamed homosexuality being a few examples.
“Mostly stuff for the booth,” Krystal said. Somehow, she still managed to look sexy, even in a pair of gray sweatpants and an old T-shirt from the high school we’d both attended. Krystal had been significantly wider of frame back then, so it hung loosely on her in a way that I found appealing, but couldn’t quite understand. Slung over her shoulder was a large duffel bag, nearly bursting it was so full. She hadn’t let it out of her possession since Bubba and I arrived and had begun loading a significant number of boxes into the back of her pickup.
“Don’t agents have teams to set this stuff up?” I asked, hefting a large box that would have thrown my meager back out when I was still alive. Thankfully, one of the boons of a being my type of parahuman was a hardier frame. Krystal was also parahuman, but one of incredible rarity and power. That was part of why she worked as an Agent (an emissary from the secret branch of the government charged with keeping peace and upholding treaties in the parahuman world), since, in a world of big bad monsters, Krystal was near the top of the heap. Sometimes, her job involved putting down supernatural beasts that had decided to chuck our covert existence and go hog wild. Other times, like this upcoming weekend, it involved a more diplomatic set of tasks.
“Fred, agents are highly specialized resources,” Krystal reminded me. “They aren’t going to take time out of their day to come help me set up a booth for CalcuCon.”
“Your entire organization cannot be made up of just agents,” I pointed out, setting my box back down. “There must be people who make coffee, clean restrooms, and mop up the messes after you leave a wake of destruction. There is always grunt work, and I know you well enough to presume you are not the one doing it.”
“Fiiiine,” she said, stretching out the word like a cat basking in a sunbeam. “I could have put in a request for a moving and set-up team, but it’s a shitload of paperwork to deal with and I found employing the boyfriend-labor to be far easier. And Bubba will do anything for a case of beer and a well-prepared steak.”
Bubba nodded his agreement, setting two boxes on top of each other as he began constructing a teetering tower he would then lug down the stairs. The truth of the matter was that Bubba would do anything for Krystal. She’d been his friend for a long time, and just last Thanksgiving had saved him from a company of dracolings that had had enough debt on him to make him a slave for life. Pointing this out at the time would have been impolite, however, so I shifted topics.
“I still find it mildly insulting that you named a convention solely based around the idea of parahumans congregating “CalcuCon,” as if no other parties might want to come to that,” I grumbled.
“First off, I didn’t name it. CalcuCon has been around for like twenty some years,” Krystal informed me. “Second, no, you’re not the only nerd drawn by that name. We’ve had plenty of applicants try to sign up for it over the years.”
“How do you dissuade them?” Parahumans weren’t exactly a secret on par with nuclear launch codes, but great pains were taken to keep the veil of disbelief drawn across society’s collective eyes. Letting them come to a place where we gather en masse, without hiding our natures, would be the height of unacceptability.
“Red tape, usually,” Krystal said. “Lost applications, extra fees piled on top of extra fees, constantly changing dates, and overall horrendous customer service. We make the experience so terrible no one wants to come, let alone try again the next year.”
“I think my cable company has been stealing plays from your book,” Bubba remarked, as he set a fourth box on the pile.
“Other way around. Every couple of years, we have someone set up a Castcom account, just to see if they’ve come up with any new tactics. They never fail to disappoint,” Krystal replied.
“How big is CalcuCon, anyway?” I interrupted. All I’d been told was to pack a bag and come help lift things, so now I had to gather information on the fly. I was largely unbothered by it all though; this was pretty much par for the course with Krystal. “If there’s a large enough presence, perhaps I’ll get a booth to advertise my accounting services next year.”
“It’s pretty damn big,” Krystal said. “Several thousand parahumans make the trek for it. That’s why I’ve got to set up an Agency recruiting booth. This is a chance to reach lots of people we’d never otherwise get a chance to court.”
“Seems like people would be coming to you, not the other way around.”
“Agents ain’t exactly universally beloved in the parahuman world,” Bubba informed me, setting the last of his boxes on top of the pile. “Lots of folks grew up with their parents treating them like the bogeyman, the sort of thing that gets whispered about, but is hopefully never seen. You know how you get an uneasy feeling in your gut when a cop starts driving behind you, even if you ain’t speeding?”
I nodded. My general anxiety meant that even the possibility of a confrontation with authority was enough to spur a bout of nausea—at least, back when I could have such things.
“Amp that up by a few dozen degrees, and that’s how lots of parahumans feel when they hear about or see an agent. Even if we ain’t doin’ anything wrong, we understand that that person can completely wreck our shit. It doesn’t exactly lead to warm and fuzzy sentiments.”
“Which is precisely why we do things like set up booths at CalcuCon,” Krystal jumped in. “We want to take every opportunity to let people know we’re not the evil gestapo, and we’ll play nice as long as they do.”
“I suppose that might help soften your image,” I agreed.
“Oh no, we don’t try to do that,” Krystal said, giving her head a shake that sent tumbles of her blonde hair bouncing about. “We like the terrifying image. That’s something we work hard to preserve. The Agency is fine with being perceived as a horrifying monster, so long as it is a just, well-intentioned horrifying monster.”
“That is slightly disturbing,” I said, and then sighed, piling my set of boxes in a manner that imitated Bubba’s technique.
“Think of it as preemptive shock-and-awe,” Krystal urged.
“I would prefer not the think of it at all,” I replied. With a mighty heft, I lifted my pile into the air and was nearly knocked off balance by the unexpected lightness of my load. This was not due to the boxes being packed with nothing but Styrofoam or other such silliness, but because I still hadn’t really grasped my current strength. Ever since I’d had that drop of dragon blood several weeks back, my physical power and senses had been exponentially heightened. For a more classic, action-oriented vampire, this would have been a blessing of incomparable worth. For me, it meant I’d broken three keyboards and pulled the handle off my refrigerator. I couldn’t wait for the effects to fade and my more manageable level of augmented power to return.
“That’s the best strategy,” Bubba concurred, lifting his own set of boxes as well. A cursory glance around the room told me that, even with Krystal pitching in, there was still going to be another trip up here before we were finished. Evidently, my girlfriend reached the same conclusion.
“Well, damn,” she muttered. “Looks like I was off. I thought you two could do heavier lifting.”
“If we try and carry any more than this, we’re likely to drop the whole lot during our descent down the stairs,” I pointed out.
“Excuses excuses.”
“You could always set down the duffel and lift a little more,” Bubba tossed out.
“No can do,” Krystal replied. “The contents of the duffel bag have to stay with me at all times until we reach the convention. No exceptions.”
“Oh. There must be something really valuable in there,” I noted.
Krystal let out an unladylike snort, the sort of characteristic that endeared her to me. “I wouldn’t really say ‘valuable,’ just needy.”
“Needy?” I asked.
“Like a colicky baby,” Krystal affirmed. She bent down to pick up a box, and as she did, something in bag shifted, striking her in the back of the head. “Ow! Look, assholes, I might have to bring you along, but pull that shit again and I won’t bother with any polishing or lighting.”
These words were clearly directed at the duffel bag, a fact which Bubba and I noticed and pointedly chose not to comment on. In the parahuman world, you learn that asking questions often leads to answers you either didn’t want or don’t understand. Sometimes, it was better to just accept things as they were and focus on the task at hand.
“We’re ready when you are,” I told her.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Krystal said, grabbing the final box she would carry. “Let’s get this done. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. On the plus side, after this run we should only have one load left.”
Bubba and I exchanged glances, then began the awkward trek down the stairs and into the street, where Krystal’s oversized truck was waiting for the next round of boxes.