Heroes Wear Capes

“Heroes don’t exist. And if they did, I wouldn’t be one of them.”

~ Brodi Ashton

Being the son of Paul Rossi, Trevor had a pretty good life. He was probably the single richest twenty year old in Kingdom City, and he didn’t even have to do much to achieve it.

His father was the source of the family fortune, so all Trevor had to do was exist and he automatically got a portion of it. Trevor didn’t know all of the ins and outs about Rossi Corp, but he did know that most of what the business put out was only for show. Rossi Corp didn’t make its money through its many subsidiaries and business ventures, but rather through a fickle operation known as illegally selling arms and drugs to the city’s most prominent gangs.

You see, Trevor’s father had built his empire so quickly by supplying Kingdom City’s less fortunate with the weapons they needed to take back their city from the notorious superheroes who got in their way. Without Rossi Corp, most every big city in the country would probably have almost no criminal activity left with all the so-called superheroes spreading fear of retribution. Rossi Corp was the reason the non-super criminals could fight back against the new wave of superheroes that came in every couple of years.

It was a simple business transaction. Supply and demand if you will.

With the influx of superheroes in the recent decade, Trevor understood the necessity of his father’s business. The so called heroes thought they had a right to squash the small business man just because they had unnatural abilities. Like, shooting arrows and punching through walls shouldn’t make you the alpha supreme.

Of course, the Rossi family opinion wasn’t a particularly unpopular one. The recent third party of the Remedists that had sprung up during the past election had actually almost won. They were an offshoot of the Republicans whose main platform was the regulation of the growing dangerous super population. With them in control, supers would no longer be allowed to run rampant through the streets, ignorantly using their powers while dressed in brightly colored spandex suits that made the heroes look more like clowns than protectors of their cities.

It was too bad that the candidate for the Remedist Party, Richard Head, had dropped out suddenly months before Election Day had even occurred. The general public had been agreed that he probably would’ve won if he hadn’t dropped.

But Richard Head did raise a lot of good questions that needed to be answered. Like, how could the public trust superheroes if most turned out to be idiot teenagers?

(The portion of superheroes who were young adults was astounding, and that was only out of the few whose identities were public knowledge through one way or another. Imagine how many more heroes were high schoolers that the public didn’t know about.)

Out of the few business ventures Rossi Corp attempted that weren’t for the good of the low faring citizens of Kingdom City and cities like it, many were arguably not good for the super population. Like the time Rossi Corp attempted to buy out Hermes Enterprises, the fashion empire who basically made every suit for every superhero and super villain ever. Or maybe you could count that time Rossi Corp tried to buy the restaurant franchise Super Burger to run it to the ground, but Carlton Laboratories got there first to save it.

(Which, let’s be honest, was not fair. The entire world knew that Chase Carlton, the ‘ex-CEO’, was in charge of the company. Chase Carlton, as in the Blue Archer. In Trevor’s opinion, the fact that the company was associated with an arrow slinging vigilante gave it a huge unfair advantage.)

Seeing as Rossi Corp had a long known history of rivalry with the superheroes, it was okay to assume that any association with Carlton Laboratories was unwanted and unwarranted. This was why Trevor was very mad when he woke up that morning to the news that Carlton Laboratories were seriously considering a takeover of Rossi Corp.

Of course, he still had to wait until his father was done with his business meeting to discuss the news with him.

Trevor could hear his father’s yells at the uncooperative employee on the other end.

“What do you mean, ‘the shipment isn’t in yet’? I specifically told you bimbos to make sure they got it here before the end of the week. If I don’t get that special shipment of PF-08-2 by the end of the week, someone down there is going to lose a body part and I don’t just mean something unessential!”

Trevor heard the phone slam down on his father’s mahogany desk and then a small crash. He must’ve crashed another glass frame on the wall. The maid would have fun cleaning that up, just like she had to do every time his father had a heated discussion with someone on the payroll who wasn’t doing exactly what he wanted exactly how he wanted.

(Basically, they should’ve just removed all breakable items from that office years ago.)

The door opened and a security guard exited. This was Trevor’s chance.

“Hello, father.”

“What do you want?” Paul Rossi asked quite rudely, brushing off pieces of broken glass from his desk as Trevor entered the prized expansive office.

There were many framed pictures of his father’s favorite people, like Richard Head and George H. W. Bush (The first Bush in the white house), lining the walls along with a case full of autographed memorabilia. Trevor was pretty sure one of the pictures in the glass case was signed by Putin.

Trevor gulped. “I just wanted to know if you heard what Lacey Carlton told SNN this morning.”

The SNN was just another marketing ploy created after the supers started to become a common occurrence. They were like any regular news network, except most of their news was superhero or super villain related. They got a big boost over the last election cycle when the Remedists were running for the presidency. They were obviously biased towards the supers and superheroes, but all networks were biased in one way or another anyways.

If you go on their website, you’d see links to conspiracy sites and confirmations of certain supers’ identities. Some theorists had been able to get proof throughout the years of certain super identities, like The League of Legends. They still saved their respective cities, but now the entire world knew who was behind the mask. It was fun to go on their site and see which supers were revealed, or if they were thought to be a certain person. It did a person good to see these supposed all-powerful people brought down a notch in their real lives.

His father scoffed. “What do we care what that stupid ‘Super News Network’ said? Or what that bitch headlining as the CEO of Carlton Labs said?”

“Well, she was talking about a possible takeover of the company.” Trevor offered. “The online news sites are claiming you guys were even considering coming to some sort of deal.”

Paul’s gaze hardened. “Lacey Carlton would never try such a thing, not with me at the helm of Rossi Corp. Besides, what use would that super-loving company have of Rossi Corp? Why would I ever willingly make a deal with them?”

Trevor shrugged, suddenly feeling stupid. He had thought he was delivering news his father would praise him for delivering. He thought that maybe his father would congratulate him for warning him of the news, but that wasn’t the case. It was never the case.

But, entrepreneurs could always find something interesting to do with business opportunities like that. Rossi Corp had enough projects going on at the moment that Carlton Labs would be able to twist in their own interests. In fact, Trevor was sure Lacey Carlton could find great use of Rossi Corp and its subsidiaries, but sometimes his father could be single-minded. And sometimes Trevor’s opinions weren’t welcome by his father. Sometimes he had to say what his father expected him to say.

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly!” Paul exclaimed. “Trevor, think before you act.”

It was like this normally with the father son couple. Trevor was never as much of a use to his father as he hoped he’d be.

His father sighed and ran a hand over his bald head in frustration. “Trevor, if you’re ever going to run this business one day, you have to learn how to separate a false claim from a true one. Believe me, if that woman was actually going to try and buy the company out from under me, I’d know.”

Trevor pouted a bit. He knew he was never going to be able to live up to his father’s expectations, and it was something he was going to have to live with.

Paul picked up the phone and waved his hand, letting Trevor know it was time for him to exit the room. Trevor sighed and pivoted on his feet, heading back out into the hallway. The door was slammed by one of his dad’s guards and Trevor flinched at the loud noise. He knew exactly what his father would say to that. “Oh, Trevor, how do you expect to take my place if you’re scared by something as simple as a door closing? You really aren’t my son.”

He clenched his fists and leaned against the wall. Trevor knew he wasn’t the all-star son that someone like Paul Rossi had wanted to have. He wasn’t necessarily gifted at much of anything, unless you counted watching too many gangster movies in his spare time. He wasn’t strong or imposing with his gangly arms and skinny frame, and according to his father, he had no sense of mind for how to run a sensitive business like theirs. Yep. Trevor was a failure in every sense of the word.

Sometimes he wished he wasn’t the son of the most notorious businessman in the city. Sometimes he wished he was a normal kid, like his friend Xander Mendez. Xander went to a public school and had a family that wasn’t known all around the country for hating the superheroes. He was allowed to be just a teenager. Just an ignorant kid.

Realistically speaking, Xander and he shouldn’t even be friends, but Xander’s mother used to be the old maid for their building. She would always bring her son over, and therefore the two would always have each other to play with. Xander was Trevor’s connection to the real world outside of his father’s business empire.

Xander also happened to be completely and totally obsessed with the superheroes. The fact would’ve been totally fine if the superheroes of Kingdom City hadn’t stood for everything the Rossi Corporation stood against.

But, it was all okay. It wasn’t Xander’s fault that he still blindly followed the heroes in spandex. He didn’t know how hard they made Rossi Corp operations go. It was more the vigilante Silver Streak that caused them the most harm anyways. The other two superheroes of the city, White Knight and Wild Fire, usually stayed around the nicer parts of town, ignoring the neighborhoods like Oakland, where most of the Rossi Corp ventures took place. They preferred to save the more fortunate. It looked better in the papers if you saved an innocent white girl and not some won’t-be-missed whore on the side of the street.

(Hey, Trevor was just calling it like it was. You always hear about the rich daddy’s girl getting kidnapped or murdered, but never the homeless man or the poor girl from the wrong side of town.)

(It was horrible, yes, but it was also the cold hard truth.)

But it was Silver Streak who really annoyed Paul, and in turn Trevor. She was always popping up and trying to dispel their sells. If she kept it up, Rossi Corp would have a hard time selling anything in Kingdom City. What had Rossi Corp ever done to her?

What Rossi Corp really needed was for one of (or all of) the superheroes of their city to retire. It was statistically proven that when a city lost a superhero one way or another, crime rates skyrocketed. And in a city with three heroes and already pretty high crime rates, a loss of a hero (especially that pesky Silver Streak) would mean big business.

But it was all okay. Even with annoying superheroes, the Rossi name was still a thing of power.

Super villains were occasionally a problem as well. Usually the ones with end-the-world plots were what bothered Trevor the most. Like, he was doing pretty well in this world, he didn’t need some self-obsessed crybaby trying to blow it up in an effort to kill one superhero. Like, “Hey idiot! You live in the world too! Do you want to die too?” They sometimes unintentionally messed with deals by choosing to fight a superhero at the most inconvenient times. One even tried to steal from Rossi Corp once. Obviously that hadn’t been a smart choice by the villain.

They also had trouble with Doctor Destruction back when he had been a big deal. He would always fight with Captain Fantastic and just become a huge nuisance. Making a business deal was kind of hard when Doctor Destruction was threatening to destroy the city just to get rid of the one stupid hero.

Back when there was that gray period between Captain Fantastic ending his career and White Knight starting his, a super villain took over Kingdom City by teaming up with Rossi Corp. Though, when he was finally defeated, Rossi Corp was able to avoid trouble with the law. It seemed like law enforcement enjoyed a big paycheck.

Nowadays most of the trouble came from Black Knight, the son of Doctor Destruction. He and White Knight would fight all over the city over some girl. What could be so special about one damsel?

If Trevor wasn’t destined to run his father’s company, he probably wouldn’t have minded being one of those mob bosses and gangsters that they were always selling guns and such to. They were villains in their own rights, but that was only because they were misunderstood. They kept neighborhoods in check and made sure small businesses stayed afloat. Not to mention they were revered. Trevor wouldn’t mind being revered for once in his life.

But being a lowminded gangster was not a part of Paul’s dreams for his son. Of course, there were other things Trevor was doing that his father wouldn’t approve of. For instance, he probably wouldn’t approve of Trevor’s closeness to a certain redhead advisor of his.

But that was a subject to touch on later on.

Trevor walked down the hall and back to his room. If he couldn’t provide his dad with some useful information, he might as well sulk in his room playing video games until he was given something to do. Maybe if he ignored his dad today, he wouldn’t mind taking him on that new deal he was planning for the PF-08-02 later this week. Trevor always liked it when he got to tag along. It made him feel more important to his dad than Paul let on.

But for the time being it was time for violent video games and a supersized bag of chips.