Whew. I’d half-expected a trap, an ambush of glitter and uncomfortable questions. Instead, I found Mindy in a practical, dark blue one-piece swimsuit that was designed for speed, not seduction. She hadn’t been lying about the freckles, though. With her makeup off, a dusting of them stood out across her nose and cheeks. She might have been pulling my leg about the red hair, or her bleach job was the work of a true artiste.

  And damn, could the girl swim. I was no slouch—I’d spent a summer learning proper techniques, and my fitness gave me endurance for days—but she moved through the water with a natural, terrifying grace. I joined her in the lanes of the subterranean double-Olympic pool, and while I could outlast her, her speed and form made me look like a thrashing walrus having a seizure.

  When she finally had to stop, panting at the railing, I flopped next to her, elbows supporting my weight. I’d been trying the breathing technique again, testing if water or humidity was one of my magical “shapes.” The results were middling. Better than the underground dojo, but still nowhere near as effective as the kinetic chaos of the city air high above.

  “Why?” I asked between measured breaths.

  “Why what?” she panted, tilting her head back against the railing and scissoring her legs to stay afloat.

  “Were you serious about being a redhead? If so, why would you change it? That’s like winning the genetic lottery and then trading the ticket for a slightly used toaster.”

  She sighed, a sound lost in the chlorinated air. “Stephen. My former agent. The same guy who told me to hire a stunt company. I’m not actually cold; I’m water. But ice is a hundred times more useful for combat PR than steam, or at least it seems that way, and I can manipulate ice just fine.”

  “So he told me that if I wanted to go the ice route, I needed the look. Apparently, neither water nor ice users test well with red hair. Fire and Earth can pull it off, and my force secondary was fine with anything, but the name, the hair, the costume… it was all designed to fit a brand.”

  “Did it?”

  She nodded. “I got a scholarship here. If I had walked in off the street, it might not have worked.”

  I barked a laugh that echoed across the water. “Mindy, you are a Class Five Hydrokinetic with a force secondary. If you’d walked in off the street weighing three hundred pounds, bald, and with a face like a dropped meatloaf, this place would have snatched you up so fast they’d have created a sonic boom. And PR-wise… well, I don’t know about this Stephen guy. I mean, I appreciate him sending you my way—paying customer and all—but his advice is about as cutting-edge as a flint axe.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Think of the headlines: ‘Frosty Shows Off Fiery Temper as She Drops The Gladiator!’ Don’t get me wrong, the silver hair thing is classic, but ‘classic’ also means it’s been done to death. Every third-tier hero team has a ‘Glacier’ or a ‘Frostbite’ or a ‘Winter’s Bane.’ You’re a main-eventer stuck with an undercard name.”

  She laughed. “I guess I can see what you mean. The powers teacher was pretty insistent that I not focus exclusively on cold, too. I figure branding is probably still important, but maybe it’s better to focus outside of the mainstream.”

  I nodded. “You’re a Class Five, and gorgeous to boot. Water elementals who can shift states are a lot less common—which is probably the real reason for your upgrade. At your level, branding isn’t important unless you want it to be. Your brand is what you make of it. You could call yourself ‘The Damp Duchess’ and people would just assume it’s ironic and deeply cool.”

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  “Seriously?”

  “If you decide you want a rose and green outfit and call yourself something not even related to water, like… I don’t know, ‘Harmony,’ as a Class Five, that would be considered a clever affectation. People would invent their own lore for you. You could probably even dip your toes into a villain aesthetic, and that would just make the fanboys pant harder. Mystery sells. Consistency is for breakfast cereal.”

  She turned over to rest her elbows on the bar, looking at me with genuine curiosity. “Allow me to pick your brain then. What would be an off-brand villain look that wouldn’t get me on the super-villain watch list?”

  I thought about it. “Okay, how about ‘Rusalka’? That’s a murderous Russian water spirit known for drowning men attracted to her. Black and green costume, any hair color you want, and the press would eat it up. Even if they occasionally painted you as a little grimdark, it would just add to your mystique. Hell, ignore the press entirely, and suddenly there’s this giant mystery they’d swarm over like flies on a melted Popsicle.”

  “Good example. Miss Anthrope. She’s a Class Four illusionist who works for Redemption. Her name literally tells everyone she hates people, and she refuses to talk to the press. If she left Redemption, even The Flare would snatch her up in a heartbeat.”

  I sighed, moving away from the wall to tread water. “Honestly,” I said between focused breaths, “despite how much agents push it, and the fact that I make money on it, visible publicity is a loser’s game for the little guys. It’s a treadmill. When you lose relevance, you fall off. At higher levels, it only matters to the agents because they make money on it. Unless you personally crave the spotlight and the endorsement deals for energy drinks that taste like battery acid, it’s a distraction.”

  She nodded. “That sort of makes sense, I guess. So support isn’t as hard to get over Rank Four?”

  I shook my head, accidentally splashing her, which just made her chuckle. “Not really. Unless you have a really extravagant lifestyle—gold-plated kaiju repellent is pricey—working for an organization like the Monster Hunters gives you a fantastic support network if you’re skilled enough not to die. Bounties, especially, are a huge source of tax-free income.”

  “I wonder why my agent didn’t suggest that?”

  I grinned. “Simple. Agents don’t get a share of bounties. They care a lot less about your money than they do about their own. If they can build your brand, get you into a commercial for dubious protein powder, maybe a straight-to-video movie, or possibly even porn as long as they can leverage it for publicity, they get their fifteen percent.”

  “Porn? Seriously? And fifteen percent? I was paying Anthony twenty!”

  I nodded. “You think Glamour Girl’s ‘leaked’ sex tape was really an accident? Heck no. She’s been on The Flare long enough to start losing relevance. She’s still hot, but she’s aging, and her Playboy spread was almost fifteen years ago. But now? Every teenage boy hunting for ‘superheroes’ is making a beeline to the unauthorized sites to see her bouncing on Johnny Reb’s lap, especially after his whole racist-remarks scandal. She’s back in the news. Not bad for a fifty-five-year-old sex symbol who looks thirty, all thanks to a ‘leak’ her agent absolutely got a cut of.”

  “I don’t like to give straight-up advice—it’s bad for my villainous mystique—but will you accept some?”

  Mindy nodded, lowering her goggles for another set of laps.

  “Fire Anthony. Not for his mediocre advice—the cookie-cutter image shows the talent management skills of a sedated lemur. Not even for failing to get you a better scholarship, though that’s a black mark. Fire him because he’s a thief. He knows the standard cut for an active-duty super is fifteen percent. For a part-timer just starting out? It’s often ten or twelve. Twenty is flat-out grand larceny in a cheap suit. He was robbing you because he thought he could get away with it.”

  She sighed, the sound bubbling in the water. “He already dropped me. I’m going to be here for the next four years, which means no profits unless I do some kind of side gig. He didn’t try to get me to do porn, but I bet he would have. He did try to get me to let him shop me out to Heromates.”

  “Heromates?” I asked, though I had a sinking feeling I knew.

  She nodded. “Yeah, you know, the little video girls that sit in the corner of your screen and take off their clothes for credits? I turned him down flat. No one gets to see me without clothes except someone I choose.”

  With that, she pushed off the wall and powered into another lap, leaving me treading water in her wake and pondering the many, many ways this world found to exploit people. Of course, I pretended not to wonder what Mindy would look like naked. Sue me, I'm male, and her swimsuit looked amazing.

  Some things, it seemed, were universal.