HEROism

Kay smiled at Cardinal.

"Somehow, I doubt you can handle a semi to the face. Or that any of you can. You're right that you need a tank, Sigrun. One question before I accept: do we have to register with HERO?"

"I'm in if Cardinal joins." Mik stated. Getting close to some of the most intelligent figures he could would be useful. If he could get back home, he might even be able to start a peaceful trade arrangement.

"Kind of an odd stipulation, but okay." Sigrun said to Mik, before turning to Kay. "As for H.E.R.O.... Yes. We really should register. We could operate without doing so, but there are numerous benefits to registering. We become an official superhero team, which gives us rights over IP for marketing purposes, but, more importantly, we also are put on H.E.R.O.'s register to be called up in case of an emergency. The whole point of us teaming up is so we can better handle situations too big for solo heroes to deal with, and if we don't register, H.E.R.O. will still have to call in temporary alliances to deal with the situations. If we hear about the problems when they happen, we could hypothetically intervene, but our ability to help goes down drastically if we don't register.

Cardinal rolled her eyes at Kay and then turned to Mik, looking confused. "Why me?" she asked.

Kay was silent for a little while. Then she shrugged he shoulders and shook out her hair.

"Okay, I'll register, with a couple of conditions. I get to be in charge of our marketing and I get 40% of the net profits from that marketing."

Suddenly Cardinal's eyes lit up. "Wait," she said, excitement in her voice, "does marketing include merchandising?? I've got this idea for little robotic toys, and with a little tinkering I could make them look like each of us!! I could even customize them to do something related to each of our powers, like have one lift stuff and so on for Kay, and then one that changes colour to blend in since I can't make it truly invisible, and..."
Cardinal stopped talking and pulled out her notebook and began furiously sketching, her eyes bright.

"Really?" asked Gungnir. "We haven't even come to a final decision on the team,  and you're thinking about merchandising? We're talking about a hero team,  not a publicity stunt,  for crying out loud!"

Cardinal did not appear to hear anything, instead she continued to scribble in her notebook. She appeared to be working on some complex blueprints with parts and concepts.

Seeing no response from Cardinal made Gungnir irritated. She pulled out a small something from her utility belt and tossed it at the notepad in cardinal's hands. "Hey!" She said sharply. "There's a conversation going and you're part of it!

Cardinal looked up, startled, and said "sorry, did you say something?"

"I have a job, I'm going to want you to do sometime," Mik responded to Cardinal. "It involves fixing something. If I can find what's left of it, at least."

Gungnir's eye twitched, and a flare of energy wafted off her arm. She closed here eyes and took a moment to get herself back under control. She then said in a level tone, "Let's get the hero team officially formed before we tackle merchandising, shall we?"

"Yes, I agree with Gungnir." Sigrun said to Cardinal, resting her hand on Gungnir's shoulder, "There will be plenty of opportunity to figure out what exactly we do with our brand, once we actually have one. Regarding your condition, Kay, I personally don't feel a need to claim a significant percentage of profits, but 40% of the net is twice an even share. I am fine with you being official head of marketing, but how exactly that works, and where the money goes should be tabled for future discussion, unless you feel it really is a deal-breaker, and must be sorted now. Furthermore, everything here is to be democratic. I volunteer to be our liaison with H.E.R.O., and I'm probably best suited to leadership, as I have the most experience in teams of anyone here... At least, on Earth that's true." She added, looking at Mik, "But everything is necessarily a viable discussion topic."

"I may be able to fix it," Cardinal began, "depends what it is though..."

To Sigrun she said, "I could also adapt them to create distractions for us...send it in to make noise in another direction and so on..."

Kay shrugged.

"It might not be important to you, but this is what I live on. Marketing the team is going to take time and money away from my own marketing. Keep in mind that my percentage wouldn't just be for being marketable, it would be for actually doing the work. If we're more profitable than I thought, I'll convert part of my percentage to a group slush fund, but I can't be a part of the group if it's going to bankrupt me."

"Cardinal, it's a thought, but for now can we focus on big picture items?" Sigrun asked, "And Kay, I do understand your point, but the fact is that everyone will be doing something in their off-time that will take away from their ability to make money. For example, if I do wind up officially in charge, I'll have to manage our assets, plan strategies, figure out where the team goes, and what we all do together, as well as a handful of other things. We can't know which will be more lucrative, but since we're all established heroes, it seems likely our brand will take off much more quickly than anything else we do, since that's what's happened in the past. Again, I'm not saying no, but I'm saying it's not quite so easy as saying 'yeah, you can have 40%'. I will say that if we produce sufficient money to properly compensate everyone in a way that is equable, then we will. Can we table this now?"

Gungnir's only response was to shrug. The shop she worked at got her more than enough to get by, and she'd been training up one of the other employees as an assistant manager. Gungnir felt the trainee was ready for more responsibility anyways, so work wouldn't be too much of a problem. Gungnir could just tell her she was taking up a bigger part of her family business, which was true. She wasn't looking forward to being both a hero and CEO of a company, but her parents were getting older and she hadn't got a degree in business for nothing.

Cardinal shrugged and said, "I'm not exactly at the age where I need to worry about money, but I do plan to go to university at some point..."

Kay's face took on a studied neutral tone.

"All right, let's move on with the discussion."

It took me years to build up tens of thousands of followers who buy stuff, Kay fumed internally, I'm damned if I'm going to just hand them over for a pat on the head.

"Kay can take my share," Mik responded, "at least until any investments that are made have been recovered. Shall I assume I'll be responsible for gathering intel?"

Sigrun pinched the bridge of her nose, "While your offer is kind, Red Mirage, it's not quite the point of the conversation." She gave a deep sigh, "Kay, if you would like, since everyone else seems to be very laid back on the subject, I would gladly meet with you privately afterwards to work out something that satisfies you. I want everyone to join this gladly, so I don't want there to be any problematic differences of opinion, especially over something like money. I just don't want to commit to any hard figures right off the bat without first going over the data a little more, that's all it comes down to. So, then, Kay, would you be willing to join contingent on finding a financial agreement that you find satisfactory? Once we have worked something out, then we can bring it before everyone else to okay, and we'll be good. Alright?"

Kay looked a little sheepish.

"Yeah. Sorry. I get a lot of crap about how what I do isn't work and isn't worth anything. I've spent 7 years of my life figuring out superhero marketing, so you can imagine why I get pissed."

Sigrun heaved another sigh, this time from relief. "It's fine, I can understand your situation, I just wanted to not get too bogged down in the nitty-gritty specifics right off the bat. Now, since everyone seems to have said they're interested, I have some paperwork to fill out." She said, heading over to a filing cabinet and pulling out a large stack of papers, "It's mostly very straightforward. Read it at your own pace, and, if everything is agreeable, please sign where I've highlighted. In case anyone is concerned about overcommitting, there is a clause in there allowing for any one of you to leave at any time in the first six months without any penalty or difficulty to you whatsoever." With that said, she handed out the papers along with pens for everyone. "If you have any questions, I helped compose these, so I can help with anything you might find confusing, but it should all be straightforward enough."

Gungnir sized up the stack of papers and prepared herself for the task of reading through them. Well, she thought, at least I have nothing else planned for the day. This is going to take a while. As she read, she found herself glancing up at the room they were in. She couldn't help but feel it needed some... Improvements. It was nice enough, but it was feeling more like an office's meeting room than a hero's headquarters. She decided she would have a word with Sigrun about it later, get a second opinion on it. Heck, maybe it could be something to be taken up on their next meeting.

Cardinal took the papers and began quickly reading through them. She had learned at an early age how to read quickly and knew it wouldn't take long to finish.