yudkowsky:

mirasorastone: yudkowsky: prokopetz: Bad: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, but nobody picks up on it for various implausible reasons. Good: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, and everybody “knows”, but in spite of countless people’s best efforts nobody can actually prove it.

“Literally everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose,” said the woman sitting across from me in our candlelit dinner. “The superheroes know it. The villains know it. The guy on the street knows it. Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon know it. The Enquirer doesn’t break the mask code when they print your picture because they don’t even bother mentioning who you are. If I need to have conversations with you pretending not to know that Bruce is the ‘Goose, we’re going to be the only two people on the planet pretending that.” My expectations for this date’s viability were starting to sink. She was saying intelligent things, and saying them with remarkable confidence and self-possession for somebody who thought she was talking to the Masculine Mongoose himself. It was impressing me and more than slightly turning me on. But the conversation had taken a turn I’d been down before, and not a promising one. “I don’t want to get into a relationship under false pretenses,” I said. “Yeah,” she said. “Like if I slept with you under the impression that you were just an ordinary playboy millionaire, instead of a superhero.” She sipped from her champagne glass, visibly trying not to smile. “Look,” I said, trying to make my voice as persuasive as I could. “Just like you say, everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose. People have believed that for eight years. And in all that time, nobody has ever managed to prove anything - never mind suggestive evidence, nobody has ever shown it for certain. Shouldn’t that give you pause?” Keep reading I would read an entire novel series about this concept. To her dying day, reporter Terri Green would remember the look on Bruce Kent’s face as the assassin stepped out of the crowd, holding the gun.

Keep reading

(5000 words. This story takes place chronologically before the first two Bruce Kent fics, but should be read afterwards.)

There was no warning. One moment I was waiting in line at the Gothic Cityville branch of the First Financial Bank to get a cashier’s check made out, trying to ignore the whispers coming from before me and behind me. Bruce Kent is very rigorous about pretending to not be the Masculine Mongoose, as everyone knows by now. Bruce Kent acts uncomfortable around people who whisper when they recognize him, just like he would if he was a normal human being who’d gotten mistaken for the Mongoose somehow. Keeping up the act at all times, yeah, that’s me all right.

The next moment, the glassed front door of the bank shattered into pieces around a woman stomping through in giant flaming power armor. She was followed shortly after by ten other goons in smaller suits of flaming power armor. When I say ‘flaming’ I don’t mean that it was decorated in red and orange, I mean that the powered suits were emitting gouts of fire from built-in spouts.

Professor Pyrofessor had somehow, God help her and both of us, managed to pick that exact moment to rob this particular bank branch.

Cries of horror and dismay came from around the huge room… though there were no screams in my own immediate vicinity.

Pyrofessor stomped into the middle of the room and let off a giant blast of flame that dissipated centimeters short of setting the ceiling on fire. “Nobody try anything crazy unless you’re me!” the infamous madgirl roared.

The person standing in front of me in line was gathering up the spilled documents she’d dropped in shock and… and quietly giggling to herself. Because Professor Pyrofessor was robbing a bank with the Masculine Mongoose inside it, right. Right.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit! What the hell was I supposed to do now?

If I’d been even 20% as smart as people think I am, if I’d been only 5% as smart as the Masculine Mongoose actually is, I’d have been able to think of something to do.

Instead, I just stood there. Frozen. Mind blank.

That’s what human beings often do when they’re in the middle of a massive crisis where immediate action is required.

Pyrofessor’s goons spread out from behind her, their powered exoskeletons making it easy for the huge-looking armors to vault over countertops and land with room-shaking thuds. Bank employees were seized, lifted into the air, dragged forth.

I stood there. Frozen. Mind blank.

The woman who’d been standing in front of me in line was starting to give me puzzled looks.

I knew that I wasn’t reacting the way she expected the Mongoose to act. But—but what the hell was I supposed to do?

My brain unfroze enough to remember the thing I was supposed to do, and I looked down to my Wristwatch. I needed to hit my panic button, the emergency alarm that tells the Mongoose to get over to me if he possibly can -

The Wristwatch was showing a grayscale sad face with Xs for eyes. I could only remember seeing that status once before, back when Barrier Maiden shut down comms across the solar system. It meant the Wristwatch was off the network. Pyrofessor must have been jamming all the airwaves, emergency and military frequencies as well as civilian.

A goon in power armor was power-stomping his way over to where we customers were standing. In sheer panic I pulled my hat’s brim down and tilted my head forward, obscuring the top half of my face. I don’t think I had any plan beyond that. I just did it on instinct before the armored goon could recognize me.

I could tell the woman standing in front of me in line was puzzled, but she gave a conspiratorial nod and winked at me, eager to be in on whatever I was planning.

If I didn’t think of something to plan, there were going to be questions asked afterwards. But what the hell was I supposed to do? Demand that the villains surrender to me? Professor Pyrofessor carries plasma weapons. She didn’t seem like the type to surrender to the Masculine Mongoose without shooting him first, if only out of curiosity about how plasma and him would interact.

The guy in the power suit growled orders at me and my fellow customers. I obediently headed to where all the customers and bank employees were being herded, and sat down when prompted. The people around me looked puzzled, but did the same.

I looked down at the Wristwatch. It was still offline.

A minute passed. Two minutes. The man who’d been standing behind me in line tried to whisper something to me. I shook my head at him, and he quieted.

I looked down at the Wristwatch. It was still offline.

I looked down at the Wristwatch. It was still offline.

I didn’t look down at the Wristwatch again. People would wonder why the Masculine Mongoose was checking his watch in the middle of a bank robbery. There isn’t supposed to be anything special about Bruce Kent’s wristwatch.

Time passed. Very slowly. I kept trying to remember where Professor Pyrofessor stood on the villain morality scale She didn’t have a standing capital sentence on her head, so she didn’t make a habit of incinerating schoolbuses. She also wasn’t the type to go out of her own way if a schoolbus happened to be on fire, if I was remembering right. She’d openly professed that her allegiance was to Science, not Humanity, to the disgust of many other mad scientists fighting the stereotype. She’d executed one of her own minions in public, once, for the crime of betraying her to another villain. But she’d never openly murdered any civilians for Science, if I was remembering all of this right, which I might not be.

I couldn’t remember exactly where Pyrofessor stood on the scale from 'terrify civilians but don’t hurt them’ to 'burn bits off civilians but don’t kill them’.

I couldn’t remember. All I could do was hope that Pyrofessor found whatever she was looking for, and cleared out without a fight starting. The Mongoose would be able to think of some excuse for why I hadn’t done anything. He’d be able to make it sound plausible. He’s smart.

But if Pyrofessor actually hurt somebody and the Masculine Mongoose just sat around without trying to stop her, his reputation was dead.

If I tried to stop her, I was dead.

Or there was the third option. Professor Pyrofessor would hurt someone, I would sit by quietly, and that would be the end of Bruce Kent’s masquerade. It’d had a good run, but nothing like that lasts forever.





Maryam Janeway had become increasingly nervous the longer the bank robbery went on. Probably not as nervous as most of the other hostages. She was sitting right next to the Masculine Mongoose. She was probably safer than the President of the United States, who was not sitting next to the Masculine Mongoose, wherever he was.

The part that was making her increasingly nervous was that the Masculine Mongoose still wasn’t doing anything. And Janeway couldn’t figure why. Or rather, her current theories of 'why’ centered around ideas like dead-woman switches in Pyrofessor’s armor that would destroy the whole bank lobby and maybe half of Gothic Cityville. She could see the Mongoose sitting quietly instead of starting a fight, in that case. Nobody had actually gotten hurt yet.

The thought occurred to Janeway that maybe she wasn’t that safe after all. A few meters away were a couple of school-age children sitting by their dad. If Pyrofessor did try to explode the building, the Mongoose might not pick her up along the way, if he went to save the kids first… no, that was silly. The Mongoose was famous for almost always avoiding situations getting that bad.

Almost always.

Almost.

New heavy thuds disrupted the room’s uneasy equilibrium. From a set of stairs at the back of the building, an elderly man in a business suit was being carried down by one of Pyrofessor’s minions in power armor. Literally carried, the elderly man’s two arms gripped between two huge metallic fists. The elderly man looked frightened, a visible wetness around his eyes. It didn’t go well with the dignity of his business suit. Seeing it made Janeway feel a little sick.

Professor Pyrofessor stomped over to where the man was being held.

Janeway couldn’t quite overhear what she said to him, or what he said to her. Maybe something about a safe-deposit box. Whatever Pyrofessor was saying, it wasn’t making the elderly man look any less scared. And whatever the man was saying, Pyrofessor wasn’t looking any happier for hearing it.

Janeway looked again at the Mongoose. The Mongoose was deliberately glancing at his watch. Trying to tell her something about time and waiting?

Then Pyrofessor brought up one of the fingers of her powersuit, and that finger started to glow, red to orange to yellow, like a hot poker. The elderly man in the business suit tried to shrink back from it, but his arms were still being held by the minion.

Even though Janeway knew it was pointless, even though she knew the Mongoose had to have already seen it, she still had to say -

“Do something!” Janeway whispered.

And the Masculine Mongoose stood up.

“Excuse me,” he called in Bruce Kent’s higher-pitched voice.

The entire room froze.

Everyone on Earth knew that voice, which all known forms of computer analysis showed had no statistically unusual correlations with the Masculine Mongoose’s voice.

Slowly, more slowly than could be explained by her heavy power armor, Professor Pyrofessor turned around to look in the hostages’ direction.

Bruce Kent tipped his hat back, exposing his face.

“Excuse me,” he said again. "Can I ask that you please not hurt that man?“

Bruce Kent sounded… terrified. Just like he was an ordinary mortal facing down a crazy supervillain with plasma weapons.

Janeway had read about this but it still felt incredibly weird to see the Mongoose actually doing it.

"What,” Pyrofessor said, her voice sounding surprisingly quiet for being so very loud, “are you, doing, in here?”

“I just happened to be waiting in line to get a cashier’s check when you crashed through the door,” said Bruce Kent. "Today is not my lucky day, I guess.“

"And you just sat down here with the rest of us?” blurted one of the other hostages.

“What else was I supposed to do?” Bruce Kent said. "It’s not like I have superpowers.“

There was a pause comprised of one part sheer incredulity to two parts also sheer incredulity, while the entire room took this in.

"Yes you do!” shrieked one of the bank employees.

“No I don’t,” Bruce Kent said.

“You bastard, we were scared half to death over here!”

“Dude, shut up,” said somebody else. "I’m certain he had good reasons, and when and if we all find out what they were, you’re going to look like the idiot foil of the story.“

The bank employee shut up.

Professor Pyrofessor walked closer to where Bruce Kent now stood, the power-armor emitting high-pitched whines with each motion. "So,” said Professor Pyrofessor. "You don’t have superpowers, huh.“

"Correct.”

“So you had no way to stop me from robbing this bank.”

“Right.”

“And no way to stop me from hurting that fool over there?” Pyrofessor’s face was a study in intrigued curiosity.

Bruce Kent swallowed. “I mean,” he said, “I do know who everybody thinks I am… so I could try to… bluff you into not doing that?”

There was another incredulous pause.

“Oh, come on!” said one voice, Janeway couldn’t see who.

“He’s producing actual sweat on his forehead,” one of the people nearby said.

Pyrofessor groaned out loud. “This is why I can’t stand his kind of cognitive augment,” she said. "He can’t just refuse to admit his identity like a normal fucking meta. No, the Goose has to make a big deal out of trying to act exactly like a real human in his shoes. Not because he’s trying to hide who he is. He knows we all know. He’s just being a fucking priss about his interpretation of the mask code. He thinks that if you knowingly behave according to a likelihood function that you can probabilistically distinguish from the likelihood function of a normal, you might as well hang a sign on your forehead. So he acts all ostentatiously precise about his interpretation of Bruce Kent, in order to sniff about how the rest of us are getting it wrong. And he does that knowing all you admiring numbskulls are completely oblivious to how he’s behaving on the augment-to-augment level. God, I hate Bayesians, they’re often right in principle but do they have to be such fucking snobs about it -“

"Mistress, you’re monologuing again,” one of the minions said.

“Right,” said Pyrofessor. "So now there’s nothing for it but to rip open all the safety-deposit boxes here to find the Gems of Color-Coding, wasting my time and yours, and keeping all these other hostages uncomfortable for that much longer. Not to mention the extra property damage.“ She turned away and started stomping towards the same stairs. "I hope you consider having saved one hostage a light, easily treated burn to be worth that. Personally, I can’t see how the multiplication works out.”

“Thank you very much,” Bruce Kent said, and sat down on his shaking legs.

“Wait,” said the same minion who’d corrected his mistress earlier about monologuing. “We’re not going to… go on robbing the bank, are we, mistress? With the Masculine Mongoose right there?”

“Of course we are,” said Pyrofessor, a smile now crossing her face. "Come on, where’s your sense of naughtiness? Of exhibitionism? When else are we going to get a chance to rob a bank while the Goose has to sit by and watch?“

"Yeah, laugh it up while you can,” somebody called. "Soon as you leave, Bruce Kent is going to say he needs to visit the men’s room, and thirty seconds later the Masculine Mongoose is coincidentally going to fly by and arrest you all. You know that, right?“

"Shut up!” somebody else yelled.

Pyrofessor paused in the middle of her heavy stomps, turning back to face the hostage group. “Excellent point,” the Pyrofessor said. "I suppose if we have to fight anyways, it would be best to fight you while I have lots of guns pointed at lots of hostages. I couldn’t win if you went all-out, but I’d be fascinated to see you stop me while acting exactly like Bruce Kent. Unless you care to promise me I won’t get intercepted after I leave, Mongoose?“ More long barrels were extending from her armor, pointed at the hostages.

"It’s -” Bruce Kent said. Janeway was close enough to him that she could hear him swallowing. "I don’t have any plans like that…“

The barrels extending from Pyrofessor’s were starting to glow an ominous fluorescent green, like a reflective neon strip on a crossguard uniform. "I’m afraid I must insist on a promise, Mister Mongoose.”

Bruce Kent’s voice was trembling. "I can’t promise that because I’m not the Goose. But if the Goose happened to stop by this way after you left, and he checked in with me first, I’d tell him about what you said and ask him to not arrest you after you left. If you didn’t hurt anyone.“

Pyrofessor tilted her head. "Well, my suit’s voice analytics tell me that you’re scared, but telling the truth. Which is fucking unnerving, by the way. I can’t imagine why the public trusts anyone as good as you are at lying. But since you’ve modulated your voice to signal honesty, I’ll take that as a promise on the augment-to-augment level. And the rest of you idiots think about how you might be endangering the Mongoose’s secret identity before you try anything that might require him to save you. Because I wouldn’t bet my life on the Mongoose’s calculations working out that way. Nobody, including me, understands what the hell that man is thinking.”

When Pyrofessor stomped out of the room that time, nobody made any other smart remarks.

After the Pyrofessor was gone, the background noise level rose, the 'hostages’ feeling safer enough to talk to each other in subdued voices. Nothing loud, though people did look much less worried. Instead it was the power-suited minions who were looking nervous as they went on pointing their plasma guns. Still, nobody tried to stand up.

At least not until one of the young kids stood up and walked over to where the Mongoose was sitting. A minion started to point his plasma gun, and then glanced in Bruce Kent’s direction and stopped.

“You’re not going to actually let them go, are you?” said the child. "They’re villains.“

There was suddenly a lot of hush in the room.

"I can’t stop them,” Bruce Kent said, sounding perfectly serious about it. “Despite some widespread misconceptions, I’m not actually the Masculine Mongoose -”

“That’s pretend! It’s not real! Daddy says I always have to keep careful track of the difference between pretend and real so I don’t, like, try to jump into a fight with real supervillains because I’m pretending to be the Mongoose. Doesn’t that mean you shouldn’t not get into a fight with real supervillains if you’re only pretending to be not the Mongoose? It doesn’t seem right.”

Janeway privately assigned a high chance the kid was some kind of seven-year-old supergenius, and then privately did her best to forget the fact, as people were supposed to do when somebody that young screwed it up. Instead she, like everyone else, was looking at the Mongoose, wondering how he’d answer that pretty good question. The Goose could have taken down the Pyrofessor before she fired a shot, Janeway was now sure.

Bruce Kent didn’t answer right away. Pretending to be a normal human who actually needed time to think about the question, no doubt. "I can’t speak for the Mongoose,“ he said after a delay. "You’d have to ask the Mongoose, if you wanted his answer. But I’ve also had some time to think about the mask code. And I think it is a good thing for society that metas get to have secret identities. Even if that means villains get to have secret identities too. It gives metas somewhere saner to go back to, and all of society benefits if the metas are a little less crazy. And of course, the code also protects people like me if somebody mistakenly believes we’re metas.”

“But Professor Pyrofessor isn’t in her civilian identity,” said the kid. "The mask code doesn’t say you can’t stop her.“

"Maybe not in so many words,” Bruce Kent said. "But even if I was the Masculine Mongoose - if Professor Pyrofessor recognizes someone walking down the street out of costume, she’s not supposed to attack him. So it isn’t fair if he attacks her, is it?“

The kid frowned, tilting his head and now looking puzzled. "That makes sense. But Bruce Kent did stop Professor Pyrofessor. Doesn’t that mean you broke the mask code?”

Again Bruce Kent stopped, like he was a normal human who had to think about it. From Janeway’s distance, she could see what looked like new sweat on his forehead. "Well,“ Bruce Kent said, "I mean - even accepting the whole premise arguendo - I didn’t intervene as a meta, did I? If you’re a meta out of costume and you see Professor Pyrofessor march past in power armor, you’re allowed to call 911 because non-metas can do that too. I only did what Bruce Kent could have done as a normal human, given that Professor Pyrofessor mistakenly thought he was the Masculine Mongoose. Like the Goose himself always says, ordinary people can also stand up and do what’s right.”

“That heartwarming moral is completely subverted by you not actually being a normal human,” somebody said. "Talk about your broken aesops.“

"I suppose I can understand why you’d see things that way,” said Bruce Kent.

The kid went back to where he’d been seated, and soon enough Professor Pyrofessor stalked back from the stairway, followed by minions in power armor. She gestured once, and her other minions fell into ranks beside her.

The supervillain and her minions all left without a word, though Pyrofessor shot the Mongoose some kind of significant glare, and received a nervous look in return that had her shaking her head in bemused admiration.

Afterwards Bruce Kent declared that he had to go use the bathroom “and possibly throw up a few times”, to widespread chuckles.

Janeway swore she could hear faint, realistic retching sounds from that direction after he’d entered. Part of her wondered if that was a computer recording, or if the Mongoose was actually producing those sounds from his own throat. He wouldn’t go so far as to throw up for real, would he?





I’d had enough time to retch a few times, without throwing up, after which the nausea had mostly subsided. I had time to mostly stop shaking. At least nobody had burst into the bathroom after me to try to snap a picture of me changing into the Goose’s costume. That had happened to me a few times before. But not this time. The hostage situation and scare maybe had people taking the situation more seriously.

Shortly after I finished splashing water on my face, trying to get most of the visible sweat and grease off my forehead, there came a politely patterned knock at the bathroom door.

“Come in,” I said.

The bathroom door swung open, and in walked a middle-aged Hindi man wearing briefs. No mask or supersuit, only the briefs. Some might have called it more of a posing pouch.

The aficionados who follow the Mongoose’s life in disturbing levels of detail, enough to remember side characters who appear very rarely, would have recognized the Hindi man as Baibhav Hegadi. That’s not a Hindi mask alias, it’s his birth name. He refuses to answer to Fastman.

Baibhav Hegadi is sometimes cited as a case study of why even the most useless-seeming superpower may be marketable to someone.

At his top official speed, Baibhav Hegadi can run fast enough to cross continents in under a minute. Wikipedia lists him as the 35th fastest meta on Earth when traversing all intervening space.

Known limitations of Hegadi’s power include:

Hegadi doesn’t have momentum proportional to how fast he’s moving. He can’t hit harder than normal.

It takes time for Hegadi to accelerate. In the first second he starts moving his fist, it doesn’t go much faster than an ordinary mortal’s fist. He can slow down almost instantly, but afterwards it takes time for him to speed up again.

Hegadi can’t carry anything that isn’t himself. When he’s using his power, he can only wear briefs knitted out of his own hair.

To sum up: Hegadi couldn’t deliver packages across the seas. He couldn’t punch harder than an ordinary mortal, or fight with faster reflexes. He couldn’t dart through a building too quickly for cameras to catch him, because he couldn’t open doors at speed. He could memorize and carry messages, but there’s a cheaper way to send those across continents, and it’s called email. He couldn’t even run out for lunch, except to a restaurant that would serve him without credit cards while he was wearing only a posing pouch.

/r/masks voted Baibhav Hegadi as #4 on the list of “most disappointing superpowers”, as measured by the contrast between apparent power and actual usability. He was the 35th fastest person on Earth, and he ran an electric-scooter dealership in Amalapuram.

Shortly after that vote, the Masculine Mongoose ran into an interdimensional historian, who offered him unspecified benefits in exchange for being notified of the time and place if the Mongoose was doing something of interest. This interdimensional being could only be reached by going through an alternate-world portal in an undisclosed location, and crossing a long stretch of desert where radios didn’t work.

So the Mongoose hired Baibhav Hegadi to act as his personal messenger, racing over to tell the Hilbert-Space Historian whenever the Mongoose was about to go into action. It went to show, said the Mongoose, that few superpowers were truly useless.

Hegadi’s contract is known to specify that he never be given information that might interest villains. The Mongoose pays Hegadi at standard meta-on-call rates, enough to let Hegadi retire and pass on his electric-scooter dealership to his daughter, but not enough to make Hegadi wealthy in retirement. No villain or government has a reason to target Hegadi, or Hegadi’s family, or his friends. He’s just a minor meta in India with an almost unmarketable superpower.

To sum up that whole story:

It would be crazy to wonder whether Baibhav Hegadi is secretly a metahuman, and it’s not the least bit odd that Fastman suddenly runs off whenever the Masculine Mongoose is summoned to a crisis.

I looked over at Baibhav, wondering how long he’d been there and watching. Part of me wanted to resent him for having not burst in and rescued me, but the Masculine Mongoose can’t exactly be seen to rescue Bruce Kent.

I still wished he’d given me some sign he was around. It would have been less terrifying.

“Tell the Hilbert-Space Historian -” I began.

“We’re not being monitored,” said Baibhav.

I nodded. "When did you get into town?“ I tried to keep any resentment out of my voice. I did not want to be told that I’d handled myself just fine.

"Not too long ago,” said Baibhav. "I couldn’t get here immediately. I did ask the Maximal Magician, Unya Unusual, to monitor the situation after your watch went off-grid. She reported to me what happened.“

Of course he’d been notified as soon as my watch dropped off the special communications network. It was ridiculously obvious in retrospect.

It probably hadn’t occurred to the Mongoose that I wouldn’t have realized that myself. His power package has fewer flaws than most, but one flaw he shares with other cognitive enhanciles is that he has trouble predicting what non-enhanciles will and won’t figure out. Mental obstacles that stop us cold may not rise to the level where he consciously notices them.

I turned to the sink and splashed more water over my face. I didn’t want to tell him what I hadn’t figured out. I didn’t want to lower his opinion of my intelligence any further.

Except that now the Mongoose knew it anyways. He’s good at reading people in close proximity.

”Who’s not a real hero again?“ said Baibhav.

"Oh, shut up.”

“Look me in the eyes and say you’re not a real hero. I want to see if you can still keep a straight face.”

“I wasn’t actually braver than anyone else there,” I told the sink. "If I hadn’t known the villains would think I was you, I’d have stayed quiet and terrified just like all the other ordinary -“

"You’re not looking me in the eyes, Bruce. A hero like you should lose arguments with more grace.”

“So I did something that was arguably vaguely heroic. Once. One time in my life. Plenty of people have. I’m probably behind on averages.”

“Bruce…”

I threw up my hands. “Fine! Have it your way. I’m every bit as awesome as people think I am. If people knew the truth about me, they’d give me my own comic-book series that would sell right alongside yours. Is that what you wanted to hear me say? Are you happy now? Are you satisfied?”

“In a way we could say that this makes you, not just a hero, but a superhero,” said Baibhav, sounding happy but not satisfied. “Your superpower is that people believe you’re the Masculine Mongoose.”

I gave him the best glare I could muster. "Seems like one of the suckier powers,“ I said.

Baibhav held up a dramatic finger. "That superpower may not feel useful most of the time - it may seem an inconvenience to you - a burden, for how it makes others look at you - but today it was the right power for the situation! Few superpowers are truly useless, after all. Today’s work might not earn you a seat at the Watching Tower of Great Justice, but you’d at least rate a guided tour of the place…” He paused again. "Though maybe not from the Mongoose himself.“

"Oh, shut up.”

“But seriously, I don’t think you should assess heroism by comic-book deals,” said Baibhav. “Society has some odd ideas about who deserves one of those. I’ve met a number of police officers, firefighters, and EMTs whom I’d put ahead of the Puissant Pugilist. And sensible janitors who happened to be working the night shift, and delivery drivers who stayed calm, and the occasional courageous eight-year-old.” He poked me in the shoulder. Gently. "Bruce, let’s leave out some of the higher-profile threats I’ve faced, like Inacan the Sealed Evil. I won’t play at false modesty; what I did then was legitimately more heroic than what you did today. But between you and I, which one of us would you say has been the greater hero just this week?“

I knew he was about to say something deepity, but my hands were still shaking and I wasn’t in a healthy condition to guess what. "You’re going to claim the opposite and make like it’s true somehow, but I’ll say the greater hero was the one who did more good in total.”

The Mongoose shook his head, suddenly looking very serious indeed. "If I was as heroic as this on a weekly basis, I wouldn’t make it past a year.“

My hands froze in mid-shake. "Oh,” I said.

“Not that you did the wrong thing, so long as you don’t make a habit of it,” Baibhav said. “But as I’ve said to a number of other people who didn’t get comic-book deals afterwards, the greater hero is usually the one who’s less immune to bullets.”