by Lucas Flint
At the end of the training session, Adams and I left the Rubber Room, which was now smoking slightly from the laser blasts that the walls had taken, but Adams had assured me that he would clean it up later, after I left work, so I didn’t worry about it.
I was, however, tired from the session; in particular, my eyes felt like they did after I stared at a computer screen all day. Adams told me that that was likely due to the constant use of my powers, as this was the most I’d ever used my powers in one day. All I wanted to do was lie down and rest, but Adams told me that we had other work to do before I could rest.
“Work?” I said. “What other work? Are you going to have me vacuum the whole Elastic Cave or something?”
“Of course not,” said Adams, shaking his head. He had removed his helmet, although he still wore the rest of the training armor. “Instead, I am going to show you to Level Two so you can become familiar with it.”
“You mean I’m finally going to see the Rubbermobile?” I said excitedly. “Really?”
“Yes,” said Adams. “Mr. Pullman told me that it is time you got a look at it. But you will not get a chance to drive it today, because Mr. Pullman has informed me that he wishes to teach you how to drive it himself once he is out of the hospital.”
“But I don’t have a driver’s license yet,” I said. “Will I need one when Rubberman teaches me how to drive the Rubbermobile?”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Adams, waving off my question. “Mr. Pullman will teach you everything you need to know about driving it once he determines that you are ready to learn it.”
“Okay,” I said. I immediately began making my way over to the elevator. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go down and see it right away.”
“Not yet,” said Adams, causing me to stop mid-step and look over my shoulder at him in surprise. “Our training session was very intense, so I want to take a moment to get something to eat and drink before we head down there. You should as well, given how tired you look.”
Frowning, I was about to say that I was fine before I suddenly felt hungry and thirsty. It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten or drank anything for over an hour, so I nodded and said, “Okay. Let me take off my—”
I was interrupted by a sudden ringing sound echoing throughout the Elastic Cave. It sounded like someone’s ring tone, but it was much louder and I had no idea where it was coming from until I noticed that one of the monitors of the Control System was on. It displayed a phone number, along with a name just above it—SASHA MUNROE—just like it looked on my phone whenever I got a call from someone.
I looked at Adams in confusion. “Who is Sasha Munroe?”
Adams grimaced. “Someone I have the unfortunate luck of being acquainted with.”
Before Adams could explain what he meant by that, he rushed past me toward the Control System. Curious, I followed him over to the System just as he reached it. Adams pressed a button on the control panel and the name and number on the screen was replaced with the face of a middle-aged black woman. The camera only showed up to her head and shoulders, but I could tell that she was a short and plump woman. She appeared to be wearing a blue pantsuit and was smiling just the sweetest smile I’d ever seen. She reminded me of my second grade English teacher, who had been the kindest and sweetest woman I ever knew (aside from my Mom, of course). In fact, she looked so much like my second grade English teacher that I assumed it was her at first glance.
“Why, hello, Mr. Adams!” said the woman in the most flattering and friendly tone ever. “I didn’t expect anyone to answer. Usually, Mr. Pullman misses my calls and they get sent to voicemail, but I guess I got lucky today, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Miss Munroe, you certainly did,” said Adams, although his tone suggested to me that Rubberman probably didn’t unintentionally miss her calls, “although you are not as lucky as you could have been, given that Mr. Pullman is currently in the hospital and is unavailable for phone calls or video chats with anyone at the moment.”
“That is exactly why I called,” said Miss Munroe, her tone still extremely sweet. “I read online about Mr. Pullman’s fight with that awful supervillain Fro-Zen. I even had some of my people send Mr. Pullman a get well card and some chocolates. Mr. Pullman, I know, loves dark milk chocolate, so I sent him an entire box full of chocolate from the finest candy store in the city.”
“That is very kind of you, Miss Munroe,” said Adams, his tone flat and unenthusiastic. “I am sure that Mr. Pullman will be pleased to see the gift, although given his current medical condition, I doubt he will get to enjoy it for a while.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” said Miss Munroe. “I’m just doing what I’d want anyone else to do if I were in that situation myself. You know, the Golden Rule and all that.”
“Yes, it is a fine rule to live one’s life by, assuming one is sincere in its usage,” said Adams. “Now, Miss Munroe, I must hang up, for I am very busy at the moment and have no time to talk with you right now.”
“Hold on,” said Miss Munroe. Her smile briefly vanished, replaced by a startling ugly scowl, before her sweet smile returned. “Can I at least leave a message for Mr. Pullman so he can call me back and we can talk business? I would love to catch up with him about what has been going on in his life and see if he might be interested in an offer from me.”
“I will tell Mr. Pullman that you called and that you would like him to call you back,” said Adams. “Rest assured of that, Miss Munroe.”
Adams’ finger hovered over the button that would end the call, but then Miss Munroe must have finally noticed me, because she looked at me and her eyes widened with surprise. “Oh, hello there, young man. What is your name?”
I almost answered with my real name, but then I remembered I was still wearing my costume and I said, “Beams. “
“Beams?” Miss Munroe repeated. “Are you a superhero friend of Rubberman’s?”
“Actually, I’m his new sidekick,” I said. “Haven’t been working for him for very long, though.”
Unless I was mistaken, I thought I saw a hint of interest flash across Miss Munroe’s eyes. “So the rumors were true after all. Well, Beams, I am pleased to meet you. My name is Sasha Munroe and I—”
“Uh, Miss Munroe, someone else is calling on the other line,” Adams interrupted all of a sudden in an unusually loud voice. “And it is someone very important, so let me hang up so I can talk to that person. And I will make sure to let Mr. Pullman know that you were calling for him. Good day.”
Adams practically slammed the button on the control panel, causing Miss Munroe’s face to be replaced with a blank dark screen, just like how it looked before she called.
I looked at Adams in confusion. “Adams, why’d you tell her that someone was on the other line? She was the only one calling.”
Adams turned around to face me. He looked incredibly annoyed, but I wasn’t sure if he was annoyed with me or with Sasha. “Sometimes, Mr. Fry, you need to make up little white lies to avoid certain people who are not wise enough to know when no means no.”
“Are you talking about Miss Munroe?” I said. “She seemed pretty nice to me.”
“She’s very good at appearing ‘pretty nice’ to those who don’t know her,” said Adams. He rolled his eyes. “Must have learned it from her father, although at least he knew when to back off when someone wasn’t interested.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Who is she? A business associate of Rubberman’s?”
“She’d like to be,” said Adams. “But to answer your question, that was Sasha Munroe, the current CEO of Munroe Acquisitions, Inc., and one of the most annoying women on the face of the planet, next only to my ex-wife.”
“Munroe Acquisitions …” I repeated with a frown. “Isn’t that the company that owns the building with their name on it in the center of the city? I saw it when I went grocery shopping with my mom last month.”
“Yes,” said Adams, nodding. “They are the largest private busi
ness in Golden City and they’ve always been very generous donors to politicians of varying levels of corruption, though they weren’t always that way.”
“What does Munroe Acquisitions even do?” I said. “Do they acquire real estate or something? Does Sasha want the Elastic Cave?”
“If all she wanted was the Elastic Cave, she might be less annoying,” said Adams, running a hand through his thin white hair. “As it is, Miss Munroe wants nothing more and nothing less than Rubberman himself.”
I scratched my head. “Do you mean she wants to have Rubberman work for her?”
“I mean the Rubberman brand,” said Adams. “You see, Munroe Acquisitions acquires superhero brands and then sells them off to other companies or individuals at a profit. They don’t actually make any superheroes themselves; all they do is wait until a superhero brand has been built by someone else and then offer to purchase it from the people who did the real work of building it.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know such a business existed.”
“It’s a rather lucrative market, although it is difficult to compete in and it is largely dominated by a handful of mega corporations that span the whole world,” said Adams. “Munroe Acquisitions is the biggest American superhero acquisition business and trades places with Zhao Acquisitions from China as the biggest in the world overall every couple of years.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty impressive.”
“It is, but don’t be fooled,” said Adams, wagging a finger at me. “Miss Munroe did not contribute to its success. She is merely riding on the success of her father, Charles Munroe, who founded it back in the eighties. Quite frankly, given her poor management style, I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed on itself or been bought out by Zhao, but I guess the board of directors must be able to rein in Miss Munroe’s dumber ideas.”
“You acted like you know her,” I said. “Has she called before?”
“More times than either I or Mr. Pullman would like,” said Adams. “The damn woman just does not know when to give up. She first started calling us about buying the Rubberman brand about five years ago, after Mr. Pullman defeated the supervillain Volcano and rose to worldwide fame. That was back when the Rubberman brand was still new; she clearly hoped to trick Mr. Pullman into selling it to her so she could profit from the inevitable royalties that would occur from the merchandise when his business exploded.”
“I guess she didn’t succeed there, huh?” I said.
“Indeed,” said Adams. “Mr. Pullman had been an entrepreneur prior to becoming Rubberman, so he was well aware of the value in the brand. He flatly rejected her offer, even though it was easily the most money Mr. Pullman had ever been offered in his life up to that point, because he knew he could earn far more money by retaining ownership over his brand than by selling it to someone else. He also didn’t trust Munroe Acquisitions to treat the brand correctly.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “What made him think that Sasha wouldn’t handle it correctly?”
Adams sighed. “Munroe Acquisitions is known for taking a superhero brand it has recently bought and ‘improving’ it. Of course, their idea of ‘improvement’ usually means taking what worked and destroying it and then wondering why the brand isn’t as profitable as it was when they first bought it.”
“Have they ever done something like that before?” I said.
“Yes,” said Adams, nodding. “A few years ago, there was a superhero named American Boxer who had a rapidly growing fan base and brand. Unfortunately, Joshua Jones, the original American Boxer, was not a particularly business savvy man, so when Munroe Acquisitions offered him seven million dollars for the brand, he sold off all rights to it without even thinking about it.”
“What did Munroe Acquisitions do to the American Boxer brand?” I said.
“They decided that it wasn’t ‘inclusive’ enough, so they gave the American Boxer identity to an overrated female boxer who spent most of her time insulting male American Boxer fans on social media,” said Adams. “As a result, American Boxer merchandise stopped selling, except for the original Joshua Jones merch, but Munroe Acquisitions decided that no one liked the brand anymore, so they retired it and stopped selling American Boxer merch.”
“Ow,” I said. “Didn’t it occur to them that the reason the merch stopped selling is because they messed it up?”
Adams chuckled. “Ah, Miss Munroe is not the kind of woman to admit when she has made a mistake. But she isn’t the only one who makes mistakes.”
Adams pointed at me sharply. “You should never have told her who you are or your relation to Rubberman.”
“What?” I said, stepping back in confusion. “Why? Should I have lied?”
“You should have kept your mouth shut,” said Adams. He shook his head. “Knowing that Mr. Pullman has a new sidekick is exactly the kind of information that Miss Munroe wants. This might mess up all of Mr. Pullman’s plans.”
“I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to tell her,” I said. “At least I didn’t tell her my real name, so I won’t lose my license.”
“Yes, but there is a reason why Mr. Pullman has not yet revealed you to the world,” said Adams. “It is because he has a particular plan for your debut. I don’t think you quite ruined it, but the fact that Miss Munroe is the first person to know who Mr. Pullman’s new sidekick is … well, let’s just say that I doubt that Mr. Pullman had planned for that.”
My face heated up in embarrassment as I said, “So what? If you didn’t want me talking to her, you should have said something before I told her who I was.”
“I had forgotten you were there,” said Adams. He rubbed his forehead. “Well, it’s a good thing I hadn’t left you alone to talk with her, otherwise she probably would have learned even more important information about Rubberman’s business. She is very tricky; she rarely tells you what she wants up front and will instead ask you a series of seemingly innocent questions that are really meant to make you tell her everything she wants to know.”
“So she’s not as nice as she seems?” I said.
“She isn’t,” Adams said. “No doubt she was calling now in order to see if she could take advantage of Mr. Pullman’s injury to strike some sort of deal. She was probably hoping that Mr. Pullman was too injured to keep working as Rubberman and that he might sell off the brand to her to pay off his medical bills or because he couldn’t run the business anymore.”
“You mean she was planning to take advantage of a hospitalized man to basically steal his livelihood from him when he was at his most vulnerable?” I said in shock. “That’s despicable.”
“For once, I agree with you,” said Adams. “And, if the rumors I’ve heard are true, this isn’t the first time she’s done something like this. I’ve even heard rumors that she’s intentionally ruined the businesses or reputations of other superheroes so she can offer to buy their brands from them and ‘solve’ their problems, which must be a successful tactic, based on how much money her company makes each year.”
I felt like we’d dodged a bullet. “Wow. There are some pretty unsavory people in this business.”
Adams nodded. “Indeed. Sometimes, it feels like the supervillains are the least dangerous people in this industry.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, “So, are we going to go down to Level Two now?”
“First, we eat and drink and rest a little,” said Adams. “I also need to get out of this armor, because we’re not training anymore. After that, we can go down to Level Two and I can show you the Rubbermobile at last.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After a quick break, Adams and I took the elevator down to Level Two. It was a quick ride, about as quick as the ride from the grocery store entrance to Level One, although I was so excited to see the Rubbermobile that it seemed to take much longer than that.
When the doors opened, I didn’t hesitate to dash out, even before Adams could leave. I came to an abrupt stop and eagerly looked around L
evel Two, trying to spot the Rubbermobile.
Level Two was really different from Level One. Although the metal paneling on the walls, floor, and ceiling was the same, the Level itself was laid out differently. Rather than being divided into multiple rooms, it was just one big chamber, with only a handful of doors to the left of us that appeared to lead to separate rooms, including one labeled ‘LAUNDRY.’ On the opposite side of the chamber was a huge, round door that looked like the exit, which was probably how the Rubbermobile got into the streets from the Cave. To the right was an elevated platform with a computer monitor, plus a wall covered with various tools for servicing cars. The entire chamber smelled somewhat like oil and rubber; it wasn’t an overpowering scent by any means, but it was still pretty obvious and impossible to ignore.
None of that mattered to me, however, because I immediately spotted the Rubbermobile, which was on the floor at the bottom of the chamber. I ran over to the railing and peered over it at the Rubbermobile below.
It was the coolest car I’d ever seen, much cooler than Dad’s car or even James’ car. It was long and sleek, looking like a tricked out racing car more than anything. It was incredibly shiny, reflecting the lights from above; in fact, I was pretty sure that I could see my reflection on its surface even from a distance. It had the same colors as Rubberman’s suit and had an awesome spoiler.
