Chapter 3

A man in a rather nice suit, with a microphone and a camera drone with the logo of one of the more reasonably professional newscast services stepped forward and thrust the microphone towards Mom.

“Mr. and Mrs. Impossible, do you have anything to say about the new appropriation bill that is-”

A bubbly blond girl wearing a T-shirt one size too small and shorts two sizes too small bounced up from the other said and said. “Heyyyyyyy, whose these cuties!?” She gestured to Starfleet, Corvi and Nova. “Are you in a polycule now!”

“Gross, no!” Corvi exclaimed, while Mom laughed and slid her arm around Nova’s shoulders, drawing him in close. This was clearly meant to be quite motherly, but it ended up just making Nova deeply, deeply aware of how curvy she was she waved at the cameras.

“No, this is a big announcement for the family!” she said. “This ... is Nova Nine, aka, Kid Incredible! Starfleet and Corvi Magpie are also our kids. We just wanted to wait for the right moment to drop the news. We’re the world’s first super family!”

“Oh my gawwwwd!” the blond squealed, while her camera drones swooped in to get a close up view of Nova’s face.

“Hi,” he said, smiling shyly. “I’m Nova Nine.”

Dad leaned in, grinning. “He got his powers today.”

“Ohhh!” the blond exclaimed.

“Nova Nine! Are you the youngest of the family?” A man called out as he tried to get his drones in – he did this by shoving the professional journalist backwards even more. The professional journalist yelped as he was dragged down by the press of other eager journos, vanishing beneath their bodies like a man swept into a storm tossed sea.

“That would be telling!” Mom said.

“Youngest,” Corvi said, grinning wickedly.

“We’re twins, actually,” Starfleet said, flying up above Nova’s head, tilting herself around as she put her feet into the air, so their heads were a hundred and eighty degrees from one another. “You can see the resemblance.”

“We looked more alike before she got a robot body,” Nova added.

“Now, we are starving!” Dad said, his hands ushering the crowd aside. He did not actually touch anyone but much like when a quadrupedal buck deer with a full head of antlers advanced on you, the people in the crowd hastily backed away to give the King his due. This opened the route to the front doors of the S’eats, which had large glass windows. Since only superheroes could eat there, and they all ate for free, the business model of S’eats was as simple as it was faintly exploitative: They owned a bunch of subsidiary eateries that were all, just so coincidentally, within easy viewing distance of the central S’eats, and those places were packed, as people thronged to them at the hopes of getting to see their favorite.

“Do you ever feel like you’re in some kind of an exhibit?” Nova muttered to Corvi.

“Superheroes? Exhibition? What could possibly be exhibitive about a nineteen year old girl wearing fishnet stockings and a Vegas showgirl uniform,” she said, stretching her arms above her head, showing off her tight bunny suit as she casually posed before the window.

“ ... okay, did you have to specify your age, though?” Nova whispered, looking to the side as he saw that quite a few people in one of the subsidiary eateries were watching intently.

“Mom does it too!” Corvi pointed out. Mom was, in fact, waving cheerfully at a gaggle of people who were trying to both eat their dinner and hold up a big WE <3 LL on it.

Nova walked over to where Dad was hauling a chair out for Starfleet, who settled her chrome butt down on the chair with a faint click of metal on wood. He slid into the cushioned bench that ran along the wall and made up half the seating for the table, and Dad yanked Mom by the hand to settle her in the center of the bench, allowing him to take the far end, so that she was now trapped between the men of the family. She was beaming as she settled into her seat. Nova, meanwhile, had noticed that despite the fact he and Mom wore capes, neither of their capes were tangling or snagging. The sym suit, it seemed, was able to control the cape just enough to keep things from getting annoying or awkward.

Corvi took her pull out chair and sat down on it – backwards, with the back pressing against her chest as she leaned forward to peer at them.

“So, salad for Dad,” she said. “Computer chips and oil for sis, uh, lucky charms for Mom, and what does Nova eat? Starlight? Fairy dust? Bear co-”

“Corvi,” Mom said, warningly.

“ ... claws!” Corvi said.

“Are you implying something about my new twinkdom?” Nova asked, his voice dry, his eyebrow arched.

“I’m just saying, the twinkon particles I’m detecting off of you-”

“Hey, you don’t have a twinkon detector,” Starfleet cut in. “ ... you haven’t been stealing my stuff again, have you?”

“You make tech stuff, not magic, you’re safe,” Corvi said, and it was so blatant that Nova was fairly sure she was telling the truth.

The waiter that came by was dressed in a pretty good replica of The Servitor’s costume, though her cape caught on a chair as she walked over – but she got herself free with an artful twist that implied a lot of practice. She was holding a handheld tablet up and had a cheerful smile. “Hello Mr, Mrs Impossible. And who are these three? Pol-”

“They’re our children,” Mom said, hurriedly.

“Oh!” the waitress entire face went scarlet. “Right! Uh, what can I get for you!?”

Nova leaned in, whispering to Mom. “Mom, do I want to know why everyone keeps expecting you and Dad to have a polycule made up of teenage superheroes?”

“H-Haaa, I’ll have some venison!” Mom said, hurriedly. “And my husband will take my salad. With ranch?” She looked to him, while Dad grinned, lifting his head up.

“Ranch,” he said. “And I’d like a side plate of willow bark slathered with peanut butter and dusted with roasted nuts. And I’ll take the lager for a dink.”

“Oh, for drink, I would like a cytocilate neroxian shooter!” Mom said.

Starfleet’s eyes blinked on and off. “Mom, that’s poison.”

“No, it’s only poison ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of the time, if you’re tough enough to survive the mixing in your guts, you get a really pleasant bubbly feeling,” Mom said. “Or if you’re lucky enough that the chemical reactions happen in the right order the first time you sip!” She beamed. “What do you want?”

“A Pentium 4, please!” Starfleet said.

“Ooh, we’re out of Pentiums,” the waiter said, while Starfleet frowned. Mom shook her head.

“Honey, the restaurant is free, go nuts,” she said.

“Okay, fine, an Alienware!” Starfleet said, her eyes whirring excitedly.

“One Alienware!” the girl with the handheld said, checking it off. “Corvi Magpie?”

“Your soul!” Corvi crooned.

“Uh, I’m sorry, my soul’s already been ordered by Devil Lass,” the waitress said, smiling shyly.

“Oh dang it,” Corvi said. “Uh, infernal crystals in angel blood.”

“ ... the blood is donated, right?” Nova asked. Corvi smiled, slowly, at him. “It’s donated? Right?”

“And you’ll have?” The waitress asked, eagerly.

Nova was very still for a long second. “Um. Prime rib? With mashed potatoes on the side.”

“How’d you like it done?” the waitress asked.

“Medium rare,” Nova said, nodding.

“Gotcha gotcha!” the waitress tapped at her handheld, and then as she turned and started to swish away, Crovi let out a dramatic gasp.

“Steak. You’re having steak? Dad is a prey animal!” She gestured to him. “You might as well have just shot his best friend in front of him!”

“Firstly, the stakes are replicated,” Nova said, holding up one finger. “Secondly, Dad is not a steer. He is a deer. Thirdly, Dad, what’s the circle of life?”

“Well,” Dad said. “Technically, there’s not a circle of life. Just a chaotic, self replicating network of biota.”

“ ... are there predators and omnivores?” Nova asked, sighing. Dad grinned, cockily.

“Oh there are predators,” he said. “And I tend to kick their ass.”

“See, it’s fine,” Nova said. “And I want a ding dang steak.”

“Language,” Corvi whispered.

“I’m going to change my order to crow,” Nova muttered under his breath.

“I dunno, eating crow tends to mean you lost, like a loser,” Corvi said, grinning wickedly.

“Wait, Mom ordered venison!” Nova exclaimed.

“Well, yeah, Mom has venison every night,” Starfleet said, with such innocent frankness that it almost slid past Corvi. Then Corvi reacted as if she had just gotten the mother of all ice cream headaches.

“Augh! No!” She let her face rest against the tabletop. “Parents don’t have sex! It’s against the law!”

“Now that my children are done inflicting psychic damage on one another,” Mom said, cheerfully. “Hows the public attention feeling on you so far, Nova?”

Nova considered how he felt. There was this prickling feeling that kept tickling the back of his neck. He turned his head and looked over his shoulder – to see that there was almost a hundred people openly goggling at the world’s first superhero family. Even from several meters away, the windows were big enough and clear enough that basically anyone who wanted to look in at Super-Eats could see any super they wanted to see. It was why the restaurant was free, after all.

“It’s weird,” he said.

“It stays weird for at least a month, by my reckoning,” Mom said, nodding sympathetically. “Then you get used to it!”

The waitress came back, at that time. She was using a wrist mounted a-grav tractor to make the huge tray of food easy to carry and balance on one wrist, which really did make her The Servitor costume look more realistic. She smiled brightly as she started to set down the food – well, the food, the crystal, and the literal Alienware made for video gaming PC computer – at the table. As she finished setting them down, she said: “I hope you enjoy your meal, ya’ll!”

“We will!” Starfleet said, taking hold of the edge of the plastic case and peeling it open with an alarming series of snaps, cracks and pops. Then she bit into the side of the plastic, chewing it into powder with her metal teeth.

“ ... I have so many questions,” Nova whispered, his eyes wide, his forkful of mashed potatoes dangling halfway between his plate and his mouth.

Starfleet chewed, swallowed, then grinned at him.

“She’s a cartoon robot,” Corvi said.

Nova considered, then smirked. “You’re recycling the components in an internal molecular furnace to turn into feedstock for your replicators,” he said, nodding slowly as he stuck his fork into his steak and began to saw away. “While your bio body is having ... a sandwich?”