“Oh hey Ron. Can I talk to you for a quick minute?”
“Of course.” Ron replied. He turned to face the young intern who’d come up to him in the hallway.
“I heard you’ve got a dinner meeting with King Crimson.” the intern said, carefully giving a quick look around to see if there was anyone near enough to them to possibly overhear what was said.
“Yeah. He said that he’s interested in maybe hiring me to see about how to optimize training regimes for the sidekicks and other heroes in his agency.” Ron admitted.
“Be careful.” the intern said quietly, as if he was imparting a dark and important secret. (Which in a way he kind of was. Speaking ill of your fellow heroes, even if they didn’t belong to the same hero agency as you, was highly frowned upon).
“I’m not sure I understand.” Ron said, confused.
“King Crimson, he... Look. You’ve worked with Avalonus and Caliburn before, right?” the intern continued.
“Yeah. In fact me and Harry are partnering up with him for one of his community outreach programs.” Ron replied, still not sure where the conversation was going.
“So you know how he’s got that whole King Arthur and the Round Table thing going.” the intern elaborated.
Ron nodded. It was kind of hard not to notice the whole chivalry thing that Caliburn had going (although there were probably people who would put in the extreme amount of effort to do so. People could be so strange sometimes).
“Well the way I’ve heard it is that Caliburn turned down King Crimson’s suggestion that he join Avalonus. Hard. And that’s kinda why King Crimson started his own hero agency - or at least that’s what the story I heard says. Anyway. King Crimson doesn’t exactly have the best reputation among hero circles; there’s a lot of turnover at his agency and a good number of the former heroes and sidekicks coming out of there just completely quit being heroes altogether. Some, I’d like to stress that this is just a rumor; no one I know’s ever found any actual evidence of this happening, even go so far as to kill themselves afterwards - or as a way to get away from him.” the intern continued to elaborate.
“Well,” Ron said as he thought it over. He’d heard some rather disturbing things regarding King Crimson and his hero agency, but - yet again - it was nothing concrete that couldn’t be explained away as pure baseless rumor and simply disgruntled individuals trying to tarnish King Crimson’s reputation as a way to get at (or get back at) the high ranking hero, “From what I’ve seen, high turnover seems to be an endemic issue for hero agencies. Between heroes deciding to branch off and start their own agencies once they feel that they’ve got enough experience to do so - or because some sort of (often ideological) rift happened, the high stress nature of being a hero finally gets to them, and being forced to retire due to career ending injuries there’s naturally a considerable amount of turnover in hero agencies.”
“It’s not just heroes, sidekicks, and heroing interns though.” the intern interjected, “There’s been a lot of turnover with the support staff. I’ve also heard that he’s having a lot of trouble getting people like tradies in more than once. No one wants to work with him if they can help it.”
Ron considered this. Of course he’d heard the rumors. It was hard for anyone who moved in hero industry circles not to (and in some cases, with some rumors, you didn’t even need to be connected to the hero industry to have heard them. Or connected to any of the conspiracy theory circles - where some of the rumors were said to have come from in the first place). King Crimson was well known to be rather difficult to deal with; a perfectionist who demanded the best from both himself and the people who worked with him or for him. Sure there were complaints; even Caliburn got complaints and he took his title as the Stalwart Hero dead seriously. But King Crimson had never once been sanctioned by the Hero Oversight Committee (whose job it was to make sure heroes kept on the right side of both the law and morals) for Behavior Unbecoming of a Hero (meaning that the hero in question had been acting in a way that was considered to be unheroic; mostly meaning that they’d been too much of an arse for any reasonable person to think of them as a hero. Heroes engaging in villainous activities was an entirely different charge that often had Behavior Unbecoming of a Hero tacked on as an added charge) which meant that he couldn’t be that bad, right? “I’ve already set up the meeting; it would be unprofessional to cancel on him without a damn good reason - and no one likes you is not a valid reason.”
The intern took another furtive look around. “You didn’t hear this from me, but well... I’ve got a cousin who used to work for this caterer. It was just a part time gig to raise a bit of spare cash while she was in uni. One of her last jobs for the caterer was for King Crimson. And while she was lucky enough to get stuck dealing with back of house issues, she had the misfortune to see how he runs one of his dinners. It was not pretty. First thing you have to understand is that King Crimson’s a stickler for ‘proper dining etiquette’.”
“That doesn’t seem too bad. I mean, I’ll have to look up the whole which utensil for which course thing but I don’t see what would be so wrong about being expected to use my best table manners.” Ron said, still a bit confused (and perhaps maybe just a bit alarmed).
The intern shook his head. “This isn’t like just holding to Emily Post or Miss Manners like they were the bible and only using the right fork for your fish. When King Crimson says proper dining etiquette, he means what he considers to be proper - and it isn’t pretty. You don’t eat or drink anything until he says to; and only what he says you can. And he’ll only give you the say so whenever he’s had his fill - from whatever he’s managed to leave after he’s eaten all he wants. If there’s even anything worth eating left. And you better eat it; doesn’t matter if most sane people would consider it edible or not, or if eating it would make you literally sick. And don’t think you can get away with having a sneakily little meal before you get there - it’s not going to go well for you.”
Ron frowned. Following the proper etiquette rules was one thing. This (provided it was true. The intern seemed to believe it was, and looked scared enough about it that you would be forgiven if you thought that he was an informant ratting out the mafia to the police about a deal that was about to go down. But it still was all second hand information and, as usual when it came to rumors concerning King Crimson’s less than stellar behavior, there was no evidence regarding the validity of it) as another. Still as Harry had a habit of saying better to have (or know in this case) something and not need it rather than need it and not have it.
“So remember my cousin once had to work one of King Crimson’s dinners? Well it didn’t seem like such a bad job at first. A smallish spread that was supposed to be good for about five or six people; butternut squash soup, caesar salad, clams oreganata and stuffed mushrooms for the appetizer, roast leg of lamb with mint sauce, roasted mixed vegg, mashed potatoes, yorkshire puddings, and steamed asparagus with a pecan pie for the pudding. Only there were easily twice that number at the table - and one of them was a diabetic. Now my cousin wasn’t entirely sure what happened at the table. She was busy in the back making sure the food got out at the right time at the right temperature and calming down the servers who were all kind of having little breakdowns on account of how demanding King Crimson was being. But this dinner had been going on for hours at this point - and only King Crimson had actually eaten anything at this point. His guests didn’t even have glasses of water to drink! Well not eating wasn’t doing the diabetic any good let me tell you. I might not know all that much when it comes to the ins and outs of handling diabetes, but I do know that you have to eat on a fairly regular schedule to keep your blood sugar at a good, stable, level. Apparently the diabetic hadn’t eaten anything since lunch - which at that point was over six hours ago, and naturally her blood sugar tanked hard. We’re talking confusion, slurred words, sleepiness, clumsiness... the whole nine yards really. And King Crimson, he refuses to let her eat anything or even leave altogether so she could go get something to eat somewhere else - apparently having an honest to god medical emergency’s rude now? Well someone ended up calling an ambulance so at least she didn’t slip into a diabetic coma and die right there, so that’s something right. But I guess that wasn’t the right thing to do according to ‘his lordship’ King Crimson ‘cause he threw an absolute fit, just began throwing the food on the table on the floor and smashing the plates so no one could eat anything and then kicked his guests out on their ears. Then he has the gall to blame the caterers for the whole thing - I think one of the servers or someone else in the back of the house with my cousin were the ones to call nine nine nine - and demand that the whole crew my cousin was on be fired for incompetency and unprofessionalism. I don’t know what King Crimson had on the caterers, ‘cause they did fire everyone involved. Oddly enough the catering company went out of business a few months later; not sure what the story was there, but my cousin did a happy dance while singing ‘ding dong the witch is dead’. She never did like that place, come to think of it, but money’s money...”
With the intern’s words of warning lurking in the back of his mind, Ron made his way to the King Crimson Agency for the dinner meeting with a bit of trepidation. He’d done a bit more digging after his talk with the intern, and what he’d heard was not good. No one liked working with King Crimson if they could help it. He was an absolute terror to his employees and service staff; often screaming at and berating them over even the slightest mistake. He had a bad habit of trying to rules lawyer any contract he entered into (contractual terms had to be held to the letter of the law unless not doing so would end up in his favor) and getting him to actually pay up the full agreed upon amount - especially in a timely manner - was like trying to get blood from a stone (although you’d probably have better luck with that than the former). He’d used his blood manipulation quirk on nonvillains to bully them into line and scare them out of making formal complaints (and, some said, just for his own sick enjoyment). Ron had even heard a few rumors that King Crimson had actually gone so far as to rape a couple of girls although there wasn’t any proof of this that Ron could find (whether this meant that rumors were just that, rumors, or if the girls who’d fallen to this had decided not to come forward for whatever reason was anybody’s guess).
A quaking sidekick dressed in a costume of the obligatory blood red color (which was sort of the uniform for the King Crimson Agency) showed Ron into the conference room where his meeting was to take place. As soon as he was free to do so, the sidekick fled the room leaving Ron alone with King Crimson, who was seated in an elaborately decorated office chair that was very reminiscent of a throne. King Crimson acknowledged Ron with a simple wave of his hand and wordlessly bade Ron to sit at the table. Once Ron was seated, a stream of workers - all dressed in King Crimson’s preferred blood red - filed in and began to set a decadent meal on the table down at the end where King Crimson sat. Ron mentally girded his loins and set about figuring out how to get out of this unharmed and without having to sign a contract with King Crimson or his agency. Sometimes rumors turned out to be nothing more than just that - rumors; whispered things that might’ve once held a grain of truth but had passed through so many people that everything about them twisted and distorted. Sometimes rumors turned out to be just the angry ramblings of those with an axe to grind against a person; poisoned words set out to destroy a person’s reputation and tear them down. And sometimes, though this was rare, the rumors turned out to be true. Ron might not be able to say anything about the validity of all the negative rumors surrounding King Crimson, but he could see the truth of some of it. And the picture this painted was of a man who Ron wanted nothing to do with (When someone’s so unpleasant they make Lucius bloody Malfoy from Before look downright altruistic and progressive, well that says some - not very nice - things).