Chapter 17: 1.16 Coming Clean

“It looks good,” Ava said. “Like, really good. You said you got a friend?”

“Just someone I know,” Brooke said. “Plays LoS with me, works as a dev—does this stuff full time.”

“It shows.” Ava was seriously impressed at the quality of the website, seeing how they’d paid—Brooke had paid—with a big, fat, ‘I owe you’, and nothing more.

Like usual, Brooke continued to stick her neck out for Ava, putting everything she had into growing Ava’s business. And sure, there was an implicit agreement Ava would be paying her back—and then some—the moment she was able to, but still. Why was her best friend so devoted to her?

Maybe a silly question, but then again, not really. Most people’s best friends, Ava was pretty sure, didn’t go and put their financial future in jeopardy by burning through as many credit cards as they could get their hands on. 

“This is just the landing page,” Brooke said, scrolling through the web page. “Let me give you the tour.”

Ava had dragged in a chair to sit down next to Brooke as they went over the website.

As for why they had made their own website—because they couldn’t stay on the adult streaming one forever. Not because she couldn’t garner a fan base there, but because it was smarter to not. She and Brooke were shooting for the stars here, and like the initial plan had accounted for, they wanted to centralize: to create her own dedicated fan base, with their own space. A website fulfilled that goal.

Plus, LiveCamFrenzy didn’t have all the features she wanted, plus took a cut of tips, and whatnot. Better to be moving away from it.

The color scheme didn’t match up to Ava’s own, but that was intentional. White and gold didn’t make for the best ‘erotic site’ colors. Instead, they’d gone for pink and black. And at the top of the home page, in big, bolded letters, ‘The Starlet League’.

Initially, the plan had been to make the site themed around Ava only, but the introduction of Clash had changed her mind on that. Or their minds, since Brooke was involved in every step of this.

Because pulling other supers into this fiasco might be a smart idea … a sort of ‘Sub Hero Association’, lacking better terminology. Who knew? Maybe other aspiring heroes would flock to Ava’s banner, and she’d have a whole ‘Starlet League’ of supers selling their body to make ends meet. Ava couldn’t be the only one in an annoying financial situation, grinding out six to eight hour patrols multiple times a week for little to no reward.

The Hero Association wouldn’t take kindly to the idea, obviously, seeing how they’d reacted so harshly to Ava’s ‘incident’ on her previous stream. But Ava didn’t have a choice in creating some sort of schism with the premier hero organization. Though, preferably nothing too serious. If the HA chose to come after Ava in a serious sense, she wouldn’t stand a chance. But they shouldn’t. 

The worst outcome would be they kicked her out of the HA, and even that was doubtful. The kind of thing that got a hero barred from the HA was truly heinous acts—if not outright becoming a villain, then extreme abuse of power, or otherwise some horrific crime. Not … this.

Even if ‘this’ would be horribly bad for a ‘hero’s image’. And sure to cause tons of PR problems for the HA. But no helping that. Ava had a goal, and she’d be seeing it through.

The Starlet League’s website featured Ava—Spotlight—at the forefront. It was formatted more like a blog than anything, since a constant stream of ‘highlights’ and ‘subscriber benefits’ would be the main draw-factor. But as time passed—and needs changed—it would, of course, modify to fit them.

On the sidebar to the left were several options, ‘subscribe’ being the biggest, most eye-drawing. This was, fundamentally, a money-making operation, as much as it was a publicity one for amplifying Ava’s powers. The two were rather tied hand-in-hand. It would be hard to achieve one without the other. Both for the obvious reasons, and because making money meant easier ways to advertise. Or if not that, fund publicity stunts. That photo-shoot hadn’t been cheap. None of this fiasco had been cheap.

Fortunately, that problem should be solved with this. The long-awaited ‘cashing in’ of Ava’s efforts over the past several weeks.

“What are the different tiers, again?” Ava asked idly. Brooke had been clicking through, showing off the website, and Ava had found very little—nothing, really—to complain about. It really had been done exceptionally well.

“Supporter, Fan, and Superfan,” Brooke said. “Middle one’s just there to make the highest tier look better. Common strategy … I guess.” She shrugged. “Like I’ve been saying, I’m no marketer. But Superfan’s the tier everyone’s going to get. If someone’s willing to pay five bucks to see you half-naked … they’ll pay ten for the real deal.”

“See us naked,” Ava teased.

Brooke flushed at the reminder. She’d made a few comments about how she couldn’t believe she’d been convinced to do that … but had never seemed actually upset. And never asked to have the pictures removed from the set Ava would be posting over the coming weeks.

“Anyway,” Brooke said pointedly, “the real goal’s to be nudging people to Superfan. And honestly, that won’t be hard. Seeing someone like you naked? A super, much less? Even if we stuck with the pictures that didn’t show anything, they’d flock to it.”

“Don’t talk me up too much,” Ava laughed.

Brooke rolled her eyes and continued. “Even if I think everyone’s going to go for the last tier, it’s still important to cultivate a sense of value. The lower tiers make it seem more exciting. ‘Tier-exclusive private shows’ sounds so much better.”

Private shows.

Yeah … those were going to be, um, interesting. Despite the name, they weren’t going to include anything crazy. Unless Ava wanted to. She … hadn’t fully made her mind up on that. The idea of going for broke did have her stomach squirming in excitement—titillation—but even if she’d relaxed to the idea of using her body to get what she wanted, that didn’t mean she was at the point where she was okay with anything.

“Okay. And it’s ready for the … influx?” Ava asked.

The announcement video would be launching after her stream tonight. Seeing how the site would be going from zero traffic to … well, a lot, at conservative estimates, in basically an instant, she had some concern over the site’s ability to handle it. Fortunately, Brooke seemed assured.

“It’ll be fine,” Brooke said. “Let me worry over the technical stuff.”

Which, yeah, fair enough. As if Ava could understand any of the details if she tried to go into them.

Ava chewed her lip for a second, then said, “Let’s double check the announcement video.”

“Sure.”

A few clicks, and Broke had it pulled up. She adjusted the volume slider as the video faded in.

It was weird seeing her own face on the screen. Ava might have become magnitudes less camera shy over the past few weeks, but that didn’t mean she’d entirely fought away the insecurity.

“Hey, everyone,” Spotlight said brightly once the video had resolved, flashing a smile that even Ava admitted was charming despite the fakeness of the situation. Maybe I am getting better at this. “Just wanted to take a moment to hand out some announcements. Stick around—I promise you’ll be interested.” A sly smile. “At least, I’m pretty sure you will. Don’t think I didn’t see how popular I got after that event.”

Man, she actually made it seem not that awkward. Like Ava’s insides didn’t twist up anytime she thought about the staged debacle. She was, honestly, a bit proud of herself for playing it off so flawlessly.

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“So,” Spotlight said. “Big news. A new chapter of my story. Any guesses what it is?”

A quirked eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Spotlight said, grinning. “The day’s finally come. You perverts are getting your wish. Let me give you a sneak peak.”

Spotlight held up her phone screen to the camera. The image was grainy, and a bit out of focus, but that was intentional. The subject matter was still obvious. She and Clash were dressed in their bikinis, bodies pressed into each other’s, and revealing a scandalizing amount of skin. It was a picture from their so-called ‘tamer’ half of their photo shoot.

“And it gets better,” Spotlight grinned. “But if you want to know how much better … I’m afraid you’ll need to check out my website.”

She pointed upward, and the URL for the Starlet League appeared. 

“For a monthly subscription, you might just be able to see what you’ve been waiting for. And who knows what the future holds?” A wink. “See you next stream!”

The video faded out.

Ava wrinkled her nose. “It still feels a bit weird. Forced.”

“It’s great, Aves,” Brooke said. “Laying it on thick is the point. And it’s not forced. Just …” She shrugged. “Sellsmansy, if that’s a word. It’s what people expect.”

“I guess.” She did think it had turned out fine, better than expected, even. But seeing herself play a character for a camera was weird, even if she played it better than she could have hoped for. “I just hope it works.”

“It’s going to work,” Brooke said amusedly. “Have you seen yourself? We won’t even know what to do with all the money.”

“To start with,” Ava said dryly, “we’ll be paying off mountains of debt.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, with the bucket-loads left over, I mean.”

Ava blinked. Brooke had made it a point to moderate her expectations so far, so if she was saying something like that so confidently, she really thought this would be a money-printing operation with close to zero chance of failure.

She must really have a high opinion of how well Ava’s body could sell.

She was flattered.

And it … affirmed something in Ava’s head.

Or maybe spurred her on to something that had been quietly building for weeks—even months—now.

“I … I need to apologize.”

Brooke blinked at the turn in conversation—and tone. “Ava?”

“I’ve been hiding something from you.” Ava cleared her throat. “It’s something kind of personal … but I don’t like hiding things from you.”

Brooke was quiet a moment, adjusting. “You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to.” She sounded confused. “We’re all entitled to secrets.”

“But I want to tell you. It’s just a bit weird. If that’s fine?”

“Sure?” Brooke clearly had no clue where this was going.

Ava breathed in, then said, “My um, powers. They’ve … resolved. Into something that makes a bit more sense. Something I’ve been hiding. Though I can’t begin to imagine why they work like this.”

Brooke waited patiently.

“Can I show you?” Ava asked, nerves thrilling through her body. “Instead of explaining?” She should tell Brooke what it was beforehand … especially considering what, exactly, her powers had become.

The reason she didn’t was because she wanted to surprise her friend. Ava hadn’t forgotten that book she’d found in Brooke’s room, back when all this had started. The … very detailed depictions of two girls going at it, one with large, extra equipment between her legs.

And maybe it was rude to skip asking that she was okay with it, but Ava wanted to confirm something. She wanted to plunge off the cliff without asking. Because … despite her normal hesitance, she thought she was right.

One thing, at least, she was certain of by now, however much she’d been shying mentally from the topic. Even if Brooke didn’t like her, she liked what she saw.

She liked Ava’s body.

Which meant Ava had a way to pay her back for everything she’d done.

Ava shuffled up to Brooke, rolling across the carpet in her office chair, and a hand went slowly, questingly, to between Brooke’s legs—who stiffened at the unexpected action.

“Just let me know if you aren’t okay with this,” Ava murmured.

A rod of golden light coalesced between Brooke’s legs, and Ava’s hand wrapped around it.

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