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It started as a joke.
A fucking joke, but it’s what seemed to finally click.
It had been after another long, long shift, wrangling a squad of super powered dipshits, when the idea was given to him. A few squabbles and a lot of backtalk had him complaining to Chase at the end of the day.
“It’s like herding a pack of cats on cocaine that all hate you,” he deadpanned. “And at least one of them is actually on cocaine.”
“Yep,” Chase responded, focusing more on his game of tug-of-war with Beef than on Robert. “You can see why I was happy to hand the shitshow off to you.”
“Seriously, sometimes I feel like running a kindergarten more than a superhero team,” Robert groaned, rubbing his eyes. “If he weren’t at least effective at his job, I might try putting Flambae in time out next time he sets a building on fire.”
Chase chuckled. “You could use those sticker sheets they use to teach kids how to do basic shit. Give them a sticker every time they do something right.”
Robert had laughed at that. It was a funny idea! So funny he’d gone to the craft store to get sheets of stickers and some craft paper. It was only a few dollars, and it was just for him to tease the team and laugh with Chase about later.
And somehow it led to this.
“Alright, settle down,” he grumbled, walking into the meeting room. There was a bit more chitchat, but they were somewhat actually listening. “Good work yesterday, team. There are some things to-”
“Oh, hurry it up!” Prism interrupted. “You know what we’re here for.”
“Yeah, stickers on the table, Bobby,” Sonar chipped in.
Robert sighed, already pulling out the sticker charts. It was the only way they would listen to review.
“Fine, let’s get started.” There were cheers as he arranged the sheets in the order he wanted to go in. “Golem, good job on that security detail. You kept the client safe and didn’t injure any civilians while doing it. Minor points off for knocking that car over, but no one was hurt. Two stickers.” He pulled two from the plant themed sticker sheet as a few people gave congratulations.
“Invisigal,” he continued, and the subject of this sheet groaned. She was the only one still holding out on actually enjoying the sticker charts, but she could play along. “You got your missions done, but even over the cameras I saw some merchandise from the store you were sent to start floating before disappearing. Since you didn’t notice or apprehend this mysterious thief, only one sticker.” She scoffed and a few others snickered. He put the generic star stickers he had since she refused to pick out her own sticker sheet, complaining that she “wasn’t a fucking two year old.”
“Punch Up. You had a pretty good shift up until that burglary. Your brawl with the suspect caused quite a bit of property damage, even though you brought him in in the end. One sticker.”
“He had super strength as well, you think I could resist a good tussle?” he grumbled, but gave no further complaints as Robert put a four leaf clover sticker on his chart.
“Coop,” he smiled a little. “Great job yesterday. Four missions and you only injured one civilian in that hostage situation, and he didn’t even need stitches. We can really tell you’re trying to do less collateral. Three stickers.”
She had no response as her teammates cheered, but she shifted her posture in what Robert thinks was preening at the praise. He stuck three little yellow chick stickers to her chart. This sheet hadn’t been Coupé’s idea, but she hadn’t complained when Punch Up picked it out for her.
“Sonar,” he changed his tone. “While you did complete a few missions, you bought illicit substances on the clock, disobeyed a direct order, and purposely scared a small child while in monster bat mode. No stickers”
“I thought you wouldn’t see that…” Sonar sighed, sounding disappointed in himself. Too disappointed.
“And,” Robert continued, “for misbehaving to artificially increase the value of any small amount of effort, Sonar loses two stickers.”
“What?!” the bat hybrid shrieked, dropping the mopey act. He lunged forward, trying to stop Robert from taking his money stickers off his chart, but was held back by Punch Up. “I worked so hard to covertly manipulate the market!”
“Yes, and you might have gotten away with it,” he nodded, crumpling up the used stickers and tossing them toward the trash can. “Until I noticed Malevola start acting out yesterday and you two giggling about it during your break. Since she just started, and otherwise had a good track record, she still gets one sticker. But any more of this, and I’ll take more.”
They both grumbled, but Malevola couldn’t complain too much as he put the devil emoji sticker on her chart. He had to have a fluid value for each team member’s sticker, and he wouldn’t have someone taking advantage of that by depreciating their own value by dropping the quantity of their work.
“Flambae,” he continued. “Good pivoting yesterday when that granny crossing the street call ended up being a trap. You cleared civilians and managed not to set surrounding buildings on fire.”
“What can I say, I’m good at what I do,” he smirked, leaning even further back in his seat with his boots up on the table.
“However, I do think your ‘sixth sense for fires’ could have detected that one that just so happened to crop up along your route back a little faster. Two stickers.” There was a small scoff, but no further complaints as he stuck the holographic, glittery flame stickers to the chart.
“And last but not least,” he said, “Prism had a fairly standard shift yesterday, but she managed to only cuss three times during her Bone Zone interview. Two stickers.” There was some applause as Robert put her holographic, glittery music note stickers on, completing her sticker chart. Flambae loudly whistled in celebration as the colorful sheet of cardstock was handed over to Prism’s flickering hands. She excitedly took it and showed it off, taking extra time to rub it in Sonar’s face.
“Alright, settle down,” Robert had to shout to be heard over the excitement. “Since Prism completed her sticker chart, she is the recipient of the prize: a copy of my file with every picture of Beef I have ever taken.” He handed over a flash drive, a crude drawing of Beef made on the plastic. There were even more cheers, a few people excited since they knew they would inevitably see some as well. They were very easy to share, but it would be hard to look at them all; that file was several gigabytes.
“However, I know you’re not much of a dog person, so I also got this,” he continued, looking away as he dug a piece of paper out of his pocket. “I stumbled across a reptile expo that’s coming up in a few weeks, and saw some cheap tickets. They weren’t much, so I went ahead and got you two.” He tossed the paper and she struggled to catch it with hands that were flickering even harder.
“There’s gonna be so many adorable snakes!” She was positively shining in excitement as she looked over the tickets and event details, and it was starting to hurt Robert’s eyes.
“Now, what you will next be competing for,” he cut through the noise and pulled a folded note card out. Everyone immediately went quiet to hear what it could be. “The next person to complete their sticker chart gets told my body count.”
The room exploded in delighted shrieks and laughs. They always got the most excited for any dirt on him. Flambae looked like a kid on Christmas, and even Invisigal’s jaw dropped in excited shock.
“I did not think our dispatcher would be capable of taking a life.”
“Ehehe, I don’t think that’s the sort of bodies he’s counting, darling.”
He’d realized early on that he couldn’t offer them anything that would be too exclusive or they’d fight over it. There had been a whole week of sabotaging each other for the shitty gift basket he’d put together, so he had to start giving more abstract prizes. Now he tries to give them something they can all share, but whoever actually won gets to gloat that they were the reason they got it.
“How high can it really be? I expect no more than three.”
“You’d be surprised. Lots of people are into pathetic doe eyed white boys.”
“Alright,” he interrupted, already regretting his life choices. “Great job yesterday, let’s keep it up today. Head down to the locker room and I’ll be on coms in a bit. I need some coffee to deal with whatever shit you all will get up to today.” He stuffed the folded paper in his back pocket and headed to the break room.
He got to his desk, steaming cup in hand, and Chase was waiting for him.
“So it really worked, huh?”
Robert hummed into his mug. “Had to change up a few rules, but they’ve actually been responding to it really well. I just have to make sure I keep offering what they want as a prize. There’s only one holdout, but…” He checked his back pocket. The note was gone, making him grin and take another sip.
“But what?” Chase asked.
“Give it a second,” he inhaled the steam, enjoying the smell of his shitty coffee for a moment. Then, a wadded up piece of paper appeared from nowhere and hit him in the side of the head. He chuckled, just taking another sip. Curious, Chase picked it up and unfolded it, cracking up at what it said.
Invisigal, earn stickers and complete your chart if you want the real count :]