"This," Taylor started as she dropped a stack of papers on the table. Bills, notifications about the imminent end of essential services. Random bits of fluff from the new pizza place a couple of blocks away and real estate advertisements. Mostly bills though. "Is the situation. The gist of things." Taking a bill out of the pile, Taylor cut it open with the edge of a nail. "Electricity. Two hundred dollars, with change." Another bill. "Water and gas. Three hundred and twenty-seven. Even." Another handful of bills, all still in their envelopes, spread themselves out in front of Lisa like a hand of cards. "Do you understand what this means?"
"It means," Lisa scratched at her ankle, the bracelet that had been tied around it, (as 'insurance' she'd been told) jingling merrily as she moved its bells about. It was surprisingly fun. "That your dad sighs a lot when he pays the bills?"
"No!" Taylor stomped her foot, making the cement around said foot crack and shatter while dust fell from the ceiling. "Well, yes, actually. Thanks for reminding me of that, you ass." Lisa warily shuffled back into her seat at the edge of Taylor's bed, reminded of the fact that the floor was tougher than she was. "But what I was getting at, is that you," Taylor pointed. "Have been living here, for free, for the past week."
"... This is one of those talks, isn't it."
"I am not a rich girl, Lisa, if you haven't noticed." She had noticed, actually. It wasn't all that hard to, seeing how Taylor—her name had been an absolute bitch to get, involving a day of pleading, a new fashion accessory and half an hour of chanting—was currently cooking Tinker grade pharmaceuticals and weaponry on a dingy hot plate which, itself, was on a just as dingy workbench. "And what I do is very, very expensive."
"I think I got that when you threw a couple thousand dollars worth of drugs into a soup pot." Lisa inclined her head at said soup pot…was that steam supposed to be green? "Along with, what? A full roll of condoms and a chocolate bar?"
"It's for protection!"
"From what though?" Lisa asked incredulously, honestly taken aback for once. "A boring sex life? Sobriety? Common sense?" Lisa felt her lips twitch up into a smile. "Because I don't really see how chocolate, ecstasy, and condoms are going to help you fight crime."
"I don't have to explain myself to you!" Taylor shot back, "It's magic!" Lisa's face was starting to hurt. Totally worth it though, considering this was probably the closest she'd ever get to snarking at Myrddin. And she made it so easy. "Stop being difficult!"
"Hmmm…" Lisa looked up and began tapping her chin. "I'll think about it… As soon as the nightmares stop."
"That was a week ago," Taylor said hurriedly. Lisa laughed. "And I said I was sorry!"
She really had. It had been genuine too, as far as Lisa could tell. The girl that had saved her life—which she was grateful for, don't get her wrong—was too…socially unaware, to trick Lisa like that, even without her powers.
Taylor was smart though. Scary smart… And also, possibly, more than likely, insane. Because, really, how could she not be? Lisa had taken a glance at one of Taylor's equations before. One of those in that journal she carried around, just to be nosy. Never again. Not even if you paid her. She'd needed to lie down for most of the day after that little glimpse, nursing a constant nose bleed and a mind-splitting headache. Without any Advil.
That had been a terrible way to find out her powers had returned. Dicks. Dicks everywhere. In the numbers, the words. The stick figure drawings right past the equal sign. Dicks.
"Wax statues, Taylor." Taylor twitched. "But I accept your apology." Lisa waved her hand magnanimously. "For now."
"Sweet of you. But, really. Stop." Lisa couldn't help but watch when Taylor moved away from the table and to her workbench. "This is serious, and I want you to treat it that way." Skirt swishing, hips swaying, a walk as graceful as a model's on the catwalk. Some people got all the luck. "You need to start pulling your weight." It just wasn't fair.
"And I'd be happy to!" Lisa said brightly. "Just hand me a putty knife, and I'll have my wallet off the sidewalk in a couple of hours! I really hope you like the smell of ashes, melted plastic, and burnt hair!"
"I—What? I don't like any of those things. Why would you even—"
"Or maybe you want me to empty my accounts?" Lisa's grin began showing a few more teeth. "You know, the ones that are most likely being watched? You might as well ask me to bring Coil to your house," Lisa spread her hands out in a helpless, and more than a little patronizing, gesture. Taylor pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. "We could have a party! A laser dance party, even!"
"What the hell does that even mean?"
"His people have lasers. I am a terrible dancer."
"... Huh."
"So. What do you want me to do? Really?" Lisa held up a hand, three of her fingers held upright. "Any of my accounts being touched would be a giant flag saying that I'm still alive." She lowered one. "My wallet either melted into the ground of The Docks, or is now a part of me." Lisa shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "For example, my right ass cheek was once a thirty-twenty-fifty mix of spandex, wallet leather, and charcoal. That is a fact." Taylor rubbed her own behind sympathetically and nodded, face kept carefully blank.
"Also," Taylor's face quickly changed when Lisa lowered another finger, leaving the middle digit the only one still standing. It was hilarious. "It's not like I can just—start working in fast food." Lisa circled her face with the other hand. "I'm too damn pretty for that sort of thing for one." Taylor started to turn an interesting shade of red. Anger and embarrassment in a single package, allowing sparks to trail off the ends of Taylor's hair in tiny arcs. "And for another, do you really think a position in a fast food franchise is going to help?"
"... No. No, I don't. Entry level anything wouldn't allow for…" Taylor turned herself stiffly around, ladle in one hand, notebook in the other. Eerily quiet as she began to stir the pot and the sparks began to die down. Scribbling yet more madness into that book of hers while she mumbled under her breath. "I find your concerns to be...reasonable. Understandable. Painfully traumatic."
"Well…yeah." Lisa started playing with her ankle bracelet again. "I'm actually sort of surprised I didn't second trigger."
"Those options are closed to us, obviously." Taylor continued talking, seemingly ignorant of the fact that Lisa had been talking. Lisa ground her teeth. "But I like to think of myself as—pragmatic. Willing to compromise for the sake of my goals. To a point. Which is why we—"
"I don't turn tricks."
"—or, to be more exact, you," A pencil stub hit Lisa in between the eyes, laying her out on her back with a startled yelp. Taylor shook a smoking hand once or twice, pulling out a cutting board and a box of strawberries after it had stopped. Prostitution jokes. Not funny. Got it. "Since you just volunteered yourself," Fucking ow. "Are going to be doing some errands."
"... Errands?"
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Five minutes of arguing. Three minutes of pouting and ritualistic weirdness. Another two spent trying to talk her way out of what had been asked of her, only to receive a swat on the rear that sent her out the door with a bag full of loot to be fenced, some pocket money, and a grocery list. Ten minutes in all spent being as difficult as humanly possible just for the sake of it.
Worth it. Considering where she was now. Outside. In the sun.
"This is work." Lisa rubbed her still tender lower back, squinting in the midday light. Why was it all so bright? Was it the new eyes? Had she become some kind of—subterranean creature, over the last week? Because god damn. She felt like a vampire. "Brian work. Or Rachel. If I ever see them again…" Lisa hefted the bag a little higher over her shoulder. "I'm going to say something mean. Something emasculating even."
Lisa paused in her walk towards the bus station. Hand to her forehead as she felt a headache coming on. "I didn't need to know that." Ten inches of what. "How was he not popular?" He had enough blood going to his brain to think how? "But still. Mean. Doesn't matter if it's true or not." She started walking again. "As long as it hurts someone's feelings." Being dead, or critically injured, was no excuse for making her work. Jerks.
"Alright. So, first thing." Pulling out the list she'd been given, Lisa shuffled her way towards the nearest bus stop bench. "Fence all this shit before it kills me... And why am I talking to myself? That's weird. Homeless, not crazy." Taking a peek inside the bag, Lisa nodded to herself.
This was going to be easy.
First, the gas station. The one downtown. Get a hat and some sunglasses. Chips, sour cream and onion, with a drink that wasn't tea. Coffee maybe. She missed it. Unload most of the drugs on the two stoners that hung around the place, before heading to Crazy Steve's place out on Burlington for the rest. After that, the groceries, making sure to buy enough tea to start a revolution out on the harbor with some more chips.
Then, after that, the budget she'd been given for personal use. Two hundred dollars for clothes and basic necessities, grudgingly given. Like pulling teeth. Lisa knew how that was from experience. It was going to be 'Forever Cheap' for a while, with its twelve packs of underwear and plain white t-shirts that made her skin itch just by looking at them. Maybe something for herself if she had money left over.
She ran a hand over her head, feeling only the barest hints of stubble as the bus pulled up to her stop.
Lisa could think of a thing or two she could buy after she was done.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Or not.
"Three hundred dollars for a wig that doesn't make me look like I'm in the circus? Fuck that." Lisa grumbled as she walked into the nearest clothing shop, sunhat set firmly in place upon her head, groceries—No coffee though. The store she'd gone to had been fresh out—mixed with fresh bills, stuffed into a much lighter bag as she mentally flipped multiple birds behind her. "I'm bald. Not dying." While she had no idea what her life was going to be like in a week, let alone a month, she knew that a decent pair of pants never hurt. It was the little things that made life worthwhile.
A shame about the wig though. The red one had looked good on her. Really made her eyes pop.
"Too few stitches," Lisa said to herself. Her power had become a lot more—manageable these days. Subtle. Less likely to tear her head off in a rant over something stupid. More of a nudge over something stupid instead. It took a little longer to get somewhere now… But she found it to be a more than acceptable payoff, as long as she didn't think about it too hard.
That way lay madness.
Too few stitches again. Too many Stitches. Fake Pockets. Fake Pockets. Fake Pockets. Fake—I hate fake pockets so goddamn much why are those even a thing. Creator was hung over. Creator was drunk. Creator was drunk and hungover and had a lazy eye.
Her choice of store had been chosen…poorly. Luck of the draw, she supposed, considering she'd just—walked into the first store she saw in an angry huff.
"I should have gone somewhere else. The men's department at Target or something." It hadn't taken all that long for her to reach the end of the clothing rack, not one of them worth the time it would take to try them on. "At least they have pockets." Damn them.
"That's what I usually do." A voice spoke up from behind Lisa. She screamed like she was a little girl again. "Skinny jeans just look good. They aren't practical." Lisa turned around slowly, barely keeping herself from verbally tearing into the brunette that had been behind her. Bringing attention to herself wasn't a good idea these days. "What are fake pockets even for anyway?" The girl sniffed. "They don't even make sense."
"They are the proof that fashion designers hate women," Lisa replied sourly, startling a laugh out of the other girl… Who felt oddly familiar. Something about the hair. Or maybe it was the freckles? "And they are also a marketing ploy."
"What?"
"Where do you put all of your things," Lisa waved at the far end of the department, over at the bags and accessories. "If you can't put it in your pockets? Think about it." The brunette's face twisted angrily.
"Those bastards."
"Ruining the cut my lily-white ass." Lisa agreed, feeling closer to the other girl at that moment than anyone else she could remember in recent memory. However, before any more female bonding over how much women's fashion sucked could happen—
"I just found the cutest shorts!" A voice called out from the other end of the store. "Get over here so you can try them on!" The girl sighed.
"And that's my sister." The girl sighed, face drawn down in one of the most expressive frowns Lisa had ever seen. Exhausted affection, mixed with hopelessness. Lisa gave her a pity pat on the shoulder. "She has no taste…and now, I get to spend the next few hours of my life, staring at her ass so that I can tell her if it looks big in her new jeans, or wearing said jeans. Jeans that'll be unwearable in a couple of weeks, most likely." She turned around with another sigh as she began ambling her way down the aisle. "Nice talking to you."
"Later." Lisa waved sloppily, already back to being neck deep in clothing, without any expectations that she'd ever see that girl again. Later was just a thing you said. Anyway… There had to be something good in here…somewhere.
She'd been wrong.
Three stores, two hours, and a brush with people pretending to be security later, Lisa had finally come to a pair of conclusions. Conclusion one. Women's fashion was at least eighty percent bullshit, sprinkled with diamonds that might have actually been ground glass. Conclusion two. A bag full of cash was a powerful temptation for those with and without. Tempting enough that the thought of running away, again, had crossed her mind more than once. Sadly though, even ignoring the fact that Coil may or may not be looking for her… Stealing from Taylor would be stupid. Also, quite possibly, impossible.
Taylor had been rather vague on what it was that the ankle bracelet did, leaving it open as to whether it held a Master effect, a Shaker, or even something more exotic... And Lisa didn't feel like testing what it was. Not even as a joke. She shuddered in remembered pain.
The memories of... THE PURGE… would be with her until the day she died.
Suppressing her sudden bout of what was most likely PTSD, Lisa checked her memory with a mental nod of satisfaction. Just another two blocks and she'd finally have her prizes. A decent pair of jeans. Some fresh underwear. An, even lighter, sack full of cash, and a couple of coffee cans to even out Taylor's tea monopoly.
It was called variation. Taylor had none.
"Finally." She sighed as she turned the corner and caught sight of the trademark circles within circles. A concentric circle? Something like that. Anyway, thirty minutes or so, max, and she'd be done with today, as long as Target hadn't sold out or something…
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
They hadn't.
"Talk about spoiled for choice," Lisa said to herself, staring at the racks upon racks of clothing, feeling something close to what she suspected was a nearly religious rapture. Poetic if she was, considering her long trek through fashion hell. She had already managed to grab a decently fitting bra and twelve pairs of panties. With money still left over even! Things were starting to look up.
"Okay. Jeans first. They're probably going to be a pair of mom jeans... but they'll fit." She nodded to herself, "Fit comfortably and last even." Then shrugged. "That and Taylor is going to be the only one who'll see me in them. She won't care." She snorted to herself as a thought struck her.
Coil might be looking for her… But she really doubted her description had 'bald and wears mom jeans' in it. A real master of disguise she was. He'd never find her now.
"Okay. Let's see here." Lisa readjusted her bag, as she started to work her way through the rack. Slightly too many stitches. Will ride a bit high. Will ride too low. Returned item, returned item, stretched out because a size eight was convinced that they could fit their ass into a size two, a sleeping Tinker creation which has been worn by someone today… Wait. Tinker? Lisa's train of thought came to a screeching, fiery halt as her sudden attempt at mental backtracking ended up in flames.
"Wha—?" She uttered faintly as she slowly took a step back from the thing hanging from the clothes rack. A shapeless mass of black and green, unnatural in its features. Visibly oozing a foul and viscous slime all over the floor… A slime that she had thought was just some really old soda. Also, she was starting to think that Taylor, the living dictionary that she was, was a bad influence on her speech patterns. Anyway—
Lisa stifled a scream as the thing twitched.
—Now was the time to slowly back away and call someone. Security. The PRT. The National Enquirer… Taylor even. Lisa was not dealing with this. Not her problem. Not her store. She'd just get jeans somewhere else, somewhere that didn't have possibly lethal tinker tech lifeforms hanging around in the women's clothing department. Hell, maybe she'd go back to the first one. That girl was probably still there watching her sister try on jeans with fake pockets.
And that was when she stepped on a plastic hanger that had been lying on the ground. It shattered because of course it did.
"Shit." Was all Lisa could say as the creature started to stir. "Shit!" Quickly turning on her heel, she managed to get all of one step away before a warm appendage had wrapped itself around her waist. Her eyes widened. "Oh, hell no!" She now had a pretty good idea of what her power had meant, when it had said someone had worn it today. She'd seen enough porn in her life, by accident, of course, to know where this was going.
Lisa bit back a yell, resisting as it tried to pull her deeper into the clothes rack. Sure, someone might hear her. But if they didn't… well... she wasn't exactly planning on getting facefucked today. Anyway really. Nope. Maybe, though, if she waved really, really hard and threw something heavy, someone would notice—
Lisa bit back another scream as yet more tentacles appeared, grabbing onto a few more racks, and forcing them to close ranks around them, cutting Lisa's line of sight, and making her plan moot. Lisa tried not to shudder as it wrapped an appendage around her neck. After a few seconds of cringing and feeling slime as it began to soak into her clothes, Lisa cracked open an eye and looked around. Not that she was complaining or anything, but she'd been expecting an attempt at strangulation. A tighter, more threatening hold or something. Instead, it seemed to be satisfied with just—calmly tickling the sides of her neck.
Almost as if it were threatening her. Gently.
Is curious. Seeks heat. Seeks close physical contact.
Lisa focused on anything she could to ignore the sense of impending doom. Anything else at all. She started to, for once in her life, purposely open the gates of her power in hopes of giving herself a headache.
No smell. Does not produce any real sort of scent. Any scent it may have comes from the material it has had contact with. Scent is discarded at whim, or when no longer useful for camouflage.
Lisa took an experimental sniff and concluded that her power was right. The tentacle around her neck smelled a lot more like a discount chain clothing department then a tentacle monster should. With a hint of blueberries and freshly baked bread. Weird. She'd expected it to be a lot more….
Lisa jumped, hurriedly shaking a leg as she felt a tentacle start making its way up one of the legs of her pants.
Musky. Sexual. Maybe even straight out lewd, smelling of fresh semen and possessing aphrodisiac qualities capable of turning her into a sex-starved husk of her former self… Not that she'd ever thought of things like that or anything. With the internet and a power like hers, you picked things up sometimes. Anyway though, despite herself and weirdly enough, even as she grappled with yet another set of limbs trying to slide under her shirt while the first was busily trying to reach her groin—Eww eww eww eww—she couldn't help but feel like she'd just been let down.
The internet had lied to her.
Squeezing in an attempt to tighten her grip on the tendrils caressing her stomach didn't work as well as she had hoped it would. The sensation of jello and oil in between her fingers, a liquid warmth. The smell that she had just realized was the smell of muffins, fresh out of the oven, right as it oozed through her hands like they weren't even there to playfully run itself over the point of one of her breasts.
Lisa's face twitched, her bottom lip placing itself between her teeth at the sudden shock. Unsure whether she should be glad that she wasn't wearing a bra at the moment. She hadn't been for the past week. On one hand, if she had been wearing one, she'd have had to throw it away right after, wasting the money she'd been given. On the other, if she had been wearing one, it would have at least slowed the thing down, keeping away from giving it what was essentially permission to attack her nipples directly—
Lisa's mouth fell open in a breathless gasp, back arching as a tendril wrapped around her left breast, giving it a gentle squeeze while the other began to circle a rapidly hardening nipple, coating it in oil.
—Like they were doing now. Enthusiastically. Lisa quickly closed her mouth, then began silently headbutting a curious tendril a couple of times until it went away. Her pulls at the creature took a turn towards the frantic as she remembered that she wasn't wearing any underwear either. Yet another of Lung's many crimes. One that Lisa would personally take out of his hide when she had the chance.
Dragon leather underwear would sell and sell well.
She couldn't hold back the quiet hiss when the tentacle in her pants finally reached its destination, giving her outer lips a teasing stroke down the middle. Reflexively closing her legs as another tendril coiled itself around her, Lisa bent over at the waist, putting her back and both hands into pulling it out and away from her pants leg, willfully ignoring the fact that the beast that had attached itself to her was getting clingier if that was even possible. Its hold on her tightening just enough to give her the impression that any more would hurt. Its movements at wherever it touched her sped up, acting as if it was excited by her struggles.
Thinks this is a game. What?Is having fun. Well good for him then. At least one of them was having fun. That was what really mattered here. Has no concept of personal space. Really? She hadn't noticed. Thank you, Sherlock. Likes you. Wants to keep you. Wants to take you to its home so you can play more. Oh hell no.
Yet another—How many limbs did this thing have!?—tentacle, sliding down through the back of her pants and down the crack of her ass, had her standing straight up again, actually budging the one at the front from sheer surprise before it came back with a vengeance. Her eyes grew wide and wild, butt clenched hard enough to crush coal into diamonds, as she finally considered if getting a mouthful in return for a scream was an acceptable risk after all. Exit only, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. No.
She knew it was silly, but she had standards, standards that she didn't even know she had when it came to tentacle molestation. What had happened so far? Unpleasant, yes. A surprise, yes. But not an out and out dealbreaker when, she assumed, her life was up for grabs. But butt stuff?
Lisa fell to her hands and knees, gasping for air and drooling a little as the tentacles in her clothing went wild, vibrating en masse in a low rumble.
Getting her butt stuffed with tentacle cock was where she drew the line… No matter how good the other stuff had felt. It just wasn't fair. Also, she was going to have to review this whole 'masturbation' thing later. If there was a later.
Falling onto her side she fumbled with the button of her pants, giving up at pulling to cover herself directly, keeping it from trying to get any deeper, even as she felt herself add to the liquids already staining her jeans with a slow, heavy climax.
She suspected that she might actually succeed if she tried this time. It was sort of mind-blowing, once she thought about it.
Closing her eyes as she cupped her crotch during a moment of relief, Lisa breathed in deep, really deep. Deep enough her lungs hurt as she readied herself for a scream Shatterbird would have been proud of. Blueberry muffins, discount clothing. The smell of sex and ozone.
Wait. Ozone?
The building pressure at her backside forgotten for all of a second before she doubled up on her clenching, Lisa opened her eyes… And had to blink at the bare concrete walls. The lack of cheap, commercial grade carpeting and store music, replaced by hard ground and the sound of things on the boil. Any further observations were cut off as clothing started falling all around her, with Taylor out at the edges of the fall in the sluttiest outfit Lisa had heard of, let alone seen. Blue and black, a tiny domino mask and an even tinier costume. Like an almost sheer, ultra-thin, skin-tight leotard that had decided to moonlight as a thong… But Taylor worked it like no one else.
Lisa and the tentacles on her body stopped moving all at once when Taylor shifted her stance. Even when she stood still, the rest of her moved.
Lisa's own costume may have been skin tight, but wearing something like that… That was a sort of confidence she just didn't possess. Not even close. Because, god damn. That ass. Those legs. Holy shit were those abs!?
Some people had all the luck…
The last thing Lisa heard before a lacy black camisole fell over her head and the tentacle monster started screeching, leaping forward and dragging Lisa along behind it, was Taylor's horrified screaming.
Lisa joined in very soon after. A second or two later. Around the time when what felt like half a foot of tentacle forced itself into her backdoor. She hadn't exactly been paying attention to the time.
There was much screaming.