Predatory
16
Vicky whined as she began to wake up. For once, she actually didn't want to get out of bed, but she really had to pee. She was warm, comfortable, and content. That probably had something to do with the arms wrapped around her midsection, or the expanse of deliciously soft, silky smooth skin pressed flush against her back. Or maybe the amazingly full feeling in her belly, as one of the hands wrapped around her stroked her heavy, swollen stomach.
Vicky blinked. Something about the situation seemed wrong. Several somethings, really.
Managing to crack one eye open, she looked around and took her surroundings in. This is Amy's room, she realized, which meant the person holding her was probably her sister. That wasn't too unusual, actually. They used to sleep together all the time as kids. Recently, not so much, but occasionally Vicky wanted a bed partner and forced her way in. But usually, they were both clothed—even if those clothes were little more than practically sheer silk or cotton.
Amy's hand trailed down, her fingers combing through Vicky's neatly trimmed bush before dipping lower and sliding across the blonde's clit, before dipping into her folds. Amy's never done that before, she thought. And yet… it felt amazing and she didn't want it to stop, so instead of protesting, in her still half-asleep state Vicky spread her legs a bit wider to give her sister better access. A pair of pouty lips kissed her ear, before teeth gently bit it, drawing a quiet gasp from Vicky's lips as Amy began teasing her lower lips, entrance, and clit.
Then, her sister's fingers wandered back and Vicky's pleasure hazed mind had just a moment to wonder where she was going, before Amy's fingers found something just as sensitive as her clit between her pussy and her ass. Vicky yelped, coming suddenly awake. She rolled away from Amy and hopped from the bed, only to stare in disbelief at her naked body. And her very round, swollen belly that sloshed as she moved. It all—well, mostly—came back to her as the shot of adrenaline woke her the rest of the way up.
Looking at the bed, she found Amy there staring hungrily at her form, but no sign of Miles. Vicky opened and closed her mouth a time or two, not quite sure where to begin. That's when her bladder reminded her that she needed to use the restroom. But first… "Ames," Vicky grumbled, before gesturing at her stomach. "Can you fix this before I go to the bathroom, so mom doesn't see it?"
"She doesn't come back to this part of the house unless she wants something," Amy countered, but made a waving 'come here' gesture. Vicky stepped closer and Amy reached out and poked her stomach. "There. You'd better hurry or you'll make a mess~"
Vicky's eyes went wide as she felt her bowels grumble and something starting to seep from inside her womb. She quickly gathered her clothes and flew out of the room, to the bathroom. She had just enough time to lock herself in, make sure the seat was down, and get into position before it started. It felt, and sounded, like someone had opened up a fire hose. Her nose filled with such a thick smell of sperm that Vicky nearly choked on it. What felt like gallons spewed out from her ass and lower lips, enough that she had to flush just to keep up with the flood. But as it ran out, Vicky saw her belly visibly deflate. Oddly, there were no stretch marks or other signs left behind, so she was thankful for that at least.
God, I can't believe I did that, she thought to herself as she shifted a bit to let her head rest on the cabinet set above the toilet, her body relaxing as she closed her eyes and thought back over the… ridiculously erotic night she'd had. Even just thinking back on it, her heart was starting to race, her nipples growing hard, and she could feel her pussy and ass tingling. Wait. Ass?
She vaguely remembered agreeing to let Amy modify her. And that there had been anal involved. And, Vicky blushed at the memory, Amy growing a cock and fucking her in the ass while Miles fucked her pussy at the same time, making Vicky the meat in the middle of a very sexy sandwich. Things went kind of hazy after that—all she really remembered was things got way more intense. Like, insanely intense. To the point that she felt herself starting to drool. Smacking her lips and tongue, she shuddered as a jolt of pleasure ran through her body from her mouth.
Right, she did my mouth too, Vicky realized.
The blonde wasn't entirely sure how to feel about all of these changes. On the one hand, she had agreed to them, but on the other it was in the heat of the moment and she couldn't really say it was an informed decision… And on the other other hand, if her mouth was any indication, she wouldn't be complaining long if she decided to test them out now that she wasn't put on the spot, so to speak.
Still can't believe I did that! She circled back around, biting her lip and reaching up to tease her nipples as she ran her tongue around her own mouth, enjoying the new sensitivity while she focused on the memories.
'You mean you're going to let me cuck Dean?!'
It was like being doused with a bucket of ice-water. Guilt filled her at the thought of what she had done in the heat of the moment. And she couldn't blame Amy or Miles for this one. Yes, they were the ones she had cheated with, but it was Vicky's choice to do so. They had given her the choice to walk away and she decided to stay.
And yet… while she felt guilty about it, she couldn't really say she felt bad for doing it. She and Dean had broken up and gotten back together more times than she could count at this point, and every time she broke it off he just took her back without complaint. And she kept wondering why he did it. Like, if their positions were reversed, she would have told him to get lost after the second time. It was, she admitted to herself, part of why she kept doing it. Because he kept letting her get away with it.
The other part, she had never quite been able to figure out until now. But now, feeling her heart start to race again, she knew what had been missing the whole time. While Dean felt safe, he just didn't excite her. He didn't make her heart race, her mouth drool, her nipples hard, her pussy throb with need at the thought of his cock. The most they had even done was him fingering her and Vicky sucking him off.
It's his own fault for never making a move, she decided with a frown, before putting thoughts of Dean out of her mind for the time being. Vicky was done with him. She could dump him Monday. For good, this time.
Instead, she wiped and flushed again, before turning the shower on. She wanted to explore the changes Amy had made. So far, she'd figured out her sister had done something to her ass and her mouth, but she also felt more sensitive than she'd ever been. And then there was the strange second clit she could feel throbbing with need in time with the one she was supposed to have. While the water was warming up, she hurried out of the room and floated down to her bedroom. She grabbed a change of clothes and a vibrator, then paused as she considered her small collection of sex toys before grabbing a second vibrator.
Wrapping the toys up in her tee-shirt, Vicky hurried back into the bathroom and locked herself in before putting her clean clothes in the cabinet, then put her vibrators on the toilet lid. Stripping down, she tossed her dirty clothes in the laundry basket and slipped into the shower. After a quick scrub, she started her exploration. Trailing a hand back, she tried something she never had before. Oh so carefully, she probed at her anus with one long finger. It was slightly leaking warm, slimy fluid, just like her pussy did. Humming quietly, she pressed inwards slowly and her finger slid in. Vicky gasped quietly at the sensation—it was very similar to fingering her pussy, most especially on the inside—the only difference being the ring of tight muscle and nerves clenching her finger.
Did she turn my ass into a pussy or something? Vicky wondered as she explored herself, leaning against the wall of the shower and floating a bit as her legs threatened to give out. Reaching out a bit further with her middle finger, she brushed against the new clit her sister had given her and that time, her legs did give out.
"Oh wow," Vicky muttered. A smirk crossed her lips as she opened the shower curtain long enough to grab both vibrators. Cranking the heat up a bit on the water, she turned the first vibrator on low and slid it into her pussy with a hiss of breath. Then, she repeated the act with her ass, and her eyes threatened to roll up in her head as she came a hair from coming on the spot. Deciding to remedy that, she reached down with both hands—one from the front and one from the back, and started stroking both of her clits at the same time. She came within seconds, both her pussy and ass clenching down on the vibrators inside her. But instead of feeling oversensitive or like she was finished, she just wanted more.
Going to have to thank her for this later. Great big kiss on the lips, Vicky giggled to herself as she continued to work herself over.
Meanwhile…
Amy yawned and rolled over. 'I don't want to get out of bed.'
"So don't? You're allowed to laze around a bit."
The brunette hemmed. 'I should go to the hospital though. I haven't been putting in as many hours lately.'
"You could… or you could go ask to schedule a meeting with the director of the hospital and offer them a deal." Amy raised an eyebrow at that and Miles continued. "You've given them how many years of free treatment? They've made literal millions off of you by now, just because you've been treating their patients and asking for nothing in return."
Amy frowned. 'I shouldn't—'
"Says who? Carol?" Amy's silence confirmed it, as did the feeling of resentment building within her. "Because that fits her ideal of what someone 'good' would do. Fuck that shit. You're being taken advantage of because she feels you're a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off, because of who your father is."
Blinking, the messy-haired brunette softly asked, "You know who my father is?"
Miles paused. "I thought you knew. You knew you were adopted—"
'Well, yeah. I understand how genetics work and I don't share DNA with my family. And I kind of have vague memories of a time before the Dallons, when I lived with a man. He was tall and had long hair, and I think he loved me… Is that him?'
Sighing, the man-turned-puddle sent the mental impression of a nod. "Most likely. There's no easy way to say it, so I'll go ahead and rip the bandaid off. Your dad was Marquis. Carol hated him because, if I recall correctly, he reminded her of one of her kidnappers from her and your aunt Sarah's trigger event. Before they became New Wave, they broke the unwritten rules and attacked Marquis in his home. I think he begged them to take you in, because otherwise every villain in the country would be after the daughter of Marquis."
Amy stared up at her ceiling with a frown. 'So the reason she's such a hardass and treats me like a redheaded stepchild is because she's afraid I'll become my dad?'
Her shoulders shrugged. "No, pretty sure Carol's just a hardass by nature. But the rest of it? Yeah, probably. But that's just Carol. Pretty sure Mark actually loves you, when he's not… you know. And Vicky's, well, Vicky."
'Yeah, I think you're right. I never got the feeling that Aunt Sarah, Uncle Neal, or my cousins didn't like me. It really is just Carol,' Amy agreed. A thought occurred and she asked, 'Do you… think we could fix my d—Mark?'
"Amy… it's alright to call him your dad," he told the girl. Before she could say anything one way or the other, he added, "And I'll have to look at him, but I'm pretty sure I could. You want to?"
The girl nodded once, firmly. 'He's been a good… dad, when he could. I was always afraid I would break something, or I'd be tempted to change something more. But you know what you're doing and aren't afraid to do it. Would you?'
In answer, Amy's body got out of bed and clothes formed around her. They left her bedroom and made their way through the house, to where Amy suspected her dad would be at this time of day. Opening the door to the den, they found him seated in an overstuffed recliner, watching TV. "Hey dad, got a minute?" Amy called, stepping hesitantly into the room.
"Sure, hon, what's up?" Mark asked listlessly, not looking away from the TV.
Moving closer, they came up alongside him and Amy steeled her resolved upon seeing his vacant stare into nothing, the program on TV only serving as background noise. "I, I figured out how to do brains. Do you want me to…?"
Mark blinked, then slowly turned his head to Amy. Then, he shrugged. "I don't care, hon. Go ahead, if you want to."
Nodding, Amy laid her hand on his bare arm. Thin micro-filaments of tendrils burrowed into Mark's flesh and zipped up to his head, where they spread into and through his brain—in addition to cracking open his shard connection and nomming on it. Miles poked the man's brain and sent him to sleep. "Alright, let's see. Run this by your shard and MJ's… Yeah, I think I see the problem. And… done. Let him sleep it off naturally. A short nap and he'll wake up right as rain."
Amy felt her eyes grow hot and reached up to wipe away her tears. 'Thank you.'
"You're welcome. Now, let's get out of here. I want to find somewhere private before I spring the next one on you," the man said, his voice sounding irritable.
Nodding, Amy left the den and made her way through the house towards the front door. She found Carol, cooking what looked like breakfast for—a quick count of the materials and she came up with three with a frown. Amy opened her mouth to tell Carol she was leaving, but Miles shut it again. "Touch her."
Curious, but trusting her friend, Amy quietly walked up beside Carol and laid a hand on the woman's arm. With just that touch, a minute amount of biomass detached from their body and rushed into Carol's, making the trip up to her brain and opening her shard connection. It left that way and initiated a hostile shard takeover. Carol jumped, turning to the side and glaring at Amy as something glowed to life in her free hand briefly.
"Jesus, Amy," she grumbled, dispelling the gathered energy and turning back to her pan of scrambled eggs.
"I'm going out," Amy told her.
"You should go to the hospital. They called and wanted to know why you've been pulling less hours." Carol frowned at the shorter brunette. "Where have you been going, if not the hospital?"
Amy briefly considered how to handle Carol—whether she wanted to keep going as she had, or whether she should stand up for herself. Finally, she decided on the latter. "I've been spending time with Gwen. That is, Widow."
Carol… hesitated. Eventually, stirring the eggs, she asked, "Doing what?"
"Hanging out on her patrols, mostly," Amy shrugged. "I've been to her house a couple of times and met her family. They're nice. All parahumans, but only Gwen and her sisters are capes. One of them just triggered—you've probably seen her. Silk?"
Carol nodded. "I see." She piled the eggs onto a plate and cracked another two eggs—these looked to be sunny side up. "Okay. I'll allow it. She's a good hero. Just remember to go by the hospital from time to time."
"Thanks," Amy said, before waving and heading for the door. Once she was outside, she pulled her hood up and started walking.
"Jesus fucking Christ that woman is a bitch. She didn't even ask if you wanted something to eat. And the only reason she's 'allowing it' is because she's thinking 'Gwen' will be a good influence on you. Bright colors, friendly personality, shows her face in public. Our alter ego is pretty much exactly the sort of person she wants you to emulate."
Amy snorted softly. 'If only she knew Missy's actually a sexually predatory, jaded little misanthrope. And the other half of Widow is an asshole and a dirty old man.'
"Exactly," Miles agreed with a chuckle. His mirth fell off and he sighed. "I didn't have you touch her just so I could eat her shard. Here, let me…"
A bit of fiddling between [Intuition], [Shaper], and [Need] got a sort of virtual display piped directly to Amy's visual cortex, creating a floating overlay of the world around her—similar to MJ's 'detective vision' tweak. Except in this case, Miles used it to bring up four familiar double-helix patterns. DNA taken from four people. Under each was a name: Vicky, Carol, Mark, and Amy.
"Why me too?" Amy murmured, studying the helices.
"A control," Miles said. Lines stretched out from Amy's sequence to the others before the words NO MATCH appeared under it in red. "Not related, obviously."
Amy nodded. A line extended between Mark and Carol, followed by NO MATCH. "Okay, yeah. That's kind of expected unless we were in Arkansas."
"Hey now, I'll have you know that's a racist stereotype," Miles chided lightly, but Amy could tell he didn't particularly care. "Now…" A line extended from Vicky to Carol, coming back with a big green MATCH between them.
"We knew that—" Another line, this time between Mark and Vicky.
NO MATCH.
Amy stumbled. Yes, she had kind of expected it given the lead up, but… actually seeing it was different. Made it real. 'So, who's the father then?'
"No idea. Not enough samples. [Intuition] has some ideas. An idea, anyway. The most obvious one."
Sighing, Amy brought a hand up to rub at her forehead. 'I guess I should go visit Aunt Sarah's family and… and touch Uncle Neil.'
"Doesn't have to be now. It can be put off."
Considering her options, Amy shook her head. 'I'll do it the next time I go on patrol with them. Until then, let's hit the hospital. You had some idea for making money?'
"Ah, right. Short version: offer them a deal. Your services free for otherwise terminal local cases and children—the sort of heartwarming thing that makes people love you for doing it already. But tell them you won't be treating general cases any more and you'll be offering your services at a premium to the wealthy. And don't just offer healing for things like cancer. Offer cosmetic upgrades, longevity/deaging, and that sort of thing too. And charge out the nose for it. I think your shard might be able to handle actual, biological sex changes without the body turning into a puddle of goo, fighting itself in an autoimmune response, or brain damage. Maybe. We'd have to test that one with mice first just to be on the safe side. Offer the hospital a cut, no more than 20% but lowball it at 10% to start and make them work for it for anything more than that. Ten percent of ten million is still a million, for something like deaging some rich old fucker who wants a few more years."
'But I wouldn't be helping as many people—'
"People who don't actually need your help," Miles pointed out. "We have hospitals. Some people don't even go to the hospital. It's not your responsible to wipe every runny nose, Panpan."
Amy glared at the air ahead of her. 'You know I hate it when people call me that.'
Miles chuckled. "I do. But you see my point, right? If you try to take on too much, you're going to be swamped. And let's be honest, you don't need a 'saving people thing.' That's Carol's thing, not yours. But if you really wanted to, you could start playing with your powers. There's a whole lot of Tinker shit in your power. I've unlocked pretty much all of it for you. You could easily bio-engineer things to do stuff for you automatically. For instance: want to end world hunger? You could engineer fruits or vegetables that would generate all the nutrients, vitamin, minerals, and protein a human body needs and come out with the taste and texture of whatever you wanted. You could make a tree that grows pre-shaped steaks, Amy—of the kind that people pay a lot of money for, not the cheap shit. Want to work on reducing pollution? You could make grass and trees that absorb and use the stuff and strip it from the atmosphere, soil, and water—and either store it, or separate it out into its constituent elements and render it harmless. Want to cure diseases? Make a berry bush that produces what are essentially biological pills that'll cure whatever ails someone—a literal panacea plant. And then sell them."
Amy felt like someone had just opened up the whole world for her, but there was one small detail preventing her from taking it. 'What about the PRT?'
"Run it by them first. Make it 'safe' by their standards—it can't reproduce, produces no pollen, it's completely harmless to anyone who touches or eats it, and so on. Normal medicine is poison, but you could make something smart—something that, when ingested, scans the patient for genetic markers and only if they have them, it activates. In fact, let's swing by Lowe's or somewhere and pick up a few potted plants for you to play with. Then, we can see what we can do…"
The girl wore a smile as she stepped into a copse of trees that made up the green space in her neighborhood. Her form rippled and shifted, her Panacea outfit falling away in favor of an all-black catsuit. Her hair straightened and became white, her eyes blue, and her face shifted in a way she couldn't see. A hood formed over her head, topped with cat ears that twitched this way and that—and were actually connected to her head, much the same way Missy's were when she was Gwen. The girl grew taller, her figure thinning just a bit and growing more muscular under the skin tight suit.
Looking down on herself, Amy sighed. "Really? See, this is what I wanted. Why can't I have this?"
"Because there's nothing wrong with the way you look now. I like short, womanly Amy just the way she is. About the only thing that could improve your normal look is if I knocked you up."
Amy blushed, but didn't fight it—because she knew he did, in fact, enjoy her exactly as she was. "So why not a spider-themed suit?"
Amy's eyes rolled outside of her control. "Because we can't have every single new parahuman with a package similar to Widow turning up wearing similar costumes. It'll look like what it is—that we have a way to duplicate powers. Instead of what we want it to look like, which is a cluster trigger."
"Mm," Amy murmured. Running her hands down her body and feeling particularly sexy as she did so, she asked, "So who am I supposed to be?"
"Take your pick. The costume's pretty similar to Catwoman from the Arkham games… and you have no idea what those are, right. Catwoman or Black Cat—Selena Kyle or Felicia Hardy. They're basically expy characters anyway. You've got a modified version of Selena's costume, with Felicia's build, features, and powers."
"Black Cat. The animal-dash-gender names are dumb," Amy sighed.
"And color-plus-animal names are any better? They're all dumb. But they're memorable, which is why they're successful," Miles countered. "Now, let's go. Take out that whip start slinging it around. It's basically a tentacle, so we can control what it does."
"Ooh, kinky," Amy murmured, taking the rolled up whip off her side. Flicking it in the general direction of a tree branch overhead, it followed where the was targeting and extended up to wrap around the branch, before contracting and pulling them up. "Whoa!" Amy yelped as they were jerked off their feet. Flailing a bit, she scrabbled at the branch. Small claws popped from the ends of her fingers and she grabbed hold, before leveraging herself up and onto the branch.
"Hang on, I'm going to copy MJ's powers over to you, minus the Tinker shit," Miles murmured. "I can do most of the hard work for balance and acrobatics like I do for Missy, but I'd rather you have it through your shard and not need it, in case we have to separate for some reason. Call it a backup plan. I can make this form a transformation through your powers, so you can switch back and forth if need be. Also, giving you a copy of the 'spider sense' from Eidolon's shard. Aaand… done."
Amy blinked as the world changed. She felt more sure of her body and balance than she ever had before, and the overlay from before returned with a bit of attention and started feeding her information on her surroundings. "Very cool," she murmured.
"Yup. And I've got a raven near where we need to be. Mass shifting now."
Amy's form disappeared from the tree—or Black Cat's, rather—and reappeared on top of a building in downtown. "I'll let you get the hang of swinging around first, then we can hit up the store and the hospital."
Looking over the edge of the building, Amy winced. "That's… really high. And how to I use a whip to grab things if there's nothing to grab on to?"
"It's a tentacle, Amy. Look at the end," Miles instructed.
Amy focused her power through the biomass and studied the end of the whip in question. It changed under her attention, becoming covered in tiny, sharp barbs and larger pieces laced with metal of some sort that looked made to dig into or penetrate surfaces, along with something that looked like a mass of tiny suckers that would stick to surfaces like glass. "So it'll stick to whatever it touches," Amy murmured, and her head nodded as she did. "Okay. I guess I get to fly on my own now."
"You're not on your own, Amy. I'm right here with you," Miles reminded. "If you fall, I'll catch you."
That brought a smile to her lips. "Thanks," she beamed. Then, she leapt off the roof with a scream and flicked out the whip. It extended and caught on the side of a nearby building and yanked her into a swing, before throwing her down the street. Amy screamed the whole way, like it was the world's only roller coaster with no safety bar. And yet, for all that her heart tried to hammer its way out of her chest and her stomach tried to do flips, she loved every second of it.
Over the course of the following weeks, Amy set about building herself a foundation for when she eventually decided to leave New Wave.
As Panacea, she ran several bio-Tinkered designs for food and medicine production by the PRT. None of them had been approved, but they were being fast tracked through the approval process—the Endbringers had done much to damage or disrupt food production in the years since they first started appearing, so having a new source of food (especially luxury foods, like things that relied on overseas imports) on tap was something the United States government was very interested in.
The hospital had approved her proposal to monetize her services and were now advertising said services among the medical community. Patients were already being flown in from across the country for a variety of treatments according to a daily schedule consisting of only two hours a day and Amy's bank account balance had ballooned by several zeroes. Carol was not happy when she found out, but then she didn't exactly have much time to focus on Amy lately. No, she was too busy being miserable over Mark's cured depression and the fact that he was no longer allowing her to just have her way with everything.
As Ms. Face, she had set up shop with Faultline's Crew and started selling her services modifying powers by night. They'd already had several Case 53s come through and get cured and the news of that was spreading like wildfire through the forums. It wasn't too long before the PRT came nosing around. Piggot wanted her shut down, but her bosses had threatened to have her reassigned to Alaska if she was anything but politely cordial with 'Ms. Face' after she revealed she could tell Tinkers their specialization and even broaden the scope of those specializations.
Armsmaster had been the first to volunteer for that, followed by two weeks of self-isolation as he submitted to every Master/Stranger protocol known to man, along with both mundane medical scans and a look over by Panacea—who obviously gave him a clean bill of health. Kid Win volunteered next—mostly because Chris just wanted to know his specialization and have a little more leeway with what he could make. After that, the floodgates opened. Dauntless wanted more charges for the enhancement portion of his power. Velocity wanted to be able to interact with the world when he was moving at speed. Ms. Militia wanted to be able to turn her power off from time to time, or selectively forget things. The list went on—and that was just in the Bay. And just the heroes.
It wasn't long after before villains started showing up, since she advertised herself as neutral and discrete. One of the first was Alabaster, in fact. Like Ms. Militia, he wanted the ability to turn his power off, for reasons he didn't want to get into. Leet came by and, although Miles and Missy had already eaten his shard as Noh Face some time ago, they still charged him to disable the 'no repeats' limitation of his power (and Miles reset the shard AI, since it had a massive hateboner for Leet and replaced it with a new one that wouldn't try to kill the Tinker). Others trickled in after that, even some out of towners, and they didn't turn away any of them—it was one long smorgasbord of shards for Miles to eat, having physical access to them meant he could turn them off any time he felt like it, and they got paid for the service. Win/win/win.
And what is where Amy found herself the day Gwen called…
"So, can you do it?"
Ms. Face held out her hand to the blonde girl nearly swallowed in her hood and robe in front of her. "Let's try it and find out."
'I kind of want to push her down,' Amy mused as Rune clasped her hand.
Miles sent her the mental impression of an eye-roll as he dove into the girl's shard and ate it. At the same time, he poked her brain and sent her to sleep. Tendrils spread through her brain and went over the life and times of one Tammi Herren—fifteen, female, and member of the Empire. "Leave the girl alone, she's straight."
'We could change that,' Amy offered somewhat hopefully. It wasn't the first time she had suggested changing something about one of the people they'd dealt with. She wanted to mind-wipe Alabaster and disappear him, but that wasn't happening. Not in their current identity. Armsmaster, she had suggested giving an actual personality, but Miles had nixed that as being too obvious a change. And now… 'You did Lisa for less. And then there's Allison. I don't see why we can't just, you know, lock her into her own mind and rebuild her as we want.'
"We needed Lisa and she pushed Missy's buttons. We… may have acted hastily and in anger in her case, but we can't deny that the result is someone overall better than Lisa would've been. We needed Allison for her Tinkering and she was an active threat to us. She was legitimately crazy and there was no way we could trust her even if we fixed her crazy—too much wrong there for too long. We don't need Tammi and she's not a threat."
Amy pouted internally and Miles sighed. "Okay, fine. Looking over her life, she's in the situation she's in mostly because of her family. She doesn't want to be here—that is, the Bay—doing what she's doing, but she doesn't feel like she has a choice. And she hasn't actually done much of anything to hurt anyone—no murders, no robberies, one instance of smacking a guy with a rock because he shot at her. Worst she's done so far is provide transportation for the Empire. Technically, aiding and abetting or something along those lines. So what I can do is lessen the weight of those familial obligations and give her… options she didn't have before. Plant the idea that she could go hero if she wanted. Give her the choice and see what happens. If she chooses to leave the Empire, great. If she doesn't, she hasn't done anything worth eating her as Noh Face yet. …And maybe poke her brain just a little to give her an affinity for spider-themed capes. She already kind of likes Widow, even if she'll never admit it to anyone. Maybe she'll look to us as a role model or something after."
Amy hummed quietly to herself as Miles worked, doing just as he'd said. 'When are you doing to do that? Clean up the Bay, that is.'
"After Missy and I clear out the worst offenders from the nearby cities. New York, Boston, maybe as far away as Baltimore. Eating the major contenders in the Bay is going to create a power vacuum. I want every villain nearby who would see this as an opportunity dead before we do it. Publicly. In a highly visible manner. Because when we get rid of them, I want Noh Face to fill the vacuum herself. The only monster in Brockton Bay, and a threat big enough that none of the other villains will come running to fill the vacancy… but not so big that they would glass the city to get rid of us. Which reminds me, I need to make backups for everyone."
'Backups?' Amy asked. 'Clones?'
"That too," Miles agreed. "But no. Specifically, I'm talking about setting up copies of you similarly to what I did with Allison and Sarah. Have a copy running parallel in your shard. Except those copies will be synced with the original and you won't be able to tell they're even running, unless something happens. Then, we could just make a new body if yours is destroyed and you'd be back up and running inside of a few minutes, if not seconds. Alternately, if you're worried about the whole 'clone/copy' thing and whether or not you'd have a soul, I think I could, uh… eat you. Absorb you into my biomass the same way I am and your body would be more like a meat suit. Or maybe give you your own biomass—essentially turn you into your own fully-fledged tentacle monster instead of effectively absorbing you."
'Why not both? Obviously something we'd want to test on someone else first, but if it can be done and it'd keep us safe from powers, nukes, or Scion… then I'm for it.'
Across from them, Rune twitched and jerked awake. "What happened?"
"You're all done, Rune. As for what happened, you lost consciousness temporarily. As the forms you signed said, that's perfectly normal. If you'd like to review the security footage now, we can."
The girl nodded and Amy picked up the remote sitting on the table and pointed it at the TV standing in the corner. The footage recorded from five different cameras in the room backed up to the point where Rune entered the room and began playing back. Rune watched the whole thing in silence before finally nodding again. "Okay. Sorry, it's just… you know."
Ms. Face nodded. "I do. It's hard to trust sometimes. As discussed in your call, the fee is fifteen thousand, since this was a minor modification."
Rune pulled out her phone and sent a text. A few moments later, Newter escorted in a tall, blond man wearing a black armored plate carrier vest, blood red shirt, black pants, and a mask. He carried a backpack in one hand, which he set on the table at a gesture from Rune and stepped back. "Thanks Victor," Rune smiled, before opening the bag and starting to dig out stacks of twenty dollar bills. Counting out seven stacks, she opened an eighth and counted out fifty twenties. "You want to count it?"
Ms. Face nodded, took out a money marker, and began doing just that after marking a line through the edge of the stack of bills and making sure the ink didn't change colors. After a few minutes, she sent the girl across from her a smile. "All done."
"Not quite," Victor announced as Rune left her chair and pulled out a few marbles from a pocket to test her newly improved telekinesis on. "How much to make it so that I don't steal skills but copy them instead?"
Ms. Face raised an eyebrow. "Ten, possibly fifteen depending on what's involved. It sounds like a minor adjustment and actually beneficial to your targets, so I'd be willing to give you a bit of a discount on it."
Something in her tone prompted him to explain. "It'd be easier to remain undetected if I could just copy skills instead of stealing them," he explained.
"Ah, makes sense," Ms. Face nodded, then gestured to the seat in front of her. Victor sat and held out his hand while Rune turned to watch, keeping one eye on them while she played with her powers. Miles nommed his shard and poked the man's brain to put him out. Looking up at Rune, Ms. Face gestured with her free hand. "See? Normal."
The blonde girl nodded. "Okay, yeah. Fair enough."
"And unlike Tammi, Victor really is a piece of shit. Adding him to the list of people for Noh Face to eat later. Now, wakey wakey, get the fuck out of here."
Victor shook awake a moment later, blinking and looking around as Ms. Face released his hand. Digging into the backpack, he counted out another seven stacks of cash and handed over the half-stack from Rune. "Not going to ask to review the tapes?"
The man shook his head. "Nah. Rune would've said something if you did something weird." Standing up, he picked up the bag and zipped it up. "Thanks. We'll spread the word and let people know you're on the up and up." Pausing, he asked, "Sure you don't want to join the Empire? Kaiser'd make it worth your while."
Ms. Face shook her head. "No, thank you. Joining anyone would compromise my neutrality, which is worth more to me than the money—even if your employer could pay ten times what I make, it wouldn't be worth it, with the loss of friendly, or at least neutral contacts within various other organizations. Such as the Protectorate. The ability to come and go as I please and call in favors from all sides is worth too much to give up by choosing a side. Otherwise, I would've sided with the Protectorate when they made the same offer, for a lot of money. The safety of my family comes first. My powers already paint a huge target on my back. But being a neutral means that anyone trying to coerce or kidnap me or my family would draw the ire of multiple, typically conflicting forces in the attempt. As it stands, what do you think would happen if someone in my family were in trouble and I started putting in calls?"
Rune answered with a quiet snort. "You'd have half the capes in the Bay scrambling all over themselves to help. It'd be a little mini-Endbringer truce for the duration."
"Exactly," Ms. Face nodded. "I've essentially made myself too valuable for anyone to reasonably consider messing with."
"That's understandable. Hold onto that for as long as you can. I hope you don't have to, but one day you may have to choose a side," Rune sighed. "Come on, Victor. Let's go."
The pair left, escorted out of the building by Newter once they left the room, and Amy heaved a sigh. "Let's go home," she said, and found herself nodding a second later. The scenery around them changed and they dropped out of a tree in the park near their house, shifting to Amy's default body and Panacea outfit before she hit the ground.
They wandered back to the Dallon household, where the scent of cheese, tomato sauce, bread, butter, and garlic hit them as soon as they stepped inside, making Amy's stomach growl and her mouth water. "Smells like Mark's cooking again."
Amy smirked faintly. 'Carol's going to be pissed.'
It turned out that Mark was actually a pretty good cook. Better than Carol by miles, anyway. Since she had fixed his brain, he had started taking an interest in, well, pretty much everything. At first, Carol had been somewhat happy to have the help as he actually started picking up the chores—cooking, cleaning, laundry, and so on while she was at work during the day. He also started paying more attention to Vicky and Amy. He cooked them breakfast every morning—and didn't go out of his way to exclude Amy from that. He spent a lot of time talking to them, just catching up and trying to rebuild his relationship with his daughters.
That was when Carol lost her shit. She didn't like Mark stepping into what she perceived as her territory. Didn't like him having anything to do with Vicky, at all. She was even less pleased that he was showing Amy the love and attention that Carol herself refused to. Amy was slowly developing a real relationship with her adoptive father, now that he could actually reciprocate, and Carol hated it. It left things… strained, to say the least.
And then, there was the big one. Amy felt a bit guilty about it, but it was either let her adoptive father languish in ignorance, or tell the truth and hurt him. And potentially shatter New Wave at the same time. The night she was out with New Wave, that Missy had called her about Taylor being stuck in her locker, she had had the opportunity to scan her uncle, cousins, and aunt. It had confirmed Miles' theory about just who Vicky's father was, while at the same time only bringing up more questions.
"Hey there, Amy. How was your day?" Mark asked as she passed through the kitchen.
"Productive," the girl smiled as he stepped away from the oven and pulled her into a hug. "Got a lot done."
"Good to hear. Dinner should be ready in about twenty minutes. Homemade lasagna, garlic bread, and a salad for you girls. Why don't you go wash up and set the table?" Mark asked, letting her go and moving back to where he was cutting up ingredients for the salad in question.
"Sure, dad," Amy said, before heading to her room and dropping off her bag. I can put it off a little longer. …Maybe I should ask Aunt Sarah first?
Shaking her head, she hurried to do as Mark had asked. Vicky returned home just in time for supper, while Carol called in from the office and said she would be late. So, the father/daughters trio had a nice, peaceful meal together without Carol casting a pall over everything. It was as Amy was finishing up that Miles spoke up.
"Fuck. We have a problem."
'What's that?' Amy asked, while laughing at the end of a story Mark was telling them.
"We… kind of pushed Taylor too far. Maybe. Not sure. She wants us to separate. 'Us' as in me and Missy, and me and you. Missy's going to call in a minute."
Amy resisted the urge to facepalm. 'Fuck. How long?'
"A few days," Miles sent the mental impression of a shrug.
'This is going to suck, isn't it?' the healer asked, and the man sent a mental nod. 'And let me guess. If I decide against just going along with this bullshit, she's going to get uppity?'
"Threatened to call the PRT."
"Excuse me for a moment," Amy stood up and hurried to the bathroom. Closing the door, she she her eyes and leaned her forehead against it. 'Why do we need her?'
"Her shard. I'm getting to the point where I'm having trouble managing everything. Beyond that, really. And unlike your [Shaper] shard, her [Queen Administrator] is being a little bitch. Unless we find the [Thinker] QA shard, and I have no idea where that is, we're going to get bogged down soon," Miles explained, sounding frustrated. "That, and she's the backup plan. One of them, anyway. The one I think stands the best chance of getting the job done."
Amy sighed. She flushed the toilet so her sister and Mark would hear it and washed her hands, before heading back to the kitchen. A moment later, her phone rang. "Hey, Amy. Want to come hang out tonight?"
The healer winced, hearing the stress in Missy's voice. "Sure. Sounds fun. I'll head over in a few."
"Great, thanks. See you then," Missy responded and hung up.
Looking up from her phone, she smiled at Vicky and Mark. "I'll be back later. Going to hang out with Gwen for a while."
Mark and Vicky exchanged a look, the man raising an eyebrow. Vicky simply shrugged. Mark turned back to her. "Why don't you invite her over some time?"
Standing up from her seat, Amy grinned. "Sure. I was thinking about doing it sooner or later. I'll talk to her and see what she says."
Amy exchanged hugs with Mark and her sister before leaving the house. 'Let's get this over with.'
"You should call Faultline and tell her you're taking the week off, just to be safe."
Amy nodded and her 'Ms. Face' phone fell into her hand. 'The sooner we get this over with, the better. And we seriously need some way to reign her in. We can't just jump through fucking hoops every time she demands it.'
"Working on it, but if I'm right… Taylor's the type who'll reign herself in if she trusts someone enough. It's earning that trust that's the difficult part. Until then, she's going to do everything she can to shit test and make sure we're not trying to screw with her. Maybe. Depends on which version of Taylor we're talking about."
'More of that 'precognitive' stuff then? Fun,' Amy snarked mentally. "She'd better be worth it," she murmured as the phone picked up. Her throat and mouth shifted and Ms. Face's voice left her lips when she spoke next. "Faultline. It's me. Some things came up and I'm taking the next week off. … No, it's personal business. We're fine. Thanks."