Grind 4.6

January 12, 2011, Dev's House - Brockton Bay, 10:12 PM

My reward lasted for a good 23 seconds (it was just a kiss you gutterheads!). Funny thing when you have four minds running in your head, even with two of them fully devoted to enjoying the experience and one in deep meditation; one mind still has time to count seconds, think random things and often point and laugh at the other three minds... Yes my head is a weird place at times.

Once we disengaged, both our faces were flushed, she began stuttering, trying her best to look elsewhere, "It... It... It was an ex... experiment. Yes, experim..."

"Lisa."

"You know, because I've never been able to focus... so.. so.."

"Lisa."

"To be so close to someone, and to be able to appreciate... It would be a... novel experience, with anyone..."

"Lisa!"

"Not that you're just anyone. I mean, I'd like to... uh... You're..."

"LISA!"

"I mean... Yes?"

"Use your power."

She finally looked at me. I was pointedly broadcasting all my emotions. I liked it very much, and I understood her reasoning, I came from a sexually repressed culture, it made perfect sense to me anyway. I was also absolutely fine with leaving it at that and pick things up at their own pace later on.

Her emotions slowly stabilized from the turbulent mix of worry, arousal, trepidation and excitement to a calmer mix of relaxation, understanding and simple joy. I smiled, "I liked it, thanks."

"Ah, I liked it too. And thank you for understanding." She let out a deep sigh.

We both took a moment to compose ourselves. I allowed a nominal amount of emotional control to take over again, as much as I did even before getting any powers. She was the first to speak, her usual smirk back in her face, "As much as I'd like to... ahem... experiment further. Call Taylor over, we've got plans to make."

I nodded and messaged her words to Taylor, she replied with a surprised 'Youre done already?!' and added that she was coming over. I facepalmed. Lisa started laughing.

Taylor arrived in a few minutes, when I got the door for her, she was looking at the both of us with a very scrutinizing narrow eyed stare. Lisa waved at her, shook her head and mouthed "Not even a quickie."

I saw that, muttered "...kids these days." And facepalmed again.

I went and made coffee for Lisa and tea for Taylor and me while Lisa gushed about how good Taylor was looking. Taylor was doing her best to hide her embarrassment.

Once we settled down, I began, "So, best case scenario, Coil knows that I'm a civillian who's the brother of his top finance guy without any knowledge of Lisa's cape life. Worst case scenario he knows about Taylor's powers and that we're planning something."

Lisa shook her head, "I doubt that, my power tells me it's the first scenario as of now. I have a meeting with him tomorrow, I'll be going in with full intent to reveal nothing. We'll arrange for a panic signal if anything goes otherwise. He considers me a valuable asset, he won't take any drastic steps unless he's confirmed of anything."

Taylor added, "And he'll not know about me either, I got the anonymity protocol prompts too."

Right, that had slipped my mind. I messaged a short dossier on Calvert to Taylor, "Calvert is a dangerous man, his status as a PRT consultant means we'll have to go with the assumption that the PRT is compromised."

Lisa nodded, "He's got deep moles there, I know that for a fact. He's also got at least a few more independent parahumans or groups at his beck and call."

Taylor piped in, "Okay, my trust in the PRT is at rock bottom anyway. Also, Aveek, I figured out your leverage on them. I resent that you didn't tell me back then but in hindsight that was a good decision. Because I'd surely have lost my shit earlier."

I nodded, "How'd you figure out?"

She looked at Lisa, "I remember you telling me to watch the news, today I finally had time to check things out. Only relevant news regarding the PRT is the transfer of Shadow Stalker. I also remembered that when the police came in to take my statement they were saying something about Sophia being already convicted and her case was taken over by 'higher ups'. At that time I thought it was due to the spycam evidence, but later I'd wondered why were Emma's or Madison's cases not being taken higher up? It all added up. Shadow Stalker's conscription into the wards, then sudden transfer, PRT's superhot response for the Winslow Case. Sophia's demeanour, her apparent immunity at school. It all makes sense now."

Lisa nodded, "Well deduced. How're you taking it?"

Taylor Shrugged, "my trust in authorities and the 'heroes' is at an all time low now. At least their response means they weren't complicit in it. But negligent, definitely. Anyway, I'm at peace with the results, though I won't mind hitting the bitches with a few bullet ants. So anyway, back to Coil, or Calvert, what's the plan for him?"

I replied, "I can share my power with Lisa right now and vanish her with a complete new identity, but she'll still have to go underground and the Undersiders may get some flak for it."

She shook her head, "Coil remains too much of a threat, and I don't want him to force other unwitting capes to work for him. I want to destroy him and take over his empire."

I raised an eyebrow, "Including his criminal activities?"

Lisa shook her head, "Actually, apart from being a creepy scumbag, his criminal activities are surprisingly tame, I've been researching for a while. Even if we discard all his obviously illegal businesses, his semi legal holdings and completely legit stocks and assets still amount to a not-so-small fortune. And it's all handled by the Number Man, so disentangling and discarding what we don't want will not be much of a problem." She turned to me, "I know Dev would be overjoyed to work with him on that."

I chuckled, "That he will, that he will. Anyway, to neutralize Coil the first step will be to gather a more concrete picture of his powers. I need a look at him."

Lisa smirked, "Day after tomorrow, meeting at PRT HQ, 9:30am."

I nodded at her and continued, "then, once we finalize the plan and ensure Coil won't need to directly interact with Tattletale during the next few days, so you can be added to the team, get used to the new powers and help with surveillance on him. Once the plan is in motion, you will have a very short window of action to transfer the assets."

Lisa sighed, "we'll also have to decide what to do with his mercs and other parahumans, if they can be let go cleanly I'm fine with that. If they have to be neutralized too..."

I shrugged, "Needs must." Taylor gave us a slight frown but didn't protest.

We hashed out other trivial details for the next few days' plans, I set Lisa up with the same panic button app that dada had. I also took a scan of her and gave her a refresh. We chatted a bit more and Lisa left. I took Taylor into an ID for another training session, high level mercs again, this time in full armor and with her expanded repertoire of bugs.

I sat down to meditate and go through some more of the organism scans I'd taken in the forest. Meanwhile she went full terror-swarm on them, using human-shaped masses of bugs to serve as distraction. I messaged her to start thinking of a cape persona fully based on bugs. She'll be mistaken as a weird case 53 and her real body can be anywhere within her huge range. She started refining the bug-bodies and soon got a Swarm Clone skill for it.

We stopped at around 5am as Taylor left to get her 2 hours of sleep. I continued going through scans of animals, trees, bugs, snakes and even a few birds I'd managed to tag. Biology was getting a great workout and levelling up in leaps and bounds. Speaking of biology, Amy would be dropping by later in the day to assuage Taylor's body image issues.

Thinking of Taylor's swarm clone skill, I wanted to try something, I prepared fleshcrafting with one of my own fresh scans, opened an inventory hole to my biomass store, and activated the skill. There was a blue flash, and a clone of me was lying in front of me.

ROB IS A DICK!

A singular ego will not be allowed to have more than one discrete conscious instance!

You're not Jango Fett.

The body was comatose. Damn you Rob!

But wait, it said discrete, what if it's part of a continuous consciousness?

I fired up fleshcrafting as well as mana construction, scanned my superpositioned/entangled brain and willed the mana in the clone brain to turn it into another multitasking instance brain of mine. Suddenly one of my minds was in its own separate body.

This was an entirely new and quite disorienting experience. I stood up and looked at myself. My clone body had no mana or gamer skills, it was a baseline body... I tried to walk a bit, the moment I went out of my main body's 60cm mana projection range, I snapped back and watched the clone body fall back limp and comatose.

I needed a mana conduit into that body too. I walked into the range of the clone and repeated the multitask/entangling process. I was looking at myself looking at myself again. I dipped into my meditation in both bodies, the clone body did not have a mindscape separate from the multitasking mind's mindscape. I tried to push my main mana conduit into it.

It took a herculean effort but in the end something clicked, I came out of meditation... and nope, I'd just switched places, the original body was the clone now... Dammit!

Think laterally, think laterally Aveek! The main mana conduit is singular, it's my sole connection to the manaverse, of course it can't be duplicated, I don't even understand how it works! I dipped into my mindscape again and studied the conduit, it was inscrutable as ever. But the other dot beside it wasn't! That's Taylor's connection! I could replicate that!

I tried again, this time simply sending a forced party invite targeting the clone body and accepting it from there. It didn't quite work like adding a party member but it worked. A new dot was there, linked to my clone body. It still didn't have mana, but I/it had my gamer stats and non-mana skills! I walked away from myself, yes!

There was only one thing left to do.

I fought myself.