The Demigod of Brockton Bay

A Worm/Demigods CYOA Story

Chapter 3: Shit Happens

The conversation with my dad went surprisingly well. I suspect a large part of that was because he now felt like a million bucks thanks to his body being in better than perfect condition due to the healing I'd performed on him. It's fairly hard to be angry at someone when, thanks to them, you wake up with each and every old injury that has plagued you for years completely absent. As young as I was, I had already accumulated a few persistent aches; when they had been silenced thanks to my (supposedly) prodigious regeneration, it had felt amazing. I was reminded that I really needed to test the efficacy of my regeneration power, as well as that of my durability… I couldn't keep going into battles without knowing how much damage I could take, or how quickly I could recover from injuries.

As I took my father deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, he kept asking me more questions, until over an hour had been spent simply talking. Deciding that our conversation was much more important than work, he used one of his many stockpiled sick days and called the office to let them know that the boss would be out for the day. Dad got his buddy Kurt to fill in for him as head of the Dockworkers Union, as my father's longtime friend and coworker had sometimes done in the past. We checked the local stations on TV, and just as I thought Winslow was closed due to the PRT investigation, though the announcement didn't specify why class was canceled for the day. I'll bet that by Monday there would be rampant speculation about the unscheduled closure... especially among the students. It would be interesting to hear the rumors my classmates cooked up once school restarted.

When our conversation hit a lull, I quickly and efficiently made us a large breakfast using a combination of super speed and telekinesis, my dad watching from the sidelines, bemused at my antics. It turned out that every single area of his body had seemingly been enhanced by my healing power, to a lesser or greater degree. He was actually able to track me with his eyes as I blurred around the kitchen... thought afterward he informed me that it made his eyes ache slightly to do so. A tiny trickle of my mostly recovered healing power cleared that right up. When I was finished preparing our meal, we sat down to consume the scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and pancakes that I had prepared. I ate at least a half dozen eggs all by myself, as well as four pancakes and a regular helping of everything else. I guess nearly overusing my "Healing Hands" ability had made me especially hungry. My appetite had certainly increased since the day before yesterday. Looking back, I found that I had been eating large portions at every meal since I ascended.

After polishing off our meals, Dad and I sat down in the living room to continue our talk. I had given him most of the highlights, explaining all about the God visiting me, my powers, the first day of school, and (most of) my activities last night. Now was the time for going over things I hadn't elaborated on during the retelling, and answering specific questions that he had. There were certain parts that I had been vague on, and things that I absolutely was not going to tell him. I guess that in that regard, I was no different than the average teenager. I was reminded during our conversation that my father was a massive geek.

"So you actually know Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū!? Holy crap! Can you teach me?" He asked, his face animated from his extreme excitement. He looked fit to burst when I had informed him about my skill in that art… not that I had really bothered to review it yet, or to use those skills outside of the cool flip off of the bleachers that I had done the night before. I would need to make time to actually go over my martial arts knowledge soon.

"Uh, sure." I answered, nonplussed. Sure, martials arts are cool, but I can fly and make portals. How cool can hand-to-hand fighting be compared to stuff like that?" It's pretty cool..." I said, thinking of the acrobatics that I was easily about to perform now. "When you told me that it was the ultimate martial art back when I was a little kid, you weren't kidding! Why didn't you learn it years ago, if you're so interested?" I asked my father, slightly bewildered by how enthusiastic he seemed about the martial art I had selected.

It had seemed like a good idea to spend my last five points learning how to fight, because I had known exactly two things about hand to hand combat before I became a Demigod: jack, and shit. I had dredged my mind for styles of combat to choose from, when suddenly I had been reminded of my father telling me about the "ultimate martial arts style" back when I was a little kid. I remembered a few of the cool things my dad said that you could do with the techniques of that style, so I had put it down on the form.

Dad looked at me oddly. "Taylor… Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū, or 'Anything Goes Martial Arts' style is from a Japanese comic book called Ranma ½. It's not a thing in real life…" he said, exasperated. "Or at least it wasn't before you asked a real live God to instantly teach it to you as part of your powers," he explained, making me flush. I certainly had not known that. I kept finding myself in the position of not being aware of knowledge that I actually did possess… It was like the vast stores of information and skill that I had been given were completely inert until I thought about something in particular, or purposefully decided to access a certain subject, in which case related knowledge would start flowing like water. I suppose it was better than having my personality change by all of that information being forcefully injected into my head at once, but it was a little odd to suddenly be wondering what the answer to a question on a test was, only to find that you suddenly knew the subject better than the instructor teaching the class. Not to mention weird.

"I'll bet that you haven't really explored your knowledge of the style, or else you would have realized that most of the techniques you can perform with it are more like cape powers than normal fighting moves." My father told me knowingly. Damn him for knowing me so well!

I looked at dad incredulously, before deciding to find out if he was exaggerating. I spent a moment mentally reviewing the information I had on my new fighting skill… and I was totally blown away by all of the fucking bullshit that was present in the power that was supposed to be the weakest one I'd chosen. I was aghast! I had completely ignored something that should have been the cornerstone of my combat abilities since moment one.

'Holy crap,' I thought, 'I get all of this for only 5 points!?' I wondered if I could have picked more "fictional" fighting styles which were chock full of superpowers disguised as "techniques". Hot damn, I had received the bargain of the century! Once I synced my memories of Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū with my physical body and practiced a bit I would be able to fake a few dozen additional powers, and enhance some of the ones I currently had. I realized sullenly that I hadn't even needed to purchase super speed, as my martial arts style allowed for ultra-fast movement… Damn it all! Well, come to think of it, Divine Speed did have several advantages to it that my martial arts skills didn't possess, like the fact that it hardly tired me out at all. The fast movements in Anything Goes style were only meant to be used in short bursts.

"Holy crap!" I cried, my eyes opened wide at how broken the five-point power truly was. My dad laughed heartily at my shock, his voice booming. I hadn't heard him laugh like that in over a year… not since before mom had died. It was nice, and I decided that I wanted to see him do that more often. I would never willingly let our relationship get as bad as it had been again.

"You should have seen the look on your face!" He teased me, smirking at my surprise. "So… you will teach it to me, won't you Taylor?" He asked, trying to be serious in the face of his obvious desire to learn the same fighting moves as the hero from his old comic books.

After Kyushu sank, the market for Japanimation and Japanese comic books had shrunk a lot, making the few that had been imported into the US, collector's items. Dad had a whole huge bunch of them, at least a hundred of the funny backwards comic books, maybe more. I had read a few, but some of them were really gross, which made me lose interest. Looking back, the stuff I had been grossed out by five years ago was really not that bad, usually kissing and the like. Dad did have a box of comics in his room which I wasn't allowed to read, but I pretty much pretended that they didn't exist, after looking at them once while he was gone. The ones in his room really were disgusting. I would need to try reading the regular ones again, especially if I could learn more about my newfound skills in the martials from them.

"Well," I said teasingly, "I dunno… Training you would be pretty hard..." I gave him a wink and a smirk. He just dished it out... let's see if he can take it.

"Hmph." He said, actually pronouncing it like a word, "It's the least you could do for messing around with my body while I was sleeping." He bantered back.

"Oh my god." I said aghast, my face turning beet red. How could he phrase it like that!? What in the fuck was wrong with my Dad? As I looked at him with a horrified expression, the alternate meaning of the words he had used slowly dawned on my father.

"Oh shit! I'm sorry, sweetheart... I didn't mean it like that!" He babbled, speaking very quickly. "Fuck." he finished, smacking the palm of his hand against his forehead.

Daniel Hebert looked nearly as mortified as I did by that point, a mixture of disgust and extreme embarrassment present in his expression. I remembered when Dad was younger, he used to put his foot in his mouth all the time like that… and Mom had made fun of him mercilessly each and every time. He had been so quiet and withdrawn for the past year that this was the first time that I could remember seeing him perform one of his famous verbal gaffs.

"I'm sorry, Taylor." He said after a moment, speaking very softly. I could see that Dad had a repentant look on his surprisingly youthful looking face. "I'm just going to go to the bathroom, give you a little time to yourself. Neither of us have really had a chance to get ready for the day yet."

As he headed upstairs, I suddenly remembered one of the changes that I had unwittingly made to his body, the only one that I hadn't had the courage to tell him about quite yet. And I shouldn't even have added "yet" to my previous thought, as I never, ever planned to bring it up. At all. Suddenly, his words from a moment ago set off alarms in my head, withthattaken into account. He was going to find out about it the second he took off his pants! I once more turned bright red, shuddering in abject embarrassment and disgust. I very sincerely hoped that my Dad would just thank his lucky stars for the "boost" that he'd been given, and we would never, ever have to actually speak about… it… for the rest of our natural lives. Please, God. Please!

I put the very uncomfortable topic of thought out of my mind as best I could, deciding to simply continue on with my life as if it hadn't happened. Yes, that's what I would do. As I headed up to my bedroom to get dressed and perform the rest of my morning routine, I heard a brief scream of alarm coming from my Dad's en-suite bathroom, followed by a cry of "Yes!" that was so loud it rattled the walls of the house.

I hung my head, cursing my poor luck at having to think about this fucked up subject once again. Well, it was my own fault for being an idiot with my powers. 'At least he's happy with it.' I thought. I shuddered, thinking about what might have happened if he hadn't been... I could've been forced into trying to reverse the change if he'd had a problem with it. At least I had been spared that particular indignity.

. . .

I got ready very quickly, but it was over half an hour before Dad skipped downstairs, looking extremely bright eyed and bushy tailed. He sported a huge grin, and he leaped over to me from the bottom step of the stairs, sailing over a good ten feet of carpet. He wrapped me in a huge hug and placed a light kiss on my forehead.

"You're my favorite child in the whole world, Taylor!" He said exuberantly.

"I'm your only child." I replied, deadpan. I was actually very happy with his upbeat mood, though. It seemed like I was getting my dad back. This was much more like his 'real' self than the mopey, uncaring man that I had barely recognized as my father.

"Anyway, uh... thank you for healing me sweetie." He looked a little nervous, scratching his chin as his eyes darted back and forth. "It would have been really crumby to suddenly die of heart disease or cancer without ever knowing that I was sick in the first place." He finished quickly, as if he had to actually explain to me the specifics of why he was thanking me. Dad could be so weird sometimes.

Then he looked me in the eyes, his face gravely serious. "You really are the most amazing girl in the universe, Taylor. And now you know that I've always been right all the times I've said that to you… You're the one person in our whole world who was worthy to receive the power that you were given," he told me solemnly.

I leaned forward and embraced my father, tears in my eyes. "I love you, Dad. I don't want to lose you. You're the only family that I have left," I told him, my voice thick with emotion.

"I know, honey. I feel the same way. I want you to work really hard, though, and make lots of friends from here on out," said dad, his tone of voice a little less serious now, "Maybe even a boyfriend someday." He chuckled.

I laughed. "Maybe. I'm don't think I told you earlier, but I met someone at school yesterday during lunch. Her name is Cammy, and she seems really nice." I told him happily.

"Met someone, eh?" He asked, waggling his eyebrows. "Maybe I should have said 'girlfriend'?" he asked, as if to himself.

I playfully slapped his arm. "Daaaad!" I mock-whined, embarrassment turning my cheeks pink.

God, he was such a man sometimes! I didn't even think I liked girls that way… did I? I had never really dated, and discounting the last forty-eight hours it had never really felt like I was a sexual being. Sure, I had thought certain boys were cute or particular girls were pretty, but nothing really got my motor running if you know what I mean. I had always told Emma that my "type" was big, muscular guys, but some of that was because those were her favorite types of men, and I wanted her to think I was cool like she was. It was also partly because I had wanted to like big strong guys, if that makes any sense. Crushing on big hunky men was normal... easily understood. I didn't have to think about the fact that I might be different somehow. Using my new fount of information, it seems likely that I had either been damaged emotionally, or that I was nearly asexual before my everything was upgraded. It's likely that becoming a demigod, or one or more of the powers I chose 'fixed' my broken sexuality. I was a strange topic of thought, but I needed to confront it in order to learn more about myself. I wasn't going to lie to myself any more, about anything, not after deluding myself and rationalizing had been the cause of so much of my suffering. Never again.

Now that I was thinking about it, I had been experiencing some fairly lustful thoughts about some of the people I had been spying on with my "Godly Eyes" … I could see underneath the clothing of anyone I chose, and I had been choosing to peep on nearly every person I could see who was physically attractive. I hadn't been thinking too deeply on this matter while spying, but now that I was taking a moment to examine my emotions, I had to admit to myself that I had really enjoyed examining other women's bodies. Cammy and Miss Militia for instance, were both very nice to look at. The thought of their naked forms caused a warm feeling well up from my tummy, nearly making me shudder in desire. It was almost disturbing how hot just the idea of actually touching them, or making out with a pretty girl was making me. 'Am I a lesbian?' I wondered.

On the other hand, I also really enjoy looking at men's bodies... especially their genitals… most especially the really big ones. I didn't really like men's faces or bodies as much as those of women and girls, but they were still nice enough to trigger that little tingle in my panties. I'm probably bisexual, I realized, with a slight preference for women over men. God... I felt like such a pervert admitting these things to myself, even in the privacy of my own mind. Not enough that I was actually planning to stop spying at people's nude bodies, but it still made me feel a little skeevy to be having these thoughts.

I switched my train of thought, returning to the present. I didn't need to be examining my sexuality in the middle of a conversation with my father. Before my mental sojourn, my dad had been ribbing me good naturedly while I teased him back. I don't know what he thought when I had simply trailed off for a moment there, but he was looking at me oddly now, as if I had done something strange. It made my face flush slightly, bringing a slight glow to my perfect cheeks. I decided to change the subject.

"So, Dad… How would you like to go somewhere where you can train a bit with your new upgraded muscles? We both have the day off, so I can give you some tutoring in the martial arts as well." I smirked, waiting for him to bite.

I didn't have to wait long; in less than a second my father was standing right in front of where I was sitting on the couch, crouched down so that we were looking at each other eye-to-eye. Holy shit, you would think that he was the one with super speed based on how quickly he had moved!

"Do you actually mean it, Sweetheart?" He asked, raw hope and excitement in his voice. "You'll teach your old man the secrets of the 'Anything Goes' style?" he asked, a pleading note in his voice. I chuckled at the role reversal; I had often begged him for something that I wanted the same way when I was a little girl.

"Sure thing, champ. And if you do a really good job, then I'll even take you out for ice cream afterwards." I responded with a smile, really playing it up.

"Ice cream!? Can I get sprinkles!?" He squealed, seemingly even more excited about getting a frozen treat than he was able to learning secret martial arts techniques that would put him on the same level as some of the most powerful capes there were.

"We'll have to see how it goes… Sprinkles are for winners." I told him mock seriously.

Dad laughed heartily at my over the top acting. Pocketing his truck keys and grabbing a coat from the hook, he prepared to leave, gesturing for me to follow. I stopped him before he could open the door. "Hey, Dad… How would you like toflythere?" I asked him.

"Wow… Uh, I don't know, Honey. Flying in the middle of the day, in front of everyone? It is safe, right?" He looked at me with wide eyes, hesitation clear in his expression. I smirked at him.

"I can turn invisible, remember? And of course it's safe!" I replied, taking his hand. Before he could say anything else, I had taken us both into Shadow mode. We flew upward, passing through the roof of the house and then into the wide open sky. Dad's hand clenched mine tightly, with enough force that I suspect his overpowered mitt would have pulped a normal girl's fingers. It barely felt like anything to me, just a sensation that indicated somewhat greater than normal pressure.

I held onto my father tightly as I telekinetically propelled us through the air. We moved at lightning speeds, flying even faster than I could run. The ground passed by us in a blur, cars and faces disappearing too quickly to make out. I let out a whoop of unadulterated joy as we passed the sound barrier. Thankfully there was no sonic boom to ruin everyone's day, as we were still in shadow mode, completely intangible to the world around us. I looked over to my father flying beside me, our clasped hands allowing me to share my shadow power with him. Dad's expression was one of excitement now; he had apparently lost his fear somewhere around Mach two. I grinned, enjoying his happiness nearly as much as the flight itself. I shot him a smile, which he returned. I'm so glad that I shared this part of my life with him. I knew with every fiber of my being that hiding my superpowers would have eventually ripped our relationship apart at the seams.

It didn't take long before we reached our destination. We were on the outskirts of Brockton Bay, hovering above a small forested area that I had spotted from our house. I had looked for somewhere suitable to train before we left, and this was one of the best spots that I could find. It also had the benefit of being very scenic. I took us down, setting us in a rough clearing in the woods. The open area we stood in was roughly three hundred feet in diameter, and over twice that in length. The edge of the large clearing was ringed with trees, several paths leading through then so that the local wildlife could graze here. We were miles from the nearest person out here... there were no trails, vehicles, or anything else man made for over a mile in any direction. This was a spot of wilderness that had been only seldom touched by man, and lightly at that.

Dad looked around, his gaze filled with joy. He had always loved the outdoors, and he had tried to share that with our little family. Unfortunately for him, mom had loathed camping. "This should do the trick." He commented. "By the way, Taylor… please tell me the before you do that next time, OK?" It was phrased as a question, but it quite obviously wasn't.

"Sure thing, Dad." I said, rubbing the back of my neck in slight embarrassment.

"Ok, then…" He said, brushing his hands together as he looked around. His face split into a huge grin as started forward. "Let's see if your old man can uproot a tree." Said my father, as he walked over to a young oak.

Stretching his arms wide, he gave the enormous plant a big hug, digging his fingers deep into the bark where he held onto it at each side. Dad had bent his knees before grabbing the tree, and once he got a really good hold of it he heaved, pulling upward with every ounce of the force that his body could generate. He managed to partially tear the roots out of the ground, yanking over half of them from the earth. The roots caught before the tree was fully uprooted, halting his upward motion abruptly.

This caused the extremely strong man to overbalance, sending him stumbling to the rear of where he stood, tree still clutched tightly against his body. Dad tripped over his own feet, falling backward, the tree following after him. I sighed, catching the fifteen-foot-tall oak with telekinesis just before it crushed my father. I was a bit disappointed with my father… he had apparently gone retarded while I wasn't looking.

'Or maybe trying to lift the heaviest object that you think you might possibly be able to heft is just a guy thing?' I wondered. Naw… that would make the entire gender slightly retarded. That wasn't the case, was it? I hoped not.

"Jesus, Dad!" I cried, annoyance clearly present in my tone. "What the hell are you thinking? That tree weighs over nine tons! You can't lift that much." I said, looking at him crossly.

I gestured to my right, absently tossing the tree almost to the other end of the clearing. I winced a little when I saw the massive piece of raw lumber crash into the ground. The force of the impact sheared off most of its limbs, causing leafy branches to go flying in all directions. The log, which had been rendered mostly bare by the rough treatment we had subjected it to, rolled some good ways until it smacked against a couple trees at the edge of the clearing. It was still moving at a fairly good clip when it impacted the pair of maples with a loud 'thunking' sound, like two coconuts being smacked together.

We both started at where I had thrown the tree, then turned to look back at each other. My father and I simultaneously began laughing loudly, tears coming to my dad's eyes as he picked himself up on the damp, dirty ground. I strode over to where he stood, the back of his jacket and pants smeared with wet soil and grass. It looked like a mud golem gave him a swift kick in the ass. Still chuckling, I used a burst of finely controlled telekinesis to strip the dirt and water particles from his clothing, rendering him completely clean and dry.

"Thanks Taylor. I guess I was being a bit of an idiot there, wasn't I?" He asked, chagrinned.

"Maybe a little bit." I agreed. "It's not quite as bad as me shooting a million volts of healing power into you, though." I told him, to take the sting out of his lapse of judgement. And maybe because I still felt pretty bad for doing that without his permission.

Dad sighed. "Sweetheart, please don't keep beating yourself up about that. I really, really like the results, and I trust that you'll never do something like that again without the permission of whomever you use your power on, right?" He asked, his voice soft and non-judgmental.

"Yeah, you're right." I agreed, my voice subdued. I hadn't told him about covertly healing Piggot, fearing what his reaction would be. If anyone discovered that I had used my powers on the head of a PRT branch without her permission, then I was looking at "assault with a parahuman ability" charges being brought against me. Call me crazy, but I really didn't want that to happen.

I hadn't given the blonde PRT leader as much energy as I had filled my dad with, and I hoped that meant she wouldn't experience any side effects. To assign the amount of power I had used a numerical value, I had given Dad around one-hundred units of healing energy, and Piggot somewhere between thirty and forty-five units. It seemed like my healing power refilled its energy reserves faster or slower depending on how much energy I had left in the tank. When I only used a tiny bit, then it would refill itself faster than I could actually use it. When I used nearly all of it, like I had with my dad, then my reserves took somewhere between two to four hours to refill, depending on how much I was resting, eating, etcetera.

I had a strong 'feeling' that if I ever completely exhausted my healing power, then it would take at least a full day before my energy refilled... maybe even longer. Unless I planned to start manufacturing Brutes, then I shouldn't ever need to use all of my healing power up... or even a significant fraction of it. The amount of power I had expended to set up Piggot's delayed reaction healing had refilled itself in less than ten minutes. That meant that it would be a good idea to try and stop using it for a while when my healing energy was halfway exhausted, or else it would take much longer for it to replenish afterward. That shouldn't be too hard.

Speaking of healing, I needed to find out if pulling that tree out of the ground by the roots had injured Dad at all. He was the type of guy who would never tell a soul if he was hurt, unless he had to for some reason. "Did you hurt yourself pulling out that tree, Dad?" I asked him seriously.

"I'm fine Sweetheart." He replied, his words spoken a little too quickly for my liking. I looked at my father coolly, a frown on my face.

"Give me your hand." I ordered, my eyes hard. I'll be damned if I was going to let him walk around injured when I could heal him as easy as breathing. This macho bullshit was simply not going to fly with me from now on.

"Taylor…" he started to argue, before he saw my expressing. Sighing, he conceded in the face of my superior stubbornness. With a roll of his eyes, Dad held out his hand to me. I gave him a sweet smile, to reward him for doing what I had asked. He was learning!

I took my dad's hand, using a miniscule trickle of healing power to assess his physical condition. Some of the muscles in his arms and back were strained a little, and his fingers were bruised and stressed from being used to lift up a fucking full grown tree. There was not an iota of damage to his bones, which I suspected were many times more durable than the rest of his body due to their impressive makeup. I would need to find out if I could augment my own body like I had inadvertently done to his at a later time. A tiny spark of healing power eliminated all of my father's injuries, and another sent waves of relief coursing through his body, removing any fatigue or stress that he had accumulated since he woke up. As I had previously seen, my healing power was refilled to maximum as soon as expended these tiny fragments of energy. I let my dad's hand go, and gave him another smile.

"All done! Feel better?" I asked cheerily.

"Very much so," he replied, sighing in relief at the lack of pain. "I'm sorry sweetie, I'm not used to having a super powered healer for a daughter. Usually I don't like to complain about my aches and pains, because there's not really anything that can be done for them. It's always felt a little too much like whining." He explained. "Now that you can actually do something about it, I'll have to work on that," he offered with a smile. I nodded my understanding at him, glad that he had shared that with me. Even a day ago simple exchanges like this between the two of us would have been nearly unthinkable.

"So, we've discovered that you're strong enough to uproot a medium sized oak tree... but not strong enough to pick it up." I said with a little grin. "Thanks to my super powered brain and the information my eyes and healing power have given me, I have enough to grade your strength and durability." I told him, numbers and equations blurring through my mind.

"Really?" Asked my father, surprised. I got the impression he thought it would take much longer. "So, how strong am I?"

"You should be able to pick up around 12,000 lbs., or six tons, without damaging your body at all. You won't be able to move around with that much weird very well, however. If you lock your legs and get your arms into a good position, though, you should be able to hold your max safe weight while standing still pretty much indefinitely, due to how strong your bones and connective tissues are." I said.

"Whoa," said dad, his eyes shining with wonder.

"Yeah." I agreed. "As far as carrying or throwing goes, I wouldn't try to move over 4 tons at most, and obviously the less you carry, the further you'll be able to throw it, and the faster you can move." I supplied.

"That's amazing!" Said my dad. "I could toss a car quite a ways, couldn't I?" He asked, excitement filling his voice.

"Yep, you're now a card carrying member of the car-slinging club. I figure you could throw an average sedan several dozen feet, easy. Maybe more." I chuckled, imagining my dad getting out of his truck and muscling other cars out of the way the next time he gets stuck in a traffic jam. "As far as durability goes, it's a mixed bag. The good news is that your bones are nearly unbreakable; they're providing support and anchor points for your muscles and other tissues, allowed other systems to perform better than they usually could. Your muscles are extremely dense, and to be able to exert the forces they do, they have to be extremely strong. Your connective tissues are phenomenal; they're extremely resilient, and almost as tough as your bones." I paused.

"Now the not so good. Your skin… is maybe three times stronger than normal, as are most of your other tissues and systems. This includes all of your organs except for the heart, which is a muscle. That means the limiting factors of your durability are your organs and skin, really. You get shot or stabbed, and you will bleed normally... though a bullet or blade won't be able to penetrate your bones or muscles unless there's superhuman force behind it. If you get hit hard enough to make your muscles get damaged, the organs behind of them will get hurt. You can still bleed to death fairly easily if someone gets you in the throat, or other areas unprotected by muscle tissue." I explained, looking at the ground. All in all, Dad was much stronger than he was tough.

"I see." Said dad, looking pensive. "I guess that means that I'm not quite Alexandria, huh?" He asked, adding in a fake chuckle.

"Well, you could be. Maybe." I said. "I'd like it if you would let me try to enhance your skin, and if that goes well, your organs." I told him bluntly. "I could definitely use your help with my plans to save this city, Dad, but if you're going to be a Brute-type cape, then I need you to be able to take a hit or two without getting seriously injured… or worse." I was hoping that he would let me do this, if not for himself, then for me. That's why I phrased it the way I did; I felt that it would lead to more cooperation than if I just told him that I didn't want him to die.

"Are you sure that it will work alright sweetheart?" He asked quietly, his eyes serious.

I had actually been thinking about that a lot, dedicating a large portion of my brainpower to the problem after I'd accidentally upgraded him earlier this morning. I had come to the conclusion that my ability to upgrade people was not purely a function of my healing power, but rather an interaction between healing, telekinesis, and godly mind. My healing energy was the power source for this ability, and the vector by which I effected the changes, but it would not have been possibly to make such sweeping changes without the other powers and the information I had received from both parahuman and mundane sources, gained via Godly mind.

I also had a hunch that most of Dad's upgrades were influenced by his subconscious. I had supplied the energy, and when it proved to be too much to simply heal him the excess power had needed an outlet so that it didn't kill my father. I must have unconsciously used telekinesis to direct the healing energies to modify his tissues in ways it was not originally designed for, and tapped into the vast pools of information available to me, in order figure out how to actually design and implement the changes. Reviewing everything I knew about parahumans, I suspected that many of the ideas for dad's augments had come from the power relays I had scanned, and the Tinker knowledge base… A lot of his modifications were very similar to those of regular "Brute" class parahumans.

"Yes. I have a very good idea of how to direct the changes I want to make this time, so that upgrading your skin and organs will be the only things to change. Last time, I wasn't directing the energy I poured out in any way, other than willing it to heal you. It looks like most of the upgrades were actually chosen subconsciously, by you, in order to use up all of the extra healing power, so that it wouldn't hurt you." I explained to him.

Dad blinked, and cocked his head to the side. "Huh… that actually makes sense. So, if I subconsciously want a different type of change than the ones you're trying to make, will that screw things up?"

"Wow, that's a very insightful question, Dad. No, I don't think so. It's my power, I'm the one who directs it by default. The only situation where you would be able to do that is one where I'm feeding an enormous amount of power into you, without trying to make it do anything at all."

"Surprised that your old man actually has a brain, sweetie?" he asked with a grin. "Don't be; when I was in college I was even in a club that only accepts smarter than average people. It's called 'Mensa'... maybe you've heard of it?" He grinned at me, taking stock of my slightly surprised expression. "That's actually where I first met your mother, though neither of us went to the meetings all that much. A lot of the people there were total snobs, and you know how much I dislike people like that." He explained.

"Dad… you and mom never told me that you're geniuses." I said, surprised by this information. Sure, I had known that my mom and dad were smart people, and that I was likewise fairly intelligent, but not that we were all apparently in the upper 1% of humanity in terms of brainpower.

"That's because it's not really that big of a big deal, Taylor." He explained. "Your IQ is only an indicator of your potential for learning, not the end-all be-all of who you are. Your personality, your work ethic, your capacity for love and understanding… all of these things are more important than your raw intelligence. I've seen people on the docks who were smarter than me, who got fired for slacking off too much or making the same stupid mistake over and over again. I've also seen guys who were in the 'special needs' classes in school, who are some of the nicest, most reliable, and hardest working folks that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing."

Daniel Hebert's expression softened. "Your mother and I didn't want you to think that you were better than other people just because you're smarter, or that the people around you mean less because they don't share your gifts. I'm very pleased to see that it worked, because as you've grown up, I've been able to watch you became the amazing, understanding woman that I knew you would grow into."

"Thank you Dad," I said, my eyes misty. I gave him a hug, and we were both feeling pretty good when we parted. "I love you too."

"I want to help you, sweetie. Go ahead and give me the upgrades… Just try not to change anything else, OK?" Had asked, half joking and half serious. I nodded, once again taking his hand.

I pulled on my healing energy, using it to scan dad's body. I memorized the current state of his skin, finding that there was a function that stored data already present in my healing hands power. This data store appeared to contain a library of information on everyone and everything biological that I had examined or used my healing power on in any way, shape, or form. It even included the genetic sequences of all the bacteria and viruses that I had touched while healing hands was active. I looked down at the hand holding my father's, my eyes wide. This was amazing!

I was shocked to see a full set of information on my dad's original body in my healing archive, including all of his old health issues, and a full copy of his genome. My own information was there as well… both a copy of my old body's state and genetic code as it was seconds before I was transformed into a Demigod, and another copy of my body and state after that life-changing process. The presence of my bio-data answered one of my biggest questions…evidently Icoulduse healing hands on myself. I felt a little stupid for taking Regeneration for a moment, before I thought about how hard it would be to heal myself while fighting someone strong enough to injure me to the point that I needed healing in the first place. Yeah, on second thought I was glad that I had taken regeneration.

Knowing that I was much tougher than my father, and indeed most capes with Brute power, I checked to see if I could somehow use my own upgrade to give my father a similar amount of protection. I studied the information on Divine Resilience contained within my healing power, trying to figure out how it worked. This power was incredibly complex, and even my heavily upgraded brain struggled to understand the supernatural power. The mode of operation by which Divine Resilience functioned was two-fold. There was an odd field of energy that suffused my entire body, which I did not recognize; I guessed it was an active component of sorts. There were also physical components, which were… extensive. It looked like each and every part of my body had been optimized to resist damage on a micro scale, as if I was now less of a human being, and more an armored machine made to survive a war.

My cells were 'hardened', the walls made out of an organic armor which was selectively permeable, allowing them to function perfectly as regular cells. I doubt that even ice crystals would destroy them, meaning I could conceivably be dropped into a freezer and thawed safely in a few years. The cells also somehow became tougher the tighter they were packed together. This meant that these super-cells leant a level of damage resistance to my body that increased by orders of magnitude as the complexity of the structure they were a part of scaled up; first as they formed tissues, then organs, then an entire system. By the time you got to the organism level, I was already ridiculously tough, and this was only one part of the physical side.

Each of my organs had been redesigned to eliminate any soft spots or weaknesses, and they were all surrounded by their own reactive organic armor. When I studied my bones, I nearly gasped. This was where the design for my dad's bones came from. They were a cheap rip-off of my own, which were superior in every way to his. They were composed of the same basic elements bones were, but arranged in such a way that they formed an unknown organic substance for which there was no name or description in any of the information I had been gifted. Like dad's they were crystalline, but they were more tightly packed and much, much stronger. I didn't know of any metals or carbon allotropes which had a higher tensile strength or hardness.

My skin was the most interesting part. It was an organic armor composed of polymerized macromolecules; huge chains of a protein-like substance that formed long ropes the width of a single cell. They had a tensile strength which was simply unreal, and the capacity to absorb kinetic and thermal energy like a sponge absorbs water. These strands were woven into an ultra-fine mesh, which had the exact same appearance, texture, and color as ordinary skin. I learned why I had been so much more sensitive to touch since my ascension; my skin didn't actually have nerves any more… rather, it was all one huge piece of nervous system tissue. The living macromolecules acted like super-neurons, carrying information to my souped-up brain faster and better than any nerve in the history of biological life.

There were dozens of other physical adaptations which operated on a smaller scale to increase my toughness, but I didn't want or need to list them. The energy field and the physical enhancements seemed to work together, raising all of their protective abilities to insane levels. The radiation from the energy field felt a little like my portals, and my healing hands power, making me think that it might be some kind of "magic", the power source for my abilities which was referenced in the documents that the God had me choose my abilities from. I had noticed that my powers had a sort of fluidity to them, which electronics and parahuman powers lacked. If I had to put it into words, I would say that magic allowed an ability or power to perform the spirit of its intended function, despite what ended up happening physically in the real world.

If I understood correctly, magic should allow "Divine Resilience" to help me resist damage from any given attack, no matter if this power had the capability to do so or not according to causality and the physical rules of the universe. If my observations of Velocity and Miss Militia's power were typical of all capes, then that meant parahuman powers weren't 'psionic' or supernatural in any way, but physical and dimensional. That meant that master powers, force fields, lasers, telekinesis, etc. were all physical effects… meaning that Divine Resilience would render me either completely immune to them, or at the very least highly resistant. Sure, some of the more exotic or powerful effects would likely still damage me, but I was much better off than I had first thought.

Additionally, regeneration should render me more resistant to most of these effects and powers for similar reasons. At the least it would help me recover from powers that could actually harm me very quickly. My brain spun, running through the implications of my thoughts… The implications were staggering, but I needed more data; much more.

One thing that I definitely wanted to do, and as soon as possible was to learn more about Master and Stranger powers. If it was as I suspected, then all of their effects were actually transmitted via targeted "Blaster" and untargeted "Shaker" powers as vectors to deliver these powers to the people who were affected by them. Unless I was missing something, then there should be actual signs in the brains of the victims of such powers that indicate they are being controlled… signs which I should be able to pick up on easily, using the diagnostic function of healing hands.

If I can isolate the vectors Master and Stranger powers are transmitted on, I can neutralize them. If I can come up with a method to stop these types of powers from affecting the brain physically once delivered, I can neutralize them. If I can create a device to simultaneously reverse the changes made to the brain or nervous system by M&S powers, I can neutralize them. With assholes like Heartbreak, Nice Guy, and Valefor running loose in the world and turning people into their willing slaves, it would be a minor miracle if I could come up with a means of rendering their powers moot. It would be a worthwhile project… I would just need to find a few masters and strangers to help me get the data I needed.

I finally returned to my current task, doing my best not become fascinated with the mechanisms by which my godly abilities and the powers of parahumans operate. I studied the physical part of my skin and organ upgrades, and focused on applying them to my father's body. I let my power guide me in this task, feeding it only as much power as was required to replace his existing tissues with the enhanced versions that I possess. The difference from before was as great as night and day; rather than a veritable flood of unrestrained power, I fed a controlled stream into my father's body, directing it to suffuse each part of his body that I was rewriting.

I saturated every one of my father's internal organs from the neck down with healing energy, as well as the entire surface of his body. When these tissues were full of power, I willed the energy filling his tissues to transmute the flesh there into the desired forms. While I was at it, I also changed his bones into the same material mine were made of, rather than the knockoffs he had first been given. It took maybe two minutes to accomplish these tasks once I began. Altogether I had used barely 20 units of energy to increase my father's durability by at least two orders of magnitude. From experience, I knew that I would be able to recover that amount of energy in maybe five to ten minutes at the most.

"Whoa," said my dad as he opened his eyes. He blinked a few times, taking a few seconds to get his bearings. Walking around the clearing a bit, my dad flexed the muscles in his arms and legs, getting a feel for the differences in the composition of his body, for all that he looked exactly the same as he did a few minutes ago. "I assume it went well?" he asked.

"Yep." I answered, popping the 'p'. "It went great, actually. I found out that part of my damage resistance is physical, so I upgraded you using my tissues as a template. Your skin is tougher than the hull of a battleship now, and your organs are more solid and durable than cannonballs. I went ahead and upgraded your bones and connective tissues as well, since mine are so much better than what you had before. You're probably a good bit stronger than you were before, and a huge amount tougher. If you want PRT numbers, then you're probably around "Brute 6"." I informed him.

"Honey, that is absolutely amazing! I'm doing the best I can with this, and feeling so great physically really helps, but I am so overwhelmed, and completely in awe of everything you can do now…" he sighed, looking at me. "The fact that you can permanently turn normal people like me into the equivalent of capes is amazing, Taylor. I know enough about parahumans to realize that out of everything you have done so far, this is the part that is probably the most impressive and important."

My father looked at me closely. "Now that you know how to do it, how many normal people could you turn into Brutes in a day? A dozen?" Shocked by his words, I shook my head no. "A hundred?" He asked, his voice hoarse.

"Around a hundred," I told him. I absolutely had not considered the implications of what I could do. One hundred new capes a day, even if they were "only" Brutes… Any organization or government would kill for that kind of power.

Dad looked at me sadly, his hands shaking a little. "Honey, imagine a thousand people as strong as me fighting Leviathan or Behemoth. Or ten thousand. Or a hundred thousand." Tears streamed down his face and he held me close. "Sweetheart, I am so proud of you and worried for you. Part of me wants to help you build an army to finally kill the beasts that are slowly destroying our world, and another part of me wants to take you far from here and hide you away... because if anyone at all finds out that you can manufacturer artificial parahumans, then you will either be conscripted or chased down for the rest of your life."

I summoned up willpower and the sheer stubborn pride that had allowed me to survive each and every day since my mother died; every single shitty school day since my best friend turned into a raving uber-bitch. I banished my fear, and turned my eyes to meet my father's gaze. He started at the intensity I level at him, and shot me a questioning look.

"Dad, I can become invisible and intangible at will. If I need to go out in public, then I can look like whoever or whatever I want. If I am captured, then I can create a portal to anywhere, without limit… even to outer space or to other planets. And I have a dozen other powers besides those."

I smiled fiercely. "You're the only person left in the world that I love, Dad, and now that you're insanely strong, and nearly as durable as I am... no one will be able to hold your vulnerability over my head. We both have powers now, Dad. If someone comes after either one of us then it will always be a real fight now, not a hostage situation. And while there may be someone out there who can kill me, there is no one in the world who is capable of taking away my freedom. And if they try to capture you, then God help them… because I won't."

I paced back and forth, my mind whirling. "If all I could do was heal and turn people into mid-level brutes, then I really would be concerned, but those are just a few of abilities. I definitely don't plan to start turning everyone and their sister into capes. And while a hundred thousand Brute 6's would be useful, that's not what we need… to beat the Endbringers we need half a dozen capes with extremely strong powers, or powers that synergize well with one another. Even one person with just the right ability could be enough turn the tide on those fucking monsters."

If Dad had been looking at me oddly while I was speaking, the way he was staring at me now was downright disconcerting. His gaze reminded me of the looks I had seen given to priests, visionaries, and other exceptional people capable of inspiring hope. I felt simultaneously proud that I could inspire feelings like that in my father, and a little worried that all I had needed to do in order to get that reaction from him was to speak passionately and from the heart about a matter about which I felt strongly. Still, I had not lied, and I was only attempting to share my viewpoint, and to reassure him about my capabilities so he wouldn't worry. Thanks to my powers, I was now the greatest escape artist the world had ever seen.

"Holy shit, Taylor…" said my dad, staring at me. "Have you ever thought about selling used cars?"" He asked me seriously. We both smiled at his lame joke, trying to get rid of the oppressive mood that had beset us a moment earlier.

It was time for something lighter. I thought of the reason my father had let me haul him out here in the first place, and I knew what to do. "How about I open up your Chi points and then demonstrate the opening katas for Anything Goes martial arts while you get a feel for your inner energy?" I asked him.

"What do I need to do?" He asked, looking at me excitedly.

"Take off your jacket and shirt, and then stand still." I told him.

I began reviewing my knowledge of the incredibly overpowered fighting style that the God had seen fit to let me have access to. I mentally went over the process I would need to perform to allow my father to harness the inner energies that were required for most of the techniques of Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū. I held my forefingers out, and practiced hitting the air in the very specific pattern needed to unlock a human's ability to use 'Chi'. The store of information I had access to thanks to the Anything Goes style didn't actually tell me where the energy came from, or what it actually was, but since martial artist who can utilize Chi tended to eat at least five time the amount of food normal people did, I could only guess that it was produced internally, rather than coming from some outside source.

According to martial arts lore, each and every person on earth had the ability to use Chi, to greater or lesser effect. Unless a master unlocked their Chi points, however, this power would stay locked inside of rigid channels in their body forever, completely inaccessible. Evidently part of making me "better than any human alive" at Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū involved unlocking my own Chi points, or else all I would have access to would have been some fairly showy hand-to-hand techniques which I wouldn't ever have been able to use to their fullest.

I went over the process for unlocking Chi points until it was burned into my brain, and then turned to face my father, or had been looking at me curiously. The knowledge I help told me that the quicker I synchronize his Chi points while I was unlocking them, the better this would work. After telling Dad to brace himself, I used super speed to allow me to move more quickly, and took aim. My hands blurred as I poked his torso in very specific places with my forefingers, using tiny bits of my own spiritual power to unseal each of the Chi points that I tapped. It was over in seconds, and my father fell backward when I tapped the last pressure point. A confused expression on his face, he landed with his butt in the mud.

"Holy shit," he whispered from his spot on the ground. I could tell that he was able to feel the new energy moving inside of his body. There was a huge grin on my father's face.

Using my eye power, I could actually see the inner energy starting to well up from each of the Chi points that I had unlocked. The power was beginning to permeate his tissues and circulate throughout the rest of his body the way my own Chi had been doing since I had first become a Demigod. I hadn't been searching for it previously in myself, so until I actually knew what to look for I hadn't even noticed it. Chi was quite different from the energy that I used for healing, though they both shared a few characteristics. Chi was much more mutable, and somehow 'thinner' than the power which was used to fuel 'healing hands'. It was harder to grasp, too, and I knew from the implanted memories in my head that a martial artist would need to teach their body how to manipulate Chi for each and every application they wanted to use it for manually, through intense and repetitive training. Chi manipulation wasn't like Divine or parahuman powers at all; there were no inbuilt reflexes or knowledge on what to do with it, no instructions or feelings that told you how to perform any of the superhuman feats you could use it to accomplish. It was pure distilled potential… and the only way to convert that potential into something usable was to do an ungodly amount of hard work. Unless, that is, you were a bullshit cheater like me.

I gazed at my father, who was still sitting on the ground. He had his hand held in front of him palm up, and he was staring at it intently. There was a wispy looking heat-haze there when I looked at it with my normal sight. Peering at it with my ocular power, I could see a swirling orb of loosely held Chi, which my father was concentrating on intently. I raised an eyebrow in surprise; that level of energy shaping, while not too advanced, definitely wasn't something that a rank newbie should be able to do… It took quite a bit of energy, and a lot of concentration to form one's inner energies into shapes. I peered into his Chi system, and was surprised to note that there was an abundance of energy held there, not the trivial amounts that someone should possess when their Chi points had just been unlocked minutes before.

I sighed, realizing that I was relying solely on my martial arts memories for that, and not considering other factors. For one, the amount of Chi someone possessed was determined by their physical strength and endurance, which my father had in spades after I'd upgraded his body. Another factor in the amount of Chi was someone's 'spiritual' development; as an adult with a lot of life experience, of course he would have more spiritual than the average newbie in the art, who would usually be a young child. The final factor, and the most important one, was training. The more one had used any of the Chi-based martial arts, the more energy they would have available, and the more efficiently they would be able to use it. If he had this much energy now, as a fresh novice, then my father's potential was extremely high… maybe as high as anyone who had ever practiced Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū. Only time would tell, I suppose.

"Nice work with the Chi shaping, Dad." I told him. Startled, he looked up from his exercises, a bewildered look on his face.

"Oh, that? I was just playing around. It's so strange, you know? How do you deal with having all of that energy coursing inside of you all the time? How am I going to be able to work, and do normal things, knowing that it's lying there, just under the surface?" He asked, half to me and half to himself.

"It's a novelty right now… it will get much easier once you've received a little bit of training. That's what we're going to do now, actually. I'm going to walk you through doing some of the beginning forms of Musabetsu Kakutō Ryū, and I want you to follow along. While you do the movements, I would like you to work on focusing your Chi into your muscles; that will help you move faster, and when we start contact training, it will make your strikes stronger." I told him.

Dad nodded eagerly, and I lifted himself to his feet. I cleaned him off again, and then we began training. I walked him through kata after kata, marveling when he memorized each one almost instantly, rarely needing me to show him anything twice. I guessed that the increased activity and complexity I had seen in his brain after his 'tune-up' this morning had something to do with that; also, my father had always been a quick learner. We practiced for around three hours, deciding to quit at noon, when we both started to get hungry for lunch.

. . .

'Yeah,' I thought from in from of my enormous cheeseburger, 'Chi users are bullshit.' After using up large portions of Chi in the previous few hours, the both of us had been starving. I had flown us to the only place I could think of where the two of us could get a meal that could truly fill the gaping hole that I felt in our respective tummies… the burger capital of Brockton Bay, and the greasiest spoon this side of Lord's Hill… The one and only Fugly Bob's.

When we became visible and tangible a block and a half away from the restaurant, the smell of charred beef filled my nostrils, sending my saliva production into overdrive. Wiping the drool off of my chin, I looked over to my dad, who was sniffing the air with glassy look in his eyes. Our eyes met, and we both nodded to each other in silent agreement, before heading toward the source of the heavenly aroma at nearly a jog. I burst through the door, instantly taking in the concentrated cooking aroma, and the huge plastic baskets loaded down with enormous burgers and heaping mounds of thick cut steak fries that were being served to customers.

I saw the length of the line in front of me and nearly whimpered when I saw six people waiting to order their meals. My father walked him behind me, and we took our places in line. I scanned the menu, looking all of the various choices over, as I knew the meal I regularly ordered wouldn't be enough today. I usually just ordered a bacon cheeseburger and fries, but right now I felt like I could eat four of them at least. I mentally tallied the amount of money that four burgers would cost, and winced.

I suddenly remembered the huge stash of money that I had in my room. My wallet still contained the remainder of the stack of bills I had placed in there when I went costume shopping yesterday, meaning that I had over fifteen hundred dollars on me. I grinned; suddenly, the amount of money it took to buy lunch didn't matter very much. I looked at the picture of the largest burger on the menu, and my stomach growled so loudly that the girl ahead of me in line shot me a worried look. I gave her a little smile to indicate that I was fine, and she turned back around. My dad was looking over the pictures and description on the menu as well, a hungry look in his eyes. He had used over three times as much Chi as I had, so he probably felt like he was dying of starvation.

"No wonder Genma was so obsessed with food…" whispered Dad under his breath. I ignored his non sequitur, and turned to speak to him when we were nearing the head of the line.

"Hey Dad," I said, getting his attention, "Don't worry about paying for lunch, it's on me today." I told him.

"I can pay for lunch, honey." He replied, his voice a little defensive.

"Dad, it's OK. I've got this one… and I'm not taking 'no' for an answer." I warned, a dangerous note in my voice. He didn't say anything back to me, but I doubt he'd given up… he was stubborn enough that he seldom failed to get his way when it came to things like this. Not that I was worried he'd actually succeed in paying for lunch; I was stubborn as well.

We stepped up to the counter as the people ahead of us finished. The twenty-something cashier looked at us, her voice chipper. "Welcome to Fugly Bob's, home of the Challenger! What can I get started for you today?"

"We would like two Challengers with the works, but we won't be sitting in the big chair or actually doing the challenge. We don't want an announcement or anything like that, just a lot of food." I shot her a sweet smile. "I'll just pay the full price upfront." I rattled off my order quickly, before my dad could say anything. I'd peeked at his wallet before ordering, so I knew that he only had thirty-two dollars in there; less than half of what was needed to pay for the food I had ordered. I would normally have been worried about him using his debit or credit cards, but Fugly's only took cash. This way, he would be forced to let me pay for the meal.

He gave me a sharp look that let me know that we'd be having words later as I paid the bemused cashier for our meal. The quick glance he gave my stuffed-full wallet was filled with suspicion, and I feared that I would be due for an interrogation as soon as we were in a reasonably private spot. Deciding to get everything out in the open as soon as possible, I lead us to a booth on the far side of the restaurant, one that had no one else was sitting nearby. I set the little plastic sign with the number "73" on it at the edge of the table, and then Dad and I spent a moment at the soda fountain, filling the small bucket-sized cups that we had received with delicious carbonated goodness.

When we settled back down, Daniel Hebert gave me a hard look. "Taylor, where did you get all of that money?" He asked, his tone of voice stern.

I grinned wickedly. "Dad," I whispered, checking to make sure that no one could hear us, "I have x-ray vision, and I can see for miles. It took less than ten minutes to find an old stash of money that no one would miss. I found a bag that had been buried underground for at least a decade, which had a lot of money in it. It was nearly rotted through; a few more years, and the money would have probably been decomposing. They're all old-style 20's, but they still spend the same." I informed him.

Dad looked a bit calmer now, but still a little worried. "Are you sure that no one's going to come looking for it?" He asked, concerned.

"I'm positive." I replied firmly. "Dad, I told you that the bag had been there for years… the person who buried it there is probably dead or in prison. The bills were all non-sequential, and there were no identifying marks on any of them. It's impossible that anyone will ever know it was me who found it." I paused a moment. "I'm sorry that I forgot to tell you… but honestly, with everything that's happened, it's really the least important thing on the list, by far." I explained.

Daniel Hebert sighed. "It's alright honey. Just tell me about this stuff as it happens from now on, so that I'm not caught flat-footed, OK?" He asked.

"I will." I told him, meaning it. Well, mostly… I'm sure there were things that he wouldn't want to know, and some stuff that I wouldn't be comfortable sharing. Still, staying honest was probably the best policy in most situations now that my father and I would be working together.

"Oh, by the way…" he said, as if just remembering something. "I'm going to pay you back for this lunch, even if it did cost seventy bucks." His tone was dangerous, as if he was begging me to argue. Dad didn't raise a sucker, so I didn't bite, pretending that he hadn't said anything at all. When I didn't respond, a smirk popped up, and he thought that he had won.

'The jokes on him,' I thought, 'Let's see what he thinks when I pay off the mortgage!' I grinned internally, wondering what his reaction to that would be. It would sure be fun to find out!

A waitress kindly brought our fries and the rest of the 'fixins shortly, informing us that it would be a few minutes before our burgers were finished. The baskets the fries came in were gigantic, each of them containing over a pound of thick steak fries. On the side were cups of Bob's famous dipping sauce, which was a tangy mustard-based sauce with relish mixed in. Normally I was ambivalent about the dip, but today it tasted wonderful. Dad and I polished off our fries long before the burgers came, even eating the parsley garnish on the side.

Apparently the 'Challenger', a burger that was normally free if you could finish it, came with a milkshake as well. They hadn't asked us what kind we wanted, surprisingly, but I found that mine was vanilla, and Dad's chocolate. After we tasted them we switched, each preferring the other flavor. We drank the 32oz desert beverages like they were water, our bellies hardly swelling at all, oddly enough. Afterward we were both still hungry, Dad enough so that his stomach was still growling regularly. I spotted the waitress who had brought us out the fries coming toward us, with another member of the kitchen staff following. Both of them were carrying large platters which each contained a hamburger of elephantine proportions.

The Challenger looked more like a full sized layer cake than a burger. The bun on top was bigger around than my head, and dotted with thousands of delicious sesame seeds. There was lettuce, nearly a head in each sandwich, as well several sliced tomatoes, and at least three cucumbers worth of dill pickle chips. The beef patties were over two inches thick, and each of them were so wide that they hung off the sides of the bottom bun. There were at least ten slices of American cheese melted on the beef patties, and mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard. My mouth began watering as soon as I caught sight of the burgers. My only regret as they sat the food in front of my father and I, was that I wouldn't get to eat both of them.

I tore into my food like a girl possessed, not even stopping to breathe… I suspect that regeneration took care of that. I had to fight my instinct to switch on super speed in order to eat faster, but with effort I managed to restrain myself. Totally focused on the enormous ball of yum in front of me, it took me by surprise when four parahumans came into my 100 meter "sixth sense" range. I continued to scarf down large bits of the 100% beef patty smothered in cheese and sauce as I turned x-ray vision on them, watching the quartet of capes approach.

I idly noted that my father had made more progress than me on his own humongous burger, having already consumed nearly three quarters of it in the last few minutes. Sadly, he had beaten me; I'd only managed to eat half of mine so far. My stomach was full enough now that the nearly palpable haze of overwhelming hunger which had permeated my being was starting to lift, and I became aware of the fact that half the people in the crowded dining room were watching my father and I make complete and utter pigs out of themselves.

As I licked a glob of mayonnaise from my food-stained lips, I watched one of the onlookers, a teenage boy a few years older than me, become beet red and quickly look away. 'Whoa,' I thought, using my marvelous eyes to examine in fine detail the reaction I had caused him to have. I blinked my eyes, a bit bemused; that hadn't been that sexy, had it? I was suddenly very glad that my father was so occupied with his meal; he wouldn't have liked seeing boys ogling my like thatat all.

I turned my attention to the parahumans I had sensed a few seconds ago, who were now walked through the door. They were all teenagers like me, though they were all a year or two older at the least. There were two boys and two girls in the group. The first two through the door were a blonde girl with freckles and a tall black boy with dreadlocks, thought he was more of a man than a boy. I like what I saw, so I gave them both a quick scan from head to toe, memorizing the details so that I could examine them later… in private. The next two to walk inside were not quite as nice looking, unfortunately... There was a thin pretty boy with a cold expression on his face, and a plain looking girl, who had the appearance and mannerisms of a butch lesbian. Neither of them "did it" for me, so I didn't bother to take a peek.

I did, however, scan each of their power relays in super speed, memorizing as many of the details of the crystalline structures as I could. All of them relays were quite versatile compared to Velocity's, who I suspect had gotten a fairly shitty relay based on all of the nifty things that the other relays I had examined since his seemed to be capable of. I was particularly interested in the relay which connected to the blonde girl; it seemed to be capable of large-scale data gathering and manipulation. If my Tinker knowledge could be trusted, it contained the ability to parse thousands of yottabytes of information per second. Out of all the power relays I had seen before, hers was the most like the computers and machines that regular human technology could produce, though orders of magnitude more advanced. I memorized as much of it as I could, but there was so much data that it was difficult to get enough to be worthwhile.

That's how I discovered a new trick with telekinesis. Wanted a way to encode information that no one but I could retrieve, I decided to experiment whether I could write with my TK. I tried recording some of my findings on the inside of my skin, smiling when it worked flawlessly. Remembering how I stripped the water and dirt particles from my father's clothes earlier, I decided to go deeper. I tried recording information on my very cells, and that worked too. I couldn't really go smaller than that, not without damaging my cells, so I isolated a couple of million cells that weren't critical for my health and wellbeing, and then telekinetically recorded a representation of the entire structure of the freckled blondie's power relay upon them. 'So this is what it feels like to have the blueprints for an alien supercomputer written on my tits,' I thought amusedly.

The four capes were standing in the line to order their food, which was still unfortunately long due to the lunch rush. The blonde was glancing around the dining room while wearing a smug little grin, which makes her face look a little vulpine. She turned her head to look at me, and her expression changed, the smile being wiped from her face. Her eyes went wide as she continued to stare at me, and I started to worry that her information gathering relay was telling her something worrisome about me or my powers. That's when everything went to shit.

"Br-uhh! Br-uuh-uuh-ian!" She cried, clawing at the tall black boy, trying to clutch at his arm, and failing. He turned toward her, a dispassionate look on his face, and tried to catch her as she fell to the ground. She had already fallen too far, however, and she slipped away from his grasp, landing on the tile floor in a shuddering heap. The fair haired parahuman started seizing violently as she lay on the dirty ground, blood beginning to seep from her eyes and nostrils.

I stared at the fallen teenager in horror, my eye power taking in the damage that had occurred inside of her brain. I ran through possibilities for what was happening in super speed; it had probably been caused by using whatever Thinker power she possessed to try and get information about me. Her relay must have strongly objected to something having to do with my powers, or else she had overused her parahuman ability to a ludicrous degree… My gifted knowledge informed me that Thinker powers were notorious for giving their wielders headaches, and had occasionally even caused strokes or brain hemorrhages when they were used beyond the limits of what the brain could tolerate.

Peeking again at the mess inside of the fallen girl's head, I realized that she had maybe five or ten minutes at most until she the hemorrhage that had occurred in her parietal lobe killed her. Super speed was already turned on, and I willed it to work as fast as it could, pushing the limits of that particular power as much as I could, to give myself enough time to think of a solution for this mess that wouldn't immediately 'out' me as a cape. I discarded a dozen ideas in less than a second, before coming up with one that I felt could work.

It was time to get creative with illusion. But first, I needed to let me dad know what was going on, so that he wouldn't blow the whole thing wide open and ruin my plan. Dropping most of the way out of the auto-time dilation I was experiencing, I used illusions to cover my words, so that no one but my father would be able to hear me.

"Dad!" I said, getting his attention. He had just started to turn toward the fallen girl, and his eyes snapped over to me instantly. "I have a plan. I'm going to make an illusion of myself that will stay here while I use invisibility to slip out. I'm going to disguise myself as another cape, and then come back in so that I can heal her. Stay here, and don't draw any attention. Make sure that no one gets close enough to discover that you're sitting next to an illusion. I have to go now!" I spoke quickly and clearly, knowing that my dad would understand thanks to his native intelligence and neurological upgrades.

I made a false copy of myself over top of my real body using my Illusionist power, and then willed my real body invisible and intangible using Shadow Form. I flew up through the roof, heading a few blocks over at hypersonic speeds. I then spent the longest ten seconds of my life designing the "Phase Two" cape disguise that I had been planning since yesterday afternoon. I was prepared enough to have already come up with a theme and basic appearance for my newest persona, allowing me to rush through the design and creation of the semi-permanent illusion that would allow me to pretend that there was yet another new parahuman in Brockton Bay.

Rather than making my new persona extremely attractive, as I had made my Helen of Troy 'grab bag' avatar, this new disguise nearly personified the "inhuman" part of "inhumanly perfect". The face I designed had skin that looked like porcelain, and features that were so uniformly symmetrical that my new appearance nearly tipped over the edge into the uncanny valley. This was by design; I wanted people to see a hero whose appearance was so immaculate that that depending on whether you were a villain or a law abiding citizen, you would either be terrified of me or place me on a pedestal. This persona wasn't made to garner feelings of attraction or be personable in any way, shape, or form; it was no more or less than an icon of cold perfection that would stand as an example to be loved from afar... or feared up close, for the miscreants mindlessly working to unmake this world in their abject selfishness.

I chose to give this illusion long red hair... bright red, nearly the color of fire. It was pulled back from my face and braided, with the elaborate feet-long braid hanging over my shoulder and falling down the front of my body. My head and face were completely unadorned by disguise or decoration, rendering my icy perfection my only mask. My body was covered by form-fitting, feminine plate armor done in gold, with silver accents, a crucifix decorating the front of my breastplate. At my waist hung an enormous two-handed sword in scabbard, the handle projecting a good two feet from the sheathe. My armor covered everything from mid-neck down to my toes, giving me an inviolable appearance, as if nothing could harm me.

The last part of my disguise was the most impressive. From enormous angled openings in the back of my armor, projected enormous white wings, their tips decorated with red the color of my hair. My wingspan was enormous, over twenty feet, making me look much larger than I actually was. I spread the illusory wings, and flew through the air, visible only to myself. I view myself, as if I was looking at my own illusory body from the outside, using one of the many capabilities of my eyes; I looked amazing. I smiled, as rose in the air in super speed, until I was above the wispy clouds, far above the restaurant I had just come from. It was time to make my entrance.

Now that I was completely alone, I became visible high in the air amidst the clouds. It had been less than one minute since I left the Fugly Bob's, but I needed to hurry if I didn't want the girl in there to suffer any brain damage. I had a strong feeling that I could cure even that, but I didn't want to risk it if I didn't have to. Pulling back my illusory wings, I dove, using Telekinesis to perform a controlled fall. I streaked downward, drawing attention from several people in the area, who watched in awe as a real, live fucking angel landed outside of the local burger joint. People outside of the restaurant moved out of my way as I went to enter, their eyes and mouths opened wide in shock.

I folded my wings tightly against my back and sides I as stepped inside, people looking up at my towering eight and half feet of height in shock. I had spared a smidgen of worry that I might look too much like the Simurgh, but in actuality we looked nothing alike. She was a monochrome statue, and I simply... wasn't. I looked nearly human, and I was clearly not here to hurt anyone. People were treating me like they would any other angelic Case 53; with wary respect and feelings of shocked awe. I sauntered in like I owned the place, ignoring the surprised looks and gasps, until I was standing next to the downed girl.

The tall black boy was leaning over his friend as I entered, feeling for her pulse, while the feminine looking boy who had arrived with them spoke dispassionately with a 911 dispatcher on his cell phone, describing his companion's symptoms. The last member of the group had backed away from the others, the butch girl looking at the blonde with an odd expression on her face, as if she didn't know whether to be worried or contemptuous. I ignored them all, striding forward until I stood in from the broken Thinker, the shadow I cast causing the young man kneeling next to her to look up. His eyes opened until I thought that the skin around his sockets would snap from stretching so far, his lips pressed together tightly.

"Relax, child." I told him. The sound when I spoke was a concert of three extremely beautiful female voices in different timbers intertwined with each one another. He gulped when I spoke, and I saw a few people seated in the restaurant make the sign of the cross. "I am a healer. I will attend to this girl, if you will please stand aside." I told him, a reassuring smile on my lips.

The boy stood up, his leg trembling at the enormity of my presence. Minor illusions of various types played across my form, adding to my supernatural presence. The sides of my face were always alight, as if I stood with the noonday sun at my back. My skin did actually glow with an inner luminescence, though it was so weak as to be only barely visible. The color of my hair rippled, a golden streak in in slowly moving throughout the braid, causing it to shine and ripple as it changed.

He stared up at me, his face becoming hard as he marshalled all of his strength. "You had better not hurt her," he told me. He didn't need to add the last part; the 'or else' was already there, in his eyes.

I nodded. "I shall not harm the little one," I told him. "I only seek to soothe her injuries this day." As soon as he stepped out of the way I knelt down, putting my head at the level of some of the taller people in present here. Several people had taken their cell phones out, cameras pointed in my direction. The illusory Taylor sitting next to my dad was no exception; she had her equally incorporeal phone out, so that I could pretend to have her record me. I laid my hand onto the bleeding girl's trembling body, using a minute trickle of energy to assess the damage.

Here brain was a mess; in addition to the first hemorrhage, there were three more now. One of them was interfering with her autonomic functions, causing her breathing to slow down to nearly nothing. Her heart was beating erratically, and if I did nothing, I could sense that it wouldn't be long before she was cast off her mortal coil. 'Not today.' I decided, feeling healing energies into her damaged body. The hand I had laid on her hair lit up with a gold light, streamers of energy pulsing as they disappeared into her body. The teenage girl's torn tissues and broken brain drank in the life-restoring power I gave her, setting all of her injuries right. In less than a second, she was healthier than she had ever been in her life.

Bright green eyes shot open, and the girl looked up at me. An expression of awe spread over her face, her eyes opening to wide and the smile on her face growing so much that it almost looked painful. The teenager's expression suddenly twisted into a grimace, and she began to spasm again. I was still trickling healing energy into her, so I felt it when another artery in the girl's brain erupted; parts of the circulatory system around the exploded capillary simply disintegrating under the enormous load it was attempting to bear. I frowned; the part of her brain connected to her power relay had gone crazy as she looked at me, damaging her again in seconds. It seemed I would need to do more than simply repair the girl's damage. I looked up at the dark skinned boy, whose gaze was flitting back and forth between me and the girl I was attempting to heal, a look of worry on his face.

"Something is very wrong with her brain," I muttered to him, low enough that only he would be able to hear. "Her power keeps activating violently, causing arteries to burst inside. Fear not, for I can still heal her… however I will, by necessity, need to redouble my efforts. Do not be alarmed if it becomes somewhat… bright in here."

He nodded, and I got back to work. If her circulatory system and brain were not hardy enough to survive whatever was happening to her, then I would need to upgrade her until they were. I sent carefully metered amount of healing power into her entire head, tiny rivulets of power spreading through the veins, arteries, and nervous tissues of her body until her entire circulatory and nervous systems were inundated with healing power. Using my own heavily upgraded tissues as a template, I did to this poor soul what I had previously done to my father when I improved his bones and organs earlier today. Picturing the end result in my mind, I transmuted her weak organs and tissues into veritable copies of my own, making sure that her brain was changed slowly, one cell at a time, and that the data stored on it was kept completely the same. In this way, her continuity of consciousness would be maintained as the changes took place.

I kept the freckle faced girl's eyes closed throughout the procedure, fearing what would happen if she saw me while her body was in flux, and she damaged her brain again while it was upgraded. Golden light leaked out from my palm, bathing the entire dining room in rays of less diffuse healing energy. I found, to my surprise, that I could feel each and every person in the room as the escaped energy hit them. I could read their biology as surely as I could the girl under my ministrations, and I could tell that all of the minor wounds, aches, and pains that each of these people carried were being healed as the golden light washed over them. The mood inside of Fugly Bob's dining room became solemn, and I could see one or two of the people who had simply been eating their meals began to shed the odd tear. One elderly man began openly weeping, his wife holding him close as he begged God to forgive him for his sins over and over into her breast.

Fugly Bob himself had stepped out from his place in the kitchen, holding his sweaty, greasy cook's hat against his chest tightly, as if it was a lifeline. A fat tear made its way down his cheek, as the years old chemical burns which had previously given him and the restaurant their names were slowly erased upon being exposed to the excess healing power that strobed through the interior of the room. Finally, after two long minutes of work, my task was complete. I had learned a lot from my previous experience "doing upgrades", and so I was able to fix the girl's brain issue with far less power than had been needed to increase my father's physical power. I had used perhaps twenty units of healing power to heal the young woman, and I could already feel my reserves beginning to refill as I stood up from where I had knelt beside her.

I hoisted the now-healthy blonde to her feet, watching as she blinked her green eyes rapidly as she took in the room around her. Her eyes finally landed on me, and I watched as her face once more began sporting the enraptured look that I had seen just before her second injury. I tensed, waiting to see if there would be any issues this time, but thankfully my upgrades did their job.

Her neural tissues and circulatory system were at least two orders of magnitude stronger than they had been, with an increase to their performance that was at least equal to that. I had rebuilt all of her brain, including the coronas pollentia and gemma, and I had taken special care to shore up and increase the connections between these organs and the rest of her brain and spine.

From what I had seen, it appeared as though the aneurysms she had suffered were ultimately caused by a lack of bandwidth between the girl's power relay and her brain. When the relay fed her more information than she could handle, then her brain started taking damage proportional to the overload she experienced. I suspected that nearly all Thinker class capes would have this issue, to a greater or lesser extent depending on how good the connection to their relays was, and how much data their powers tended to send them at a time.

Those problem were in the past for blondie; I had increased the data bus between her and the source of her parahuman power to such a ludicrous degree that she would die from fever due to overheating her brain before her data channels could be saturated to such a point that it would harm her neural tissues. Not that that would happen… she would need to use her power at full bore for days, without sleeping or stopping for even a moment, to even approach that level of thermal buildup. She would also have to ignore the resultant fever, and somehow not pass out from heat stroke.

I figured that there was a very slim possibility that she would intentionally harm herself to such a degree; even so, she was much better off than she had been before I'd healed her. She had only been one long glance away from killing herself due to power overuse, as had nearly happened when she tried to use her Thinker power to make sense of me. I was still curious about what her power actually was, but I figured that here and now wasn't the time for that. I gave her a beatific smile with my perfect, porcelain features, and attempted to extract my hand from her very firm grip. I realized that I had accidentally upgraded her muscles to a small degree; that was only to be expected, I guess, as healing energy had suffused most of her body as it traveled down her nerves and blood vessels.

The beneficiary of my healing powers looked up at me with a genuine smile on her face, staring at me in amazement, as if I was a literal God instead of merely the angel I appeared to be. "Thank you." She choked out, nearly beginning to weep as several in the room were already doing. She still would not let go of my hand. I didn't force the issue, at least for now, preferring not to use telekinesis on a girl I'd just brought back from the brink of death less than a minute before.

"You are most welcome, my child." I told her, my three-in-one voice intertwining in harmony as I spoke. "Fear not, for the physical problem which brought you low shall never trouble you again. The weakness in your mortal flesh has been healed by I, The Archangel Ariel, and you shall suffer it no longer."

I rose into the air an inch or two, my wings spreading out slightly. The blonde girl, for all that she had a Thinker power and enhanced neural tissue now, did not let go. In fact, she clung to my outstretched hand all the more tenaciously. She leaned in close, turning in such a way that none of the cell phone cameras recording us could see her face.

"I'm being held captive," she whispered. "Please help me. Take me with you." Her tone was pleading, nearly heart breaking in fact. I searched her body for deception, reading her subdermal muscles using my eye powers and healing ability. I didn't find any; she was telling the truth. I couldn't find it in myself to refuse her earnest request, so I decided to help her. I gave her a subtle nod, as I rose higher, and then lifted her off the ground with telekinesis, making it appear as though I lifted her with sheer Brute strength. The blonde teen let out a small gasp of surprise when I scooped her up into a bridal carry, holding her tightly against my chest. My right hand was holding her lower body, and I was instantly aware that my hand was touching her very shapely rear end. I could tell that she had realized this as well, because a bright blush painted her freckled cheeks.

The black boy was walking toward me now, his face showing worry and a little bit of apprehension when I lifted his 'friend' up. He didn't seem like the one who was holding her captive, he was much too concerned for her wellbeing, but I didn't know for sure if he was involved yet. I wasn't about to let him have her in any case.

"I am taking her to Brockton Bay General Hospital so the doctors there may perform tests to verify that your companion's injuries will not return." I told him. "I will carry her there personally, as the girl is still weak from my healing. You can meet us there at your leisure." I told him in a commanding voice. I left no room for argument, and even if he was a parahuman, there was no way he was going to endanger his identity by using his powers in public like this.

The older teen frowned at me, but then nodded his head after a moment, a resigned expression on his face. "I'll hold you to that." He told me, making me wince internally. If he was an innocent party here then I regretted having to lie to him and basically kidnap his friend, but she had asked for my help… I wasn't about to let my first rescue as a hero be ruined by being honest to someone who might be a villain, or because I was afraid to hurt someone's feelings. It didn't help that he was really good looking, and that his genitals were very large and nicely formed. I once again used my bullshit eye powers to peep on the blond girl in my arms, in order to take my mind off of the dark skinned hottie that I'd just lied to. At least I would be in one of their good books.

Going intangible, but not invisible, I rose up through the roof of the building amidst the gasps and cried of surprise of the people in the burger joint. The girl in my arms clung to me tightly, her heart rate increasing as we phased through layers of the ceiling and the roof. We emerged in the clear, sky, the wispy clouds I had hid behind before I went inside the only thing marring the nearly empty blue expanse. I rose in the air until we were so high that everyone on the ground looked like ants, only going invisible when I couldn't see any people or recording devices tracking me any longer. Blondie once again clung to me harder, with enough force that she would have ripped the skin of a normal person apart. She wasn't anywhere near as strong as my dad was now, only around five times as strong as a girl her size would normally be. Still, it was probably enough to net her a "Brute 1" rating, especially when you took the extremely quick reaction times she would have now that her nerves and brain worked so much faster.

It didn't take long to reach the top floor of the empty building I'd found yesterday. I set the girl down gently on the floor, a little sad that I was no longer able to hold her soft, curvy form against my body. Oh, well… she would probably need me to carry her out of here as well. That thought perked me up a little bit. I shook all of the hazy, hormone driven adolescent thoughts from my head; it was time to get some information from the girl I'd saved. I looked her over, noting that she seemed much more relaxed now that we were well away from her 'friends'. I hadn't seen any weapons on them earlier, but that didn't mean much when it came to capes; any of them could have had the ability kill her at any moment for all I knew. I could tell a little about what a parahuman's power did based on what their power relay looked like, but unless they used their powers around me I didn't really know what they were capable of. I would need to work on that. I had found myself thinking that a lot, lately.

"So," said the girl with a smirk, swaying her hips as she took a step closer to me. "Do I actually get to see what my savior looks like?" I was startled enough that I took a step backward, and a little of my surprise leaked through into my illusory face.

"I thought so," she said softly, her smile becoming nearly vulpine. "So, that really is some kind of hologram, or something? No? An illusory power, maybe?" She studied me for a moment, as I stood there, taken aback at the information she was pulling from nowhere. And I had thought that my Thinker powers were bullshit!

"How are you doing that, Blondie?" I asked, my three-in-one voice colored by irritation and surprise.

She chuckled. "It's Lisa, actually." She shared. "And that's my power… though I suppose you've already realized that I'm a fairly powerful Thinker." She paused a moment, her hand coming raising to cup her chin as she gazed at me consideringly. "Well… I was a fairly powerful Thinker, maybe a six or seven. Now that you've 'had your way' with me, I'm probably closer to Thinker nine or ten. Not to mention the minor Brute and Mover rating that your little 'healing' tacked on."

My eyes were wide under my fake face, and I had gone tense. For the first time I thought that I may have been able to actually use Telekinesis to erase memories, if I had taken it. This girl had already ferreted out several of my most dangerous secrets, and it had only taken her a few minutes. Thinker nine or ten, indeed! I would need to convince her to keep what she had discovered to herself, somehow… I wasn't about to kill her, or anything like that, but if I was going to fix the nearly fucked world that I was born into, I couldn't have the secrets of my powers being spread around town like yesterday's gossip.

"Were those other capes actually holding you as a prisoner, or did you lie to me about that so that you could get more information about my powers?" I asked Lisa, a note of anger in my voice. I really hoped that she had been genuinely in need of rescuing, and not trying to play me. I really didn't want to be forced to do something drastic to keep her silent, especially after I'd just gone through so much trouble to keep her healthy and safe. I guess I could portal her somewhere really remote, if I needed to. And if that wouldn't work, as horribly distasteful as the thought was, the Yangban wasalways looking for more Thinkers to add to their group. It would break my heart to do something like that, but I thought that I might be capable of it if my own life, and the lives of my father and everyone I could help were at risk.

The smile dropped off of Lisa's face like she had been burned, and she held up both of her hands in a placating gesture. "Whoa, whoa, no need to do anything drastic!" She exclaimed, her voice wary. "I was just trying to figure out your deal; it's kind of what I do. I promise that I'll keep anything I learn to myself. Just don't go and do… whatever it was that you were thinking about doing to keep me quiet. I'll can be a good girl."

"I really hope so, for your sake." I told her, my voice firm. Thinkers were total bullshit. When I enhanced Lisa, I wasn't really thinking about her power, I was mostly concerned about her life. If I had known just how effective her power would be at learning about my powers, I might have made the effort to come up with another way of helping her.

"I know that parahumans can't help but use their powers, but I didn't save your life and then free you from whatever situation you were stuck in just so that you could turn around and expose all of my secrets." I told her seriously. "I'm one of the good guys, and I'm actively working to make this city, and hopefully the world, a better place… for everyone. If the people trying to wreck society know what I'm doing, or even what I'm really capable of, then my efforts will be much less productive."

"I'm sorry… I wasn't intending to threaten you, but I get that it might have sounded like that." Lisa said contritely. "Ever since I triggered, it's been hard to stop myself from running my mouth, usually to try and get one over on someone." She frowned, her green eyes pointed at the ground. "Other capes can shoot lasers, or hit really hard; the only weapons I have are my words." She gave me a shy smile, which I returned.

I studied the girl for a few minutes, trying to see if she was being honest with me. I tried something new, in order to accomplish this. Certainly, I could see every part of her body, using my amazing eyes, but using them as a lie detector wasn't perfect. When I used my healing power, however, I was connected to every part of someone's body at once, and gained a perfect understanding of its inner workings. I had learned earlier in the restaurant, that I could use "healing hands" at range, something that I hadn't even considered previously. It seemed to lose part of its effectiveness when I used it that way, quite a bit of the energy radiating off into the air, but I wasn't planning on healing anyone… I was planning to use it as a lie detector.

I used the smallest, most insignificant bit of healing energy that I could grasp, forming it into a microscopic beam that was so infinitesimal that it couldn't be seen with the naked eye. I aimed it at the exposed skin of Lisa's face, and then sent it out. I caught a tiny glow on my hand where the energy had originated, but other than that, nothing. It was not something that normal human eyes were capable of seeing, thankfully. When the beam of healing power connected, I smiled under the illusion I wore; I was connected to the girl's body again, and I could sense every one of her biological functions as if my palm was once more on her head. I couldn't actually heal her, using this little energy, but I could certainly tell what was going on.

I concentrated hard, trying to figure out what she was feeling. It was readily apparent; mostly, she was scared. Both of me, I suspected, and of something else… possibly whoever she had begged me to save her from. It was probably this nervousness, and a sense of relief at escaping, that had led her to run her mouth so thoughtlessly a moment ago. Super speed helped me learn all of this and more in a mere second, keeping me from delaying the conversation with my information gathering.

I was very glad to discover that Lisa was more than a fat mouthed sieve, for several reasons. For one, I got to put off learning whether I had it in me to do something terrible in order to protect my father and I, and to preserve my plans to help save the world. I was also glad because I liked her, in more ways than one, and I could definitely use the help of a powerful Thinker. I wasn't exactly chop suey when it came to the brains department, but I know my own limitations… in that area, and at least for now. I might keep getting smarter indefinitely, but I'm no 'Thinker nine' like Lisa appeared to be after the enhancements I'd given her brain and to the connection between her coronas and her power relay. I didn't know the specific of her ability, exactly, but it seemed akin to using deductive reasoning to a ludicrous level.

"I appreciate your honesty, and I'm not offended by what you said." I told her. "As long as you're willing to work with me, and to keep what you learn secret, I'd be glad to help you with any problems related to the captivity you mentioned, and any other problems that you're having, within reason." She became a little less tense as I spoke, some of the 'fight or flight' hormones in her bloodstream dispersing when she realized I wasn't going to kill her or portal her to China.

"Can you tell me more about the situation I rescued you from? I need to know if you're actively being targeted, and by who. I'm a little perplexed, as the people you were with didn't seem especially hostile, especially not the boy I talked to… he seemed concerned, if anything."

"Up until ten days ago, I was on my own, a complete unknown as far as capes go. I'd done nothing worse than some petty shoplifting, and that was only so I could keep myself fed while I was on the streets." She sighed. "I must have mouthed off to the wrong person, because someone figured out that I'm a Thinker, and before I knew it I'd been captured." She scowled, holding her fists to her sides and clenching them tightly.

"The bastard who caught me, Coil, sent an entire squad of goons after me when he realized what I was. Even before the tune-up you gave me, I was a powerful Thinker… probably one of the strongest in this part of the country. I tried everything I could to get away from his soldiers, used every trick in the book… but nothing worked. No matter where I ran, what I did, they were always one step ahead." She looked at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "When his mercenaries brought me before him, Coil gave me a choice; work for him 'willingly'," she used air quotes, "or eat a bullet. Seeing how I'm fond of living, I agreed to work for him. I figured that with time and luck, I would be able to figure out his power and get out from under his thumb."

Lisa laughed bitterly. "I still don't know what his power is. It's not something flashy or obvious. It's either a Thinker ability, possibly precognition, or some kind of power that can subtly manipulate reality. It tells him how to win in a given situation, somehow allowing him to make the correct decision in nearly any scenario. When I asked what his power was, he flipped a coin ten times in a row, giving me the correct answer every time. He told me that his power is 'destiny manipulation', which is complete and utter bullshit."

The girl's face was flushed due to anger and stress, her eyes puffy from unshed tears. "And then you came along," she said, sniffling and wiping away an escaped tear. "My own personal guardian angel, saving my life when my power went off the rails like a runaway train. You even literally swept me off of my fucking feet." The blonde teen laughed while she cried, tension draining from her body like air from a punctured tire. Given that she had been captured at gunpoint by armed soldiers, and then kept under nearly constant stress for almost two weeks, I could sympathize with what she was going through.

Lisa's legs looked a little wobbly, so I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her. She pressed her face into my side, and I felt hot tears soaking into my blouse as Lisa cried out her frustrations and bad feelings. I got the impression that she wasn't usually so emotional, but this had happened so rapidly, in just the right way, to cause this kind of reaction from her. I patted her shoulder reassuringly as she dried her eyes on her coat sleeve. There was still one thing piece of this puzzle left; or rather three pieces.

"What was the deal with the three other parahumans who were with you at Fugly Bob's? They didn't seem to be guarding you, or keeping tabs on you to prevent escape." I asked, wondering what had been up with that. The boy with the cornrows had been worried about her, and had done everything he could in that situation to protect the blonde Thinker from harm, even going so far to subtly threaten me when I went to take her away. While a captor or minder might have done something similar, I wouldn't expect them to actually care about their charge.

"They're a team of minor league supervillains that Coil just put together. They don't know anything about him, not even his name; just that they have a mysterious benefactor who pays them to join forces expects them to do specific jobs now and then. Coil forced me to join as his 'inside man' so that I could steer their group to his ends and keep an eye on them." She explained. "They're called "The Undersiders", and all of them come from bad situations, or have valid reasons for becoming supervillains… but none of them were recruited forcibly, like me. They didn't know that I wasn't there by choice, either… Coil told me that if I let them in on that he would either kill me, or whoever I told… whichever was more convenient for him."

I looked at her in surprise, my mind whirling at the implications. "So, the team is brand new, then? Have you even committed any crimes yet?" I inquired. "And why were the other three so willing to become villains… surely they could have joined the Wards, or became rogues if they needed money?"

Lisa laughed bitterly, her face twisted into a scowl. "Not all of us hit the jackpot in the superpower lottery like you." She said. "The Protectorate would take any of us, sure, but then we would be making minimum wage until we hit eighteen, the rest of our pay going into the vaunted Wards 'trust fund'. Brian, the boy you talked to, needs a valid source of income so that he can get custody of his little sister; she's in a bad situation. The PRT might help with that, but then again they might not… and they would make him join up first, without him knowing if they were actually going to help beforehand." She frowned. "The PRT cares more about getting parahumans under their thumb then about their welfare, especially underage ones. They would probably string him along with promises, as that would allow them to control him more easily."

"As far as the other two go, Rachel and 'Alec'," more air quotes, "are damaged goods. Both of them triggered young and were forced to commit some fairly heinous crimes, either by supervillain parents in Alec's case, or just to survive in Rachel's. If the PRT even knew they were in town, they'd be more likely to send them to prison than to entertain the notion of recruiting them."

I looked at her in shock. "Surely they can't blame kids for committing crimes so that they could survive." I found myself saying out loud. As I said the words, however, my knowledge of parahuman law informed me that yes, the law did often hold young parahumans accountable for their actions, as if they were full grown adults. The practice made me sick; some of the children they had consigned to juvie and the birdcage-the foremost parahumans prison-were no older than nine years old. Sure, they had committed some pretty heinous crime, but that did not mean that they were as responsible for their actions as an adult was. Children couldn't vote or drive for a very good reason… their minds and bodies weren't developed enough to do so; neither was their sense of judgement. A child was, simply put, not capable of shouldering either the rights nor the responsibilities of an adult. Pretending like they were just because it was more convenient, was abhorrent to me.

And this Coil, a fully grown man who took advantage of troubled parahuman children… it made me sick. I sincerely hoped that Lisa didn't just plan on running and hiding, because I was most assuredly planning to punish Coil for his vile actions. If I could rescue the other teens who he'd roped into committing crimes for him then all the better. I had nearly a quarter million dollars; surely that should be enough to at least begin helping with the Undersiders' various problems, at least for now. And when I took down this self-styled mastermind, this 'master of destiny', then I would add his resources to my own, giving me even more options and choices when it came to helping these, and other, children. No one should have to have their lives ruined just because they were abused, or otherwise subject to the whims of fate at a young age.

"We're going to be taking Coil down, as soon as possible." I told Lisa, my voice brooking no argument.

She looked at me, her eyes wide. "Just like that?" She asked, her tone filled with surprise. She stared at me harder, her brow furrowed. "Whatever you did to me, it's not helping me read you any better than I could before… I can pick up things about your individual powers by observing their effects on other people and the world around you, but from youI'm getting nothing… well, nothing that makes sense. At least my power's not tearing my brain apart trying to figure you out anymore..." She said dryly. She pursed her lips, snuggling up against me more closely. "Just what is your power, anyway? If we're going to be working together, then that would be a good thing to know."

I thought it over for a moment; if I was going to be helping this girl, and maybe even her former teammates, then it would only make sense to reveal my true self to her… if not my true nature. She may not have been able to read me directly using her power, but if we kept meeting then sooner or later she would pick up enough clues from context to figure out where I lived, or something else that would lead her back to my identity. Based on her rather abrasive sense of curiosity, I doubt that she would settle for a non-answer, either.

I pondered for a moment, before coming to a conclusion. Lisa had been playing it straight with me by telling me everything she knew, whenever I asked her a question. Oh, I knew that she was using a false name, but I knew her real appearance, so it would be trivial to find out her true identity in just a few moments on the Internet. If I was going to be working with her then it really would behoove me to show her the same amount of trust that she had already given me.

Besides… she had started seizing in the restaurant when she'd seen me in my civilian identity, and then again when she saw my illusory Archangel Ariel disguise. I doubt that the minor memory loss from the brain damage she'd been afflicted with would keep her from linking the two incidents for long. I'd healed all of the damage, which meant that she could access those memories at any time. I suspect it was only her shock and the rapid change in circumstances that was keeping her from remembering mine and my father's appearances at the moment. A show of trust right now might go a long way toward getting her on my side and helping her to trust me long-term. Besides, I liked Lisa, in more ways than one... and I could always use another friend.

I dropped the illusion I'd been wearing, causing the armored, Amazonian angel who had been holding Lisa tightly to shrink down to normal size. Now I was merely taller than average, not superhumanly huge. Lisa looked into my face, which was much closer to her own than it had seemed previously, blinking her eyes in shock as she took in my superhumanly perfect features. I gave her a huge grin as she continued to stare up at me like a deer caught in the headlights. She was maybe 5'6 in height, about a head shorter than me, so she had to crane her neck to keep her eyes on mine. Finally, after a period of time that felt like an eternity, but was only a minute or two in reality, she turned her head away while exhaling loudly.

"I thought that you'd be older," she finally said after another moment of silence. "You're about nineteen, right?" Asked the dark blonde haired girl, a slight blush present on her freckle dotted cheeks. The other girl in the room with me was acting a bit odd, now, trying to avoid looking me in the eyes... but not attempting to get out from under my arm, strangely enough. She still had her front facing me, her torso and legs pressing up against the side of my body. Her face was nearly touching my neck. Maybe she'd realized that she'd had her face buried the crook of my neck while she had been crying a few minutes earlier, and not against my side like she had thought? Was that embarrassment enough to explain her current actions?

"I'm fifteen, actually." I told her. I gave her a shy smile, a light rosy blush of my own spreading over my face. "My name is Taylor Hebert, and I just started my sophomore year in high school. It's very nice to meet you, Lisa." I loosened up the hold I had around her shoulders, and began to turn toward her so that I could offer my new friend my hand to shake. My fingers trailed over her back as I moved, feeling her soft skin underneath her top. I turned my head so that I was looking her directly into her eyes. That was when Lisa did something that surprised the hell out of me… I'm not sure if she thought I was leaning in to make a move, or if it was simply because she was as attracted to me as I was to her, but the lithe blonde practically jumped me. Her newly strengthened arms wrapped around my torso and she pressed her moist lips firmly against my own.

When I opened my mouth to gasp, it was suddenly filled with a wriggling tongue that began massaging my own, and then exploring the interior of my oral cavity. I noted that the gorgeous teenage girl in my arms tasted faintly of cherry lip gloss. I was surprised, extremely so, but this new development was definitely not unwelcome. I wrapped my own arms around the sexy little blonde and grabbed her firm little bubble butt tightly, pulling her against me. She gyrated her hips back and forth wildly as the juncture between her shapely legs was ground against my knee under the force of my grip.

Lisa pulled away from our searing kiss and threw her head back to whimper in pleasure from the stimulation her sweet little box was receiving. I felt my right knee starting to get damp through my jeans as the other girl continued to push her womanhood against my leg, her little hole spilling liquid love all over me. I saw Lisa's smooth, graceful neck uncovered as her head hung backward, so I attacked with my mouth, alternately sucking, kissing, and giving it little nips with my teeth. This sent the green eyed teen into a frenzy, her body shuddering as she orgasmed from the sensation my mouth on her skin and the rough pleasure of dry-fucking her cloth covered pussy against my leg.

I help the cute little teenager close as she came down from her orgasm, shudders and little jolts of pleasure still coursing through her body. She fluttered her eyes as she blearily came back to herself, fighting off the warm, sleepy sensation that coming so strongly, and so unexpectedly, had caused. We slowly sank down to the carpeted floor together, and she leaned close and kissed me again when our rear ends hit the floor. We both began pulling and unfastening each other's clothing between sweet kisses, discarded garments being dropped or thrown away as soon as they were clear of our bodies.

"God, you are so fucking sexy," husked Lisa as she finished tearing off my shirt, her eyes firmly locked onto my big, round breasts. I hadn't yet had a chance to purchase a bra since my transformation… not that I seemed to need one. My huge titties, which had to be at least an 'E cup' were not only extremely well shaped, they were very firm, with just enough sag to show that they were real and not silicone implants. Each of my tits was capped with a large pink nipple which protruded from the exact center of my relatively small areolas. In short, my breasts were glorious, and Lisa had seemed to fall in love with them at first sight.

The beautiful blonde dove at my chest, a string of drool hanging from the corner of her mouth as she locked her lips onto my left nipple and began sucking noisily on it. Her thick, sensuous lips worked the most sensitive part of breast as she nursed. The feeling of her mouth on me, and the sheer sluttiness I felt at letting a veritable stranger suck on my tits made me moan out loud. The other teen occasionally flicked her tongue out, batting at the nub she was sucking, which made my toes curl in pleasure. She would also nip at my nipples and other parts of my boobs with her teeth, causing me hiss at the sharp, delicious sensation. A warm, tingly feeling began to build up in my chest from the yummy feelings that Lisa was giving me.

Her head moved back and forth every few minutes, as Lisa alternated sucking on first one, and then the other of my thick pink nipples. The titty that she wasn't currently giving a tongue bath was not left to fend for itself; the girl with the bright green eyes would lock eyes with me over the wide curves of my epic cleavage, and pinch and pull at whichever of the ultra-sensitive pink nubs she didn't currently have in her mouth, teasing me unmercifully. My tiny little cunny was juicing like crazy after less than five minutes of this erotic breast worship, causing my slippery girly cum to leak from my bare snatch, and drool all over my thighs, and Lisa's own tits, which were rubbing all over my naked lap as Lisa laid on top of me, straddling my long, smooth legs.

The tingling in my chest reached a crescendo as the sexy young girl on top of my began treating my poor titties really rough, violently slapping at them and gnawing on my drool-covered nipples, then biting down and pulling back using her strong neck muscles, or whipping her head from side to side with both pink nubs trapped between her teeth at the same time. Her eyes had a manic expression in them as she tortured my fat baby feeders, and I could feel a pool of her own girly goo flowing from her sopping snatch as she really got into it.

Of course, none of her rough treatment was actually harming me… I was so bullshit durable that I could have had Alexandria from the Triumvirate do a fucking Mexican tap dance on my breasts, and all that would happen was that she would get tired out. The only thing that my new lover accomplished when she munched vigorously on my cans, was to send huge spikes of pleasure directly into my brain.

Finally, I couldn't take it any longer. A humongous explosion of scalding electricity lanced through my breasts, making me cry out in abject ecstasy. A high-picked keening sound rang out from my throat as the enormous pressure that had been gathering in my titties increased to the point that it was actually painful, before releasing suddenly in the form of a blinding wave of pleasure. The amazing feelings that shot through my fat boobies were so mind-numbingly wonderful that I nearly blacked out, only my superhuman constitution allowing me to hold onto consciousness. As I looked down through eyes half lidded in pleasure, and leaking tears from the intensity of the sensations wracking my body, I witnessed something wonderful happen.

My big, thick nipples had swollen even larger and turned bright red under Lisa's wonderful oral torture. Now, they were swelling even more, becoming longer, wider, and even more puffy as I convulsed from the massive titgasm I was experiencing. As I watched, my teeth clenched from overstimulation, the pores at the end of each nipple were forced open, the tiny seals keeping them sealed blocking open under the massive pressure inside my jiggling breasts. My eyes rolled up into my head and a gurgling sound escaped from my throat as torrents of thick, white fluid spewed out of my gigantic knockers in huge, satisfying spurts. I moaned deeply, even louder than before, as my fat, milk filled baby feeders came hard. Lisa still had both nipples stuck in her mouth, the rubbery nubs clutched between her teeth as they started spraying milk directly into her delicious oral fuck-hole.

Lisa locked her lips around my milk-spewing paps as soon as they started ejaculating, humming in pleasure through her closed mouth as she tried as hard as she could to simultaneously grind my nipples into mush with her teeth and suck my poor boobies completely dry. Her mouth and throat worked frantically as she pleasured me nearly into a coma, gulping down mouthful after mouthful of the thick, creamy titty-cum I was feeding her. She grabbed the sides of my boobs with her small, strong hands, digging her fingers as deep as possibly into the voluminous tit-flesh she found there. When her hands would sink no further into my huge rack, the teenaged Thinker began to work my titties over with as much strength as she could bring to bear, massaging the deepest part of my breasts, clenching her hands over and over again, stimulating my gurgling, cream filled udders to shoot their milky load even more forcefully.

That was the last straw for me; feeling the sweet girl furiously sucking and squeezing my big, fat titties so forcefully was so transcendently amazing that my soaking wet pussy, which hadn't even been touched, exploded into orgasm as well. My hot little hole clenched, squeezing and pulsing as the entire core of my being was filled with white light. I began to sob in unrestrained joy as my cunt and tits came in unison, hot jets of thick fluid erupting from both ends. Lisa continued to torture my breasts wonderfully as I shook and sobbed. My face turned bright red as I cried out, my arms and legs encircling the hot blonde who was making me feel so fucking good, holding her sexy little body tightly against my own. I buried my hands into her silky hair, tugging on her honey colored locks as she kept nursing, eating the thick, creamy discharge my heavy tits kept spewing out.

My mind was awash with such overwhelming pleasure that I fear I would have died, had I still been mortal. The dual orgasms thundering in my titties and cunt kept crashing through my body like Leviathan's tsunami waves, making me spasm and shake while I sobbed in unrestrained joy under Lisa's furious assault. My beautiful face was a mess by now, wet from countless tears, and bright red from cumming so hard for so long.

The hot teenager violently sucking and squeezing my tits suddenly switched targets, releasing my left breast from her crushing palpitations and roughly forcing three of her slim fingers up into my super tight, heavily gushing cunt. My hips bucked uncontrollably as my new lover penetrated my tiny virgin pussy, causing me to nearly throw her off of my gyrating body from the strength of my wild humping motions. A sense of deep, visceral satisfaction welled up from deep inside of my slippery little gash as it was stuffed full of firm, feminine fingers. I wailed in abject lust at the feeling of having something fucked into my womanhood, wishing that her fingers were thicker, longer, bigger.

Unbidden, the thought of the hung black boy from the restaurant, Brian, filled my mind. His penis had been at least five inches long, and quite wide, and it was completely flaccid. I imagined that it would grow much larger than that when it became hard. I pictured his huge cock tearing into my little hole, stretching it out and making it his. I moaned deeply again at the lewd thought, and at the sexy, slutty things that the blonde who I barely knew was doing to my incredibly sensitive body. I squealed and sobbed my way through the never-ending orgasm that tore through me as the hot little blonde forced another finger up inside of me. I really wished that she had something bigger to stuff up there.

'God, I wish that Lisa had a big, fat dick to fuck me with!' I thought. The mental image of such a cute, petite girl with an enormous cock and a pair of fat, round testicles jutting out over her delicious little pussy intensified my orgasm, making me gasp and pant. My inhibitions were lowered, and I was feeling so much pleasure that I was almost completely out of control, barely coherent at best. That was probably what led to me fucking up really badly with my healing power again.

I really need to stop doing that.

Golden lightning flowed from my hands, which were still tangled up in Lisa's long blonde hair, the jagged, nearly undirected spikes of power coursing through her body. The other girl was nearly as incoherent as I was at that point. Her own little pussy was winking open and closed as it spurted girly cum onto my legs as she ground her delicious little snatch against me, cumming hard. Lisa's eyes were tightly shut as she continued to suck a never ending tit-load of thick, sweet booby-cum from my still spurting nipples. Her formerly flat tummy was pooching out slightly from the amount of my milk that she had consumed, but evidently she couldn't make herself stop.

As blissed out as I was from the horny little teenybopper playing my body like it was an instrument, I didn't evennoticethat my healing power was active until well after the damage was done. Responding to my horny, depraved desires, the golden light filling Lisa's body did my bidding, as it had each and every time I had used it. This time, however, I wasn't even aware that I had ordered it to do anything. Taking cues from my lustful imaginings and the only coherent thought I'd had about the sexy blond in the last few minutes, the Thinker's body changed.

An enormous bulge began forming above the teen's clitoris, swelling bigger and bigger, like some kind of fucked up tumor. Big and round, the lump continued to increase in size until it was nearly the size of one of Lisa's perky 'C' cup breasts. And then it exploded. The skin on the outside of the lump suddenly broke, and a gigantic coiled penis sprung forth, slapping wetly against my legs. Below this mammoth flaccid cock was a huge scrotum, containing two testicles, each the size of a small, squat eggplant.

Spitting out my nipples and yanking her fingers out of me, like my pussy had scalded her, Lisa stared down at her crotch in shock, her eyes the size of dinner plates. The sudden loss of stimulation caused my extra-long orgasm to end abruptly, and I blinked my watery eyes, trying to figure out what was going on. I looked up at the girl who was still lying on top of me, staring dumbly at first her milk coated face, and then the huge, sticky male organ which protruded from her previously all female body.

"What the fuck, Taylor!?" cried Lisa, a notes of hysteria and anger coloring her voice.

I met her eyes, my mouth hanging open in shock. My body was still shaking a bit as orgasmic aftershocks coursed through me, and my expression continued to espouse sheer, stupefied surprise. I moved my gaze back and forth, alternating between taking in her beautiful, feminine face and the huge, veiny horse-sized cock hanging limp above her sticky little snatch. The same downy golden fur which Lisa's mons were dusted with decorated the root of her new prick; the soft, fluffy pubic hair somehow feminizing the huge, dangerous looking organ.

My superhuman mind whirled, my brain computing the best way to handle this situation, coming up with dozens of strategies to navigate my way through the minefield that my unconscious action had created. I weighed the pros and cons of several things that I might say or do, trying to figure out how to somehow salvage something from this monumental cluster-fuck. I prepared to part my lips, getting ready to deliver the perfect sentence which would make all of this right. It was all for naught, however, because my stupid mouth was already moving.

"Oops?" I found myself saying.

"God dammit, Taylor..." sighed Lisa as her penis, still laying on my leg, twitched.