"So I guess I'll just wait here for you to come back?" Emma asked rhetorically, arms crossed as she leaned against the nearest wall.
I'd taken an additional handful of minutes to go over the minutiae of how some of the new gear worked - like making sure Vicky knew her ghetto knockoff of Path to Victory would only work every ten minutes or so, but that she could suppress the activation to only go off when she wanted it to - and the redhead had mostly just deigned to watch with interest while I had done so.
"Huh?" I bumbled at the statement, jarred from considering what else I could do in terms of magic items. I knew I was only doing maybe a tenth of the work required to actually produce some of the stuff I made - there was simply no way that any moron who knew the right symbols to scratch onto a tiara could make a diadem of Desna the way I had otherwise. I probably should have considered it sooner, but my focus on technology that other people would recognize as 'tinkertech' had sort of been dumb.
Not that I could have really done anything differently if I had wanted to.
Pretty much everything I built was in direct response to a problem I had, after all.
"Shouldn't you like, go home? We're gonna be out all night anyway," Vicky pointed out for me.
"It's like nine at night. You might be able to fly right over the bad neighborhoods to get here, but I'm not setting foot outside without someone to take me home," Emma insisted, before lifting an eyebrow in Vickys direction and adding, "Unless you're offering to fly me."
"That's… actually a fair point," I muttered in thought, earning myself a glare from Vicky - I have no idea why, it was a perfectly reasonable statement on Emma's part - and a look of vindication from Emma herself that left me feeling weirdly like I had just lost at something.
I opened my mouth to apologetically ask Vicky if she would mind terribly doing me this favor - I mean obviously she did, but I had to ask anyway - but was saved from annoying the blond further by an unlikely ally.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Amy asked me, clearing her throat loudly to get everyone's attention. As one, we turned to look at her, so she rolled her eyes and pointed one gloved finger at the Encounter Suit. My eyes instantly lit up.
"Oh! Right, shit, sorry. I was distracted," I said sheepishly, only to get a chorus of 'nerd' shot back at me by… well by everyone in the room.
It would have been endearing and familial if it didn't also set Emma and Vicky to glaring at each other again.
"Screw you guys. Vicky, can you drop Emma at home while I help set the suit up on Amy's projection?" I asked tiredly, and the quiet desperation in my voice, born from hours of dealing with the two of them must have shown through, because they both winced when I spoke.
I felt bad but… man was I gonna be glad when this was over and I could go back to being a social recluse.
Vicky shot me a look that I took to mean 'fine but don't ask again', before begrudgingly grunting and turning to Emma.
"Fine. Let's go, I actually wanna do something that matters tonight," she groused, lifting off the ground and gliding out of the room faster than Emma could keep up.
Emma, for her part, got a relieved look on her face that instantly made me feel like shit.
See, I had been assuming she brought the entire thing up as another one of her weird social power plays - something that would force us cape types to let her stay engaged. Only now, I realize she was being entirely serious. This was a girl who - very recently - had been extremely traumatized by the gangs. When she said she wasn't going home without an escort - she meant it. Even if she and said escort didn't actually get along.
I awkwardly watched both girls leave for a second, then, when they were both out of sight, released a breath I hadn't known I was holding.
"Alright so, the suit- '' I began, turning around to find Amy's… Petting Zoos… projection already wearing the encounter suit, and having transformed itself into what Satan may generously describe as a horse - on a charitable day.
The shapeshifting bio armor was fitted over the creature so snugly that the teal outer layer looked like a second layer of blubbery whale skin. The 'horse' had a cherry red glow across it's torso that made its bone structure visible even through the armor. It had claws instead of hooves, bat wings that shouldn't under any circumstances have been anything but decorations, and was emitting a steady stream of acrid smoke from its nostrils as it pawed the floor. The scraping sound that caused as its incredibly sharp claws interacted with the concrete was jarring as hell. Nearly jarring enough that I almost forgot to ask what the fuck was going on.
"I thought-" I began, turning to Amy who was already making her way past me to her steed with an annoyed look on her face.
"You seemed like you needed an out," She said with a mixture of resignation and irritation clear in her voice. Which… I mean fair.
"Sure, but how did you know how to use it?" I asked again.
As much as the Encounter Suit was weirdly easy to make, it was stillpower armor. It wasn't like my suit, which any idiot could put on and start walking around in. It had biological mechanisms inside of it that assisted the wearer's movements, and required actual skill and competency to pilot. Sure, it had been designed for a race of shapeshifters, so it matched oddly well with Amy's nightmare projection, but that didn't mean she should be able to instantly master it.
"You grew it from m-my projection. It just kind of reattached itself when they got close to each other," She said with a shrug, making her projection lower itself until she could get on the massive nightmare horse's back.
I frowned at that. That was… not a good thing. It meant that any biological material I cultured from the thing would be at constant risk of being taken back the second it got near me. More importantly, it meant that Shaper - Amy's shard - maintained control of the stuff when it was separated from the projection, and there was no way I was going to build anything that would connect me to that bitch of a shard.
So there went my own Encounter Suit. I doubted I'd get away with having biological armor in the first place under Piggot, but it might have been nice to have as a back up anyway. It wasn't like it took all that much personal effort to grow one.
"Whatever, are we good now?" Sophia interjected, tapping one foot on the floor irately as she waited for everyone to get ready.
"Yeah, I guess. Just gotta wait for Vicky to get back. Sorry, by the way," I offered tentatively. If I could touch the back of my own head I'd be scratching it awkwardly, but as it was, I couldn't - so I just flexed my hands anxiously instead.
"What's the deal with her anyway? I was gonna leave it alone but…" Amy trailed off, wiggling around on top of her horse adjacent… thing… until she was comfortable. Once she was happy with her positioning, the sides of the thing grew bonelike protrusions that wrapped around her legs before plunging back into its own flesh in a way that looked profoundly painful, securing her in place.
I stared at the spectacle for a second, not sure what to make of it. The Amy I was familiar with was almost insanely prudish about her biokinesis. This version of her seemed to take a bizarre sense of joy in weirding me out everytime she did something with her power, if the slightly amused look on her face as I watched was anything to go by.
I say 'slightly' because she was still very evidently annoyed that I had inconvenienced her sister in any capacity. Which… I would probably find much more scary if she had the version of her power I was familiar with. As is, this was actually drastically less stressful.
"But she's fucking useless and keeps wasting our time," Sophia interjected angrily. I winced. Usually Soph took whatever I said or did as gospel truth nowadays, so she had to be very annoyed to be calling me out like this.
"I uh, I mean I saved her from getting dragged off by the bad boys a while ago, and she was really shaken up about it so I went to see her again, and then she sort of latched onto me as like… an emotional support parahuman and…" I trailed off, unsure of how to really explain Emma's presence in my life without explaining a whole bunch of other stuff I'd rather not.
Hard to lay out 'I had to stop her from becoming a bitch from trauma so she wouldn't make someone totally separate trigger and do a bunch of fucked up shit' in a way that wasn't… really hard to make sound reasonable.
Sure I had that faux thinker rating, but there was being a thinker, and then there was 'predicting trigger events years down the line'.
"Oh. Oh my god, you like her," Amy said in a tone of voice that was practically oozing with scorn - and a touch of relief that made me extremely uncomfortable.
"I do not!" I snapped at her. And genuinely, I didn't. I could see how she would probably end up a very pretty woman as an adult - but she wasn't one yet, and I wasn't interested in being with someone who had less emotional intelligence than me by far, or effectively rearing her to become one.
That was just creepy.
I heard a snort from Sophia and I turned to glare at her through my helmet.
"I don't! Seriously! I just felt bad for her!" I insisted.
"Sure, I believe you," She said with a shrug and a completely serious tone of voice.
"You do?" Amy asked her incredulously, turning to my cousin with a surprised look on her face. Sophia snorted again.
"No," She admitted.
I groaned.
How to explain this…
"Listen, I- you guys know I know stuff, so just- I mean, if I didn't exist Soph would have rescued her and they would have been best friends so I felt bad for fucking that up!" I blurted out, uncomfortable with the topic in its entirety and desperately trying to find a way to make myself understood.
"...but she's fucking useless?" Sophia asked in an entirely nonplussed tone of voice.
"You-" I started to say in response, only to be interrupted as Vicky exploded back into the room.
"Alright! Where are we headed, Star?" She asked, flying into the room so quickly that she actually skidded two feet across the floor before stopping. I looked at Sophia and Amy, hoping to see some form of acceptance of what I had said on their faces, but as teens are wont to do, they had already moved on as though it had never happened.
Which is not to say they wouldn't remember it. Just that it had lost their attention.
Grumbling, and not wanting to bring it back up with Vicky around to add to the dogpile, I begrudgingly allowed the topic to pass, simply happy not to be talking about it anymore.
And hopefully, ever again.
"You are very optimistic today, sir," Merlin noted idly.
'Screw you too buddy. Just… just find us a place to hit with no capes,' I responded with a sigh.
"I was under the impression that your compatriots wished to target the Merchants?" Merlin queried.
'The Merchants are barely a gang. They don't matter, and they don't have turf I could even begin to invade. Besides, I-' I paused trying to put into words why I was leery of that. It wasn't that I didn't want to go kick the shit out of Skidmark. The problem was, it was the exact opposite - I wanted to hurt Skidmark and his gang of crack-addled pricks.
If I closed my eyes in a quiet room, I could still hear the crunch of a man dying under my hammer. It haunted me in a way I wouldn't have expected beforehand. I had always considered myself fairly pragmatic, fairly emotionally resilient. Even if I wasn't the most balanced person in the world, I considered myself impervious to things like trauma. I mean… I was the outside context problem. I was destined to do a bunch of important shit and kill god or whatever.
So why couldn't I stop agonizing over the death of one random transient who - at the time - had been trying to kill me?
I didn't know. But I did know that if I got within vision range of Skidmark I… might do something ill advised.
So instead, I had Merlin designate a few areas we could patrol that had a high, but not guaranteed, likelihood of encountering normal gang activity.
And I prayed Skidmark didn't decide to show his stupid tarp covered face while we were at it.
"Come on, I'll lead the way," I said easily, turning and heading towards the roll up doors at the rear of the building.
"Soooo," Vicky asked as I bent over to pull the aluminum door upward.
"Hmm?" I grunted.
"What's your deal with her?" She asked pointedly, like the specific 'her' she was talking about should be obvious to me. Which it was, much to my annoyance.
"Why do you care?" I demanded, my annoyance at the entire ordeal starting to bleed past the filters that usually prevented me from snapping on all the teenagers I was surrounded by for being teenagers.
When the snappy answers I had come to expect from Vicky failed to be forthcoming as I stepped out of the building I paused and turned around to find a hurt and angry expression on the blonde's face. Amy was glaring at me, and Sophia… well I couldn't make heads or tails of Soph in her pitch black suit in the middle of the night - but she felt disapproving for whatever reason.
I groaned - but only because it wouldn't be socially acceptable to take that moment to scream into the void.
Fucking. Teenagers.
"Vicky! Vicky, come on!" I yelled after the blond, who had promptly refused to speak to me past the point of finding out where we were going. Why she was still bothering to work with me and Soph tonight when she was clearly pissed at me and just wanted to patrol with her sister was beyond me but-
Actually, no, Soph hadn't pissed her off so, that, I understood.
Unfortunately for me, I was still somehow the slowest member of our group. Sophia could do her weird jump glide thing with such casual ease that I suspected her shard had partially automated the process for her, Amy was on a flying horse, Vicky could fly.
And I was left trying to time my jumpjet usage so as not to burn too much fuel before actually getting into a fight.
"Just- look I'll explain if you want, I just-" I huffed, slightly out of breath from the dead sprint I was being forced into in order to keep up with the three annoyed women with me. Truthfully, I could live with them being mad at me. I didn't like it, but I supposed it solved the problem of Dean being pissed off at me all the time quite handily. No, my problem was that we were a group of extremely obvious and visible capes making our way across the city at night looking for trouble.
And that was my only problem with it.
Definitely.
Even odds were, either we'd scare anyone off before we had the chance to do much of anything but do a lot of running, or we'd attract attention from an enemy cape. Both things I would actually prefer not to do tonight, especially with everyone mad and therefore, stupid.
At length, I finally managed to catch up with Vicky, although that was less because I sped up enough to do so, and more because she finally stopped flying ahead of me, choosing to alight on top of a nearby building where she waited for me to arrive.
Admittedly, I could have used the Mindlink Circlet at really any point in order to force Vicky to hear me out - since the only way to block psychic transmission is to be psychic, or to exit the circlets range - but that felt like a stupendously bad idea when my desired end result was for her to be less mad at me.
Shit, it was less than a moment ago that I'd thought I didn't care that much about them being mad at me, but now that I was getting the chance to apologize I had to admit it actually did bother me. It bothered me alot. In the strictest sense, these were basically my only friends. My closest friends. Yeah they were also annoying bloody teenagers, but once you got past the somewhat lacking emotional intelligence - a field I was pretty garbage at myself on a good day - they weren't stupid or anything. I could, if pressed, admit to having some fun moments with them.
So as I drew up next to Vicky and basically everyone else, who had all managed to land before I had, I was paying very little attention to my surroundings.
"Look, I'm seriously sorry I just-" I began. I would describe this sudden blurting of my thoughts as uncharacteristic but well.
It sort of wasn't.
My ability to deal with other people was really good, right up until it wasn't.
'Hey, moron, focus," Sophia thought at me over the mindlink circlet, even as Vicky rolled her eyes and physically grabbed my arm to turn me towards the street below us - which I awkwardly allowed, but only because I was too distracted to stop her.
…and also I couldn't have physically stopped Vicky from doing much of anything even if I wanted to.
Below us, were two extremely nonplussed looking capes. No, nonplussed isn't the word, rather, they seemed like they were waiting for us to finish talking before proceeding with… whatever it was they were doing. The broken window, and loud blaring alarm coming from the jeweler across the street made it sort of self evident I suppose.
"...So like, are you doing a fantasy theme thing or-" I began to ask in lieu of knowing what the hell I was looking at.
Because there were two guys in medieval armor, one of them bright blue armor, and the other wearing an ill fitting viking helm standing in the road staring at us.
"I told you people wouldn't recognize it," The guy in the viking helm grumbled at his compatriot.
"Nah man, real gamers will get it. Tower of Doom came up before these guys were even born probably," The other responded casually.
Evidently, ignoring my question, and our presence in general, wasn't sitting great with Vicky - who, again, was already kind of pissed off - because she interrupted their brief aside to talk about… video games…
Son of a bitch.
"Hey! Assholes! You're outnumbered, I suggest you surrender!" She insisted in what I'm sure was a very heroic tone and pose in her head, but which came across as petulant to pretty much everyone else, if the snickering from the two villains was anything to go by when she said it.
'Please don't be Uber and Leet, Please don't be Uber and Leet, Please-' I chanted in my head.
"There are several pieces of tinkertech secreted about their persons sir, and a brief scan of their streaming site is currently showing them robbing the jewelry store. I would estimate it at a fifteen minute delay," Merlin popped in to helpfully inform me.
I couldn't help but groan at the confirmation.
"I dunno, I scan four baby heroes and whatever that thing is," One of them - I couldn't tell the difference between Uber and Leet at a glance - noted, pointing at Amy's horse thing.
'Plan?' Soph asked me immediately through the circlet, which was helpful because it finally kicked my mind back over to thinking about the current situation and not driven to distraction by interpersonal bullshit.
Not that it mattered, as Vicky flew straight down at the two idiots before I could even answer.
It wasn't so much that I was concerned by Uber and Leet being a threat, but rather, Uber and Leet had a curious ability to get away with things and make anyone who tried to stop them look stupid in the process. They'd been around long enough that even now they were a household name in the city, and they hadn't gotten that way by being nearly as bad as most of the fanfiction I had once read would seem to imply they were at being supervillains.
So I wasn't worried about getting murdered, which was good. I was kind of worried that my definitely not sanctioned Wards patrol was about to be live streamed.
I'm sure Piggot would loooove that when she found out about it in the morning. Assuming the crazy woman wasn't working through the night and liable to find out about it exactly fifteen minutes from now.
As though expecting Vicky to charge him, the man in the blue armor lifted a shield with a weird hexagonal pattern glowing on its surface, which he used to perfectly deflect the blond's punch to the side, popping her forcefield amidst the impact, and causing Vicky to land on one foot with way too much force from her punch spinning her to the left and leaving her back open to her opponent.
And naturally, because Vicky was Vicky, and therefore, completely devoid of any kind of restraint when she was pissed off, she completely ignored her suddenly absent forcefield, and equally, suddenly absent ability to fly.
I give this to Glory Girl though, she wasn't a complete moron, and had clearly set up that punch so that she could safely land if her forcefield did get popped, which resulted in an only very minor stumble as the guy with the shield - I assume this one was Uber because he looked actually competent - lifted his sword overhead to swing it at her.
A chill ran down my spine at that, as I recalled that no one in this dumb city actually knew that Vicky wasn't invulnerable all the time, and likewise, cursed as my hopes for my workaround for her forcefield turned out to be bunk.
Before I could even think to act, Merlin had my canons whirling around on my shoulders to fire a burst of violent force at Uber, and I mentally reached out to my teammates.
'Blue one's probably Uber, take him out and Leet isn't half as effective. Dogpile him, but keep an eye out for anything Leet does - I dunno what stupid bullshit he's got right now,' I fired off at the speed of thought, prompting Sophia into motion, and Amy - who had been only barely behind me in responding to Vicky's moment of vulnerability - slammed into the concrete below on her mount.
Following my own advice, I left Merlin to focus on taking shots at Uber - which he was blocking admirably with his shield, despite that making no sense at all to me given the fact that I was shooting invisible bursts of sonic energy at him - and I turned my attention towards Leet.
Just in time for something to bounce off my domed helmet, cracking it and for some reason making all my systems reboot.
Including Merlin.
Including the servos and actuators that let me move in this giant hunk of crap in the first place.
"I think I hate Tinkers," I said out loud, more to myself than anything else. Across the mindlink circlet I could hear Glory Girl, Shadow Stalker, and… Petting Zoo… coordinating their attacks on Uber, which at least seemed to be going well, and I quickly let them know that I was dead in the water for a little bit while all my shit turned back on.
"Sir, you are a Tinker," Merlin helpfully pointed out to me.
"That's different," I complained as my suit's power cycled and everything started to boot back up.
'I'll cover Star, you guys keep him down,' Vicky ordered instantly, taking over in the absence of my ability to really see what was going on sans the visual enhancements my suit and Merlin combined gave me.
'How are we doing?' I quickly asked for clarification as something vaguely Vicky shaped thumped into the rooftop next to me.
'It's-' Vicky began to answer over the mindlink, only to loudly curse as something bounced off of her head, making her stumble.
"Hey! Stop throwing those at my head!" Vicky barked angrily which just seemed so… I mean was she expecting the supervillains to listen or what?
Almost mirroring my thoughts on the matter, two more of the objects flew through the air at her, and she was forced to bolt to the side to avoid them the second her shield - and therefore, ability to fly - returned to her.
"Who cares! It can't hurt you anyway!" Leet cackled back at her.
My suit came back online just in time for me to see Vicky bite back her own instinctual reply to that, which was probably something along the lines of 'yes it can'.
Honestly, it kind of felt like hiding how her forcefield worked was a double edged sword sometimes. Sure, no one really knew how to stop her without that information, but likewise, people seemed continuously comfortable applying lethal force to Glory Girl even when they really, really, shouldn't.
'Shadow Stalker, peel off and distract Leet, I can't get knocked out like that again. Petting Zoo, fall back from Uber, I'll see if I can do something about him temporarily,' I rattled off, engaging my spell core and ducking beneath what I could now see was an utterly mundane looking steel hammer as it cratered the brickwork of the chimney behind me.
Then I pointed a finger at Uber and did what gamers have been doing since the dawn of time.
I fudged the rules a bit, and thanks to Merlin's tireless efforts to make my library of spells more robust, cast Magic Missile. A spell that literally couldn't miss, because it unerringly went exactly where you wanted it to - including around obstacles provided you had some way to perceive your target around said obstacle yourself.
Having previously determined that a d4 of damage was roughly as much damage as getting stabbed or shot once with a low caliber weapon, and now, having three such bolts of unerring death, I did the one thing this spell emphatically could not do.
I directed two of the bolts at Ubers knees, and one at his shoulder.
You couldn't dodge Magic Missile, but it could probably be blocked. A suspicion that was borne out for me when Uber lifted his shield to deflect the bolt that he must have thought was aimed at his head, and then promptly had his legs swept out from under him as the remaining two bolts of raw, glowing, force, hit his armored knees.
Ideally, his kneecaps weren't completely shattered by that, but I'd be lying if I said I cared all that much.
I didn't bother checking how Sophia and Amy were doing with Leet, instead taking Uber's misstep as an opportunity to fire a jump jet to launch myself at him.
"Hey-" He started to yell at me, before I latched both hands around the edge of his shield and yanked as hard as I could, while my canons applied as much force as I thought was safe in the opposite direction.
…to Ubers torso.
I repeatedly shot him in the chest, is what I'm saying.
With the dipshit distracted, I was able to yank his shield away from him, and Glory Girl zipped up behind him to yank the sword out of his hands. Then she carelessly tossed it to the side and bolted forward, dragging him into a chokehold that he instantly began thrashing against.
"Quit struggling, Jesus," I complained, leaning forward to try and stop the man wearing what had to be power armor from just punching Vicky in the head repeatedly until she let go of him. I didn't doubt it would work, even if Uber probably didn't think so.
He was more acting out of desperation and habit formed by his power than anything else. It's not like there's a 'special trick' to breaking a choke hold. You kind of just had to be stronger than the other guy, or hurt him so much he let go of you.
And neither of those things was liable to happen when the person holding you was Glory Girl.
Eventually though, Uber stopped moving, and Vicky gently lowered him to the ground, allowing me to check on Sophia and Amy.
They had things about as well in hand as I might have expected, of course. By the time I actually turned towards them, Leet was cowering like a baby underneath Amy's horse things, which was holding its steaming muzzle inches from his face and growling like a dog at him while he whimpered at it. I could tell Soph thought that was hilarious by the way she silently watched it happening in that eerie still way she tended to get when she was doing her whole… 'I am the night' bit.
"Well… that was easy," I said aloud.
"Fun, too," Vicky chortled, gliding over to me with one hand raised for a high five.
I stared blankly at her, unsure of how to take this sudden change in attitude.
"Are… you not mad at me anymore?" I asked curiously, tentatively lifting a hand to tap it against her own. The loud clanging of my metal armor bouncing off her forcefield was interesting to note, but I set it aside for later.
Vicky shrugged awkwardly at me at that, then glanced away like a scolded child.
"You… didn't actually do anything," She admitted much to my awe.
"I…I mean, I-" I bumbled, unsure what I was trying to say here. On the one hand, I did feel a need to apologize for being snappy at her because I was annoyed, but on the other hand, I felt like trying to explain the situation back to her would be both patronizing, and likely just remind her why she should be mad at me.
"Look, I get it, you were stressed out. I'm just not comfortable with some random person being around while I do cape stuff, you know?" Vicky admitted, and I was once again forced to acknowledge that maybe I was thinking about the situation with myself at the center of it a little bit too much.
Vicky didn't dislike Emma because of some imagined jealousy on my part - she disliked Emma because she was a completely uninvolved civilian that I had forced her to be around while she was doing 'cape stuff', which was usually Vicky's preferred way of blowing off steam. Put in that light, it made way more sense why she felt like she had the right to decide if Emma got to be around or not.
Because she freaking did. I didn't get to arbitrarily and unilaterally decide who got to hang out with my sort of party. Even thinking I could was just plain selfish.
"That's… shit, I guess that does make sense. My bad, I just- I was supposed to hang out with my friends and all so I thought-" I paused to restructure my thoughts while Amy and Soph dragged Leet - still conscious - over to where we were standing over Uber. Sopha swiftly zip tied both of their arms and legs together but otherwise didn't bother to interject in our conversation.
"I'll… refrain from bringing her along without permission," I said somewhat woodenly, as police sirens began to ring in the distance.
I didn't expect Uber and Leet would be in prison for very long. Uber by definition had all the required skills to orchestrate a prison break pretty much no matter where they put him that wasn't explicitly the Birdcage - which he definitely didn't deserve to go to. But still - they'd be off the streets temporarily at least, which was nice.
"Promise?" Vicky asked me pointedly, leaning forward so that she had to angle her head back to look up at my face. Which was about when my spine started to tingle in that way it usually did when Emma was playing me somehow.
"...Yes?" I half asked in response, turning to Amy and Sophia for help understanding what was happening. Amy shot me a look of almost fond annoyance, but Sophia made a derisive noise at my expense. Vicky pumped her fist once in the corner of my vision, but back to standing stoically over Uber and Leet when I turned back towards her.
"So… we're good then?" I asked tentatively when no explanation seemed forthcoming.
'Merlin, you'd tell me if I was being played right?' I asked him hopefully.
"If it did not interfere with your normal emotional development as a teenager, then of course," Was his blase response.
"Totally," Vicky said with a smile that made me feel like I had lost at something.
Again.
'Is… now one of those moments?' I prodded Merlin once more.
The fact that he didn't answer was telling.
The fact that Uber's armor started making an ominous beeping noise and Leet started cursing in panic shortly after didn't help either.