With a resounding plop, you and Nora come into being, standing right where you left, inside your storeroom lair.
With a mildly sour look, Nora huffs. "You really could have told me beforehand, it's not like we haven't seen each other naked before."
You just smile and lightly shake your head. Surprising Nora is surprisingly fun, you've found. Regardless, time to put on the clothes you were wearing when you left, now lying around on the ground, discarded after your dimensional jaunt.
Leaning out of the door, you call out "Kaaate!"
"Yes, Gabe?" comes echoing from upstairs, the main living room if you were to hazard a guess.
"Could you come down here real quick?" you answer. Time to pay the piper, so to say.
It isn't long until Kate arrives in your little room... and raises an eyebrow at the naked woman standing there. "Gabe, what did I tell you about other women?"
Catching on immediately, you respond: "Only after asking you, I know, but just look at her! Could you say no to those eyes?"
Looking at her, she seems rather confused for the moment, though she gets it quickly. She tries to make puppy dog eyes, but she just can't and ends up laughing. "Sorry, but this is just too funny. You're Kate, right? Gabe told me about you."
"Yup, that's me. Who might you be?" Kate asks, shaking Nora's offered hand.
"I'm Nora. Gabe found me in my dimension, though I think I'll let him explain all about that," she smirks, apparently already anticipating what's coming next.
Well, you can't exactly not do it now. So you tell Kate you spontaneously developed the power to travel between dimensions (causing her raised eyebrow to raise even higher) and immediately did so, causing you to end up in a postapocalyptic wasteland (causing her hands to twitch).
You tell her about how you were found inside the cryopod by Nora and how the two of you went to Sanctuary and eventually to concord, murdering a bunch of insane bastards locally called 'raiders' (causing her to visibly salivate), about the local science level and the handheld laser weaponry (causing her to twitch when talking about it).
You tell her about you and Nora murdering your way through several raider bases (causing her to shiver all over her body), about how you cocooned yourself again and got more cool powers (causing her to lick her lips), about how you reverse-engineered as much tech as possible and can now get the gang blueprints for primitive laser weapons (causing her eyes to positively gleam).
It is at this point that you can't keep on talking, as Kate has grabbed onto your shoulders and starts to shake you back and forth. "Why didn't you bring me along? You totally have to be able to if you can take passengers along! It would've been so much fun! We could've shot so many people!"
"Oh, and we found Slave, forgot about that," you say, now that she's got the first load out of her system. "Slave?"
"One of the female raiders we found already packed up in bondage equipment. We just kinda fucked her together and kept her as a pet."
Now she's just looking at the both of you, a bit lost. Aaah, can't have that, now, can we?
Carefully taking hold of her shoulders, you look deep into her eyes as you lean down to kiss her deeply.
Coming up for her to breathe after you've thoroughly tasted her mouth, you smile down at her and ask "Feeling better?"
When she just mutely nods, you continue "I've brought us a new playmate, and she just loves to play our games, doesn't she?" you look over at Nora, who is staring at what you're doing and nodding, stunned.
"See? it's all alright."
Huffing, Kate pushes you away. "Sure it is! Now you just stay down here, you old caveman. You come along, Nora, we gonna find you some clothes!"
Chuckling, you motion for Nora to go on ahead. Not like you can exactly go up yourself, what with the evening sun...
Only to be bowled over from behind by an excited Kate.
"As if I'd just run off now! You went to another Earth! You brought back LASER GUNS! This is getting celebrated! I'm getting Sherrel!"
Now just laughing, you throw an apologetic look over at Nora. "Sorry, but it looks like those clothes would just get in the way now. At least we'll have some fun first thing, eh?" you smile at her with your 'we're about to fuck' smile, eliciting a blush from Nora.
You've still got it.
It's not much longer before Kate shepherds a confused Sherrel inside the room, who gets a look of realization on her face when she sees Nora stand there, naked. Getting pressed down on her knees before her, she gives you a coy smile before digging in.
You, meanwhile, stalk your way behing Kate, kissing her cheek and looking over her shoulder at Nora as you begin to strip her. Kate, still holding onto Sherrel's head, sighs in contentment as she controls her pace.
It isn't long before she's naked entirely, giving you reason to fish your dick out of your pants and slowly insert it between her thighs, idly teasing her pussy as you fondle her breasts.
Kate soon starts to grumble and look at you disapprovingly, causing you to chuckle as you draw back and enter her while you reach over to pinch Nora's nipples, earning two gasps from both women, Sherrel still dutifully eating Nora out.
Not one to be outdone, you begin to fuck Kate in earnest, making her lean forwards and hold onto Nora's waist as you start to properly rail her. No need to start out slow, she likes it rougher, so you speed up and don't slow down.
Not when she comes around you for the first time, clenching around your dick and getting her head pushed into Nora's breasts. Not when Nora pushes Sherrel's shoulders to make her turn around and return the earlier favour, pushing her head against the snatch you're railing. She's mostly licking all over her clitoris and your dick, but Kate certainly seems to enjoy it, judging by her renewed moans.
It isn't long until she comes again, and all three of you work together to prolong her orgasm, you not slowing down even a little, Sherrel actually adding her fingers to her fun and stroking around her ass and Nora kissing her as the fondles her breasts.
After a good few minutes, you decide to cum yourself, unwilling to hold ypurself back right now, filling Kate and giving Sherrel a little treat.
Once she bonelessly slumps down, you slowly extricate yourself and seat her against the nearest wall, carrying her over a little. "You just relax a bit, I'll take care of the others," you say.
Registering her nod, you turn towards Nora, pressing your body against hers and pushing her against the wall softly after you've undressed yourself. "Anyone here up for a little love?" you ask, questioning what she wants to do.
Looking you in the eyes (and blushing like a virgin), Nora wordlessly strokes along your cock, gently guiding it towards her pussy. Not one to be daft in situations like this, you kiss her and glide your hands all over her body, taking possession of it.
When the tip of your dick presses into her, she gasps into your mouth and begind pressing back into you.
Someone wants it bad.
It is about half an hour of intense lovemaking that follows, with your dick softly kissing her cervix, then railing upwards into her for a few thrusts again, only to gently reach her deepest depths once more.
She comes more times than you can be arsed to count, really.
At the end, you leave her as a wet puddle on the ground, leaking copious amounts of fluids originating from both of you.
Turning around, it seems Kate and Sherrel have decided to have their own fun now that Kate's recovered a little. With a smile, you step in to thoroughly rail Sherrel as she's giving Kate head, not unlike the time when you originally recruited her.
It's a long few hours before you're done...
Taking a moment to take stock of the situation, you realize that you have no urgent business whatsoever.
The gang continues to run smoothly just as it did before your little vacation, so you may as well use the time to train more for now.
Taking position opposite the sleeping girls, you proceed to shoot ice shards at the wall repeatedly, trying to get them to hit harder and faster, maybe even rotate a bit on being fired.
Turns out that helps a lot. Huh.
Satisfied with your progress after about half the night, you switch to quiet contemplation of your spell that lets you raise zombies. Their inability to fulfill even mildly complicated orders frustrates you, so you set about trying to resolve this issue...
...only to realize that modifying a spell without using it is pretty damn hard, and you have no convenient corpses lying around for this purpose.
Annoyed, you spend a few hours trying to do it in your head, but it's very slow going.
Eventually, you consider the situation... and slowly turn to face Sherrel sleeping on thr ground.
Well... time to see if it actually works, you suppose. Walking over and stroking yourself to hardness, you carefully lower yourself and prod her lips with your head, making her happily lick along it in her sleep.
... it actually works. You spend the rest of the night alternating between working on your project and being baffled by this.
Interlude: Forked Tongues
Thomas Calvert was sitting in his office, doing his regular duties as a PRT Consultant, mainly analyzing data on organized crime, predicting big issues before they cropped up and comparing data and such- it was really mostly analyzing shit.
The parahuman known as Coil was sitting in his office, reading through reports and knowledge unearthed through moles, intimidation, blackmail and such, however his men could get it.
Curiously, quite a lot of information the latter obtained found its way into the reports the former was writing. Not all, of course, and only the information the latter would be of advantage to him when in the hands of the PRT, but still far more than should be possible.
This is not a coincidence, as both men were one and the same, acting in different timelines and using his power to his advantage. Funnily enough, he regularly did the reverse, too, reading reports handled in house in his day job in a throwaway timeline and using the information thus obtained in his other persona, or just adding it to his personal databank for later use.
Information may be the only thing he could carry over, but oh, information was such a useful thing when handled right.
Currently, however, Coil was less scouring his information for useful tidbits to use as Thomas and more scrabbling to find a lead, any lead, on the new group in town. The new group that had just upended the little applecart he had going on with the Merchants.
The Merchants were supposed to be a buffer between the bigger gangs and aid in keeping the situation within the city on worsening, but also stable enough to stave off the inevitable gang war he was steering it towards for a few more months while he moved his pieces into place. The status quo was serving him well for the time being and while he could use these newcomers as parts of his plan, their timing was... suboptimal.
A few months earlier, and he'd have just propped them up as another minor faction, a few months later and his plans would already be in full operation and their addition could be integrated into them or discarded via another player as needed. With forming at the time they did, however, and doing what they had done, they'd made themselves a... not quite nuisance, but a minor speed bump in relation to his final plans.
So, Coil needed to find out as much as he could about them to decide just exactly who they were, how to use them, all the normal stuff.
Only, to his exasperated frustration, there was no information to be found.
From his contacts with Accord, he'd found out the core group seemed to consist of a few minor players, weapon smugglers formerly based out of the vicinity of the boardwalk. They'd been so minor pretty much nobody paid any attention to them, assuming the Empire would take care of the issue sooner or later, as they usually did, and the impact they had in the meantime was so insignificant they simply weren't worth the bother for anyone involved.
However, when the bunch of thugs sent to them was later found as a pile of corpses on the side of the street opposite their former headquarters while they turned up a week later doing business with Accord's men, bigger in scope than ever, that changed.
Especially so as they suddenly had a cape with them.
It was somewhat of a rule nowadays that any organized crime without capes involved would be either absorbed by a bigger organization or be broken up and the niche it was filling filled up by the same. It was simply how things turned out when capes had become a thing.
It was a mixture, as far as Coil reasoned, of actual powers being somewhat of a game changer, both in committing crimes and on street conflict, and street cred. While most capes weren't immune against a bullet to the head, neither was the average gangster, and when comparing a group with parahuman support to a group without, odds were mostly always going to be on the side of the one that had powered options the other one did not.
So any group that had suddenly gained a parahuman supporting it, like this one, immediately became an issue for everyone involved, but especially so for the entrenched gangs that didn't look too kindly on possible new rivals rising up, but that was where the problems for him lay.
This new group, it was actually smart.
Shocking, yes, but most capes, when newly triggered, just went out, rushed into the face of the gangs and either got recruited or killed off. This new guy (and he was male, he knew this much at least), however, went around and grabbed the first bunch of qualified underlings he could find that had reason to dislike the entrenched gangs.
A certain sign he was making a power play, this, too, Coil was certain of.
The heart of the matter was that he didn't know much else.
There was no information to be found on where this new gang was based out of, which spoke of discrete preparations far ahead of time, which didn't fit into how it was founded only about a week ago, and presumably immediately went dark. The transactions he could follow in regards to that little weapons handoff involved secure offsite exchanges on every end, and the men he had sniff around where the weapons arrived in and left the city didn't find anything in the respective vicinities.
A few minor crooks had dropped off the radar, but whether that meant they knew something he didn't or just fucked out of the city as their kind usually did, he had no idea, and the feelers he'd sent out towards others still in his reach hadn't returned anything, either.
Then, a few days before the weapon transaction that'd actually given him the leads he'd needed to get this much in the first place, they'd apparently stolen Squealer.
Just, nabbed her right off the street. A breach of the usual rules, of course, but it's not like anyone cared that the Merchants clamored around. No, what was far more interesting was the Merchant front they'd also robbed in the process, or rather, the bonus payday their cape had grabbed while he was at it, while apparently also draining the blood from several people present via a bite.
And not using normal teeth in the process, from what the autopsy reports he was looking over revealed. Coil shuddered. He'd seen more than enough monsters with these kinds of teeth for a lifetime, thank you very much.
So, from what he could gather, the grabbag cape in charge of the new players had those teeth, some kind of cryokinesis and shadow control judging by his 'mask', possibly paired with slight superstrength and/or claws. A considerable package, especially if he had more powers he just had no idea about.
The sheer lack of information was his biggest issue here.
He still had no idea what this new gang looked like, how many members it had (though he estimated just a few, he'd have noticed bigger groups of people moving about), what they wanted, how they intended to handle their little war with the Merchants (and it WAS going to end up with one side getting killed and the other getting killed by the bigger gangs, he was sure by this point), none of the above.
All he was certain of was that they had absolutely no hesitations about killing anyone they were up against, which was just going to escalate matters.
He had no idea what they were going to do, and therefore no idea how to use them as part of his plans.
Massaging his neck in frustration, Thomas sent off his report containing requests for further investigation into this new villain even as Coil dismissed the autopsy reports from his main work computer... only to suddenly have a man standing before him.
Without hesitation, he drew his gun and shot him thrice.
Pretending to go through his day as normal in his Calvert persona, Coil stood up to investigate, the ringing of the gunshots still echoing in his ears, as an exact copy of the first guy he'd shot suddenly appeared before him.
Completely ignoring the corpse beside him, he looked at Coil, saying "Hey man, how's i-" before being shot, again.
Standing above the two corpses, Coil looked down at them. Perfect copies of each other. They'd even had the same posture before being shot. Memorizing their shared face for now, he was just about to call somebody in to remove the bodies, before the third one appeared.
"H-m-s" was all he stuttered, before falling down, dead. Mystified, Coil went to change the alarm level of the base (that automatically started going into red when a nonauthorized person appeared in his office), as he stumbled on yet another corpse suddenly just lying there.
Looking around, the floor was covered in these identical corpses, more of them appearing by the second and starting to pile up.
Thomas Calvert checked his work phone for any encrypted messages, but there was nothing aside from the regular updates telling him the base was going on as usual. Curious.
Dismissing his information timeline, Thomas got up and went to get himself a coffee before investigating this further, once again splitting the timeline.
Only for one of him to be confronted with the same young man, standing there right besides him, just staring at him.
Thomas sighed.
Getting out, you poke Kate awake, lying in her bed and sleeping like a baby.
"Mhm... What is it, Gabe?" she asks, staring at you balefully with her one opened eye.
"I just wanted to ask you if there's anyone technologically inclined in our gang so we can mess around with laser weapons."
Grumbling, Kate turns around, waving an arm in your direction. "Go ask Lea, she likes to fiddle with stuffnow lemme ged back to sleep..."
Chuckling, you leave your sleeping beauty to her pastimes and track down Lea, telling her you need some help with something. Telling her to go grab some miscellaneous arts and crafts supplies as well as a few lightbulbs, you settle in to wait.
It takes her about half an hour before she's back at the base and dropping off the spare change in the stash. It doesn't take long before the two of you are sitting in a side room together, with you teaching her how to cobble together your primitive fusion cells.
You'd like to get started on the laser muskets, too, but you just don't have the tools nor the materials for now. Best to start with the easiest stuff until Sherrel's workshop is set up.
While you're at it, you convince Lea to drink a little of your blood regularly. While she isn't too thrilled at the prospect, she agrees it's better to have the only person other than you to know the production process less squishy.
After a few hours, you have a new thrall and a small pile of bulky plastic devices letting off a quiet humm.
The rest of the day you spend on working through your powers and magic here and there, just whatever tickles your fancy. You spend a few hours doing nothing but sharpening your claws against each other, then finishing up the changes to your zombie spell.
You think they should be capable of understanding simple commands that go beyond 'follow me', 'hold this' and 'kill that'. At least in theory. You haven't exactly done this before, and you don't have a zombie around right now to test it out, so you'll just have to hope it works as intended.
Afterwards, you ponder about your souls... and how some of them seem to have powers of their own. You wonder if you could... push them, for lack of a better word, to develop theirs if they don't have one.
You feel that it's possible, so you spend the rest of the day trying to figure out how.
Finding Squealer, you ask her about any places the Merchants had you could hit. With a pensive look, she mentions that she knows about one of their bigger drug labs you might be interested in.
Considering this, you agree with her reasoning. The Crypts do want to start up their own drug ring, so the equipment the Merchants are using might very well be worth the effort to grab. Not to mention taking the place out would continue to hurt the Merchants, who're still reeling from the loss of Squealer and the load of cash you stole on the occasion.
Nodding at her with a smile, the two of you spend a few minutes talking about how it's a shame you haven't had the time to get a proper workshop going for her yet, leading to you showing her the pile of basic fusion cores you'd made earlier.
You regale her with the story of you suddenly developing the power to jump between dimensions, which is where you found Nora, and about the complete destruction of the place and the advanced science you'd found and reverse-engineered from there.
She still has a hard time believing the things aren't tinkertech, the implications of the stuff you have access to immense and her actually in a position to understand them.
Regardless, you leave her to slaver about the fusion cells while you go off to see the girls. Time to organize a raid!
... Or hope Kate is awake enough to do it for you, you suppose.
A few minutes of face poking, an ice cold beer and a grumpy Kate later, everyone is getting ready, filing into the vans your little gang seems to have taken a shine to.
Sherrel is a bit worried someone who knows her might recognize her, but one of the others holds a hand mirror in her face, shutting her up. For a good while, even. While the changes were small and gradual, she's already showing a lot of difference after your thralling, after all.
Nevertheless, the lot of you arrive a street away from your target. Everyone piles into the nearest abandoned building and the planning begins, naturally started by asking Sherrel about what to expect.
Turns out, she knows the place rather well. "I was thinking about putting my garage here, but Skids decided it'd be better off elsewhere." As always when her (now) ex comes up, she has a somewhat sour look on her face, though she moves on before anyone comments on it.
"So, this place's an old supermarket, from back when this area had actual residents and shit. Most of the stuff we'll want is in the upper floor, the base floor's basically storage for drugs. Nice to have, but not the jackpot.
There're guards on both the front and back entrance, though it's just a pair each. Skids never expected this place to be targeted by anyone, you see- too deep into Merch territory. Only way it could be deeper would be if it was the trainyard, really.
'Side from the guards, the only people really frequenting the place are the couriers taking the stuff elsewhere and delivering supplies and the lab monkeys."
Well that was informative. Now then... you need a plan.
"Okay, to reiterate, here's the plan," you say, looking around at everyone, "I'll go in first and scout as a shadow, looking for and offing anyone looking important or like they may be a problem later.
Then I'll silently kill the guards guarding the backdoor and open the door to let you girls inside. You'll take care of everything upstairs and inside while I go take care of the front guards. If everything goes well, we're taking all the equipment we can carry and anyone that looks useful, the rest stays behind as corpses. All clear?"
After a round of nods you move out, trusting the others to do their jobs themselves. Time to do a thing, you suppose.
Falling into your shadow, you begin to dance and slither your way inside the building. Good old doors, always leaving a gap open for you while telling everyone else nobody can get past them. Heh.
Regardless, inside you see two sleepy guards, one of them smoking something. While they themselves aren't too impressive, you're not too keen on letting them fire off those assault rifles lying next to them.
Where the fuck did they even get those things?
Moving further inside, the next room seems to be the storage room Sherrel told you about. You see several packages, a few duffle bags, and a few assholes sitting in a corner consuming a variety of drugs. Holy hell, never take your own product. How is this that hard, people?
Checking the front entrance a bit further ahead, yup, the front guards, also smoking. Also also standing guard outside, good to know.
Making your way upstairs, you're held back by the bright lights installed everywhere. Apparently someone wanted to actually make this place look like a lab or something.
Getting back down while avoiding getting too close to anyone, you position yourself behind the smoking guards and consider how to do this.
In a great jump, you clear the distance towards your prey and ram him down to the ground, your hand on the back of his head and your own head rearing back, only to be mashed into his neck, your teeth tearing through his soft flesh and letting his blood pour into your mouth.
You may be getting hungry.
Meanwhile, your summoned soul has got the other one in a chokehold. Huh. You had no idea he could actually do that, but hey, learn something new every day and all that.
Jacob was always... well, slow. And not the nice 'slow' that people call idiots, he was really, REALLY dumb. As in, to the point of being mentally disabled.
Unfortunately, there was nobody around to recognize this and get him the help he needed, so he just went on to do whatever anyone told him to do he could understand.
Too bad the only people interested in having him around were the Merchants that aroused the attention of something... else.
Looking at the other guard consideringly, you ponder what to do now. You could just eat him, of course... or you could start reanimating his buddies' corpse beforehand, just to terrorize him.
... Or you could keep him alive for some reason, you suppose. Not that you're planning on doing so without a damn good reason.
Well, you'd just noticed you were getting a bit hungry, so hey, why not see if you can feed yourself on this guy before engaging the Gabitons?
Yes, you've named your teeth. You can do that.
Mentally shaking that thought off, you walk over to your second victim, which is slightly wheezing at the moment. Making a long cut along his lower arm, you begin to lick up the sprouting bloodflow.
Actually, is it just you or is your tongue longer? You never really paid attention to it, but it's a noticeable change now that you've got it out of your mouth like this.
With a bit of an appetizer drunk, you proceed to grab his wrist, then pull it towards your mouth, where you then tear into it with gusto, unwilling to let any of the blood escape.
Delicious.
Mark didn't have to end up as a crook on the street, but he enjoyed stealing too much to ever stop. Just, taking from others was his greatest joy in live.
He spent a lot of his youth as a pickpocket, but when he got caught one time too many, he got thrown in prison and his parents didn't want to post bail. So when he got out, he just... walked out of his life and into another one. A colder one, with less happiness adn warmth, but with more freedom instead.
Eventually, he ended up joining the Merchants, simply because they offered a decent payday and the occasional gangrape, never knowing this latest job would be his last...
Letting go of your victim's arm, you dismiss your summoned servant and watch the body drop. Now then... what next? Confirming none of the druggies nearby heard you, bodies and drag them into the corner, then chant Rise, my fleshly servant, and go forth to fulfill my will! twice, making them actually get up and look in your general direction.
Looks like your change to the spell actually worked, then. Good to know.
With that taken care of, you carefully open the door, soon ushering in your group of heavily armed psychopaths. You really love your job sometimes.
Once everyone's inside and the door is closed, a few whispered conversations explain your new ability to reanimate dead bodies and the next part of the plan is set to begin. Only question is how you will use the zombies and kill the other guards while the girls gun down the druggies in the main storage area.
Looking at the zombies, you order them to "Protect them," while pointing at the girls. They turn their attention to them and start to follow after them when they start moving.
You can only hope they're smart enough to actually be useful, but for now, time to go and deal with the other guards.
Now, how to do so? You could try sneaking through the storage area and ambushing them, or you could just rush through and take them on the hard way. It'll be loud shortly either way, what with the way Kate's starting to stroke her gun's barrel.
Moving through the storage area slowly and carefully, keeping away from the idiots taking drugs in the corner and using cover to block lines of sight, you successfully sneak through and arrive before the doors leading outside and to the guards you're aiming for.
Now... how will you take them out once you burst through the door? You can already hear the girls move into position way behind you, getting ready to move onto the victims down here.
Deciding to repeat your earlier strategy, you slam the door open, summoning your trusty soul next to one guard while you jump for the other one.
With a mighty heave, you grab onto your victim and lift him up, letting him fall onto your open mouth, even as he struggles.
Said struggles cease soon after your mouth has clamped around his shoulder and the majority of his blood has left his body.
Your summoned soul, meanwhile, is making good use of its ability in close combat combined with its aura of weakening.
Dropping the body, you turn towards your minion, currently keeping the other guard restrained...
And using his free hand to punch him in the crotch.
You suppose as long as it works, you won't say anything. Still, time to dig in, so you have your minion hold your victim still (whereupon he immediately starts whispering in hsi ear, not that you care), biting deeply into his neck.
Dismissing your soul and looking over the two fresh corpses lying around, you consider what to do next as you hear shots fired from within the building. Looks like the girls are hard at work.
Dismissing your soul once again, you spend a few moments to raise your two newest undead and head inside, where you find that the girls seem to have used the element of surprise to overwhelm the opposition.
Turns out getting a solid wall of bullets salmmed into you is bad for your health, after all.
The girls are now storming up the stairs, clearly intent on finishing this before anyone can coordinate any actual response to your attack. Time to finish this and cart off the loot!
Motioning the girls to stop, you order your zombies to take point, having them move to the front and get up the stairs.
Emerging into a hallway with you at their back, the zombies stop when a door to the side opens and a guy comes rushing out, throwing something at your zombies that then shatters and releases some kind of fluid.
... and makes their faces melt off a little. Nevermind, you can guess what it was. This guy's face when your meatshields just ignore the damage and keep on walking.
Mhm. You may want to improve their intelligence further so you don't have to tell them to defend themselves if attacked in the future.
Just letting your zombies continue on their way, fulfilling the order of 'stay ahead', you grab onto this guy's lapels, push him against the wall, driving the air out of his lungs, and ignore his grab for your hands as you bite into his neck.
Alberto always hated them.
His parents for naming him, his peers for making fun of his name. His teachers for saying it whenever they could, then his professors.
He had a good head on his shoulders, make no mistake, he just also hated everyone and blamed them for anything that went wrong. He went to university, studied chemistry.
Mostly because less people would say his name that way.
Unfortunately enough, however, the economy was shit and his attitude made it hard to find employment regardless of his education. Could he be blamed, then, when he stole a bit of lab equipment from the university and started making drugs?
Not like it was hard to do, looking up the instructions online took five minutes, for the love of god. Of course, going from making (and taking) drugs to selling them would have been a giant pain, so he simply went out, found a dealer, and, well, made a deal.
Over the next few months and years, Alberto earned himself a reputation towards reliability in the business, and he soon got approached by some new gang to make drugs for them. He didn't mind, the less effort he had to put into getting the stuff sold, the better as far as he was concerned.
So what if his products ruined lives all over the city? He hated them all anyway, or would have if he knew them, so why would he give a fuck about their suffering? On the contarry, it was good they slowly killed themselves. Less cunts out there every time one of the OD'd.
At least, so he thought, until something peculiar happened to the place he was living and working in...
Letting the corpse slide down the wall, you observe how your zombies keep walking without interference. Looks like everything's clear.
Waving the girls over, you prepare to enter the side doors of the hallways, starting with the one your newest meal jumped out of. Inside you find...
Well...
A teenager holding out a box of pills to you?
"I- if I give you these drugs, are you leaving me alone?"
Okay, you were not expecting this, but you honestly should have, considering your experiences these past few (subjective) weeks.
"Well, I'm afraid we're here to take everything valuable... starting with YOU!" you answer, bending down to pick her up, slinging her over your shoulder.
"NOOoooh! Let me go!" she screams, pounding her almost comically small fists onto your back. Really, what is she, twelve?
Ignoring her actions for the moment, you carry her back out of the room, taking care not to bump her against the doorframe, then hand her off to Mariam, apologetically nodding your head at her. She, along with the others, is grinning at your antics, though, so you suppose it's alright.
That and the fact that, once she's thrown her over her shoulder, she immediately begins to grope her ass.
"HEEELP! I'm being molested by a bunch of horny amazons!" your newest recruit screams. At least she's shaping up to be amusing.
Returning back into what you're now fairly sure is a lab area, you clap your hands and proclaim: "Alright, girls, take anything small you can carry easily, the heavy stuff me and the meatshields will handle."
At Miriam's look, you explain: "She is small and easy to carry."
She doesn't object, and the subject of your short discussion seems to have started pouting.
With yourself and your four zombies, you make good speed at carry everything out. Of course, you then realize you probably didn't need the random desks, but ah well.
At least you got a bunch of useful stuff, including modern lab equipment (the Merchants must've stolen this stuff from a university lab somewhere), and you actually do manage to cram everything into the vans.
This includes your new human drug fabricator, who is still pouting for some reason.
So, now you're going to drive through the city, splitting the vans up for a bit in case someone's trying to follow you and meeting again in about an hour at the site the others had picked out for the drug lab.
It's so secret, not even you know where it is!... or rather, you didn't bother involving yourself in that whole business. This is the exact kind of thing you have minions for, after all.
Speaking of minions, you have about an hour's drive worth of time to waste and nobody but a bunch of your minions for company.
Deciding you may as well get acquainted with your new chemist, you pull her onto your lap when everyone files into the van. And yes, you're riding in the front seat. You're the boss, you can just do that.
Once she's properly secured and strapped in (still pouting with crossed arms and resolutely looking forwards), you wrap your arms around her midsection and drawl "So, my little cupcake,-" only to be interrupted.
"I'm not a cupcake! My name's Addison, though everyone just calls me Addy. Or Ad. And... there's blood around your mouth," she says after turning her head to face you.
Chuckling, you wipe your mouth with your sleeve, answering "An astute observation, Addy. And yes, I'm a cape, if the shadows around my face didn't make it clear already. That said, I happen to believe I'm a terribly boring person, so talking about you would be far more interesting."
Getting the clue (or maybe just going along with it), she asks "Well, what do you want to know?" while still looking at you, though she soon turns her head back around, if only to avoid cramping her neck. Though she does keep rather still.
"For starters, how'd you end up making drugs for the Merchants?"
"I just, uh... made drugs? They make people feel good and they give me money for doing it, so I just made a job out of it!"
Her chest is actually swelling with pride at finding such gainful self-employment.
"But how'd you end up doing it for them specifically?"
What follows is a short tale about how she came to work for them. And it has everything: A young woman, love, betrayal, drugs, rock'n'roll, comedic misunderstandings...
You imagine you could actually make a movie out of this and make bank.
But to keep it short, she was looking for a job after university, having taken the usual stuff kids take when being students there, and knowing how to make soft drugs herself, then actually did so, and after a brief stint as the campus drug dealer, she got forbidden from entering due to said drug dealing and basically worked as a freelancer drug cooker for a few years before being approached by the Merchants.
Oh, and she's 28.
Yeah...
Over the course of telling her epic tale, she starts to relax again, frequently gesturing and moving around as part of her story telling. Which, of course, makes her butt rub against your crotch. Now, you could, of course, just ignore it thanks to your ability to control your boner, but... why would you?
You're not some awkward highschool boy, you can get a hard-on whenever and wherever you want. So you just relax and see what happens.
Which, for the first while, is not much. Not surprising, given you're hardening very slowly, but eventually you're hard enough and, after a small jump in your lap, Addison realizes what she's planted her butt on.
She immediately goes still, then starts to fidget.
She looks back at you, then immediately looks forwards when she sees you looking at her.
"What is it, Addy? How did you defeat the traitorous doggy that stole your favorite handkerchief?" you ask, leaning down to speak directly into her ear.
"I-you-bwuh-" taking a deep breath, she tries to calm down, your dick still poking at her butt insistently. "I asked the granny standing on the other side of the street for help, and-"
The rest of the drive is immensely amusing. Oh, and the girls of course immediately realize what's up and start grinning to themselves.
Really, first class entertainment.
Eventually, your group arrives at the location the girls picked out. It's in the same general area as your warehouse, which makes sense, you suppose.
Entering, it's another warehouse, with lots of space and a few side rooms. It isn't long before you're busy ferrying your loot over for the girls to install it (Lea being a great help here) and setting up your very own drug lab.
It actually fills you with a lot of pride you can just... do this. Walk all over the Merchants, killing them with contemptuous ease and taking whatever and whomever you want.
Addy is poking the zombies a bit, so you hurry over. Touching corpses can't be hygienic. Her insistence that you don't have to tell her to go wash her hands, that she's an adult and 28 years old doesn't stop you from doing it anyway.
A few hours later, everything's done, and Addy has actually started making her first batch already. Sharing a smile with Kate, you walk over to your warehouse, getting a room ready for Addy.
Seriously, why does it feel like you adopted her or something?
Taking a moment to think it over, you go on ahead and summon the most... science-ey souls you picked up from that post-apocalyptic superscience dimension you visited, ordering them to go help cupcake Addy and teach her what they can, hopefully finding ways to recreate some of the cooler shit you'd seen there.
With that out of the way, you once more try to figure out a process to enhance your souls, but it's slow going by any measure.
Looking into yourself the same way you usually do once the sun goes up and you have a moment of time to yourself, you see that time has sped up significantly inside, as well as two fruits that grew on the tree since the last time.
Wasting no time, you breathe yourself in and telemaid over to your daily snacks.
Thinking over what to do today, you transform your claws and begin to grind them against each other, trying to get just the right angle to maximize sharpness.
And keep on doing so.
For six hours.
You'd actually checked on your laptop clock, you spent a quarter of a day doing this. You're rather sure something must be wrong with you for doing this.
So you take a break and make a PHO account. Hey, it was one of your favorite pastimes, and while you don't want to use any of your old emails, you can just make a new one in a bit.
Your old account got deleted sometime after your death, unfortunately.
Actually, while you're at it, why not do it properly? You call out to the girls currently awake and ask for someone that has a hand for computers.
Turns out Samantha does know a thing or two about this shit, so you have her help you set up a throwaway account on PHO. You even go out of your way to use Nord VPN and all; this should keep you relatively secret unless a thinker or applicable tinker of some kind decide to go after your cyber-identity for some reason.
You take half an hour just browsing PHO for anything interesting. Funnily enough, that turns out to be your actions against the Merchants as far as the Brockton Bay board is concerned.
Supposedly, being a mysterious stranger cape that just appears with a bunch of mastered women or something, murders anyone in his way and ignores anyone else makes you prime discussion material on the net. Heh.
After your little break, you return to your ability to breach other dimensions. Specifically, your ability to take others along on the ride. It did come in handy insofar as it means you kept Nora around, after all.
The power to ignore bullets is pretty powerful all on its own beyond her general ability to shoot someone's face off herself. Heh.
Unfortunately, you're hitting somewhat of a roadblock. You just can't get anywhere no matter what you try. This is around the time you hear a small commotion upstairs, so, happy about any opportunity to procrastinate, you lean against the wall next to your opened door and listen as best you can.
"Hey Cupcake, how you doing?" you hear Kimberley call out.
"I-I'm not a cupcake! I'm Addy!" the cupcake responds.
"You're over twenty-five and you're pint sized. You're a cupcake, Cupcake," she drawls. Flawless logic, you agree.
"Ahh! You! I am a full grown woman!"
"Coulda fooled me, right girls?" she asks, earning a few giggles and agreements from the other girls currently awake.
"I'm an adult!" the cupcake insists.
"Oh really?"
"Yes!"
"I bet you wouldn't suck the boss' dick," Kimberley continues. You think you know where she's going here.
"S-suh, what? What does that have to do with anything!"
"See, Cupcake is scared," she goads the Addycake.
"Well, Cupcake is a cupcake after all," one of the others grins. You can't see them, but you can hear the grin in her tone. It's an outright physical thing.
"ARGH! Fine! I'll do it! I'll do it, okay?! I'll do it better than any of you! You, you, you HUSSIES!" Addy then shouts, to the laughter and catcalls of the others, not that she seems to be hearing them with the way she stomps off towards your storeroom of solitude.
Quickly taking position, you move towards the middle of the room, sitting in lotus position. Your entire body language practically screams 'I am meditating, I am concentrating, I am not paying attention to what is happening!'. Your ability to perfectly control yourself is coming in handy here.
Standing in the door, Cupcake Addy swallows audibly when she sees you. Nevertheless, a cupcake has to do what a cupcake has to do, so she slowly and carefully approaches you.
Your eyes are closed, but from the way she's moving, you can picture just how she's looking. Hesitantly moving forwards, occasionally stopping and observing you for a reaction, just like a small animal.
Eventually, she reaches your sitting form and kneels down next to it. Just as slowly and carefully as before, she stretches a hand out for your crotch, or rather, your zipper.
Slowly opening it (wincing at the sound as she does so), she stretches her hand inside. Pausing here and taking a few deep breaths, she wiggles her hand around, not really having any idea what to do, but eventually she manages to pull your dick free of your underpants.
Letting out an amazed breath, she slowly strokes her hand along your length. She's not really good at it, she's not actually gripping it, but just this situation is enough to to slowly get you hard.
Addy keeps on letting out small noises of amazement, reminding you that you should never take her anywhere you want to stay undetected. Regardless, you're soon at half mast, and she's started muttering.
Just a few thoughts, like "So big" and "It'll never fit" as well as "In the car...", among others. Oh, looks like she's made up her mind. She's approaching your dick with her head.
Yes... time to see how far she'll take this on her own. So when she hesitantly presses a kiss onto your dickhead, you have to forcefully suppress a chuckle,
It seems she at least knows what sucking dick actually means, as she's slowly opening her lips, letting you into her warm mouth. Her tongue tests your penis inexpertedly, but she's using it at all, which immediately makes her better than most first timers.
She seems to actually like the taste, judging by how she keeps on licking your dick all over, naturally leading to sucking it down deeper in search of more cock to drool over. This, of course, leads to her getting your tip towards her throat, freezing up and trying not to cough loudly. How cute.
In an effort to make it easier on her, you run your hands along her head, resting them atop it.
"Yes, I'm awake," you say as you can practically feel her shock. Leading to immense embarrassment. Leading to freezing up in mortification.
Of course, you can't let that stand. Getting so deep into your sexy voice it's nearly purring, you say "Don't stop now..."
Once more swallowing audibly (and god, with your dick in her mouth it feels amazing), she follows you soft pressure against her head and begins to properly suck you off.
She's still a complete beginner, but she gets better by the second, especially as you begin teaching her what to do (being careful of your teeth and using your tongue and hands, mostly), so it's only a few minutes later when you feel orgasm approaching.
"I'm about to come. Prepare to swallow," you whisper, making her tense up once more, but she dutifully stays down and does her best to prepare.
When you shoot your load, she lets out a surprised squeak around your cock, but she eagerly drinks it all down. Getting up, she massages her knees a little as she says "Uhh... tasted strange, but somehow good."
Oh, nevermind, her hands are traveling towards her crotch.
"If you want to try more, you just have to ask," you say, leading to her making what you like to call an atomic blush, complete with a small animal noise. "But if you want more..." you add, gesturing for her to sit on your lap.
Standing before you, Addy shivers a little before... nodding, slowly, hesitantly, but nodding.
Still squeaking a little with every breath, though. This can't stand.
Ushering her into your embrace, with you still sitting there, you just spend a few minutes stroking her hair and all over her back. Eventually, she's calmed down a little, so you let up and look at her face.
This leads to her looking in your face and blushing like no tomorrow again, but you have to press on regardless. "This your first time?" you ask, earning a mortified look (still blushing).
"It's alright, it's alright. Your first time always sucks, but we can keep it from being cringe-inducing, at least."
True to your word, you take your time touching her all over, slowly undressing her (note to self, get some damn furniture in here already, normal people still feel cold), taking time to frequently kiss her softly.
She especially melts into your kisses, doubly so when you start kissing with tongue. Looks like your little cupcake loves getting tasted.
Eventually, though, she's naked (enough) and you're idly toying with her (surprisingly big) breasts as you pull your head back from your kissing, a long strand of salive connecting your mouths.
You know she felt your teeth configuration with her tongue, but both of you agree there's more important things right now.
Embracing her whole body, you carefully pull her towards you, her own arms wrapping around your back in turn. It's, uh, actually pretty hard to do this without your hands, but you maneuvre your dick into position anyway.
Looking deep into her eyes, you lower her body towards your lap, your dick kissing her pussy...
Before you stop holding her up, making her drop halfway down your dick with a yelp.
She's clinging to you now, but it's more in pleasure than in fear or pain, so it's good enough for you.
Gently moving your hands, you grip onto her small butt, lifting her up as you get up. You'd love to just carry her into her room just like this as you'd noticed she was getting a little cold, but unfortunately, your plans are once more stopped by the baleful light of the sun.
So you'll just have to keep her warm through movement, after all.
So you look into her eyes once more, her hands clinging to you, and you start to bounce her on your dick.
On the first time she's subjected to your full length, she gasps.
On the second time, she squeaks.
On the third time, she screams and she never stops screaming, either.
Not all that surprising, given she's climaxing and can't stop until after bounce number 18.
Letting her rest with your whole cock onside her, her eyes rolled into the back of her head, you let her recover at her own pace, which she indeed eventually does...
...only to look at you with puppy dog eyes and asking for "More?"
Chuckling, you lower her to lie on the ground on her back, gripping her ankles to keep her legs spread as you begin to really pound into her.
It takes just a few moments of this jackhammering for her to be once more trapped in orgasm, even as you feel your own come. Slowing down just enough for her to register your words, you lean down at tell her "I'm about to come."
Not waiting for her reaction, you go back into giving it your all, soon groaning as you fill her out to her very depths, coming as deep as you can.
Pressing a kiss onto her forehead, you once more pick her up, just without ever pulling out of her tightly gripping pussy.
You don't stop fucking her all day.
Oh, and you actually managed to make great progress on your training. Apparently, sex just makes you train better in general, you contemplate as you rut into your little cupcake.
A very cream-filled cupcake.
After Addy eventually wakes from her fuck-addled state (and runs out of your room squeaking in embarrassment, escaping to her new room), you go out and find Sherrel, who is currently just hanging out in the main living area.
"Hey Sherrel, wanna see some cool tech I stole from another dimension?"
"Uh, sure! Not saying I'll be able to tinker with it, but why not?" she answers, following you as you assemble what you'll need, mostly a few scraps to show her how the turrets' insides are supposed to be put together along with lots of paper and a few pens, just to make sure.
Sitting her down in one of the unfurnished side rooms, you start to sketch what you remember of the blueprints you saw stashed away in that workbench (which is all of it, thanks to your memory). As you do, you occasionally fiddle around with your scrap, demonstrating what you're explaining to her.
Sherrel follows your explanation and examples with unusual intensity, letting out sounds of amazement when the actual superscience letting the end result actually work to recognize friend from foe, keep its gun in operative condition etc.
Leaving Sherrel to fiddle with the assembled parts you'd made during your impromptu lesson (confident she's actually learned something from you), you come back into your storeroom to contine practicing for the night, content with waiting until the rest of the gang progresses by itself for now.
For tonight, you want to work on your dimensional travel abilities. They're just too useful not to, to be honest.
The rest of your night is spent in quiet contemplation... at least until Kate and Nora come in with a bunch of enormous pillows.
"So... I heard you fucked the shortie?" Kate asks, with Nora blushing slighty.
"I may have, yes. Why do you ask?"
"You really should have something to fuck on in here that isn't the cold, hard ground, that's why. And it's also why we brought these!" She says as she shoves the pillows in your face. "And while we're here anyway, we may as well test them out."
Well, you were practicing something strictly mentally involved, so... may as well see if your strange prevarication for getting better as you fuck works in your favor, again, so you reach out for both of them to start things out with a deep kiss each.
When the sun starts to rise, you decide that yes, yes it did. Also, Kate and Nora seem to be loving the new sleeping arrangements in your room, judging be the happy sleeping expressions.
With how you're capable of rapidly cooling down living organisms, you'd assume you should be capable of doing the same thing to nonorganic matter, too, and most of the day you spend figuring out how to.
At least you manage it just fine, eventually.
Afterwards, you try to fiddle with your dimensional travel ability, specifically how to return to places you'd already visited once.
It's a pretty uneventful day, overall.
Wandering out of your room, you go to find Lea, who seems to have spent some time making more of your bastardized fusion cells. Good initiative, you feel.
"Hey Lea, wanna know about how to actually use these things?" You ask as you idly grab one of them and start throwing it up and catching it.
"Sure, boss, if I'm gonna be the one making them, may as well jump deeper down the rabbit hole."
You just smile and lead her into your little schoolroom, as you've decided to start calling it since yesterday. Taking up your pen and paper, you launch into an explanation of how to cobble together actual laser weaponry with just some simple tools, wood and a few lenses.
Sending out the new configuration of souls with their orders, you follow along so as to ask Kate about that workshop the gang was looking into for Sherrel.
After a short conversation about how useful it'll be to have a place to do all the tinkering (and that's what you've decided to call it, just as a general precaution) the gang does in general rather than just a place for Sherrel to work in, she directs you towards yet another warehouse nearby.
Once you arrive at the place in question, you make your way inside, where you find Sherral and Samantha hard at work, sorting equipment onto several worktables, bolting down anything that's meant to stay in one place, getting wiring ready, all the little things necessary for this endeavor.
You offer your help, and soon the three of you take turns receiving the new stuff the rest of the girls ferry to where you are in batches as you work away.
It takes quite a few hours of dedicated work, but your inexhaustible stamina sees you through.
At the end, you have a nicely sized garage area for Squealer to work on her tinkering in inside the main warehouse area (you had to tear down a wall or two to make it work, but it was worth it), with several side rooms to work on smaller things inside and a few storerooms for materials you've stocked.
While you could do with some more heavy machinery, this is the basis for a pretty great workshop, you'd say.
With all that taken care of, you and the girls take a break, giving you time to sit Sherrel down and grab the blueprints you'd already made when you explained to Lea how the retrofitted laser muskets work.
Sherrel, actually having an idea of the divide between actual tech and tinkertech, is amazed beyond measure when you tell her that these things aren't tinkertech, but she has no choice but to accept the truth after an hour or two of messing around with the design.P
You look inside yourself, but unfortunately, it seems the flow of time is just about normal and there's no new fruits fully matured on the tree, so you just get to training your dimensional powers again.
You spend the majority of the day trying to figure out how to ensure you can return to a reality you'd been to before, though it is... slow going.
Eventually deciding to change your focus to something more productive, you try to work on your technical skills, but no matter how much you go over the blueprints you know of and fiddle with a few pieces of scrap, you hardly learn anything new.
Then again, you can't always have great days, you suppose.
Emerging from your storeroom, you wander off to find Kate, being too bored to find entertainment yourself.
"Hey Kate, how's it going?"
"Hey Gabe, pretty well. Right now we're mostly waiting for Sherrel to get her first big project finished so we can resume smuggling weapons, just in better, and for Cupcake to finish off the next batch to start selling the stuff en-masse.
Only issue is recruitment, but I figure we'll have that whole thing well in hand in a few days."
"Mhm. Any way I could help you along?"
"Well, I suppose you could put the fear of god into a few Merchants, kill a few and get the rest of their network ready to either flip out in fear or fall into line when we take over. You know, demonstrate how our capes are just that much stronger than theirs. Thugs pay a lot of attention to that kinda thing."
After a bit more smalltalk and a quick scroll through Kate's messages, you have a few targets you could hit.
Finding Nora, you lead her and Kate towards the vacant room you'd been using to keep the zombies, ordering the zombies to obey them.
You hope they'll manage to actually be useful if they're needed, but for now it's time to be off. Turning into your shadow, you race along the streets of Brockton, steadily nearing the address Kate told you about.
You may have to backtrack a few times, but you arrive soon enough, anyway, so who cares?
Anyway, now you're here. From afar it looks like any other random warehouse in the area, but you actually start to hear a few voices from within once you draw near.
Looks like this is the place.
Going inside you see a big open room filled with druggies beyond the next door.
A quick estimate indicates there's about two dozen of them, though a few filter in and out of the main group, mostly via several side rooms. Most of the ones you can see are either taking drugs or sleeping.
This might be... troubling, actually. There's a lot of enemies in one big group here, where you much prefer to take isolated enemies by surprise.
Over the course of the nest half hour, you listen to entirely too much idle druggy gossip. Eventually, however, you get something actually worthwhile.
"So that psycho going around isn't gunna hit us?"
"Nah, man, he don't hit big groups. Just another coward trying to get a piece of our pie. Once the bosses get this new shipment down, we'll be back in business better than evah."
Well, looks like the Merchants went and tried to reconsolidate after your recent strikes against them. Interesting.
Silently making your way out of the warehouse, you start to take a look around for the circuit box...
...and soon find yourself frustrated, but successfull after ten minutes of searching. Turns out it was right beside you when you started searching, but you went in the opposite direction in your search.
Grumbling a bit, you rematerialize and start to cast your newest spell on the thing. You really want to see how it interacts with magic, considering you have that little tidbit about technology not mixing well with magic, so, here goes. Freeze this thing so it may not move!
The circuit box becomes noticeably colder when you poke it... and a quick look towards the nearest window confirms that the lighs inside seem to have gone out, judging by the complaints you can faintly make out.
Deciding to capitalize on this, you cast Make the world a colder place! at where you think the big mass of Merchants was milling about.
That shut 'em up. Heh. Not like sudden cold is in any way connected to that psycho cape that keeps on eating them, huh?
Before the idiots inside can orchestrate a mass exodus, you make it a point to go around the building, casting Freeze this thing so it may not move! at both entrances you find, as well as at the big loading door used to bring in large loads of stuff.
Or at least it used to do so, anyway. You're actually fairly sure the Merchants can't even open it, but better make sure anyway.
With that out of the way, you take your time to turn into your shadow and slip inside once more. With the lights out, there's no way these guys are going to see you, so you slither your way right into the side rooms. On the way you note these Merchants are really living in filth; as in, there have to be twice as many rats as humans in this room.
You take a moment to poke your shadowy head under the doors for the side rooms, but all you find are small groups of merchants. Some of them are bitching about the lights being out, some are sleeping, some are just continuing on to take drugs and fuck.
And yes, it turns out the only difference between these rooms and the main room is that they prefer to fuck in here, though you saw a few naked bodies outside, too. And these are filthy Merchants; the sight was not pleasant.
Time to repress this while you think about your next move.
Looking around, your best bet seems to be to reduce their numbers a bit. So, heading into the room with the smallest group you saw.
Three Merchants, two of them asleep, the last one busy snorting something. Perfect.
Hushing right behind her, you materialize up from the ground, grabbing onto her mouth with one hand and across her shoulders with the other, securing your grasp with your claws.
She tries to struggle, but before she can get over the pain of the claws now digging into her flesh, you bite into her neck deeply, drawing her blood out of her in great gulps and ensuring she won't make any noise.
Ever again.
Stacy and Shannen were always inseperable, from birth on. Whenever one of them wasn't in the room, they would both scream and cry until they got put together again.
To them, each other was the only good thing in their lifes. So when their lifes were caught in the same downward spiral the whole city was caught in, and the whole world in a wider sense, they just shrugged and went to join the first gang that would take them to make end's meet.
Apparently, they were too tanned for the nazis, after all.
But one day, when they were lying in the warehouse the group of merchants they joined were hiding in, not knowing they would indeed be joined together long after death...
Letting go of the last body, you lick your lips a little to get the rest of the blood you got smeared on there as you consider your next step.
Once more becoming your shadow, you slither out under the door and across the room. On the way, you realize that the Merchants have started pulling out their smartphones and the occasional flashlight, but the spell you cast on the room before is still in effect.
The end result is flickering lights that only really increase the spookiness of the atmosphere. Deftly avoiding a few rays of light, you keep on going.
Once you arrive in your target room, you take stock of the situation. Four Merchants, one of them sitting in a corner and starting into the empty air, the other three bunched up and currently using smartphones to have some light.
And naked, of course, but you are not surprised.
Now, this will be harder...
Retreating from the room for now, you slide on into the last room with people in it (from what you could tell, anyway). Once inside, you see that everyone here seems more annoyed at the lights being out than anything.
In fact, none of them seem to be asleep or isolated. Oh, and one girl and guy are the ugliest things you've ever seen.
And with your perfect memory, you can't unsee this...
Backtracking to the previous sideroom, you note how the Merchants have started to realize they can't get out, as all the doors are frozen shut.
They may be able to get out with some time and effort, but you doubt they'll live long enough to do so.
As you're about to get into your target room, you hear a scream coming from the first room you visited. Well shit, time to move up your timetable.
Slipping into the room, you materialize, then turn to the door and chant Freeze this thing so it may not move! at the door, freezing the hinges shut for the time being.
With that done, you turn around at the three girls now staring at you, before you give your best grin and breathe out two souls behind them, the painfire one and the shockwave one, causing the girls to follow the smoke with their eyes and look behind them.
With a gesture at them, you order "Well? Get the murder party started!"
Your souls then pull out their weapons- an ominously glowing red dagger and a pair of brass knuckles, respectively. They then waste no time fulfilling your order.
You join in, of course, enjoying the feeling of flesh parting beneath your claws, as the three of you turn this sideroom into a slaughter painted on the walls.
Especially Shockwave, his hits really splatter stuff everywhere. You sure are glad you can get all this shit off of you by transforming.
With your work here done for the moment, you breathe your minions back in, then turn into a shadow again. A few of the Merchants are trying to break down the door, but you expect it will take them a bit to get anywhere yet.
In the meantime, you race along the dark ground, exiting the warehouse, turning back and then coming back onto a window in your owl form.
Looking over the teeming mass of people below you, it looks like a few of them are paying attention to the group of people that just came out of their side room. As in, the only group that made it out of their room.
However, most of them seem to be too busy doing something else or just running in circles. From what you can guess, one of them was important, but these are Merchants, so good luck getting them to actually listen to you when you can't just hold a gun in the face of everyone present at once.
Oh, and apparently one of these guys was an E88 wannabe or spy or something. Seems to have a swastika tattoo if you heard right; a few of the Merchants are currently lynching the guy after finding out.
Good ol' Brockton.
Flying off your perch, you find a safe place atop a nearby roof to first turn back into your normal form, then go shadow. Making your way back into the warehouse, you move to where you saw the group of people somewhat more interesting than the rest of the mob.
Materializing behind one guy once you get the chance, you grab onto him and hold his mouth closed, dragging him away from the nearest people, only to slip on some damn pizza delivery boxes nearby, leading to both of you falling and his thumb in your fucking eyesocket.
Ow.
Thanking your lucky stars he didn't make it deep enough to get at your brain, you throw him to the side before mounting him and biting deeply into his flailing form, hoping you get done fast enough none of the nearby Merchants can investigate.
Ricky, just another poor fuck who became a thug because it's the only way to feed yourself in Brockton.
Well shit, you ate the guy, but now everyone nearby is looking in this direction. No big wonder, they heard him screaming out a moment before you killed him after a brief scuffle, also audible.
Thinking quickly, you jump at the nearest Merchant, then use your levitation and jump away, them in tow... except she managed to tear herself free while you were jumping, leading to an undignified jumble of limbs instead of the proper landing you'd been going for.
In retrospect, perhaps being completely weightless in a situation where your weight plays an important role wasn't optimal. Nevertheless, looks like a few of the surrounding Merchants managed to direct their lights at you, so you're about to have an actual fight!
... is what you thought, but that's when what looks like a pillar of trash slams down where you were just standing.
Looking towards the source, there's some kind of animate trashman standing amongst your prey.
"Thought you could walk in and fuck us up, huh? Well, you're about to find out why NOBODY! FUCKS! WITH! THE! MERCHANTS!"
Well double-fuck, looks like this is about to become a cape fight... except only one side has backup, and that side isn't you.
Not wasting any time with banter, you breathe out your chosen souls for this battle, Shockwave and Painfire, just calling out a quick "Hit it!" and hoping they get what you want from the placement you threw them in.
Meanwhile, it is time you yourself got to work on your opponent, who is still trying to get a grip on the sudden change in situation. Chanting Freeze this thing so it may not move! at the trash making up his body, you're pleasantly surprised to see him jerking and throwing it off, only to replace it with more trash from the surroundings.
Surroundings that, while colder than normal due to your earlier spell, aren't actually hazardously cold to him.
Mhm... this might be more complicated than you'd hoped. Looking around, it looks like your souls, at least, are doing good work, Painfire throwing his fire around in all directions and wildly swinging his knife around, even as Shockwave is taking his time to smash the skulls of disabled gangers in.
You're kind of annoyed he didn't interpret your orders correctly, but hey, at least they're keeping the fuckers busy.
Only... that means you have to fight the fantabulous trashman alone. Which is looking to be an actual fight, judging by the enormous arm he's been shifting his mass to coming to fly at you!
Deftly sidestepping the attack, you push the arm to the side to avoid getting hit. Hmm...
Something seems off about his power.
...Yes, you're fairly sure you saw correctly. Some kind of tendrils are stretching through the trash. Looks like his power works as a Changer power that lets his assemble and assimilate trash, huh?
It's not the weirdest power you've ever heard of, but still. This guy really lost in the power lottery, it seems.
Though this also explains why he let go of the trash you cooled down- if he's physically present in the trash himself, the cold would naturally affect him, making that spell a natural counter to him. Good to know.
Still doesn't let you get through his armor or anything, but it lets you force him to throw out a bunch of trash or risk the cold fucking him up. Now, if only you also had a way to actually get at him in between the moments he throws his trash out and him getting new trash...
Deciding to change your target, if not your strategy, you cast Feel the bite of winter in your bones! at your opponent, grinning when his movements noticeably slow.
"What is it? Getting cold feet?"
Pfh... You just couldn't resist.
Your opponent growls, but just keeps on gathering trash for now. Your souls, meanwhile, have taken up hunting down anyone still capable of running away, so you send them a mental command to let the runners run and concentrate on the ones still around instead.
Only to be surprised when one of the mooks goes and throws a molotov cocktail in your direction before getting engulfed by painfire once more, shit!
Cursing to yourself a little, you roll across the ground and jump up again, shrugging off your clothes that took the brunt of the damage. Standing there in the nude, you focus on your trashy enemy again, who seems to be getting incensed for some reason, while your minions keep on killing the mooks in the meantime.
Now you're annoyed. That outfit lasted for a whole few days, and here your record got stopped short again. Farewell, non-nudist lifestyle. You will be missed.
Not liking the bulked up trashman facing you, you start to cast Freeze this thing so it may not move! at him, causing him to once again remove his armor... only this time, he's doing it by consolidating it and thowing it at you while he's gathering new trash!
Jumping to the side, you evade his projectile, and, getting quite fed up with his antics, order your Painfire minion to attack him.
There's only a few enemies left, and they're still getting fired up by him, so you're not too worried about the other one.
With a satisfying scream, your enemy starts to writhe... and gather more trash, even as he's coming closer at you. Looks like he's decided to slug it out in close combat, huh?
Deciding to stay on your toes, you dart in for a quick slash of your claws, aiming to rend as much of his armor off as possible.
You're about to savage his arm, but he, in a sudden display of acrobatic skill, he leverages his mass into a backflip that hardly even leaves the ground, but lets him push off the ground with his arms, letting him come to his feet again a short distance before you.
You... did not see that coming.
Luckily enough, your soul can just throw more fire at him, so at least he keeps on screaming in his prison of trash.
Oh, and he's still charging at you.
You move to attack him once again, but your opponent jumps back and starts thrashing in pain after all the extreme pain you've been subjecting him to. Finally.
It is in this moment that a grenade lands between the two of you.
You both look at where it came from, the mook in question just having had his skull smashed by Shockwave, when you look at each other, (not quite) man and (not actually) trashmonster eye to eye.
The world explodes in shrapnell and pain.
With a mighty series of heavy blows, you smash most of his trash armor aside, followed by a slight graze of your claws... and your electrical power used through them.
He violently convulses, temporarily stunned and incapable of unrolling himself to collect more trash. Also, turns out this is the guy that was so ugly earlier that you're feeling kinda traumatized from seeing him.
Well, while you're somewhat hesitant to put this into your mouth, you're sure as hell not going to not eat him, so... Bon appetit.
Mush was... Mush. He didn't really like to be called Jason anymore.
When his life was going down the drain around him (he never expected those brats to go to the police) and he was living in the gutter, Skids approached him. Someone saw him after he triggered and started to assimilate junk, so he came to recruit him, and he didn't object.
Any place was better than the pile of trash he triggered in.
Dropping the human garbage bin, you clear your throat and take a look around. Quite a bit of mayhem, yeah. The window coverings were torn off in the rush of the lucky survivors, meaning there were survivors to spread the tale of how you brutally murdered everyone inside here, as well as that cape.
... You still don't know what he was called, but whatever. It's still your first actual cape fight, and you won it. Handily. Anyone saying otherwise is a filthy liar who lies.
Making it a point to explore the rooms you didn't investigate before, as there weren't any people inside...
Well, you sure as fuck are glad you did. Looking at crate after crate of what turns out are drugs after opening one, you suppose you just got filthy rich. Filthy, filthy fucking rich.
Guess this place was actually where that delivery you overheard about was stored until it got delivered elsewhere. Makes sense why that cape was around now, too- he was most likely supposed to guard this shit.
Only issue now is to get this stuff outta here and sold. You should get Kate on that.
Mentally thanking Kate for making sure you know her number, you wander over to the nearest Merchant corpses, picking up the still brightly lit phone. Calling Kate, you let her know you finished up in the warehouse she sent you to, but you need the vans and some help to move a giant load of drugs.
Mentioning that you're going to let the zombies in the base deanimate for now to make some fresh ones where you're at to help moving stuff, you thank Kate and hang up.
Time to get to work.
A few chants of Rise, my fleshly servant, and go forth to fulfill my will! later, you have your five little zombies trailing after you. The ones without a head didn't work, unfortunately, but you still had enough. In fact, the cape you ate is among your fleshbags, and can still use its tendrils, which is rather neat.
Didn't keep the actual power, unfortunately, but the physical changes persisted and got reanimated along with the rest of the body. Which may come in useful, considering just how many drugs you have to get to the doors.
You and your 'team' make good time, clearing out the individual rooms at great speed.
With how none of you are restricted by stupid things such as 'stamina' or normal human strength, it was kind of to be expected.
Getting a call from Kimberley, you get to the door you told them to use and forcefully bend the still somewhat frozen thing open. Letting them inside, you gesture towards the mass of crates you'd stacked up next to the leftovers of the little massacre you committed.
"Yeah, the Merchants were trying to make a comeback with this shit, but then I stumbled upon this place, so now we're gonna take everything they had over." You grin at them when some mouths open at the sheer quantity of loot.
"Me and the brains parade over here will keep on getting the stuff from the siderooms over here while you ferry it into the vans, then to the hideout."
The vans have to drive back and forth a few times to ferry along the sheer amount of drugs, but you're making decent progress. However, a few hours in and maybe two or three drives before you've got everything, you're interrupted somewhat rudely.
With a mildly blinding flash, a cape you instantly recognize as Dauntless descends from the sky. "Halt citizen! We have received reports of suspicious ongoing in this warehouse. And... you're a cape."
Keeping a completely straight face (not that anyone can see it right now, but you get it), you say "Excuse me, sir, would you mind waiting with that for about half an hour? We're about to finish unloading, then we don't care about what beef you got with the owners."
You can see his uncovered mouth twitch for a moment, before he says "Very funny, but I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to stop whatever you're doing for now."
"Curses! My brilliant disguise was seen through!"
Pretending to crack your neck and mentally making note of the indistinct sound you can hear coming from his ear (an earpiece, of course), you continue: "Well whaddya know? Someone who isn't completely empty headed! Not that it matters, though. Name's Cain. I run the Lord Street Crypts. And you, my unwanted friend, are interrupting my business here. Why don't you be a good boyscout and go help some old ladies cross the street or something, yeah?"
It is at just this moment that the next load of crates is being carried out of the warehouse by your girls and zombies.
"Is... Are those dead bodies carrying things for you?" he asks, while the girls look over at their (still) naked boss talking with the hero.
The catcalls start immediately.
Dauntless, at this point visibly disturbed at this situation, looks at you, making you shrug. "Just ignore 'em, they do it to me all the time."
"Seriously, no. Sorry about the missed banter, but I'm arresting you all right now."
Well shit, time to think fast!
Shaking your head, you sadly tell him "It's easier if you let the girls get it out of their system."
Of course, while you are doing so, you mentally order your summoned souls to join you outside.
"That said, Dauntless... do you really want to try a three on one?" you ask as they get on their way.
"I do happen to know your empowerment takes time, and your stuff getting broken would put quite a damper on your career, wouldn't it?" you drawl on as they (finally) come out the door.
With your backup taking position behind you, you stare him down in an imposing manner, the girls (and corpses) seeing this and cautiously getting back inside to gather the last load.
He wavers a bit, looking at the three of you and then at the door the girls just disappeared in. You can just about see the thoughts racing through his head.
Eventually, the fact that he's outnumbered and possibly outgunned (unknown capes can be a bitch) convinces him to slowly back off. "Alright, but I'll be back with reinforcements soon."
Smiling into your shadow, you answer: "You did the smart thing here, Dauntless. No hard feelings, eh?"
Turning towards the conga line of drugs, you tell the girls "Alright, this should be the last drive. Everyone ready?"
Getting a few nods and affirmations in response, you get into a van, together with the zombies, and off you are. This went better than expected!
