It is now the 2nd of March, 2011
Opening your eye, you wake up. Yes, singular eye. It seems you're stuck in some kind of... cocoon? Weird.
Still, it's kinda nice and warm in here. You kinda wanna stay inside a bit longer...
Grumbling a bit to yourself, you decide to get out, after all. Ripping your way free with your claws (that you now apparently have), you slowly make headway towards freeing yourself. Once you are out of your comfy confinement, the red substance making it up starts to smoke and dissolve.
A bit sad you won't get to investigate... whatever this stuff is, you take stock of yourself. Your clothes didn't make the transition with you, though you suppose that burial suit did more than its share of work. You never liked it, but you can at least acknowledge it did suitkind as a whole proud.
Beyond that, your hands are now clawed... and you can extend and retract those claws freely. Might be handy, that. Heh. Also, you suddenly feel absolutely invulnerable towards bullets. It's a nice feeling, if you do say so yourself. As well, you just feel... better in general.
You suddenly realize you can recall everything that happened ever since you woke up in your grave, all those... days? It feels longer. All those days ago. It's a bit strange at first, but you're sure you will manage. Oh hey, you should go on a few wiki walks and see if anything useful sticks with you.
Then, you're suddenly overcome with a bunch of knowledge. You now know what magic is. And yes, you're calling it magic now. The inherent knowledge your power, or rather state of being, throws at you, includes the word magic. May as well roll with it, you knew you weren't a parahuman for a long time now anyway.
So, apparently, you can control temperature. As in, lower it. And control ice, too, of course. Depending on how that turns out, that's gonna be somewhat of a game changer.
Exiting your storeroom, you take a look around and go find Kate, ignoring the catcalls coming at you from the gangsters in your employ. Quickly finding her, or rather Kate finding you, she seems pleasantly surprised to see you on your legs again.
"Not gonna lie, boss, turning into a weird blood-cocoon-thingy is fucking weird, even for capes," she ribs at you.
"Hey now, I wasn't planning on it, but what can I say; beauty sleep waits for no one. At least I got more powers from the whole thing."
"No shit? That's fucking metal. Anyway, gang's been doing well while you were playing sleeping beauty," she begins to explain. "We got that delivery of weapons and ammo and sold it off without a hitch. The nazis sniffed around the handoff site, but were way too late to do jack shit before everyone dispersed. That money you gave me also paid for some nice toys for everyone- some of us been thinking about recruiting some more people, maybe set up a drugs thing, but we didn't wanna just go and do it without your input."
"Go ahead and see about setting up our own drug lab and sellers, I actually have a few things lying around from those Merchant places I robbed."
"I never doubted you would, boss," she grins at you.
Going down into the lair with Kate in tow, again provoking catcalls from all sides, you soon hand her the bags of weed you 'liberated' from that Merchant distribution cell.
"Did the two I took with me make it back okay with the loot, by the way?"
"Oh yes, though Jade is still fucking pissed she needed you to punch that last fucker to death, from what she told me," So that was what she was bothered about, it makes sense now, "We just threw all the stuff they had into storage. That's actually how we got on the topic of setting up a drug distribution network ourself."
"Oh, by the way, would you like a fluid refill sometime soon?", you ask with a charming grin, forming your claws and making a small cut along your wrist.
"Well boss, if you ask like that...," she smiles, sidling up to you and licking along the cut, grabbing your wrist in one hand and your dick in the other, slowly pumping it to full hardness.
Judging she had enough after a few moments, you once again pick her up and drop her onto your dick, making out with her in seconds. Thrusting into her tight pussy from below, you meet her eyes and her smile with your own, even as you both do your best to stick your tongues down each other's throat.
Neither of you is leaving the room anytime soon.
Deciding to finish taking stock of all of yourself, including insides, you finally bid Kate farewell after a few hours of heated fucking and concentrate on yourself.
Opening your metaphorical eyes, you take a look around. Missing the omnipresence your throne grants you, you nevertheless find the place you wish to view through your perfect recollection of where everything is.
Hanging from the tree, you spy three fruits, dangling in a nonexistent breeze.
In fact, those fruit are dangling rather slowly... shifting your view back towards the castle, you consider the irrelevant past meals mingling about... it seems as though time inside your castle is considerably slowed compared to the outside.
A shame. You would've liked to see if you could train inside there, but that's a no-go, after all.
Regardless, you swiftly enter your internal castle and make good time towards the tree, plucking the fruits and scarfing them down in short order so as to lose as little time as possible.
Finishing off the last of the fruit, you leave the castle to minimize the lost time and find yourself back in your lair. Deciding to try to continue to master the mysteries of this power, you try to silently speak to one of your past meals.
Making some good progress, you eventually stop when it becomes obvious you're not getting anywhere for a bit and decide to summon the soul of that one vet you ate; you recall him making a good attempt at throwing you off when you ambushed him. All the better for you to learn from.
Making great progress, you feel that you actually have the basics of hitting a dude without being hit in return down.
Next off on your list, messing around with this magic shit.
"Freeze water and shoot it at my enemy!", you yell, and are almost surprised when this actually causes a shard of ice around half the size of your arm to appear and slam into a wall.
With a grin, you decide that this is awesome.
Making some progress on making the damn thing actually hit where you want it to, you eventually take a break and mess with Kate's thrall-bond for a bit instead of hitting your head against that particular wall.
Eventually, you're pretty sure you did something, but you're not sure exactly what. Until, that is, the door is thrown open by a panting Kate who then jumps at you and attempts to throttle you by sticking her tongue as far into your throat as she can.
You shrug. Now you know what you did. Raising your arms around her, you proceed with the natural sequence of events.
A while later, Kate, resting in your arms, addresses you with a satisfied smile.
"So, think you'll be around for the next weapons shipment? We used the proceeds from the last one to get another one delivered, should arrive in a few days, and the rest we used to get everything we need for a lab and the supplies to go with it, so Lindy should start churning out drugs soon."
"Sure, I think I can pencil that into my busy schedule," you drawl, earning a happy smile from Kate.
"Though, while we're planning and everything, you ARE gonna make sure nobody samples the product Lindy's making, yeah? Don't wanna end like the Merchants."
Rolling her eyes, she answers in a bemused tone: "'Course not, boss. Everyone here joined up with us because they didn't want to shack up with the druggies in the first place."
Shrugging, you bid her farewell and stand up, summoning soul number 11, swiftly interrogating him as to other operations his delivered drugs and money to and from.
What you hear brings an enormous grin to your face.
Bursting out of your storeroom, you storm up to find Kate, who just finished chatting with the girls over a bunch of clothes. The clothes you'd asked them to buy, you'd guess. Not important right now, though.
"Hey girls, want to know who just found out where that tinker of the Merchants' hangs out?"
"I leave you alone for ten minutes, and what do you do?", she jokingly scolds you. "But seriously, you wanna grab her? We're short on cash until that transaction in a few days goes through, so we couldn't really dosh out for anything big, but then again, you might need a few days to get her to cooperate. Either way, even if we just off her, taking her from the Merchants would weaken them. Though it'd also get them out for blood, so we'd best make sure they don't find this place."
"Let me go and scout the place out, figure out where and how she comes and goes, that kinda thing. We can make a plan and grab her tomorrow night."
"Sounds good. Before you go, wear some damn clothes already!"
"Oh. Huh. Didn't even realize I was naked this whole time. Alright, will do," you say as you begin to dress in the clothes brought to you, your newfound social instincts helping you pick out what goes well together. Once you're done, you get even more appreciative glances than before, so you guess it worked.
Turning into a shadow, you race into the night, your perfect memory letting you navigate through any parts of Merchant territory you'd traversed already and the description of the place you're looking for sufficient to let you find it relatively soon.
Looking at the trashy cafe, you slowly circle the place. Keeping to the shadows far away from the building for now, you note the usual trash-filled alleys to both sides of the building, with a back entrance actually free of debris you take note of.
You start to survey the surroundings further out, but just as you're about to see if there's any good hiding place with clear sight of the entrance, your actual target arrives.
Looks like she really comes here every night.
Squealer arrives on an obviously modified motorbike, though it's not obvious tinkertech. A pretty common sight in the poorer parts of Brockton; just about every working vehicle anyone living here owns has been modified to some extent, if just to continue functioning.
She parks the thing and just enters the place, same as any other patron. Though you're fairly sure this whole thing is a money laundering front for the Merchants. Sometimes, you DO need to pay for stuff electronically, and (literally and metaphorically) dirty cash exchanged by sweaty druggie fingers may arouse suspicion when you bring it to a bank without a legal explanation for where you got it from.
Now, she's inside, but you're not too keen to enter the place quite yet. They got actual bright light going in there, so for now you'll stick to observing from a distance.
A few hours later, Squealer leaves on her motorbike. In the meantime, you'd finished surveying the surrounding buildings, finding several hiding spots the girls should be good with when the time comes.
Now, how should you approach the rest of this? You could return to the lair now, and just plan to grab Squealer before she enters tomorrow night. On the other hand, you could also totally rob the place, most likely hurting the Merchants even more than her loss alone would, though doing so would arouse more suspicion.
In the latter case, it might be helpful to know how the insides look and how many gangers to expect to come rushing out of the backrooms. Maybe you could pretend to be just a normal customer, get in, drink a coffee or two and get out again, using your senses to gather information. Otherwise, you could try to infiltrate as a shadow, but the bright lights would make it even harder than lights usually would.
Lastly, investigating the outsides of the cafe a little closer might be appropriate, just in case the Merchants are actually well organized enough to install cameras.
Slithering closer to the building, you take a closer look at the cafe's outside.
Yeah, these are the Merchants after all... They actually had a camera positioned to see the entrance, but it's been spraypainted over a long time ago. Nothing to see here, no siree.
With that out of the way, you take a look through the windows you can find. There's the cafe area, naturally, the kitchen and several backrooms. No windows for those last ones, unfortunately, though you can vaguely hear voices when you listen very closely at the wall.
Deciding to leave things here for the night, you return to the lair, making sure to scout out several routes of retreat for the girls, just to make sure they have choices and are harder to follow. More a just in case thing, but it's never wrong to be thorough.
Once you arrive, you, Kate and anyone interested in planning this out get to discussing.
"So, she usually arrives at around the same time. I saw a motorbike, might be tinkertech, but nothing obvious. Way I see it, our best bet would be to grab her after she arrives and before she enters the place, then pull her into a car or something before anyone reacts."
"What if the Merchs inside see what's going on and raise a stink? Wouldn't want anyone following us."
"If it comes down to it, I can stay back and hold them off. I'm bulletproof," delighting in the looks around the room as the gang really realizes what it means to have a cape leading them, you continue "Heck, I may as well rob the place on my own if it comes down to it. I may not necessarily succeed before reinforcements or the police show up or anything, but they sure won't manage to fight me off and I can always fuck out of there once the extraction team's underway."
Grins around the room at your deliberate nerd-out, that social power really does come in handy, the group continues deliberating details of the plan.
All you need to do is give the word, and you'll be ready to do this.
Mentioning to Kate that you have a 'pretty bad sun allergy' (hey, it's true, even), you disappear into your storeroom of solitude and, for the first time, flip the light switch.
Repeatedly transforming into your shadow form and pushing yourself into the brightest part of the light only to be forcefully detransformed, your progress is slow, but you keep at it for a while before you decide to stop for now.
Reapetedly bashing your claws into each other for a few hours, you stop when the sound they make changes. You're pretty sure you actually made them stronger, more durable. Nice.
Trying to 'tune' into the internal frequency of the souls inside you, you eventually succeed and speak to one of the faceless sausage party members. Meh.
Once more practicing your ability to remain a shadow even under bright light, you eventually notice that it takes significantly longer for you to materialize against your will.
Spending the rest of the day on trying to get your icy projectile spell to aim where you want it to, why won't this shit work graaaaah, you settle down once the sun goes down and nighttime rolls around.
Walking into the main living area of the warehouse, you smile at the assembled girls.
"Everyone ready to go?" you ask, earning a lot of eager smiles.
"Everyone's ready, boss. We all know the plan, and we can do this shit. Not like it's all that complicated," Kate mentions as everyone files out of the lair and into the two vans they spent the time to hotwire the day before.
With you in the lead vehicle explaining the way, the group soon arrives a street away from the cafe. You get out, knowing one group will follow after you a few minutes later in their vehicle, while the other will park theirs a bit away and take position in one of the places you'd scouted out beforehand, just in case there's trouble.
Now, where do you take position to wait for your victim, how will you disable her for the driving by girls to drag her into their van and how will you approach the cafe itself afterwards? Remember the plan, Gabe, that's what you have perfect memory for.
Taking position inside an abondoned building across the street yourself, you get ready to move in and grab her, to then hand her off to the team that should have stopped their van in the right position by then.
Taking a moment to instruct your vet soul to help you subdue the woman you'll summon him next to, you settle in and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Man, stakeouts like this take some serious time.
Eventually, though, you hear a motorbike approaching. Making sure that this is the right person (it is), you spring forth from your hiding place, jumping through an empty windowframe, and get to grabbing your target that has just gotten off her bike, making a surprised face at your rapid approach.
Summoning your minion to her other side, you grab onto her face with one hand and around her shoulders, your minion faithfully bending down and lifting up her feet and lifting her up together with you.
By the time she starts struggling, your van has already arrived and the door opened, so you start walking backwards (and man, your ability to make a concrete map of your surroundings through things like sound and your other senses is amazing for this shit), you hand the struggling woman off to the extraction team, keeping a hand over her mouth the whole time.
That went well.
Unfortunately, it seems as though your little operation was seen from inside the cafe, judging by the hurried movement you see beyond a door leading further inside and the waitress making a phone call.
Time to be a distraction, you suppose, as the girls drive off with the first part of the loot and you unsummon your summoned helper.
Now, how shall you do this?
Walking right through the front door, you zero in on the waitress currently on the phone, grabbing it right out of her hand and crushing it in your clawed grasp.
Smiling at her terrified visage, you exclaim: "Make the world a colder place!"
Instantly, you can feel the effect. The entire room's temperature plummets. Nowhere near enough to be instantly dangerous, but white clouds begin to rise from the lips of everyone present.
You're pretty sure they'll get out of here sooner rather than later; it's actually a little warmer outside tonight.
Now, what to do about the Merchants undoubtedly assembling in the back rooms?
You just walk into the open door, immediately confronted with what looks like a crackhead with a gun.
He shoots, but the bullet only makes a hole in your top before losing most momentum and pinging off in a random direction, perfectly intact.
This is seriously cool.
Your opponent does seem to agree, judging by the open-mouthed stare he's giving you.
While he's surprisingly quick on the uptake for a crackhead, you score a good hit along his arm, nearly making him drop his gun.
Meanwhile, the girls outside are waiting for any Merchant reinforcements to show up to gun them down with extreme prejudice. This should buy you enough time to clear this place out and get the loot, just as planned.
Still, this druggie here managed to avoid a crippling wound by your claws just now. Aaaaand now he's trying to shoot you again. Should at least give you a bit of time to deal with him.
Ignoring him trying to shoot you, you grab his arm, pull him towards you and bite into his neck, sealing his fate as you begin to feed.
Kalem, Merchant overseer of one of their money laundering operations. Always hated anyone better off than him and used to treat his subordinates like shit.
Dropping the meatsack, you go further into the place, surveying who else stands between you and the cash.
What you see is two women clutching their own guns, standing against you.
Grabbing onto her, your hand lands on her breast, leading to her jumping, surprised, backwards, only to literally bounce off the wall and lands right on you, throwing you to the ground with a hand between her legs.
Well.
Not one to waste an opprtunity, you unhinge your jaw and latch onto her tits right through her clothing, draining her blood with abandon.
Meanwhile, the other Merchant, while initially stunned at the sheer absurdity of what just happened, starts to fire at your exposed legs. When doing so doesn't do anything, she resorts to stomping onto your knee in an act of desperation.
Hitting your knee pretty hard, she nevertheless can't stop you from rolling her compatriot's corpse off of you and getting up, preparing to eat her as well.
With a wordless scream, she charges you, gun raised overhead to do who-knows-what, when you grab onto her midsection, slam her into the wall, catch her when she rebounds again and then throw her to the ground, jumping after her and jamming your open jaw down onto her neck.
Mindy, pretty much a total bimbo, though sweet at heart. Was pretty much only here to be Kalem's sexpet, spent most of her time being sexually abused by everyone involved in their money laundering operation when they weren't whoring her out.
Kerry was never a nice person. It's not that she went out of her way to hurt others for the hell of it, she just didn't see anything wrong with doing so when it actually got her what she wanted.
And she wanted a lot of things.
That's how she came to control a money laundering operation of the Merchants. She would've chosen another place to make it big, but she was too female for the E88 and not asian enough for the ABB, so she just jumped aboard the first train that promised her money and influence otherwise.
The idiot with a big gun and a small dick was trivially easy to distract with fucking the bimbo and thinking he was the boss of the place, leaving Kerry in almost complete control of the actual operation. Which she, naturally, used to skim off the top at every turn, until she saved up enough cash to get out of the Bay and build herself a better life elsewhere.
Her plan went rather nicely, until one night a stranger came into the cafe they used as a front...
Throwing both dead bodies into a corner, you approach the last room inside the building you haven't seen yet, having just cleaned out what looks like a break room the gangers seemed to be hanging out in.
Inside, you find... a significant amount of money. No surprise, this was a money laundering operation, after all. You must've hit them at a good point in their exchange cycle, you guess.
Luckily enough, they even had a few dufflebags lying around, probably to transport loads of money in small denominations. Well, you'll be making use of them for the same purpose, just with a different end goal in mind.
Picked up 20k dollars
With your loot slung above your shoulder, you whistle a merry tune as you leave right the way you came, the entire place free of anyone else. Once you leave, you can't help but notice several cooling corpses lying around the street- your backup team must've had some good fun while you were busy.
Meeting up with them with a smile on everyone's lips, you show off the bag full of cash as the van speeds off towards a random direction just in case before returning towards the warehouse.
Arriving at your lair, you're greeted with a grinning Kate, who, after everyone has put their stuff away and the loot is placed in storage, leads you to one of the storerooms next to yours.
Inside, you find a naked Squealer, bound and gagged with a ring gag. After eyeing her tits for a second, you throw a raised eyebrow at Kate, who just grins at you before approaching your captive. With a put-upon sigh, you follow her, already getting an idea of how this is going to go.
"Hello there Squealer. I'm gonna remove that gag in a sec and you're going to behave like a good girl, alright?", not waiting for an answer, Kate does just that, leading to, frankly, predictable results.
"SKIDS IS GUNNA-", only to be interrupted when the gag gets shoved back in.
"Skidmark has no idea where we are, or even who we are. I think you should be focused on what going to happen to you next," Kate says while looking deep into her eyes, clearly intimidating her successfully.
"I am going to remove that gag again, and my boytoy here will feed you some blood. You WILL drink it, and you WILL be thankful for it, no matter what we do to you in the meantime, got it?", she threatens, having pulled a gun from... somewhere and tapping the business end of the barrel between her eyes.
Her only answer are wide, frightened eyes and Squealer pissing herself.
"Good enough," she says, before beckoning you closer, leading to you approaching and manifesting your claws, leading to Squealer focusing her frightened attention on you as you make a decently sized cut along your wrist.
Taking out the gag, Kate gently takes hold of your arm and pushes it into Squealer's now accessible mouth, both of you kneeling over her prone form. With a smirk that you know all to well at this point, Kate starts to make out with you even as Squealer has to start swallowing your blood or risk choking.
It doesn't take long for the hand that isn't holding onto yours to fiddle with your pants' zipper, in short order freeing and stroking your dick. As Squealer realizes what's happening, she starts to shiver, but there's nothing she can do.
You also smell her arousal.
It doesn't take long for Kate to come up for air from your kissing, panting lightly and looking into your eyes in that very Kate way. A moment later, she looks at Squealer, who also looks at the two of you in a mix of fear, trepidation and scarousal. You smile at her with just a little teeth and you can literally feel how all those emotions deepen, even as you continue feeding her your blood.
With nobody saying a word, silent looks exchanged between all three of you, you allow Kate to nudge you into position, with her hand still slowly stroking your dick, equally slowly guiding it towards Squealer's pussy. Kate comes for the first time of the night as you slowly enter her, just from the heady feeling of power as the two of you rape the woman with enormous tits and make her enjoy it.
It isn't the last time she comes tonight.
You look deep into Squealer's eyes as you bottom out into her, filling her in a way she clearly isn't used to, judging by the slight wince as your tip reaches her womb. Slowly pulling out again, Kate now having stopped guiding you in favor of blatantly pulling down her pants and masturbating, you take your time filling Squealer over and over again in slow, methodical strokes, the arm raised to her mouth to feed her somewhat awkward despite your physical prowess.
It doesn't matter.
In short order, both women's fluids flood the beton floor of the storeroom, Squealer trying to remain as still as she can to deny how good she's feeling even as Kate gets off on her inability to hide it. You slowly speed your thrusts up over the course of several minutes, until all her surprising stubborness can't hold her orgasm back and she comes around your shaft, squeezing onto you and causing you to speed up even further, downright jackhammering into her as Kate comes over to play with her enormous tits, pinching her nipples and extracting all the fun she can out of the knockers of doom.
Eventually, after milking another two orgasms out of her, you come into Squealer, once more bottoming out unto her womb and filling it with your cum.
It is at this point that you bend over her, your face millimeters from hers, and whisper "By the way... I can keep it up for as long as I want."
Squealer can only whimper into your arm, the sound instantly triggering another orgasm for Kate.
You drag Squealer's bound form up with you as you stand up, not taking your dick out of her for even a moment. The three of you have a long night ahead of you. And a long morning, and maybe a long day after that.
Eventually, Squealer becomes your thrall, but none of you notice or care.
Making the best you have of the time in the day left after the epic nonstop fuckfest you, Kate and Sherrel (she'd told you her name in between screaming in ecstasy) had, you settle down and try to listen in on the insides of your soul palace, to go with your ability to see what's going on inside it.
Making good progress and already starting to hear indistinct sounds when concentrating really hard, you eventually switch over again to trying to actually make your ice shard spell hit where you want it to. Progress is slow and frustrating, and you ultimately stop training for the day when the shard you shoot suddenly takes on the form of a dick. Just, what. Why.
Taking a break from training for a moment, as you've decided you should spend the whole night and following day on it to prepare for the arms deal tomorrow night, you look inwards and see that the tree has actually grown another fruit by now.
Happy with the chance to eat another one, even with the continued slowness of your internal world, you hurry to materialize inside your throne room and make your way towards the tree.
You try to get back into the groove you were in earlier when you try to listen to your insides, but a strange thumping sound keeps on distracting you. Annoyed, you change your focus to your other long term project, proper aiming with the ice shards.
Making constant, slow progress, you decide you may as well fiddle with the thrall bonds, as you now have two, to see if you can't get anything more out of this.
Idly messing with the connections, you hardly realize how the time is passing until you suddenly sit up and notice it's daytime already.
You continue tinkering with your thrall connections until, suddenly, you feel something click and a part of the connection unlocks, letting parts from your side flow freely into them that couldn't before.
You get the sense that you could do something with what you just did, but it'll have to wait, as you can already hear an excited Kate running towards you, ranting excitedly about claws. Guess you found out what you did rather early...
Calming an excited Kate down is an exercise in futility, so you just let her work it off and keep her claws away from anything you'd rather avoid getting sliced off, meaning no hot psycho sex this time around. Though you eventually get her to go call the other girls into your storeroom (you really should see about getting some furniture in here one of these days), hopefully letting you discuss an issue of utmost importance for the future of the gang.
Namely, should the gang hang out in your room so you can cool their beers by holding them.
But nah, seriously, you smile to yourself, time to come up with a proper name.
After a long and exhausting discussion (seriously, there were a lot of good suggestions), the group as a whole grudgingly agrees to calling itself the Lord Street Crypts, or just the Crypts for short.
It was a hard choice, but it's short and sweet, and the 'Crypts' probably lets itself turn into a nice gang tag once you get to recruiting people that can do the boring legwork and defend your territory.
Afterwards, the gang disperses in preparation for the arms deal tonight, leaving you with about half of the sun's daylight hours left.
Working your ass off for the rest of the day, trying to get this FUCKING ICE SHARD to hit where it's FUCKING SUPPOSED TO, you're eventually interrupted when Kate comes by to ask you how it's going, likely because you'll be going out for the arms deal soon.
"I'm doing all right, but I can't get this ice shard shooting thing to aim properly. It's a giant pain not properly aiming it at vulnerable areas and all."
With a sly smirk, she says "Well, maybe all you need is some relaxation while you work?" Without waiting for you to reply, she gets on her knees and fishes your dick out of your pants. With her claws, of course. Trying to concentrate on something else as she begins to suck you off, almost immediately you notice a noticeable improvement in your aim.
Kate must never know. She'll never let you live it down.
Assembling with the rest of the gang in the main area of the warehouse, you try to ignore Kate's smirk as everyone files into the vans you'd already used when grabbing Squealer, who seems strangely comforted upon being inside one again, the merchandise securely stowed in crates in the back, you drive off towards the handoff location.
On the way someone suggests turning on the radio, but we don't talk about the great shitty music taste incident.
Eventually, you arrive, looking around the area. It's an old part of the docks, with lots of abandoned shipping containers blocking the view, hopefully giving you a bit of privacy. Actually, they're just the kind you'd wanted to use as a lair way back when you first crawled out of your grave. Good old times.
Anyway, you help unloading the cargo and checking over it one last time. A whole bunch of guns and ammo, a few submachine guns, the works. The buyer, a representative of some guy over in Boston, will arrive in about half an hour with the cash to exchange for your wares.
If everything goes smooth, they'll show up, the exchange goes through, and everyone will be back with what they wanted out of this in no time.
Of course, judging by the stories Kate's told you, it doesn't always go smooth.
The buyer being a shitheel, trying to pay less than the agreed upon sum, trying to just rob a bunch of illegal arms dealers (snrk), rival gangs showing up to try to interrupt business and take everything both participants brought if they get wind of this transaction, etc.
There's a lot that can go wrong, but the sheer amount of money in this is completely worth it, at least if you're bulletproof.
Setting up the crates, the lot of you settle in to wait. It really, really pays to arrive early in this business, and eventually the buyer arrives.
It's a dude in a suit, coming with a small truck and a driver. Not the most inconspicious of vehicles, but it gets the job done, you suppose, and maybe there is something to be said for refuge in audacity.
Kate comes over to show him the wares and assure him everything is in order with the delivery, even as the girls help load the stuff onto his truck and he brings forth a suitcase full of cash. You leave Kate to it, she's done this before.
"Good work, as always. Nice to see your operations are expanding; small timers rising in the world really brings joy to my heart."
"Sure sure, and the bigger delivery than usual has nothing to do with it," Kate smirks at him.
In the meantime, you're keeping an eye out for trouble. You're just the cape muscle here, you know to act the part. Not like his opinion on who's calling the shots in the gang matters so long as he keeps on illegally buying weapons from you.
Suddenly, you call out "Get your guns ready, everyone. We got company incoming."
With the girls getting ready and the buyer just raising an eyebrow, you have a few seconds to act. You could try to shadowform your way around the attackers and appear from behind once they arrive at the main group, you could climb onto one of these shipping containers and jump attack them from above before the fire fight begins or you could just stand there as living shield for the girls and fire off magic as they shoot, now that you finally got it to aim right.
After a short while, the oppostion starts to filter in, having to enter the area you're in in small numbers due to the placement of the containers. Before anyone can say or do anything to fuck this up, you step forwards and yell "COME AT ME; BITCHES!" at them, instantly drawing attention and, therefore, fire, to yourself even as you completely ignore it and start to chant as the girls open fire.
"Freeze water and shoot it at my enemy!"
Being prepared for your enemies, you and the gang pepper them with a barrage of bullets and a single ice shard.
You're pretty sure you saw a couple headshots there, sinking your own projectile deep into a druggie's throat, nearly nailing him against a container and promptly making him bleed out in short order, what with the bullet he took to his stomach.
Only five enemies remaining, and they don't look so hot, either, sporting wounds from the bullets or looking about ready to shit themselves and run away. Guess they didn't expect to receive such a passionate greeting.
The Merchants try to respond to you with their own barrage, but one of their guns seems to be malfunctioning and only one shot actually hits you, doing nothing but punch a hole into your shirt before losing its momentum and plinging off back towards them for a few moments.
"CAPE," one of them shouts, answered by mocking laughter by the girls and and a "No shit, Sherlock," from you.
Time to mop up the rest.
You try to concentrate on what's going on behind you, use your advanced senses to figure out if the buyer(s) are doing anything... ill-advised, but suddenly one of the Merchants pulls out a fucking flashbang (where the FUCK did they get that from), only two of them resisting the bang to avoid being stunned. So you do as well, but you're still blinded, as is everyone else on the field. Urgh.
Grabbing onto the first thing you can find, your eyes still fucked, you hold onto them and FEED.
As you're tearing into your victim, the girls keep on shooting the Merchants, producing what sounds like another corpse and a great wail about "MY DICK! UAAAAAAGHHHH!"
While this is happening, the two Merchants that aren't stunned approach you, laying into you with their bare hands and dealing what would be disastrous damage to a human, but is more of a nuisance for you.
Letting your victim's corpse drop, you consider what's going on, thanking your enhancements for letting you piece together a decent picture of the battlefield from scraps of information your senses are picking up.
There are only three Merchants still alive, two of which just hit you and the last one just recovering from the stunning blast of the flashbang.
Kason was always an asshole. He loved causing pain and misery just for its own sake, so when the Merchants rolled around and became a thing, he jumped in feet first.
When they were told to go and make more customers any way they could, he couldn't be happier. Just suddenly jabbing a needle into someone's arm or dragging them into a dark alley with some friends to give them a thorough Merchant Welcome became his favorite pastime, only rivaled by mixing cleaning agents into the drug stashes whenever he could, just to fuck people over.
It wasn't long before his enthusiasm for the work they did was noticed and he was told to go to specific places, together with other druggies, to fuck up anyone they could find. He loved doing so, too, until one night they were ordered to go to a specific place he shouldn't have gone...
She puts up an actual fight for a moment, but even as she slaps one clawed hand down, the other manages to grab her arm and draw on it, pulling her towards you and letting you wrap the other one around her midesction, where your superior strength lets you hold her with ease.
She's struggling and trying to scratch and kick at you, but it's useless at this point. Opening your maw wide and displaying the multitude of murderous weapons within, you bite into her shoulder and begin drawing blood.
Brandy. Never been the smartest around, got into drugs early in life and just did what people around her told her to for the most part. A genuinely kind person, just too slow and without drive to put that kindness into action.
One of the other two suckers turns and runs while the last one tries to loosen your grip on the victim you're currently draining, to predictable results. Only for both of them to be gunned down by the girls still firing while blinded. Serves them right for only running now instead of before you started eating their friends, really.
With all hostiles taken care of, you return back to the main group. The buyer seems to have just stood there and watched the whole time, even still making the exact same face as before you started killing the weaklings.
No matter. He gives Kate the money and gets into the truck, whereupon it drives off to parts unkown. You, meanwhile, get back into the vans together with the rest of the gang and get back to the warehouse.
"Well," Kate says once you're all on the way, "that went well."
You know that smile. She's horny.
Once you're all back at the warehouse and the money securely stowed away, you get to thinking. You're making great progress with the gang, getting the drug operations set up, hopefully starting up regular weapons trading like today, etc. In fact, you'll likely have to recruit again soon, or rather tell the others to get on it.
So why is it that you feel you, personally, are growing far too slow to keep up? You mean that literally, your own powers, while capable of growth and already better than 99% of parahuman powers, do need time and effort to grow, time you simply do not have while things are happening around you.
You want to find Sarah already and need to grow your gang to do so, but your gang is outgrowing your personal power at this rate.
The best idea you can come up with would be to get more capes to project more power on a cape level or find some way to get more time to train while everything's going on. Kidnapping and thralling Squealer was a great step in the first direction, but she will, again, need time to build up, and tinkers are notoriously incapable of maintaining too much tinkertech at once, so while she will be a force multiplier, she just won't be enough.
Making a mental note to thrall the Butcher, just to see how their rumored multiple personalities would interact with that, you settle down in a corner of your storeroom and meditate just like you did in your early days of trying to find out who you were.
After a few hours of concentrated thought, suddenly everything clicks. Magic is the act of tearing into reality in order to get just the result you want. Tearing into reality is the basis of everything you do.
So what if you tried to use your inherent you-ness to tear yourself into reality?
Your instincts say it's doable, and that's good enough for you.
New Power Acquired: Interdimensional Travel.
Interdimensional Travel: Lets you travel to other reality clusters. Time is functionally stopped in any world you have been to, but are not currently present in. Destination is semi-random; you can choose between two choices at base.
Well now, this revelation changes a lot.
You'd already deliberated on how you just needed more time, and with a solution just thrown at you like this...
Though you can sense that you'd only have a limited amount of time once on the other side. Luckily enough, you know the solution for a particular issue with one of your powers.
Time to train.
You just concentrate on the concept of staying anchored to the place you're going for a few hours until it clicks and you get the feeling you just doubled however long you can stay at maximum.