Appearing where you left, inside your very own bedroom in your very own James Bond underground base, you take a quick look around, but it is exactly as you left it, the transfer having worked and your naked lovers surrounding you.
Such as life is supposed to be.
"Alright everyone, I don't need to tell you what to do now that we're back, I trust. Let's go right ahead and return to business, I know I'll have a lot of fun with the whole nazi situation we left behind." Now to quickly go talk to Kate and figure out how to proceed... and to Sarah, you suppose, as does she judging by her knowing smirk directed at you.
You'll just have to kiss it off her face.
"Listen, Brad," Max said, holding out a hand at his tempestuous lieutenant, only to be interrupted.
"No, Max, you listen. That bitch offed Kyle, and we can't take that lying down, not now, not ever," Brad ranted more than said, gesticulating wildly.
Max sighed, not bothering to hide his annoyed and, frankly, pissed expression. It had been hard enough to get Brad to sit down and talk as it was, he wasn't about to tell him he was wrong- not that he was, as such, but the E88 couldn't afford to start an all-out war as it was. "I get that, Brad. Fuck, I agree, okay? One of ours was killed, we are gonna show them what happens in response," he promised, demonstratively agreeing with the sentiment. "But we aren't gonna do that by you running out and fucking up everyone you can until they either cage you or you manage to get yourself killed. We're going to do it as a whole, got it?"
Brad looked on mulishly, but Max knew he would relent, eventually. Which was good, he wasn't about to try and deal with this crap without his heaviest hitter in the game. "Fuck it, fine," the man whined, crossing his tattooed arms. "Don't like it, don't have to, you can save the spiel. We at least using the chaos right now? We know where the little bitch is?"
Brad didn't have to tell him he meant Shadow Stalker for Max to get whom he meant. And to head that off right there and then. "She's squirreled away somewhere, probably to be transferred out at some point. They're keeping it all hush-hush, so none of our inside men know where yet, but as soon as the PRT tries to move her, we will know," he explained.
"So long as she doesn't leave the city alive," Brad grumbled. Max was, of course, lying through his teeth; the PRT didn't suddenly gain any recognizable level of operational security compared to last week, and he knew exactly where Shadow Stalker was.
He just wasn't going to have Brad charge off, kill her and get the entirety of the Protectorate on their ass. Sure, they wouldn't actually send everyone... but nobody wanted the local Protectorate to receive reinforcements. Least of all the E88, given their position.
"Look, Brad, I have people on the Shadow Bitch, and sooner or later, they'll find her. But right now, what we need you to do is to go out there and throw the heroes out of the south side of town until we're done squeezing it and swing around to deal with the Crypts. Or better yet, get the PRT to do it for us, but right now the big issue are those assholes having half of Brockton Bay in their pocket and gearing up to strike at us while we're busy," Max went on to try and distract Brad. He was telling the truth, too, but- really, he just needed his enforcer to do his job instead of tearing through traffic and randomly riling up the men.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Brad waved him off, as always not particularly interested in the biger picture unless it was directly relevant to his current focus. "Just do what you can, would you? In the meantime, I'll just take it out on the ones they send at us."
Watching Brad leave the room, it was all Max could do not to slam his fist onto his desk. Every single time. What is that much to ask for for his people to just do what they were told?
Fuck it, things were on track again, Brad was directed at the targets he needed to be and hopefully, the asian community would sit down and accept being raided soon, before they had to kill them all. Actual casualties looked worse on paper than some looting in a low-income area, though he was quickly losing any care towards the matter as it was.
Just as long as they could get the funds they needed to gear up themselves for a singular attack at Crypt and PRT holdings, both to preserve their reputation and to shift the balance of power towards favoring the E88, now that Lung was finally gone for good, it didn't matter how the 'dragon' had died. Numerical superiority, both in terms of capes and mooks, would be what would carry his empire to greatness, so much so that he simply did not care about casualties so long as they had more than half their mundane fodder left at the end.
Now if only heavy weaponry didn't cost this kind of cash... at least Accord was amicable enough as a business partner, funneling weapons through Boston as he was wont to do.
The E88 was not the kind of power that could be ignored... even in the face of the people protesting in the streets as it was, against cape cruelty and for 'mundane lives'. A fact that still had Max laughing in his lonelier hours.
At least Kyle had taken as most of the heroes' attention as he could with him when he got himself killed.
Amy conspicuously looked around her room, making sure that nothing in it was in any way out of the usual, before opening her wardrobe, slowly taking out a pair of panties.
When she didn't drop them, spill something on them nor trip and accidentally dunk them in something, she was tempted to do a little victory dance, but decided she probably shouldn't, just in case. Her clothes had been weirdly prone to accidents lately, to the point quite a lot of them had been damaged or spilt upon.
It wasn't usually that big a deal, a go through the wash usually dealt with it, but it was just a little noticeable. She imagined if her power worked on bacteria and the like, she might actually have created something to perfectly clean her clothes, but they just didn't count as alive enough for her power, apparently.
Anyways, finally putting on some underwear that wasn't black, as she'd taken to wearing in general so stains wouldn't look as obvious, Amy deliberated over what else to wear, her towel disregarded on her bed... which was just when the door to her room opened up, revealing none other than her nosy sister.
"Hey Amy, want to go clothes shopping?" She asked before looking, only to give Amy a whistle when Vicky saw her in nothing but a pair of panties. "You know, I've been thinking about this, but you really got some knockers on you, don't you? You should show them off a little more."
Self-consciously, Amy covered herself up, only belatedly remembering how much Vicky had already seen without being repulsed or the like. "What if I don't want to, huh? All it'd do would be making boys stare."
"And girls, too," Vicky grinned at her with waggling eyebrows, heat shooting into Amy's cheeks at the mention of her little coming out. "I saw what you were looking at that one time, remember?"
"Vicky! You agreed to never talk about this again, with anyone!" With raised fists, Amy marched on her sister, intent on beating her into compliance. The fact she actually giggled and laughed while playing along didn't help, however.
Greg Veder was angry. This was not a usual state of affairs for him, he had to admit, he was usually a lot more calm and non-confrontational.
Not a little coward, totally not. But... not angry. Angry wasn't him.
Except it was now, and for good reason. Writing as fast as his fingers could type, he asked around and got replies, quickly organizing a time and place once again.
The Protectorate, Greg had always felt, were the heroes doing the best they could with what they had, protecting the people from villains and stuff. Kind of like the police, just with fancy costumes and gadgets- what wasn't there to like?
Except, as it turned out, they weren't, not really. They were just stealing tax money while being just the same kind of scum they were supposed to fight, and that... that made Greg really, really angry.
When he'd read what they'd done, what they allegedly had been doing all along, assassinating people in their homes, murdering left and right just because they felt like it... it made him sick so many people had been looking up to the Protectorate.
That he had been looking up to it.
That was why he was doing what he was, now. And for once in his life, people weren't ridiculing him on the internet over it.
"Hey mom, I'm going out for a bit!"
"Alright, just be back for dinner!"
Greg grabbed his trusty sign and got to work. There should be a bus running to where he had to go to join up with everyone on today's march.
Finding Kate where you last knew her to be isn't particularly hard, doubly so because she actually was coming in your direction by the time you returned to Earth Bet, simultaneously contacting you via telepathy because, apparently, things have kept happening in the literal five minutes that passed in-between you reappearing in the same moment as you disappeared and finishing smooching Sarah because she was too cute, followed by Nora and Okita.
Alerting you on the issue at hand, Kate explains to you that a total of six of the previous literal slaves kept at the base you are now occupying seem to have triggered, of all things, reputedly because they were old enough to have known a life outside of being sex slaves for a bunch of mercs and, slowly recovering and going to a new normal daily life, realized just how badly they were off and how objectively abnormal even their new situation was.
Emotional extremes and stress, cluster trigger as they were all happening relatively closely together, both spacially and chronologically. In theory, it all makes sense, you suppose.
That doesn't stop you from adding this whole topic to the spontaneous emergency meeting you are calling right away. You needed to talk to people about aura anyways, after all, so you just get everything arranged while you spit out a couple of semblance minions to add another room to the workshop areas full with any tools you might need for your very own weapons workshop.
As opposed to just using manufactories, but there is something to be said for personally assembling a few things every now and then, you think to yourself as you pat your gauntlets.
Theatrically thumbing through a small pile of documents lying at your position at the head of the big round desk in your traditional meeting room, you greet everyone as they trickle in, the spontaneous nature of the call for the Lord Street Crypts' executives and similar, as much as Cupcake can be counted as one, naturally leading to the whole process being rather drawn-out.
It is what it is, and it isn't like you particularly mind; with your telepathy, you can basically talk to everyone involved ahead of time and do some preparatory organizing, much as you went out of your way to arrange refreshments on your very own side table.
Good stuff, too, you ran over and up a floor to ask Ethan for help and received a batch of chocolate chip muffins. Seriously, the guy just always has something sweet baking, you swear.
Anyways, with Sarah and Kate already with you (Nora begged off and went to write up a treatise on parahuman law, in her own words, while Okita is an Okita), you just wait for Sherrel, Henley, Cupcake and, to your mild surprise, Aisha, who comes strolling along as well.
You didn't prepare a seat for her, but she just settles down under your section of the desk, so you aren't exactly going to make an issue out of it. In contrast to some of the other issues you have gathered your people to talk about.
"Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming," you begin, not seeing a reason not to be polite about this. "Sorry about the sudden meeting, but you know how things can be, especially in our line of business. So, without further ado, I would like to get right into it, unless anyone would like to say anything before we begin?"
Nobody does, you checked via telepathy. Still, they don't know you did, which is half the point of even doing this. Nodding at the silence you are receiving, you continue. "So, first off, to get everyone on the same page, I am a vampire," you say mostly for Henley's benefit, "which is really just a fancy way to call it. To keep it short, I can not only give out powers as I have been doing, I can full-on turn others into the same species as me every now and then, which isn't technically human, hence the name. This means even more powers, stronger powers, so on so forth, along with a weakness to the sun that can be overcome with a lot of time and effort, once you grow resistant. I am mentioning this because anyone I turn can themselves create more vampires, and several of this room's occupants, as well as others not present, have this capability.
In other words, what about everyone's plans for turning people?"
Having politely waited for you to finish, Kate clears her throat, sitting up straight. "That is actually something I was wanting to mention at some point, as we talked it out amongst ourselves and decided to sync up our turning timers for several reasons. We also have decided who we all want to turn, barring any recent changes. I'm gonna tell the girls to figure it out amongst themselves, which will end in either drawing lots or a short civil war, Sherrel wanted to turn Lea, and Sarah...?"
"I don't really have anyone in mind, so I'm just letting Gabriel decide," your sister smugly proclaims as she leans back. "Also, Okita will probably not really care and just do whatever someone tells her, while Nora decided to help Kate turn all her girls unless we need someone else turned."
Nodding, you look back at everyone else, taking in the mixed emotions reflecting on their faces even as you subtly adjust your seating so Aisha has an easier time deepthroating you. "And there you have it, one topic off the docket. I'll talk to Sarah later to figure things out and bring this up with Kate, but otherwise that's a wrap. Next off, I've been to yet another new dimension and spent a couple months there within the last hour or so, and I brought a new source of powers that is fairly ridiculous, as it can be gained by anyone with a soul, which I am fairly sure most people have based on my current analysis."
"He means everybody he's eaten had a soul for him to take, too," Sarah stage whispers.
"Yes, yes, whatever. For the record, this bullshit is called aura, and here's how it works..."
Ultimately, after some discussion and Sarah spouting some statistics on everyone else's account, you come to the conclusion that it should probably be alright to give aura to what you spontaneously term as 'core personnel', which includes everyone you can be reasonably sure about never betraying you, such as all the vampires you turned, your thralls and Kate's girls.
Yes, even including the ones that came in a bit later once you started recruiting. They're small enough in number to be manageable, anyways.
You may actually want to look into thralling all of them, just in case; you should be able to trivially do so by this point, anyhow. Only issue might be maintaining their thrallhoods, but you should be able to work around that by setting aside a couple of minutes every day.
"With that cleared up," you proclaim, "let us move onto the next topic. It seems as though we actually had a new set of triggers right here on base- a cluster trigger, too, which ends up in a clusterfuck more often than not, hence the term."
Receiving your looks from everyone around, you puff up your chest with a sly smile. "What? I studied this kind of thing in college, of course I'd know something about it. Anyways, Kate, please tell me everything we know about the situation and especially how the people in question have been acting."
As Kate rolls her eyes and begins to cite a couple of records she calls up on her phone, you call up the memories of both Phillip and Kirion, the duo of souls you left to deal with the kids that were kept on base by Coil and his mercs and consequently who know the most about everyone involved, simultaniously intrigued and relieved by the description of overall calm and non-murderous girls you're receiving from your second-in-command.
Their last names were scrubbed from the systems upon 'retrieval', and none of them have come forwards with them so far, not that you particularly care. Anyways, Beverly, blonde, she has a thing about being touched, which, well, rape and all, seems to have some sort of thinker power for the most part, taking in everything around her all the time, though as is normal for clusters like this she also has a bunch of minor powers to go along with it- a barrier, some minor teleportation, and her main power seems to work better the less clothes she is wearing?
Huh.
Anyways, next off, Phebe, dark-skinned girl with some sort of projections, ash-colored humanoids that ignore nonliving matter. Kind of like Crusader, in terms of local capes, though she can see through them, apparently.
You'll really have to do some actual power testing on them, later.
Jackie, a white-haired shortie that Phillip thinks may have sociopathic tendencies, can teleport and leave a short-lived, unmoving decoy, whereas Ayane, a japanese girl, can somehow accelerate objects thrown at her, even teleporting behind them and using them as sense-boosters.
It's actually fairly interesting how their various powers seem to synergize- this is fairly uncommon for cluster triggers. You'd have expected something like with Circus, several unrelated minor powers, rather than something that can only be described as a seamless whole.
More interesting data, in other words.
Next off, Kumi, the other japanese member of the trigger group, has the power to copy a weaker version of any of the powers belonging to the other parahumans in her cluster she touches, along with their physical appearances (plus temporary clothes that only last as long as she touches them) and short-term memories. Honestly, trumps were always the most fascinating capes, as far as you were concerned, and that has nothing to do with the fact that if you had to have chosen a power back when you were alive, it'd have been permanent power copying.
Lastly, Catrin, shy and withdrawn girl. Triggered with a tinker power, and she seems to have something about watching through objects she touched? Eh, you'll have to look into her exact specialization and additional powers later on.
One thing you would normally always look out for in a cluster trigger dropped on your lap like this are the kiss/kill dynamics that would normally develop in them; members of the cluster forming a somewhat irrational level of like or dislike of other members seemingly at random. From what people are telling Kate, who is conveying their words to you, however, the girls all seem to be getting along just fine so far.
It's downright suspicious, is what it is.
"It seems to me," you finally say when all the facts are on hand, "that we should keep them under observation for now. Let them interact with each other and any visitors, of course, but have them stay in a seperate part of the base for the time being, and probably send them a couple of pies from Ethan; he had a few in the ovens last time I saw him."
Seeing no objections being raised, you rap your fingers onto the table, Aisha taking your dick as far down her tight, constricting throat as she can before coming up for air. "Well then, before I forget, we actually did have the whole situation above ground to deal with. By which I mean the E88 and our plans for it."
"They're fighting the white caps right now, but we'd better get rid of them sooner than later," Kate agrees, playing with a pen she swirls around her fingers. "Last thing I knew, we were working on playing the nazis against each other?"
"Yep, hence the whole Shadow Stalker setup I was pulling. It won't be enough, of course, but my hope is to force the E88 and the PRT to deal with each other before we have to get involved while sabotaging the former. How are things looking with them right now?"
"The moles we 'liberated' from Coil say they're continuing to present a united front and acting to strike at the heroes while their unpowered mooks ransack the asian district," Sarah says, waving a hand vaguely through the air. "So far, it looks like Kaiser actually wants to act as you'd expect him to even while keeping the fact of who Kyle Roose really was under wraps."
"I still can't believe how well MLM turned out," you snicker to yourself, filling Aisha's stomach with your inhuman seed.
"Yes, well, things are kind of at a deadlock right now, but that just means anything we do is inevitably going to change the stalemate the nazis and the heroes find themselves in," your sister continues, fondly rolling her eyes at your antics.
The one measure you can come to an agreement upon after some explorative discussion of your options is to use your ability to place curses on people in as offensive a manner as you can, repeating the strategy you once pioneered against Leonardo Lionheart, though you never got around to verifying how badly he was affected, being generally busy and all.
Finding some hair from Kaiser shouldn't be too hard, you know where he works and lives, though finding Hookwolf's current living arrangements may require two minutes of digging on Sarah's account. More complicated will be to gain an exact idea o their locations at the time you cast your curses, but you're sure you will be able to figure something out.
And hey, Coil left you more than enough pictures of them, so that's taken care of, at least.
Similarly, you'll have the others look into potential places for you to sabotage with bad luck and similar; just finding a few weapon stashes that are going to be used shortly would be immensely useful, going yb your current plan. Not to mention amusing, thoughts of making guns fire more accurately, but only at friendly combatants already circling through your head.
But anyways, this is only supposed to be a short mid-week meeting, and so you call it at this point, Cupcake demanding that you come visit her in her lab sometime as she walks out the door.
And you, you have some other stuff to do right now.
Sitting down inside your personal lab space, having ensured those little cultists you have inside your inner world think you're currently hiding up inside the ateliers under the palace's roof, you go over the things you learned about effective weapon designs over on Remnant, unwilling to let the accelerated time inside your soul go to waste.
As it turns out, being significantly stronger than a normal person could ever be does mean new options open up, even as old designs become less and less viable. Simple in theory- someone that is strong enough they can break a pipe over someone's head needs a better weapon than a pipe, and if you tried to bluntly use one, you'd be liable to need a replacement very soon indeed, as simpler materials simply cannit withstand the rigor of combat when it involves the kinds of force you regularly bring to bear.
What this means is, you should probably look into weapon upgrades for everyone, though you naturally need to limit yourself due to simple time constraints. So, first off, Kate. What kind of pseudo-mechashift weapon should she have to make the most of her assets?
Duh, dumb question. You may not know all that much about her particular unique power, having heard it described as 'fucking things up with guns even more', but a quick review of what you saw her do with it has you design a gun straight out of her wet dreams, as it does everything as far as shooting is concerned.
And you mean everything. From ion matter to mini-railguns, from close range to across half a city, this baby can fulfill all of Kate's needs.
... That you don't have covered yourself, anyways.
Next off, Sherrel. Sure, she hardly ever really leaves the base and spends most of her time tinkering, but you feel all your vampires should have a proper weapon on hand, and there is something to be said for being prepared for all eventualities.
Hence, you do what you can with what you have. Sherrel doesn't really have any particular skills in this direction, but a minigun is meant to just shoot so many bullets that isn't much of an issue for most cases, and smacking a hammer into something should be perfectly viable against the vast majority of potential enemies.
Seriously, you know a lot more about super elaborate unarmed close quarters combat techniques than you ever thought you would, and precisely because you do you know that against most foes, just knowing where and how to hit and hammering that bitch like it owes you money is the best approach. Add a couple of throws and holds and you have everything you really need, honestly.
And yeah, combining a hammer and a minigun isn't too much of an issue as you consider what you cribbed from Remnantian craft.
Now then, with your vampires covered, who else could use some additional firepower? Well, there would be Emily, as well as Aisha. The former has her power, but could be doing better, while the latter would be extremely amusing to unleash upon Brockton Bay with a way to actually kill and/or attack others directly... and maybe get some additional synergy started for later on, while you're at it.
But best not to get ahead of yourself. Pinging Yoshi with an order to figure out an easily produced fire suppressant, you get started on figuring out a properly-designed flamethrower Emily could attach a variety of containers to, filled with various fluids, chief amongst would be- naturally- her power-produced super-napalm.
Which you had Yoshi try and analyze, resulting in that description. The stuff burns hotter than napalm, after all.
So, reliable ways to easily carry it (with the usual enhanced strength, of course), fire it and a foolproof fueling system that should hopefully stand up to live combat without accidentally leaving Emily disarmed with the worst timing. And, additionally, a small partially-shifted ion laser setup for additional effective matter disintegration, all in much less space than it should be possible in.
Oh snap, you just realized you are essentially designing your own kind of tinkertech, aren't you? Crap, and here you were always looking down on tinkertech... though you do have an actual idea of what you're doing, at least.
Phew. You were kind of worried there for a moment.
Back to Aisha, though... Yeah, something suitably stylish should do. A sword and a pistol, reliable classic, that, except you may as well add a hidden blade to the gun and a small gun to the blade that they can shift in and out of, and also let them combine on top of that into what amounts to a quarterstaff with blades on both ends... that can also still shoot from at least one, of course.
And to help Aisha pay attention when learning how to use it, as well as for some nice and easy synergy with hemokinesis, should you ever get around to vamping her, you'll add thorns that can be ejected from the handles. It's the kind of thing that can be regenerated away easily enough, but that also should let her remember the pain the first time she 'accidentally' uses it against your warnings.
And you'll make it black and red on top, she'll love that.
Now then, who else might need something the most... Huh, Alice, actually. She seems like the kind of tinker that inevitably has to go out and actually use her stuff, so you may as well just in case.
Then again, she probably wouldn't really appreciate you going and making her something super advanced to 'outshine' her, so you'll keep it simple. Just a grenade launcher that can also do mini rockets towards its back end, and just for completeness you'll add a combat knife to be stuck on the front as a bayonett.
Just a big grenade launcher, at the core of it. It should do just fine.
Last but not necessarily least, there would be... Taylor, you suppose. The bug girl, or Skitter, now, already has an ion gun of some kind, and though you kind of left her to Kate and Sarah overall, that doesn't mean you can't do a small reskin of your V4M-Pyre, add a detachable pistol to it and let it pop a bunch of other attachments in and out on demand.
It'll also look much cooler, which is half the point with capes. Because capes. Showmanship is a significant part of the business, after all; building yourself a reputation is even more important than your actual parahman powers, in some ways.
You kind of want to stay a little longer inside your soul and read up on this report Yoshi and Indigo sent you, something about additional superpowers by way of learning to influence reality through your mind, termed becoming an esper? But hey, you still have to dispense aura to your people, this stuff looks pretty complicated and involved and you're hearing chanting in the background again, meaning one of the weird fanatics that popped up for some reason must've caught on to your ruse.
You'll get back on this later.
"Okay, so, wait," Kate asks, a shit-eating grin on her face. "You defeated racism... with porn. And you made Sarah organize the whole thing."
"Duh, not like it needs anything more," you shrug, gesturing around you. "Everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power. Add enough sex into anything, and it starts to have power over people, and porn was the perfect carrier."
Giggling, Kate holds up a hand. "You know, you're really ridiculous sometimes, in all the best ways. So, you got aura and confirmation that porn can save the world, anything else you grabbed in the new place?"
"Oh, some engineering, I tried out a couple of new things, they had some sweet weapons there, too," you list what comes to mind. "We actually made a giant mass of robots and had them just keep on creating more of themselves to fight this unending tide of omnicidial monsters, it was pretty sweet. With enough of them to hit critical mass and a bunch of teleporters linked to them you can basically have an unending army that just gets recycled forever whenever one is destroyed... unless someone used something like ion weapons to just disintegrate the matter they're made of, I suppose."
"Wait, what kind of monsters are we talking about?" Kate asks, stretching her legs as she takes a sip from the fresh blood you're sourcing from your prisoners.
"Oh, they were this whole thing," you reply in a wistful tone. "A bunch of black creatures with bone-white parts and masks growing out of them, in the rough shapes of animals and otherwise. Wolves, birds, boars, bears, elephants, which were especially fun, these snakey dragon-things, and of course the giant scorpions and snakes and the scorpions with humanoids glued to them. A wide variety of things to completely fuck up," you conclude.
"Hey, you definitely have to take me along next time you go, then. No way I'm missing out on that."
"What, so eager to shoot some bigger game?"
"Please, do you have any idea about the kind of hell I can unleash with a gun?" Your lover scoffs. "I want to go out there and throw out some explosive rounds that can blow up buildings! Make it rain laser fire and just delete entire landscapes! With the PRT around, we can't exactly show off the big shit just yet or they'll come down on us like a sack of bricks, but damn if I don't want to."
You bump your shoulder against hers. "Hey, look at the bright side, the looks on literally everyone's faces when we decide to blow up a city or two at some point will be hilarious."
"Oh, don't go complimentin' me just yet, Gabe, you just got back," she playfully says, swatting your chest. "But yeah, before I forget it, wanna do the aura thing? How's that even work?"
"Oh, I basically just touch you, say some kind of chant that's traditional, apparently, you do a thing, then you suddenly realize the potential you had in you all along, I guess," you try to explain how this is supposed to go.
"... You sure about that chant? No offense, but I've seen you casting, and I think-"
"You have cryo as well, you know magic can't be used without them," you interrupt her, knowing where she was going. Just bumping your head against hers this time, you simply lay a hand on her shoulder.
"Let's just get this over with." A soft, gray-blue glow arising from your skin, you look Kate in the eyes. "For it is in being unending that we achieve immortality. Through this we become an embodiment of power and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by your shoulder, grasp thee."
Slowly, you can see your aura rippling over hers, a similar field of force arising on Kate's end. Immediately obviously, it is the color of rust, a reddish tint that spreads to cover her body within moments before it fades back into invisibility.
Raising and balling a hand, Kate looks around consideringly before she gets up, moving her body around a little. "Huh, doesn't really feel that different," she remarks, stretching her neck.
"You'll have to practice and stuff, obviously," you explain, similarly getting up. "Wanna head to the training room?"
"Duh."
You know, you may or may not derive a certain perverse pleasure from doing this kind of thing to people. You can't help it, making them uncomfortable is just kind if fun.
You're just going to blame Ozpin for being that kind of bad influence, you suppose.
"So, Emily, where would you say you see yourself a couple years down the line?"
Gaping like a fish, the pretty brunette you came to visit blinks, which has you smile mischievously and reach over to lift her chin, closing her mouth again. "No need to be this surprised, it's a question everyone has to answer at some point."
"I literally joined a gang so I wouldn't have to, leave me my delusions," Emily pouts, crossing her arms. And, heinously, pushing away the bowl of cookies lying on the desk between you so you can't nibble on more of them.
"Hey, no need to be like that. You won't really age as long as I'm around with the whole blood thing going on, and that means you have lots of time to figure things out," you offer, leaning back and giving her an encouraging smile. "Just thought you might want to get started at some point and might need an open ear."
"Ugh..." Giving you that wonderful look teenagers just love to give people, not knowing that only makes them (come at them) harder, Emily uncrosses her arms. "I just kinda thought I'd stay a member forever, honestly. Not like the Crypts are that bad to be part of, and as long as we don't fuck things up too badly, I don't see why that would have to change."
"I mean, I'm not going to try and talk you out of that mindset, of course, but how about wanting a little more in life? I mean, it's not like we don't have a bunch of leadership positions we could totally fill at some point, technically," you suggest. "How about it?"
"No way in hell," she simply responds. "I'm happy just being a part of the gang, but I'd never want to go and do that kinda thing. I like going out and looking scary, burning some rapist scum alive every now and then too, gladly, even, but don't make me try to deal with our own people. That's literally worse than herding cats, I've been to the canteen, I've seen it happen."
"Alright, alright," you laugh, knowing how much effort Kate puts into keeping the girls ready to jump when she says the word. "Still, how about just improving your own skills and stuff? How's your transformation coming along?"
"I can be very feathery and fluffy in half a minute?" Emily asks rather than states, tilting her head.
"That's a good start, but how about you build up on it? And maybe think about things you could do or get in general to be a more effective cape, if that's the path you want to take in life?" And totally not because that makes her a better pawn for you.
"Ugh, can we just fuck or something instead?" The rosy blush on her cheeks doesn't stop the girl from blurting it out, looking at you challengingly.
"How about this, we can have sex, if you insist, but then we also brainstorm stuff you could work towards in general? Give you a direction and all that."
Well, subtly poking at Emily's insecurties was fun enough, and you aren't ever going to complain about a tight piece of ass bouncing on your lap, but sooner or later everything has to end, and in this case that means it's time for you to, once again, broadcast a stream.
An as of yet untitled stream, because you are totally starting up yet another new one! Because as it turns out, you may or may not have somewhat of a talent for singing, or at least Weiss mentioned she thought so, and really, pretty much all your streams are just ways for you to show off your talents to generate PR.
Really, you kind of wish stuff like that was measurable at this point. Would be pretty cool.
Regardless, however, it is time to unearth yet another identity! And, wanting to keep things a little fresher, you go ahead and use the manufactories over in your assembly of workshops to get yourself a very fancy ballroom dress.
That's right, time to use your power to shapeshift for its natural purpose! Incidentally, while you're there already, you also go ahead and create a few more bodies for your hammerhead minion, as it looks like you have a new tinker from the cluster trigger happening.
Hence, more space for them, if they need it. Most tinkers do, though you have no idea if the unusual cluster situation might change something in that regard, but either way, better safe than sorry.
Now then, you've already put together a decent broadcasting room seperate from the ones you use for your other streams, now all that's left to do is decide on a name... Oh, and on what songs to sing.
So what if this is all a bit spontaneous, all the best things in life are.
Having set up all the preparations and watching the entirely unexplained poll on songs of various kinds, you nod along, listening to the ones that look to be winning so as to have them in mind- as it turns out, perfect memory just keeps on coming in handy for literally everything.
As it is, you just need to hear a song once to be able to replicate it more or less perfectly, thanks to your powers, especially the voice-related ones, and really that's most of the reason as to why you're findng yourself so good at this.
Even if some of these songs are... Well, you heavily suspect the usual trolls and the like have found themselves on your page sooner rather than later. Not that it matters to you, of course.
You'll show them. You'll show them all!
With that in mind, you start everything up, the stream suddenly filled with the vision of a self-admittedly shapely woman in a silky red dress, face veiled in shadows as she stands on what seems to be a stage with similarly red curtains, but is really just you having painted the room and hung up some cloth beforehand.
"Hello, my dear listeners," you say, voice even silkier than your dress looks, "and welcome to Lilith's Lullabies. It's a pleasure to have you all here tonight."
The chat goes crazy.
Emily Piggot was looking at the screen. She looked at Renick, who was sharing the notion with her, his bewildered eyes meeting hers, before they both looked back at the damnable screen.
"While I would have liked to start off with a more uplifting and friendly song, it seems you cute little voters have decided otherwise, so instead you get 'Excuse My Rudeness, But Could You Please RIP?'. Oh, you don't like it? Ara, ara, it wasn't me that voted, you know?"
https/music./watch?v=5y3xh8gs24c =RDAMVM5y3xh8gs24c
As the woman bearing the same face concealment as Cain began to speak Japanese and English, mixing both languages to rap and producing a wild mix of background music with seemingly nothing but her mouth, wildly thrusting out her hands and behaving like an actual rapper while wearing a ballroom dress, Emily just sat back, feeling her face go blank.
"Okay, that's it. I'm done." At Renick's look, she waved around her office, the wide window giving a good view of downtown and her downright spartan desk taking up most of the room. "I am officially capitulating before his bullshit. He can just pull whatever stupid streams he wants now in whatever elaborately pointless disguises he wants, I don't care anymore."
Getting up, Emily, made it only a handful of steps before Renick gathered his wits up off the floor where they'd landed under the assault from the woman rapping about how 'kawaii' murder was. "Wh-where are you going, Emily?"
"Why, Renick, as my colleague and second in command, while you are not exactly a friend, I will tell you about my personal plans for the foreseeable future anyways," she said, reaching for the door. "You see those morons outside? You can see them from here, I made sure my office would have sightlines on the main entrance's approach just in case when I took this post."
She didn't have to explain which ones she meant, of course; MLM was protesting in front of the PRT what felt like every day nowadays, though it was really more every second day.
"I, am going to go down there and smack each and every single one of these bitches something hard and proper, and when I'm done I'm marching up to the Dallon family home and politely request Panacea sort out my kidneys so I survive a drinking binge that will put everything the 'Alabama Ranger' did to shame, including property damage."
In the end, she never made it out the front door. Though she would admit with pride it had taken dozens of PRT troopers hastily called in by Renick to stop her from making good on her word and throw her into Master/Stranger isolation for the night.
Good lad, Renick. He did his damn job. In contrast to her people; she would have to assign some remediary training if all it took to break through a floor barricade and injure half their troopers on standby was an insane woman with a broken bottle of gin.
It was all worth it, and she would be declared temporarily insane and reinstated the following morning, but it was all worth it.
Sarah Livsey held her head in her hands, trying her best to ignore Kate as the fellow lover of her brother bust a gut laughing. She could have kept it to herself entirely, being a vampire meant that was easy, but Kate, as she knew, often didn't bother, freely expressing her feelings on whatever came up.
Which, in this case, was Gabriel changing genders and spontaneously creating a stream all about herself singing. And she knew it was a spontaneous thing, despite how it looked, she knew her brother and her power worked just fine on the paint in the background.
"Is she done rapping?" Sarah asked, taking the silence as a sign that maybe, this torture was over.
"She's done, you can look again," the amused voice of Kate replied, a hand coming up to pat Sarah's back. "It wasn't that bad, by the way. She somehow made it work despite her dress."
"That doesn't make it better, that just means he's good at messing with us, and I refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact my brother is a bigger troll than I am," Sarah ground out, looking back at where Gabriella was demonstratively straightening out her flawless dress, the cloth doing little to hide her figure.
"Now then," she continued in her abnormally smooth voice (a feature Sarah loved about her brother in general, even if she'd never admit it to him), "the next song is somewhat more in line wiith what I'd been thinking about for this, so please, look forwards to it."
With that, she opened her mouth, an orchestra of sound emerging from it.
Amy Dallon had been scrambling up on her feet as soon as she saw what this new stream was about (and finished using all her accounts to vote for the first song to be sung, funnily enough, clearly having superior tastes to all these normies), soon finding her sister doing the same, just much faster on account of flight.
"Did you see?" She asked.
"I did," Vicky replied.
"It's suspicious, right?"
"Obviously." Receiving the blonde's nod, Amy looked at her phone, still holding onto the device.
"So, it's pretty obvious something is going on with Gabe," she reasoned out what they'd both been thinking. "We know he can become a girl, and Cain can become a woman. This can't be a coincidence."
"Could be a second generation cape," Vicky threw out, "or maybe a cluster trigger. Did he behave weirdly that you could see? Mood swings, suspicious avoidance of anything?"
"I, uh, maybe?" At Vicky's expectant look, she threw up her arms. "I'm not a psychologist, you can't expect me to spot things just like that! He was a little weird when I asked to take a closer look at how his body worked that one time at the gallery you weren't there for, I just chalked it up to not wanting to air out his private life!"
"Alright, alright, but this," Amy's sister said, "means we'll actually have to investigate now. He could be in serious distress we just never managed to spot, for all we know he could be living with Cain. Heck, it would explain why he was never bothered about money or anything, Cain could be his father or his brother or something."
"Or his sister or mother, with this. Who knows if Cain is actually a guy instead of a shapeshifted woman?" Amy asked.
"Shit, you're right. Okay, we need to-" Amy didn't meant to, she really didn't, but as the next song began, she just had to hastily shove a hand against Vicky's face.
https/music./watch?v=u0KqSCjwZGw =RDAMVMu0KqSCjwZGw
This voice was heavenly, and as she heard a slowly ramping up, incredibly powerful voice sing a song full of passion, Amy couldn't help but stare at the vision of perfection on the smartphone screen.
She had suppressed her instant reaction earlier, but damn, what she wouldn't give to bury her face between those tits. Or those thighs...
"Amy? You okay?"
If only her face was visible, too... It was a crime, seeing it censored. She almost wanted to reach through and wipe it away, gently and carefully so the perfectly smooth skin under the shadow would remain unmarred...
"Earth bet to Amy? Do you hear me?"
She could almost feel it now, listening about the kiss of a rose on the grey, and the love and pain and passion expressed in the song, and she knew something like she had only known one other thing in her life.
"Dammit, Amy, come on!"
Amy Dallon was in love, for the second time in her life. and as her first and only other love dragged her back to her room and tried to get her to respond, Amy could only stare at the only other object of her wholehearted affection and feel but a fraction of the heartbreak her song was inspiring.
Being a teenager sucked sometimes, she could feel it already. If not now, then in the wild daydreams of being sandwiched by her extroverted sister and this mysterious, deep beauty whose face she could only fantasize about already brewing up in the back of her head.
Even as she hit the bed, Vicky laying her down and attempting to render first aid.
It was very, very frustrating that she had to do this, but Taylor was pretty sure that a music stream wouldn't have someone add subtitles later on so she could watch it in absolute silence and still get the full experience, and the audio quality of her home computer was... doubtful, at the best of times, and so desperate times called for desperate measures.
Or, in this case, for the latest model of smartphone she had received as being part of the Crypts. It felt weird to hold it in hand, but... she'd just never use it for calls, the 'job' was only expecting her to pay attention to a text application that was apparently purchased and private to be harder to look in on.
Taylor hadn't asked any questions. She hardly had any idea about this kind of thing, after all, so she'd just trust Sarah to know what she was talking about.
Also, if anything actually important happened, it looked like the thought-to-thought communication Cain, or rather, Gabriel, had been establishing had gained more functionality of some kind, or at least everyone that could do it could do it freely with anyone else in it, starting from this morning, so... the only real use her phone would have would be surfing the internet, after all.
Unless their other communications were interrupted, if that was somehow possible... Which Taylor would assume was the case until proven otherwise.
Either way, watching the apparently female version of Cain change demeanours to mischievous as she turned from singing a song from, from what she had read on the side, an aleph internet idol of some kind to an old classic to a musical song, all with musical accompaniment from nowhere (probably just played in via loudspeakers on her end), Taylor couldn't help but stare, listening as she sang about seeing the future, and changing it around.
Every move displayed a generous bust and perfect waistline, every time she spoke or sang, her voice pushed powerfully and pleasingly and it was all Taylor could do to think about the fact she discovered she was, apparently, bi. And this woman was hitting all the buttons in her brain in just the same way Gabriel had been doing, back when she'd seen him stand there on the slowly darkening street, the light of the flames that'd seemed so all-encompassing only to be smothered as he hung onto Lung, the world seemingly already preparing for the nightmare she was about to walk into with open eyes.
But back to this, and the remembrance of that one picture... of a woman looking a lot like Taylor imagined she might look like if she was less ugly and ten years older. And the two adoring slaves leashed to her will.
She was probably never going to find out what it felt like to dominate this woman, but damn if the thought wasn't turning her on.
"I got voodoo, I got hoodoo, I got things I ain't even triiieeed... And I have friends on the other side~."
Or maybe turn things around? Taylor didn't particularly relish the thought of being... dominated, like that, but she imagined she would gladly do a lot of things to see this woman naked.
"Taylor? Are you okay?" Shit, dad was there!
Surfacing from under her blanket, where she'd been hiding to listen easier, she cursed at herself for not thinking about just how loud female Gabriel would apparently become while singing. "I'm fine, just stretched something wrong, dad," she called out through her door. "I'll be right as rain in a minute or two."
"Okay, if you need anything I'll be downstairs," her dad said, presumably walking off.
... Right, she needed a towel she could fold and stuff under the door to muffle the sound, maybe. She'd have to think about more ways to make sure her dad never found out about this in case she would listen to more loud things in the future.
Anything that didn't involve him finding out she had a phone... and where she got it, for that matter.
David stared at Rebecca, the two of them engaged in a quiet staring contest. However, they were still technically inside the meeting room, so...
"'Being worshipped is a breeze', 'be deified when really you're a sham'. He is obviously listening in on our meetings and specifically chose this technically pre-existing song to let us know," he said, raising his head a little so he could look down on his current nemesis.
"'It's tough to be a god, but if you get people's nod, count your blessings, keep 'em sweet'. Obviously, he knows and is agreeing that he is, indeed, some kind of mythological figure despite the hoodwinking, or at least thinks of himself as one," Rebecca answered, waving a hand as though to throw away his 'interpretation' of events.
"'If they say that I'm a god, that's what I am'. Clear evidence of my version," David triumphantly proclaimed, crossing his arms.
"'Be a symbol of perfection, be a legend, be a cult'," she returned for some reason. "Perhaps it is not so much that he is hinting at us and more outright telling us that as long as someone believes his power can do something, it can?"
David groaned. She really was doing it deliberately, he had no other explanation.
Off to the side, Doctor Mother sighed, shaking her head. "I would prefer if they didn't use these meetings as a way to measure up their wild conspiracy theories against each other, but if we can't gain any new information either way, there isn't anything wrong with it, I suppose."
"Oh, I was just waiting for them to be finished," Kurt said, looking up from where he was sitting. "I have run several sound analysis programs on this footage, and despite what one may think, the additional sounds are not being played over it nor coming from loudspeakers, but rather seem to originate from the same place as the singing itself. The singer we can see, if it wasn't clear."
"So it is some kind of audiokinesis," Contessa suggested, her soft drink set to the side for a moment. "Another power for the list."
"Okay, so I don't think I have ta tell you, but this stuff looks really, really inefficient," Sherrel says, looking over the rough blueprints you just sent her containing some examples of the new engineering you picked up while off gallivating around Remnant (but really mostly Vale, everywhere else was just a little distraction).
"Sure," you agree easily, "but with the kinds of energy and materials we have access to, I don't see any reason we couldn't add even more firepower to the truck."
Sherrel blinks, looking around the somewhat cluttered workshop area you set aside for her use specifically (cars and similar vehicles do take up a lot of space, after all). "One sec, what if we... Hey, Gabe, you have, like, a couple hours? I got an idea."
Oh dear, that looks a lot like some kind of tinker fugue coming in. Well, you can take some time out of your schedule, you suppose. Not like the E88 will be doing anything in in the time you'll need. "Sure, what do you have in mind?"
"Or it could just be local omnipotence allowing him to do anything in his area of effect," Rebecca 'helpfully' added. "Or do you have another explanation, David?"
Now he had her, though. "Why, yes, and it may surprise you," he said. "Clearly, God is a woman. Check and mate."
Kurt sighed, an uncharacteristical display of emotion from the man, but David couldn't let up now.
As it turns out, Sherrel is, in the end, a pretty good tinker. Her power's theme, as tinkers always have one, is broad enough to let her really go wild as long as she has access to enough materials to build off of, which... Well, you do have a lot of eveything she could ever need.
You daresay you have enough equipment to put Armsmaster himself behind you, which is a point you should take pride in, you feel. He is known as one of the best tinkers in the world, though you always felt that the title rang hollow with Hero dead. And it's hard to really compare how 'good' a tinker is, so, well, you won't really say anything on the matter.
Not to mention all it takes you to completely hardcounter literally any tinker you can think of is casting a single spell.
Anyways, with you assisting, Sherrel sets to partially dismantling the Doomtruck, having you help her install a lot of hydraulics and plates and many, many additional knicknacks.
You can literally see how her power messes with space, too, making the insides of the truck move around and even larger relatively to their actual size.
If she wasn't working for you, you'd call bullshit and immediately blow this thing up.
Still, it's an interesting experience to work so closely with a tinker, and both of you keep on coming back to a large assortment of spreadsheets and blueprints, adding and modifying and working around or into each other as required to let this thing work, your (technically) magical engineering only adding to the mess that the internals would otherwise be.
Over the course of several hours, you and Sherrel retrofit the doomtruck into what you will now classify as the Mechashift Doomtruck, capable of spontaneously moving and transforming many of its components.
The fully transformed version, of course, is meant to exchange the outer appearance of a truck and ease of deployment for... well, all-terrain access and concentrated firepower, you'd say.
You did a lot of work to make sure the main cannon functions seamlessly as it is technically made of a couple of the partial manufactories normally on the inside and several of the other guns and emplacements spread throughout the body of the truck, but hey, you think it should do its job, and there's still the... laser mortars.
You still aren't going to ask how they're meant to work. Tinkers, seriously.
The six cluster triggers you have to deal with have been calm so far, apparently, though it isn't exactly like you have people watching them every second of the day so far; no real reason to, what with none of them seeming aggressive towards either each other or anyone else, hence just a couple of the girls keeping watch of the door to the larger room you had them stuffed into for a bit.
As opposed to six different rooms while you sorted out whether there really isn't any kiss/kill going on. Because when do people ever actually listen when you give out orders?
If you were still a human, you'd be sighing right now.
As it is, though, you just open the door, letting Sarah follow you as opposed to letting her go first just in case, being greeted with the sight of six young women sitting around sharing a big bowl of sweets.
Thank you. Ethan.
"Hello, everyone," you greet them, friendliness positively oozing from your voice. "I am Cain, or Gabriel whichever you prefer; you might have heard of me. I'm here to have a little talk with all of you and make sure you're doing okay."
"Oh, uh-" "Hello, hello." "Hiya!" Despite the varied greetings you receive, you can immediately tell all of the girls are acting in perfect concert with each other, their body languages subtly adjusted to fit each other.
They're all watching you as though they were a single entity... ah, no, one of them just blinked and looked at the sweets again, and the others are looking a little to the side in response.
Just very cooperative beyond what would normally be possible, then.
"Now then, if you wouldn't mind, me and Sarah here will just sit down and talk to each of you in turns, but we won't go out of the room or anything," you promise, already seeing they are instinctively bunching up. "Who would like to go first?"
The first person to come over and talk to you where you set up shop with Sarah (and additional cookies) is, somewhat surprisingly, Jackie, the shortest of the girls present and, as you know from Phillip's observations of them all, the quietest.
Also a coinnoisseur of cookies, immediately grabbing for one.
"Hello, Jackie," you greet her, refraining from patting her head as long as you don't know how she'll react. "Would you mind telling me about your power?"
"Mhm," she makes as she chews, instantly giving you flashbacks of Okita for a moment. "Can teleport. To somewhere nobody sees. Leave behind fakes, too."
"I see. I take it you've tried it out already?"
"Mhm."
So, that seems rather limited for a cluster trigger, unless you started to take apart her powerset into several pieces... which, honestly, wouldn't surprise you, as this seems like a fairly nonstandard cluster, not that cluster triggers are common enough to have a 'standard' outcome in the first place.
"Anything else that comes to mind?" You ask, gently. "Any smaller things you can also do?"
Jackie tilts her head. "Become faster afterwards. Touching the fakes makes the others powerless? And less clothes let me feel where everything is."
... Interesting. "Got it, Jackie. Oh, and before I forget, you don't mind still being a part of the Crypts, right? If you'd like to, you could leave, just like before."
"Mn." Getting up, the girl rubs at the scar over her eye, approaching you and plopping herself onto your seat.
You'll just take that as her answer, then.
"Gabe..." Sarah, holding a hand to her forehead, seems exasperated for some reason. "Just remember that lap is mine when we're done here, okay? Jackie can borrow it, but it's still mine."
"Of course, why wouldn't it be?" Her reaction to your question is just to nudge the chair of what would usually be a smaller meeting room closer to you.
Anyways, looks like you've acquired a new lapwarmer. Hip hip hooray? Oh, and just like that the next to approach you seems to be Ayane... except you see two of her.
Kumi, then. Or the real one, but the undercurrent of embarrassed annoyance going through the room has you guess on the former.
It takes a moment, but Kumi returns to her normal appearance before sitting down in front of you, your impromptu interview desk doing its job well enough.
"Hello, my name is Kumi," she begins with a bow. "My power revolves around copying parahumans."
"That's good to know, Kumi," you reply, happy that at least one seemingly normal person is around, after all. You were kind of worried, with both yourself and Jackie around, not to mention your abnormally cute sister being in the room.
Speaking of which. "Could you give us a few more details?" Sarah asks, taking over your task and freeing you up to feed Jackie a few cookies. "Can you copy powers in full, are they changed somehow, is there anything you have to do beyond thinking at them?"
"Yes, I needed to touch the others for a few seconds to copy them, though they didn't mind," Kumi replies, a little embarrassed. "As for the other questions, I believe my copies are a bit weaker than the originals, and I can only have one at a time, though there doesn't seem to be a time limit that we could tell. I can also copy their appearance and clothing, as well as memories, and as long as nobody is directly looking at them, I can instantly swap places with whoever I am copying at the time."
"That sounds very useful," you say more to yourself than her, ignoring the way Jackie eyes the crumbs left on your fingers. "As far as I can see, the only issue is needing to touch someone for long enough. Does it work over clothes?"
"Yes, it does, actually!" Kumi beams at you. "I can also make it harder to pull away, and when I concentrate I can feel where everyone is. Or, parahumans, at least? We all know where each other is and how they feel all the time, but it feels different, and Sarah has the same feel for this sense. I am not sure how reliable it is, however."
Smirking at the mildly troubled look on her face, you mildly wave her off, Jackie's eyes glued to your hand. "Don't worry about it, my own powers make me harder to sense with other powers. It's not exactly a common thing, but a few of the Crypts are like that," you idly remark. "Oh, and before I forget, you don't mind staying with the Crypts, do you?"
"Oh no, we all talked it out earlier, and we have come to the conclusion that staying where we are seems the wisest choice," Kumi explains with a shake of her head. "We have also decided to be together, as our powers rapidly lose potency when we are too far apart."
"... Define 'too far'," you request, thoughts spinning on how useful these six might be under the right conditions.
"Whenever we are spatially seperate for too long, a few hours best we can tell. It is alright as long as we stick around, but the bounds of this room were sufficient to tell this much."
Placidly smiling, she waits for you to continue, but you have no further questions, so she just bows before returning towards the others.
The next to step up is Catrin, the reputed tinker of the group, and also the most shy, judging by both her expression and the memories you're accessing right now, having Phillip actively and in as much detail as he can.
"H-hello," she greets you, the rest of the cluster silently cheering her on, best you can tell; as Kumi told you, they seem to be able to sense each others' emotions, including silent encoragement.
"Hello, Catrin, right?" You state more than ask, but you do know how to do this kind of thing. She needs a softer touch, she gets a softer touch.
"Yes," she replies, looking around a bit, but it seems the view of Jackie pushing her back against you as she sits on your lap has your current interviewee gather some courage. "I'm, uhm, a tinker? I have a lot of ideas about cameras and surveillance in my head whenever I look at anything that could be taken apart..."
"Oh, you will love the workshop we put together, but let's not get ahead of ourselves," you smile at her.
"Yup, what related powers do you have?" Sarah cuts in, giving her a foxy grin. At your glance, she just shrugs. What? I like to see them squirm, and she was going to take forever otherwise.
"I, uh, I can sense things like cameras? Like the one in the corner of the room we've just been avoiding," Catrin admits, pointing towards where the standard camera is sticking to the wall, too small and inconspicuous to be noticed by a casual observer. "And I can just touch things to sense through them? Look through, sense touch..."
"But that isn't all, is it?" Sarah asks, using her power to come to the same conclusion as you were arriving at, that of the girl in front of you hesitant about sharing something.
"I can. I can- I can share my tinker power!" She blurts out, looking mortified. "But only if I'm not wearing anything covering my chest or my belly and the two others I can do it for don't, either!"
You sigh softly, deciding to call a short break here to calm Catrin down a little. Jackie just keeps on pushing her head into your chest, though.
"Hiya!" Smiling at the way Phebe pops into her seat in front of you, you give her a little nod.
"Hey there, Phebe, right?"
"Yup, that's me. My power is these cool thingies I can create anywhere I can see, see?" Gesturing outwards, the girl in front of you does as she said, conjuring a nebulous, roughly humanoid projection made of these ash-colored particles. "I can only have, like, six out at a time, but they're super fast and watch!"
Watching, you see as she concentrates for a second, the power-created phenomenon simply gliding right through the desk... and into the floor, at some pretty high speeds, almost racing downwards and resurfacing on the other side of the room, coming back over again to pick up its creator.
"They just ignore stuff, but they can touch people alright! Pretty sweet, huh?"
Manton limit, is your first thought. Weaponized manton limit to let her projections attack directly through any protection in place. Against anything that isn't a Changer or some specific kind of Breaker, she would be quite the hitter- especially as her projections can travel though, say, the ground or the walls.
In fact, wasn't there that one E88 cape that can do the same? Crusader. Except that Phebe here has less projections out at a time in exchange for them being much, much faster.
"Any side powers we should know about?" Sarah asks, looking at the peppy girl consideringly.
"Oh, I can see through them!" She says, grinning. "I can also have more than six, but I'm pretty sure that only works if I strip. Want me to show you?"
"No, thanks," your sister hurriedly says, "we believe you. Would you mind calling over the next one?"
"Sure!"
Watching Phebe walk off, Sarah can't help but groan aloud. "Seriously, Gabe, I blame you for this."
Fending off Jackie's attempts to catch your hands, you tilt your head at her looking completely innocent. "What?"
"You know what you did. Somehow."
The next to come for you is one girl named Beverly, the one that had a few issues with being touched- from what you know, just shying away from touch, really. Looking at her, you can see a fairly emotionless face framed by blonde hair, and she seems to be someone actually going out of her way to try and look fashionable.
She certainly has a very nice hat, at least.
"Hello," she says neutrally, sitting down.
"Hello yourself," you reply with a mirthful smile. "So, as you've heard we'd just like to know about your powers in your own words, as well as anything else you'd like to mention- special needs, anything we can do to accommodate you in particular, you get the idea."
"I can learn things at a drastically increased rate, to the point I have learned a new language just today," the doll-like parahuman tells you. "The more of my skin is showing, the more detail I can obtain. though I have not tested this overmuch."
Is that a faint little blush you can make out? Well, as long as they're all set to the kiss spectrum of that whole kiss/kill dynamic, you won't remark upon it... though it still is weird.
"Am I right to assume that you have additional powers complementing that one?" Sarah asks.
"Yes. I have an invisible forcefield that blocks all nonliving matter, but breaks on touch from any living person, whereupon I can teleport in a direction of my choosing, though both of these require a certain amount of time to recover after use," Beverly explains. "I can also shapeshift slightly when touched, know whenever I am being observed by any means and by whom and have a power opposite to that of Kumi, which makes it easier for me to remove myself from grabs. I believe both hers and mine deal with friction."
"Mhm, I see," you say, doing your best to keep Jackie from managing to get your hands into her grasp, both of her arms outstreched and attempting to pull down yours.
"Yes. If I may speak frankly, i do not require any particular accommodations, aside from being close to the others." She doesn't tell you who exactly she means, but it's obvious enough by itself.
Last, but not least, it is Ayane that approaches, having let all the other girls come forwards first. Not because of any nervousness or anything of the sort, though, you're fairly sure.
"Hiyah," she makes, sprawling onto the chair everyone else rotated through already. "Name's Ayane, I do some really good throws."
"Mind elaboratng on that a bit?" You ask, having given up the fight for the use of your hands, Jackie lightly nibbilng and gnawing on your index finger.
"Mhm, sure," she shrugs. You get the feeling she is, if anything, the token 'chill' girl of the group. "I touch stuff and I instantly know how it works. Like, I touch a ball, I know roughly what it's made of and how to best throw it. Once I do, I can also teleport towards it if I let go of it, though that always only works on the last thing I touched, and kinda accelerate things. Like, physically. And change their direction for a moment after I throw them."
That's pretty interesting, actually. Everything revolves around her 'main' touch-based power, huh? Though it's hard to tell how many 'sub-powers' she has. Normally, there would be a different power for each member of the cluster, but things are very much nonstandard already anyways, so whatever.
"Would make for one hell of a baseball player, if nothing else," you mumble, the laid-back girl just giving you a lazy smirk for a moment.
"Maybe, if I felt like it."
So, that looks like a pretty complete presentation of the whole cluster's powers, and as none of them feel any rabid desire to hunt each other down, it doesn't look like you need to actively interfere with their desire to stay together as a group... Question is, what else do you do in regards to them?
"Alright, as that is everyone, let's talk about what happens next," you announce, the girl on your lap looking up at you with the rest of the room as she licks your fingers. "First off, I'll have someone arrange for a room with a bed for each of you, so you can all stay together, unless any of you would like to have your own room?"
At the silence answering your question, you nod. "Good. Next off, how willing are you guys to use your powers for the Crypts as a whole? Don't get me wrong, you don't want to, you don't have to, this is entirely up to you."
Silently, the six girls in the room with you and Sarah hold a short conference of sorts, exchanging looks and letting each other kow how they feel by their powers' connections, body language actually telling you a lot about what's going on. Finally, it is Kumi that speaks up. "We do not mind. We have powers, we just as well might use them," she smiles placidly at you. "Just let us know when you need someone dead."
... Mhm, that's good to know. "Gotcha. Well then, before I forget it, I can give you girls a few additional powers to round off what you already got, plus a telepathic connection to pretty much all the other capes in the Crypts."
You can feel the attention as every girl in the room shifts forwards.
"I can only do it for two of you today, but I promise I'll do the rest as soon as I can?"
What follows is some more silent discussion, along with some actual gesturing and head movements as the girls 'discuss' who gets the honors. In the end, the ones to step forwards are Kumi and Phebe, the two comparatively most open members of the cluster.
"Just one second," you ask as you extend your claws, making a pair of small cuts along a wrist before hemokinetically extending twin tendrils of blood. "All you need to do is drink this and I'll do the rest."
Jackie, who is still sitting on your lap, eyes the blood with interest, but you just use your other hand to keep her in place by patting her head. "Very well." "Will do."
Having things arranged is a cinch thanks to the wonderful power of having a whole bunch of cash and the manufactories on base, meaning you can have a couple of the girls that don't have anything to do (aka the slackers you haven't found anything else to do at the moment) take one of the empty rooms and refurbish it really quick.
It's not like you're demanding much, and after a quick application of elbow grease by yours truly you have the best you can do with what you know about the cluster's needs.
"Wooow," Phebe makes with twinkling eyes when she finally sees their new accommodations.
"It's not much, but you're guaranteed to stay within range of each other anytime," you explain, pointing towards the middle beds. "There's a bit of space you can access through the wall cutouts with their own bit of bedding, and there's a bathroom right through this door- you might need to figure something out on how to share it, it isn't really meant for six girls, but I'm sure you'll manage."
"And what do you mean by that?" Ayane asks, throwing herself up and into one of the higher beds.
Each of them begins pouting at you in unison, even Catrin and Jackie. And Sarah. Despite the scientifically proven fact that girls and bathrooms are like fat people and fast food.
"Just that the base is meant to hold people in individual rooms, by and large. Anyways, I have a busy night ahead of me yet, so please excuse me," you say, picking up Sarah as though she was weightless (which she feels like, at the kind of strength you're operating at) and walk right out of there.
Time to do a thing.
When Taylor arrives at the place you requested she do- one of the secret entrances to your underground lair- she does so expecting to find somebody waiting for her.
What she gets instead is a quick teleport down into the heart of your power, in a designated room whence you already await her, the tense girl rapidly looking around and only relaxing after a couple of moments even after having seen you.
"Hey there, Taylor," you greet her, casually waving a hand. "Hope the teleport was pleasant?"
"Why did you do this?" She demands to know, her body language going still.
"Mostly to save time," you shrug. Looking down on your phone, you note the time, as well as the fact you should probably stop ranting on PHO about how Gladly was a pedo and was let out to teach kids again by the PRT itself in a conspiracy of child rapists that may or may not exist using a few semi-random facts you combined to get the appearance right.
You think you have the usual suspects for this kind of thing on lock, they'll do the rest.
"Anyways, let's not dawdle all night, we have actual work to do," you say, completely ignoring Taylor's apparent issues with sudden teleports. "The E88 is still around, after all, and tonight we'll be doing our part to change that."
"... What do you need me for?" Taylor asks, rapidly changing gears. "If we were going out to fight, wouldn't there be better capes to call on?"
"Why, we aren't exactly going to fight anyone, at least not if things go according to plan," you say, moving a hand over the teleportation control panel you had Yoshi install on the wall. "Instead, we will be scouting out a few suspected Empire weapon cashes and sabotaging them using one of my powers."
Stepping to your side, the costumed parahuman looks up at you. "What kind of power?"
"Oh, the one to lay curses onto people or objects whose effects depend on my exact wording," you explain your malomancy in a nutshell.
"Wait, what?"
Before you can reply to her startled query, you're off in a flash.
"And it really works off of your wording?" Taylor asks, the two of you standing on a roof a couple of buildings away from your target's location.
Mainly thanks to the upgrades to the teleporters you made Yoshi take care of- the added precision and ease of use when teleporting all over the place really do make a big difference.
"Yeah, though I have a limited amount of words to use, and it actually has to be malicious in some way- I could curse someone to have a hard time finding their keys or stubbing their toes, but it doesn't really work to do things like making them do stuff outright. I think it mostly works off of probability manipulation for now," you explain.
"Traditionally, curses are a big element of folklore, so maybe you could take inspiration from there?" Taylor, or rather, Skitter right now, suggests. "Have you ever tried to make fields or people barren, inhibit someone's love life or increase the likelihood of accidents, natural disasters or maybe everyday troubles to noticeable levels?"
"Woah there, calm down," you jokingly urge, defensively holding up a hand. "I would ask what the poor nazis we're about to meet did to you, but they're nazis, thus deserve anything they get anyways. Still, what's brought this on?"
Shrinking into herself a little (as best you can tell with her twitchy body language), Skitter looks away. "You seem to have taken the vampire theme, so I wanted to see if this follows suit."
"Well, there's something to be said for trying, I suppose," you ponder, bending down for a moment to scoop Taylor up in a princess carry, an aborted struggling motion making you wonder if the deathly still girl wants this or not.
No, never mind, there's blood gathering towards her head, you're decently sure she might be blushing.
Jumping the gap between your current roof and the next, you deliberately press Taylor against yourself, maneuvering ever forwards. "So, if I had the power to curse an object to do something in a negative way, how would you suggest I, say, formulate a curse on the E88's guns? Or better yet, the containers for said guns?"
"Oh, uhm, how do you need to do it? Do you declare what will happen, do you tell it what to do?"
"The latter," you agree, taking a quick look around to make sure nobody is seeing you.
"Okay, then uhm, I have a few ideas..."
In the end, creeping through cracks and avoiding the few guards actually around, the E88 more interested in keeping the location hidden than keeping it well-protected, you easily make it in.
Nobody really suspects a shadow in the night. Except when it's a humanoid one, in which case they would think Shadow Stalker rather than Cain.
The great advantages of keeping your stealthier powers nice and secret, really, but either way you soon find yourself inside the warehouse you were coming for, well inside Empire territory and yet completely open to you.
It doesn't take you long to find what you came looking for; several descriptively nondescript crates are stacked in a few of the rooms, a quick peek inside confirming that yes, you're at the right place rather than some legitimate storehouse.
That would have been awkward.
Detransforming, you take one last look around before you trust in Taylor, who is still hiding up on the roof, to warn you if anyone comes close, telling her you're beginning via telepathy. "Let your contents hit friend, not foe!"
Laying the curse onto the crate instead of each and every gun individually, as that would be one giant pain and take forever, you continue through the whole place, chanting the same spell again and again and again. At the very least, it can't really go wrong, the chant you chose fairly direct and clear; whenever an E88 goon tries to use the guns, once they've been sitting in these crates for a bit, they'll have a certain chance to 'accidentally' hit each other, rather than who they were trying to shoot.
As you work your way through the Empire's weapons, noting that there really are more than you'd have expected, you soon come upon a particularly... interesting stack of crates.
Not so much in their own crateness, which is about as average as it gets in a warehouse full of them, nor their contents, which are just more guns, but rather insofar as they are standing shifted visibly towards the rest of the room, rather than right against the wall.
Now, maybe that was just them being put like that, but you aren't too sure about that, something about them seems... off, to you. So yo go shadow and twist yourself into the wedge between them and the wall.
And you find a couple of cases, stacked much like the crates everywhere. Some quick poking of your shadowed head inside of them proves them to be several RPG launchers, as well as accompanying ammunition, and with this newfound knowledge you soon find that there are several instances of this, more smuggled weapons hidden behind the other smuggled weapons. Everything from grenade launchers to several cases of grenades over to what you're fairly sure are rocket launchers, more RPGs... the E88 really has been stocking up, huh?
Good thing you arrived at this point to make sure they didn't do anything dangerous with this contraband.
"May your contents be strong and treacherous!" There, that should do the trick. It still takes you a while, simply because you just have so many containers to work through, but before long you're back outside, sliding up the walls and rejoining Skitter.
"That was..." She doesn't seem to be able to grasp the words she wants to utter.
"Too easy? Boring?" You suggest.
"Anticlimatic," she conludes with a nod. "Nothing really happened."
Aww, she was building this up to be some big thing inside her head, wasn't she? "Most cape business is, really," you tell her. "Everything is pretty much a normal job, until an enemy cape shows up and it isn't. Aside from that, more often than not, you're dealing with the mooks... and we aren't attacking a heavily fortified position here or anything. If something had happened, it'd have been because I wasn't doing my job of staying unseen."
"And now?"
"Now we go on and do the exact same thing everywhere we suspect an E88 storehouse to be. Luckily enough, we know a lot about their operations, because we have a lot of competent people taking care of that side of things," you explain. Because really, it doesn't get better than Sarah. Scientifically impossible. "Imagine trying to do this kind of thing by yourself; you'd have to find the place, case it out, figure out a plan and finally execute it without being shot at. The exact point behind being part of an organization."
And this has nothing to do at all with a subtle reminder that the Crypts are her only option, no sirree...
The rest of your night is spent much like this, flitting from one place to another and repeatedly hitting every container that might just have a weapon inside of it with a curse.
Taylor stays with you, acting as your lookout as well as a wider security net, just in case something is going on in the general area you're in.
You make good progress, though Taylor inevitably grows just a little tired, seeing as how she isn't getting any sleep tonight. At the very least, you will assume that to be the reason she eventually just looks at you, seemingly without wavering.
"I can sense three of them in that alley," she says, pointing off towards the ground from where you're setting her down. "They are raping a woman. Can I kill them?"
"Sure you can kill them, nothing's stopping you. Just make sure you get rid of the bodies afterwards. Are you using your bugs, or would you like to use your gun to do it?" You ask.
"...I'm taking care of it already," comes back her answer. "Just go on as usual, I'm stripping them to the bones and getting rid of the rest when I'm done."
"Attagirl," you smile at her and even pat her masked head, the smooth material cold under your hand, before disappearing, once again, into the shadows.
All in all, it's a pretty gainful night, you just hope the nazi gangers will actually use the guns before your curses on them fade.
Thinking back, she really should not have tried to cut through that alley. She had been warned about the area, told some bad types were around, but as a college student that never went to any of the worse parts of the city, she'd simply rationalized the risk she'd been taking.
Well, now one Terry Dennis was sitting there, in a room inside the PRT headquarters, having been carted over just as soon as the hospital she'd been brought to by the ambulance that'd come out of nowhere had given her a clean bill of health.
Another thing to thank her invisible benefactor for, she supposed. Normally she'd have been worried about the hospital bills, but as best she could tell an arrangement of some kind had been made. She didn't really know all the details, just that she didn't have to worry about it, apparently.
Which was good, as that was one thing off a mind that was in enough turmoil as it was. She had been raped, after all. Something the fuckwit in front of her didn't quite seem to understand.
"Ma'am, if you could state everything you remember about what happened? We need as much detail as possible, every little thing helps," he said, face remarkably impassive in the cold fury Terry was growing to radiate.
"I told everything I know to the ambulance people and to the police officers that came to take my statement, can't you just get a copy of their transcripts or something?" She asked, doing her best to remain calm. He was just doing his job, after all, no point in screaming at him...
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we need you to repeat everything as best you can for the protocol. I realize this may be hard for you, but-"
"So, I was being raped by those three skinheads," she interrupted him, the petty spite that'd been gathering inside her gut finally spilling out as she did her best to adjust her sitting position to avoid the pain of her... everything. "One in my pussy, one in my ass and the third was choking me so I couldn't scream, the three grabbed me off the street basically. I tried to fight back, but those were three big guys and all I had were a couple of sharp nails restrained by the one raping my anus. And they still broke," Terry said, showing the goon in front of her two broken nails, "when they threw me against the wall first. That enough detail for you, asscrack?"
"Ma'am, please-"
"There I was, experiencing firsthand how safe the streets really are at night and being told what a 'fine piece of ass' I was for 'being fucking tight' because those disgusing pieces of shit didn't get that lubrication is a thing when all of a sudden, we all heard a sound, this buzzing and scratching. The two still raping me didn't stop, but the third one looked around, letting go of me to look at the opposite end of the alley I was dragged in from," she continued, unwilling to stop at any part. She was telling him the story again, he was going to hear it.
"Next thing I know, there's a solid mass of flies and wasps and cockroaches flooding everything. There was a bit of chaos, I was too busy gasping for breath because I could breathe again and the two fuckers finally pulled out, scraping my insides raw again and pulled out their guns." Terry smiled grimly, the face of the guy in front of her still demonstratively blank. "Which did jack shit when the insects started biting and stinging from every direction and crawled into their bodies from everywhere- I could see one of them ripping off his pants to try and protect his ass from the bugs that were crawling inside it- and they couldn't really do anything. One tried to point his gun at me, but then a solid wall of wasps impacted his face stingers first.
"There were too many bugs at that point, I could hardly see anything anymore, but none of them so much as touched me, so all I could hear were their screams over this constant, loud buzz that was nearly completely drowning them out, and when they finally cleared up, all that was left were the bodies that were still being crawled all over. I was pretty sure they were dead, so I just tried to get to my feet and get away, and then I saw the ambulance come towards me. They stopped, waved me in and looked me over yadda yadda yadda, brought me to the hospital, checked me over again, then people brought me here to sit on this hard chair while my privates- all of them- are still inflamed and hurting like fuck. Is that enough, or would you like me to write a novel about it?"
Terry Dennis was not having the best of days, and she had decided nobody else was allowed to have a good day, either.
"... What are you doing, Gabe?" Sarah asks, a mix of amusement, exasperation and fondness clear in her voice.
"Why, Sarah, I was thinking about ways to motivate myself to actually help around the place a little more, get back into the swing of things, you get the idea," you explain, smiling happily at your wonderful little sister. "So I came up with this!"
"... Where did you even- you painted them yourself, didn't you? Of course you did." Sarah sighs.
You think it came out rather well, actually.
"Let's just... I came here to tell you there's been news," she says, shaking her head. "The Empire is calling for a meeting between the city's villains at Somer's Rock tomorrow night. Not that there's many left anymore, but it's going to be a thing, apparently."
You tilt your head, remembering having heard the name a long, long time ago, back when you were alive. "Why would they do it at that dive bar, and what would the E88 even have to talk about at a meeting like this?"
"It's the traditional place for meetings under truce here in BB, actually. Goes back to before Marquis. And the only reason they're putting into the messages is to 'discuss the current situation in Brockton Bay'. Best guess, they're trying to arrange for an armistice between villains somehow, or to force us to leave them alone at least," Sarah explains.
"... Well, isn't that a pain."
Honestly, now that you have figured out a way to allow the undead you have raised to cast select spells (or a select spell, really, that you have to choose beforehand), it is only natural that you would want to figure out a particularly fitting new model of undead specifically designed to make use of this feature.
Especially so as you deliberately avoid using massive amounts of undead here on Earth Bet, mostly because the discovery that you have empowered dead meat running around would have all kinds of the wrong kind of attention on your ass in no time.
Hence, your new revolutionary solution: Ravens. Specifically, undead ravens you reanimate. No, really, you actually sat down and analyzed possible approaches and solutions and that's the best you could think of.
Seeing as how their only purpose is to fly around and filter people to cast magic at, they don't need any physical changes to be able to fight better, camouflage being their sole and biggest defense, and their little bird eyes are perfectly useable for this purpose.
All you need is a dead raven to reanimate, then kill a couple more for you to do the same for and just like that you can have a whole bunch of autonomous curse dispensers flying all over the city and capable of differentiating various factions and such easily enough thanks to the base intelligence your fleshy undead possess as is.
In fact, you could do that easily enough right away.
Hunting down and killing a couple of birds doesn't take you long, not with your various powers and abilities, and before long you have a nice and even ten undead urban birds sitting before you, imbued with a particular curse to spew once every couple minutes.
None of them being pidgeons, of course. You could use them, but you never really liked them, even beyond the fact that they are an uncommonly social species of birds that might or might not realize something is wrong with your infiltrators into the animal kingdom of birds.
Or however you're gonna call them, anyways. "Fly, my pretties!" You exclaim, channeling the insane villainous biotinker all the way. "Fly and spread fear and distrust amongst my enemies!"
Standing off to the side, a mostly-naked Aisha grins at you. "Anything about new sexual preferences you wanna tell me?" She asks.
"Not really, no. In fact, I asked you to come over for an entirely different reason."
Your plan, continuing from your efforts on this when you were last on Earth Bet, is simple; getting Aisha to try and figure out how to better control her power through simple encouragement didn't work out, back then, and so you will simply have to adjust your approach accordingly.
You know a thing or two about Aisha, and so the obvious solution would be to give her a reward that can actually motivate her into doing what you want, while keeping said reward impossible to achieve by somehow cirumventing you. Because she totally would, if only to be 'punished' afterwards.
Hence, here you are, pinning the dark-skinned girl down onto a desk and methodically pummeling her insides with your cock, drawing almost its entire length in and out of her again and again, only to suddenly stop.
"Pleeeaaase..." Aisha whines, but you have to harden your heart here.
"Nope, and if you try to cheat again, I'm not going to let you come at all," you chide Aisha, your unruly pet fixed in place by your hand on her lower back.
While you may normally consider edging her for a while just for fun, right now you're doing so for educational purposes, keeping her where she is and mercilessly fucking her until she almost comes.
"Come on, all you have to do is turn off your power. I'm sure you can manage, mhm?" And with that, you're back at it, filling her pussy with your rod and driving her towards her next aborted orgasm. Aisha tries to wiggle in place, but you don't give her any space to do so, pressing your own body against hers in response and letting her smooth back push into your stomach and chest.
"Unfair," she gasps, tilting her head to look backwards at you. "This is unfair...!"
"Life is unfair, and so am I," you tell her, "so you really should've seen this coming. Now turn down your power!"
With a wet, squelching sound, you penetrate her all the way again, lightly bumping her womb and holding yourself there, just letting the sensation build up a bit. This is for her own good, honest!
And so, with a hand sliding down her slender body and finding her clit, lightly humping into the shorter girl until she comes dangerously close again, her pitious whining growing stronger as you immediately let off.
At the end of things, she finally manages to earn her orgasm, screaming out that her power is off to the point the pair of gangsters you left to guard the room knock on the door, Aisha's mind-rending, eye turning climax lasting for a good full minute before she collapses on your cock.
You just stroke her hair for a bit. "Good girl, Aisha... but we aren't done yet, you know?"
She giggles, looking just a tad bit mindbroken. Ah well, she'll be fine in a bit. For now, you'll just rail her a little longer- you completely neglected to come yourself, after all, and she is still as delightfully tight as ever.
Aisha seems to be feeling out of it for a bit, so you just brought her to your room to recover for a bit, her stash of stolen sweets should be enough to let her stay fed whenever she grows hungry.
You, in the meantime, have a little meeting to get to. Opening the doors leading to the bigger, shared workshop you established for all your tinkers, you behold Sherrel, Lea, Alice, Isabelle, Frank and Trevor (aka Chariot) standing there waiting for you, with Catrin and the rest of the cluster that triggered with her gathered to one side.
Quickly breathing out Yoshi and adding him to the gathered tech monkeys, you give them all a wide grin.
"Hello everyone, glad you could make it. Now who's up to do some tinkering?"
With your full team of tinkers, tinkerers and actual professionals present, along with your semblance creations and soul minions brought out as applicable, it doesn't take long for all of you to descend upon the doomtruck, the already heavily modified tinkertech creation being torn apart and put back together in waves.
Catrin's power sees some heavy use, though you need to arrange things a bit so none of the males present see her half-naked, as that's a requirement for using it; same, really, goes for Kumi, who simply copied her powers to do the same in turn.
With the tinkers actually directly cooperating, their powers somehow seeming to actually synergize, something you are fairly certain shouldn't be how tinker powers work. Still, so long as it works, it works.
And it sure does work. Before long, you can see the additional changes taking place, using Yoshi as a gofer for everyone else as you make the occasional corrections and changes where necessary. Not that you have any idea how tinkertech is even supposed to work, but that's nothing new; you simply work around this the best you can.
Of course, tinkering with barechested tinker chicks is a lot of fun, too, you aren't about to say otherwise.
Anyways, before long you have made a few... additions, to the doomtruck spidertank. Just minor things, really, such as allowing the whole vehicle to teleport a decent distance every dozen or so seconds, a couple of heavy-duty grenade launchers added to the pre-existing laser mortars (that, frustratingly, make a bit of sense whenever you link into the same tinker trio, as you've decided to call it, as Alice) automatically firing several grenades per second, a few additional layers of reactive armor that mostly works only when shifted into its spider form, a corresponding leaping capability that lets it easily clear scyscrapers and so on and so forth.
Honestly, most of your time is spent iteratively improving what was already there. Sure, most of the whole machine's insides are tinkertech now, but Sherrel assures you she's got it all on lock, so you'll just trust her on that for the time being.
Incidentally, attempts to just put blindfolds onto Frank and Trevor ended up both amusing and predictable in their results, but you aren't about to complain.
"S-so K-kaiser is really g-g-going to n-negotiate?" It probably was, you ponder to yourself, a good decision to touch base with Tammi at some point, given her situation and all- some personal encouragement slash manipulation can never go amiss, you feel, and as a former member of the E88, there's no way Tammi doesn't feel strongly about these newest developments.
"Yup, my guess is he's trying to keep the Crypts away while he sorts out his own house," you shrug, wordlessly offering from the bowl of cookies you brought along to your little visit.
She, for her part, nods. "I can s-s-see that. H-he always looked l-like the kind of g-g-guy that w-would try to weasel around r-real fights."
"Not that I'm about to say anything against that- actual fights are for suckers. Much better and easier to only fight when you're sure to win," you say, reminding her of your own modus operandi. "Still, I'm not exactly going to be making this easy on him either way. And it's interesting to see how you think about him."
"W-well it's ob-bvious," Tammi stutters, taking a moment to breathe deeply and concentrate after that one before opening her mouth again. "He just b-behaves like that kind of p-p-person."
"How about the other Empire members, then?" You jokingly ask. "Any insights into their characters? I'm actually curious now, even if more than a few of them are going to die before this is over."
"G-good. M-most of them are assho-ho-holes anyways." Tammi briefly nibbles on a cookie, taking the time to gather her thoughts and pull herself together once again. "H-hook's a giant ass, it's j-just that he can afford to be one," she begins, "and S-storm and Cricket aren't any b-b-better. S-same for Alabaster, th-the creepy fuck."
"Mhm, how about the others? I was thinking about reaching out to Purity, see if she'd be up for leaving the E88 for good."
"P-purity's nice, b-b-but also comp-p-pletely clueless sometimes," Tammi scoffs. "Sh-she just doesn't think things through. N-n-night and Fog just did wh-whatever she told them when they w-were still around, too."
"Oh yeah, I heard they were brought in from the Gesellschaft, they do that kind of thing to people, I guess," you nonchalantly imply Kaiser to be working with brainwashing groups. Which is likely correct, too, anyways. "How about the others? Krieg? Crusader? Maybe the twins?"
"K-krieg's so deep in the G-g-gesellsch-schaft's ass he forgot who p-p-put him there, and Crusader is just kind of... hanging on? N-nobody c-cares what h-h-happens to them," Tammi says. "F-fenja and Menja were alright, I g-guess, even if they always treated me l-like a little girl or something."
Yeah, all in all, it doesn't sound like Tammi would actively complain about you killing any of these people; at most she'd mention the waste. Also, her stutter seems to be getting better, on average, at least when she has some time to formulate her words in advance. You'll just keep on chatting with her every now and then for the time being, stuff like this isn't supposed to be easy to get through anyways.
According to those parent guides you read online, at any rate. Another thing to keep on doing, you guess.
It is as you are in the middle of wrapping up your daily dose of blood to keep yourself topped up that you realize something is happening- mostly by virtue of Sarah contacting you to tell you your phone is ringing where you left it in your room, the pretty much only place in the base you get some decent reception in.
Coil was paranoid, but also prepared in all the ways, honestly. Just not against you.
A quick shadow step spell or two sees you return upstairs, where you quickly find out that the one calling you is none other than Victoria Dallon herself. Which, granted, isn't exceedingly uncommon, so you just take the call.
"Hey Vicky, Gabe here," you say, as though this wasn't your number in particular she's calling. "What's up?"
"Hey Gabe, me and Amy wanted to ask if you were free to hang out tomorrow again? We got a Friday with nothing else to do coming up. Unless you have anything important that keeps you?"
And just like that, you have a feeling something is up, though the medium you're working through does make it harder to tell if there's anything suspicious happening on Vicky's end.
"Sure, I have nothing in particular planned," you respond, intent on checking up on whatever is wrong with Vicky and slash or Amy.
"Sure, I have nothing in particular planned." Vicky nodded at Amy, giving her a thumbs up.
"He took the bait, you don't need to send naked selfies, after all," she whispered to a half-naked Amy waiting next to her before turning back to the conversation. "Alright, gotcha~! Let's meet at the boardwalk, there's always something to look at there."
... Did you hear that correctly? Well, good thing you never told them your senses are extremely sharp. Still, now you kind of want to see what Amy would have done... then again, you can just strip her yourself when you next see them.
"Hey everyone, you all ready to get a powerup?" You ask, poking your head into the shared six person room the cluster girls have taken over in full by this point.
"Hurray!" Phebe, being her usual self, throws up her arms. "This stuff is awesome, it's way better than just feeling each other, we can actually talk and stuff! There's a bunch of people already in this, too, and you can talk to all of them if you want!"
"Just take your time," Kumi happily says, bringing over a chair for you to sit on. Such a considerate girl.
Taking a seat, you smile at the gathered parahumans that have been showing way less issues after their triggers than they should have. Maybe it's a matter of them getting powers with an in-built self-help group, but you're still assuming someone is going to explode at some point, more or less literally considering there's powers involved. "So, who's first?"
A quick discussion ensues, and they end up deciding that Jackie and Ayane should be the first two to drink a bunch of your blood. Jackie, of course, clambers onto your lap, pushing herself against you like a spoiled cat.
You don't really mind as such, of course, though the actual issue only surfaces afterwards, as you carefully suppress your aura for a moment to let you draw two streams of blood from one wrist each, the shortest girl in the room apparently not satisfied with just sitting on your lap.
No, as you take in the various blushes and aborted attempts to stop her, Jackie is adjusting her position to allow her access to your pants' zipper, opening it up and retrieving your dick with a (relatively) triumphant smile. "Mine."
"Uhm, Jackie? Maybe you shouldn't..." Catrin suggests, only to be denied with a shake of the white-haired girl's head.
"Nuh. Horny." And with that explanation, you feel her twist and rummage about, laboriously managing to push her own pants down, followed by the white pair of panties she is wearing.
Ayane, having stayed silent until now, just sighs quietly. "Let's just do this, okay?" Opening her mouth, she slurps down the blood you left floating before her, obviously intent on seeing this through regardless of what Jackie is doing.
You shrug. "Just take it slow, yeah? Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself." In return, Jackie nods, placing her now bare folds over your cock as she pushes up with her arms and legs to even get that far. You can't see much of what's going on, the positioning being what it is, but you feel the tender warmth of her body just fine as she very slowly lowers herself, her insides eagerly taking you.
Looking around, Kumi just continues to smile placidly as she looks on, seemingly unbothered by the proceedings, similar to Ayane, drinking her blood just as Jackie is... except for the odd glances she's throwing your way.
Analyzing the bloodflow inside her body, she seems to be slightly excited but suppressing it for one reason or another. Cute.
As for the other girls... Phebe is just grinning as she openly watches, Beverly is completely ignoring Jackie essentially jumping your pants to instead continue reading her book and Catrin is blushing like a tomato, holding both hands in front of her face.
A happy time for the whole family, in other words.
Anyways, you just passively let Jackie sink herself deeper and deeper onto you, the quiet girl making a few cute sounds that would have you pat her head if you weren't using both arms to thrall. It actually does take a bit of concentration to do this cleanly, and moving them would probably have you splatter a bunch of blood everywhere if you weren't careful, so you just don't.
She's tight, though, and before long Jackie begins to fuck herself on your rod, gasping and feeding on her own dose of blood all the while. Time for you to buckle down and make sure she leaves your lap satisfied or not at all.
Which ends up taking longer than thralling her, but eventually, you still have an insensate Jackie stuck on your lap, having been milked of orgasms by her own volition without you filling her up even once. You look Catrin in the eyes as you gently buck upwards for the first time, the shy tinker spellbound by your gaze as you come.
Happy fun times, really.
Making sure that Jackie is taken care of (aka putting her into the girls' bathroom's bathtub so the cum you pumped into her once you were done thralling everyone could drain without making a mess), you just go on ahead and leave the rest to the girls, returning to your own rooms and looking for Sarah.
Finding your (naked, naturally) sister hard at work browsing PHO and talking badly about the Protectorate, you snuggle up to her from behind, hugging and only lightly molesting her. "Hey sis, anything big going on?"
"Mhm, nothing serious," she replies, closing her eyes and enjoying the moment, her perky breasts feeling wonderful in your hands. "Just riling up the MLM crowd a bit. Wanna fuck with the nazis before tomorrow night?"
"I'd ask if you read my mind, but it's not like that's a secret," you tell her aloud and through telepathy at the same time. "Only question is, what do we do exactly?"
One thing you definitely wanted to do, before that little meetup at Somer's Rock you were explicitly invited to, was fucking with Kaiser once again, just this time from afar using the information you can gather on him at a moment's notice.
Incidentally, that is also a thing you may as well improve on, as just bothering Sarah every five minutes until she can pinpoint where the fucker is at any given time is unsustainable in the long run (mostly due to you refusing to do this).
Luckily enough, there is an alternative. Catrin, despite only being a tinker for a couple of days now, has been putting her power to work, or powers, rather, sharing her tinker power with half of the cluster trigger girls while Kumi copied her to do the same for the other half.
That and having pretty much any baseline tools she could ever need ready at a moment's notice, and, well, here you are, with a handful of miniscule, but extremely powerful miniature cameras slash listening devices. All you need to do is to put them somewhere, and they will, supposedly, adjust their coloring a little to merge with the surroundings as best they can.
Given they're small enough you are kinda worried about losing track of them and can be wedged into the smallest of cracks, you don't foresee too much trouble with that; if anything, the little balls are too good to be reasonable.
They will fail, eventually, as all tinkertech fails when left alone for too long, but Catrin assures you they will last long enough. Or more than a week or two, at least, which you hope to be longer than what's left of Max Anders' lifespan if you have any say in it.
So, while good ol' Max is fairly busy, between his civilian persona and keeping an admittedly enormous gang running, there are two locations he regularly has to visit, by and large, and therefore two targets you could potentially hit.
His office, or his penthouse apartment.
Max Ander's office on the top floor of the Medhall building is, you idly consider, becoming somewhat of an old hat for you to infiltrate. You even briefly consider just using a teleporter to get inside at record speed but, on second thought, decide against that; while the security is honestly disappointing, you don't want to chance anyone seeing the muted flash of light through a window or under the door at just the wrong time.
So instead, you go with a quick teleport to the roof of a random building in the vicinity, quickly making your way through the already familiar area. On the way, you idly note they actually shuffled their guards around a bit, but really, that was never actually going to stop you.
Once you've made your way all the way to the top, slithering through the night as a shadow, all that's left for you to do is to verify that there are no cameras or the like in place now for some reason, which you do, before you detransform and begin to take a look through the place.
Unfortunately, and despite your best efforts, you simply cannot find any of that easily shed biomatter commonly called hair, no matter how much you look all around the man's office; whatever illegal immigrants are cleaning the place have to be awfully thorough about their jobs.
Or else they just get fed to the dogs whenever Kaiser isn't satisfied, perhaps. They're nazis, you have to expect everything.
Either way, you can't seem to get what you're after... but that isn't any reason not to look for other opportunities to further your own cause, now that you're here anyways. A quick boot-up sequence confirms Anders' computer still works just fine, and his password remains unchanged from the last time you accessed it, saving you the trouble of employing your superior hacking skills.
Also known as Sarah.
Browsing around, it doesn't seem as though this guy has any particularly new stuff lying around you haven't seen yet, perfect memory once more coming to the rescue, but a few changes are present in some- aha, there you go, inside his 'private' folder, or the subfolder 'not porn', to be precise, you find a promising file name.
'Kayden Blackmail'. This wasn't here the last time you looked, most likely because he just wasn't keeping it on his work computer, but you soon enough have access to a whole bunch of both pictures and videos depicting a naked Kayden Anders. Some in the middle of having sex, some just in general, many of them seemingly taken without her knowledge.
This is... well, both interesting and troubling. Interesting because, as you are always prepared, you merely need to pull an USB stick out of your shadow to copy all of this crap on the sly, but also troubling because Kaiser is obviously planning to tighten the screws on Purity, with things coming to a head if his plans are to come to fruition.
Good thing you have arranged a meeting with her for tomorrow (or technically today, you think it might be past midnight). You will probably need to react to this in some way, lest Kayden waffles about too much and ends up being a nazi again.
Some people, really...
Anyways, while you haven't found what you initially came here for, you may as well use the opportunity being in Max Anders' office presents. Looking around lightly, you can see several objects you may as well leave a curse on, assuming Max will be coming to work tomorrow- which he likely will, before the meeting. His chair, his desk, that pen he seems to be favouring, his computer, though that may actually crap out if magic were applied to it, heck you could even curse the door to this room, if you felt like it.
You have the place all to yourself, who is going to stop you?
It would, you have decided, be a waste not to make sure this office is the equivalent to an actually magical haunted house; everything gets a dose of malicious magic pumped into it by you. Or at least everything you can think of something for; these curses can be fiddly, and you need something actually viable for each curse, due to the way these things work.
And so you leave a few... presents. The chair is cursed to become uncomfortable, the desk is cursed to make any and all work performed on it as annoying and tedious as possible, the keyboard to promote typos across the board and the mouse to randomly stutter, hopefully not completely frying them due to your magic's effects... but even then, not like it matters to you. That'd still be obnoxious for Kaiser if he tries to do anything.
And while you're at it, the door is cursed to have all that cross it stub their toes and the windows to be shit on by all the birds. You have no idea how well each of these will work, this branch of your magic being a tad bit underexplored in practical application but, looking at the white excretion splattering against the nearest window once you're done lightly touching them one after the other, you have some hope you did something right.
Now, all that's left is to decide where to go from here...
Kaiser himself lives, somewhat paradoxically considering the Biermann twins' accommodations, in the next bigger suitable building across downtown, penthouse suite of course. That means to actually get some damn hair will require you to go all the way, sneak in and search around, of course.
That is to say, teleport all the way, because while you could just as well fly that's faster and more convenient, shadow through a bunch of security that stands little chance of actually detecting you even if you weren't a shadow and, finally, find the right apartment to infiltrate.
Which is honestly the hardest part of this, and you realize halfway through you're going in the wrong direction, but fuck it, here you are.
It's a nice little place, by which you mean a luxury apartment, but that's not really important. The important part is that you can easily find your way around this place, and now just need to steer yourself towards the bathroom, away from the sleeping silhouette of blood your supernatural senses clearly perceive over in the opposite direction from the living room with a wide windows wall for a good look of the Bay.
Unless...
It takes a bit of searching, Kaiser actually being a fairly tidy person in general, you think, based on the contents of the various little cabinets you quietly open, but still, eventually you manage to get lucky on a comb set to the side of the sink, up on a ledge meant just for this.
Pulling the scant few cuple of hairs you'll need off, you shadow out again right away, mentally taking note of the brands Kaiser uses. Sure, you don't really need to spend any time on hygiene yourself at all, but you still want to keep up appearances, and it's hard to be more of an evil gang boss than nazi head honcho, so... if there's anything approaching bathroom fashion for the kind of social standing you're trying to achieve, you'd imagine Kaiser would be a save bet on finding out.
Either way, though, here you are; the hair of a nazi right in your grasp. And, with a quick use of your phone, so is a picture of him; plus his location being pretty much fixed...
Well, time to lay a curse on him right where you are, sitting atop an unattended roof in the middle of the city looking on in his general direction.
Who could stop you, at this point?
"See the untrustworthy parts of everyone else!" The rationale, of course, being that you want him to distrust and take issue with his underlings, undermine his trust in them and their trust in him in turn.
Trust, after all, is an integral part of running any kind of organization, as you well know, and if it's only the trust that failing to perform will have consequences. Anyways, with this, you hope you achieve the first part of your big 'master plan'- direct the E88 into open infighting.
Incidentally, it's also the only step of your plan, the following actions being more some idle cleanup as you waffle about how embarrassed you are about these people claiming to be actual villains rather than clowns to make both them and the Protectorate look bad.
However, you have figured out how to 'split' a single person's capacity for external malicious intent into two, which you would normally describe followed by some mystic mumbo jumbo that only really makes sense to you, but basically means you can cast two curses onto a single person, if you want and concentrate a bit. "Let no insubordination escape your wrath!"
The synergy should be obvious here.
Anyways, with that taken care of, all that remains is to return home, where you can store away this hair and, y'know, actually decide what to do with the blackmail material you copied and now know is in the possession of Kaiser.
Fun times all around, huh?
Sarah, it has to be said, is always fun to fuck, and if there's anyone that's absolutely always ready and down to do so, it would be her, your foxy little sister dropping anything else she is doing the very moment you so much as indicate you wouldn't mind some sex.
Not to mention when she really gets in the mood, which is when you wouldn't be surprised at her wrestling Endbringers to get at you.
But anyways, all thoughts about wonderful little sisters and their tight asses aside, you actually do have some stuff to do today, much as you'd like to just stay in and celebrate the lascivious debauchery that your family life has become. Thus, you are currently busying yourself making sure every important member of the Crypts gets their aura awakened and told to try it out and practice with it a bit.
While, you will not lie, still fucking Sarah's ass whenever you take breaks, as you have noticed you actually recover aura faster when doing so. It's an easy way to really speed it up, and as awakening auras consumes yours a little every time you do it, you need the extra regeneration.
She actually transformed just a little partway through, her fox ears and tail popping out, allegedly to let you stroke them, though you think she just wanted more cuddles.
Either way, you do have a bit to get through, but with the power of Sarah and her butt combined with buttsex, you can actually awaken every member of the Crypts on your list on this day. You even went ahead and called in Taylor, Dinah as well as Circus for a spell, and had the other Undersiders come by for this as well.
Once everyone has a decent idea of what they need to do to properly use their auras to their fullest, with you going out of your way to make the point how individualistic this crap can get and how to try and get a feel for practicing, with a few quick warnings about aura break and why risking getting it is a stupid idea, you spend just a little additional time making sure everyone that now has aura isn't gonna get themselves killed before moving on with your day.
Which is, surprisingly enough, pretty busy with things you have to attend to for once. Nevermind the thing at Somer's Rock first thing tonight, you have the date with Vicky and Amy, followed with a meeting with Kayden and, of course, a stream you've already announced and would be loathe to back off from.
Good thing you're always at 100%, is all you're trying to say. Imagine being actually alive and suffering from things like exhaustion, thirst, hunger, sleep deprivation... It's a miracle people even survive like that, heck, it's a miracle you could live like that.
Until you didn't, anyway, but that's another story.
Anyways, there you are, dressed in your 'teenage Gabriel that is totally neither edgy nor cringy' outfit (Sarah insisted on the name, and you aren't about to contradict her), having adjusted your age and come to the boardwalk. All you need to do is wait at the meeting spot and- there they are already, Amy and Vicky strolling down the seaside shopping street.
"Hey," you greet, raising a hand while the other one tucks away your smartphone (held up demonstratively to complete the image of a teenager busy with the thing until now). "Two of you been doing alright?"
"Hey Gabe, we're toootally fine," Vicky says, waving back at you and raising all your red flags.
"Yeah, fine," a grumpier, but no less alarming Amy adds.
Yeah, okay, you should probably address this as quickly as possible, shouldn't you? Taking a quick look around, you wave the sisters over towards the edge of the street, where your little group of three won't inhibit foot traffic too much.
"Okay, what's wrong with you two? Do you need help?" You murmur, using all of your senses at once to make sure nobody is somehow listening in or observing you from afar (that you can find, at least). "Are you under duress? If you can't talk freely, just tell me... 'The goose is clucking'. That's a good passphrase."
"What? No!" Holding back her bout of laughter at your entirely sensible suggestion, Vicky shakes her head. "We aren't under duress or anything."
"Are you absolutely sure about that? Because if you aren't, you might have been mastered," you explain your concerns.
"We're fine, you idiot," Amy interrupts, glancing around. "Everything is completely normal."
Your eyes narrow. "That's bullshit and you know it. Something's up."
"Okay, maybe we wanted to make sure of something," Vicky dithers, holding up both hands. "But we promise it's all totally alright and stuff."
"Speak for yourself," Amy grumbles. Well, if she's going to be like this...
Adjusting your positioning a little, you sling a hand around Amy's shoulder. "It seems the two of you are leaving me no other choice," you quietly lament the necessity of your actions. "But until you fess up and tell me what exactly has both of you act like this, just know I am doing this because I have to."
"Wait, wha-" Amy doesn't get far, her words interrupted by your arm snaking around and down her body, briefly patting her cute little stomach before pushing its way down into her pants, quickly finding itself inside her panties. "Gabe what are y-"
Her mouth remains open but, as you begin gently pinching her clit between your thumb and forefinger while also using the rest of your hand to stroke her lower lips, it does not move.
"Sorry girls, but I need an answer. Why have you been behaving completely out of the norm for a while now? Tell me before I call the PRT." And you would, too. If only to fuck with them.
"Gabe, you really should calm down. And, uh, maybe not do that in public?" Vicky asks, nervously glancing around.
"As long as you don't move too much, nobody around us can see anything," you tell her dismissively. "Now fess up already."
Amy is starting to visibly redden now, her thighs around your hand squirming a little even as you tease and prod her, your middle finger slowly entering her tight folds. But she doesn't actually move to try and get you off.
"Okay, geez," Vicky finally relents, biting her lip as she looks at you openly molesting her sister. "We saw Cain's stream, okay?"
... The one where you called yourself Lilith? You motion for her to continue as you turn towards Amy in full now, using your other hand to wedge under her shirt and get at her sweater puppies.
"And we saw that Cain can turn into a woman. You can turn into a girl, too, Amy wouldn't shut up about it, and you showed up just a while after Cain became active in the city, so we were suspicious." Well, that may or may not be good. Messing with these two has been pretty fun so far. Then again, the fact they came alone may or may not be good sign, at least.
You nod at Vicky as you now fully push a finger inside Amy, actually masturbating her and working on making it two fingers, the blank-faced girl just staring at you wordlessly.
"So we wanted to ask if you were under duress or needed help or stuff, because we're pretty sure you might be a cluster trigger or second gen trigger off of Cain, and we had no idea how you ask if someone's dad or brother or sister or mother or whatever your relationship might be if that first one is true is a supervillain, or if they're being hunted or held as a kinky sex slave or something."
... You have to hold back your laugh. At both that sentence and at Amy actually widening her stance so you can access her already sopping wet pussy easier, her juices splattering all over your hand and her panties in equal measure.
"Okay, so the first thing I'd like to clarify is that if anyone here would be a kinky sex slave, it would be Amy," you say, driving your ring- and middle fingers into the brunette's twat with full force now, the squelching sound you produce in doing so quiet, but audible.
"Also, you made a couple of good guesses, most people wouldn't really know about how cluster triggers and the like work, would they? Didn't quite hit the mark, though."
"Then what is going on with you and Cain?" Vicky asks, petulantly stamping her foot even as you increase the intensity of Amy's stimulation, the gasping girl holding your arm stuck inside her pants with both hands, but just that.
"Simple," you tell her, giving her a smug smile. "I am Cain."
And just like that, you make Amy cum, having known about the location of her G-spot way beforehand.
"Oh." Vicky's mouth becomes round as she blinks. "Ooooh."
"Yep. Honestly, I thought you'd have realized with that one time I-"
"Oh!" Vicky interrupts you, pointing at you. "That! Explains a whole lot, actually. Like why you never care about any money you're spending, I bet you have a bunch of cash as a secret crimelord."
You take a quick look around. You know nobody is quite in listening range right now, but it doesn't hurt to remind her. "Well yeah, there's a reason people commit crimes. They pay, that's the whole point more often than not."
Now sufficiently wary of discovery, Vicky frowns. "Yeah, this isn't the place to have this kinda talk. Wanna go to a cafe or something so you can stop molesting Amy in broad daylight?"
In response, you slide your hand back out of its hot and swelteringly humid confines, showcasing the way you lick it clean of the clear fluids covering it. "Lead the way, I'll be right behind you once I finish my snack."
"Gabe!"
You just point at Amy, who is kind of starting to slump towards your shoulder. "Hey, someone has to take care of Amy while she recovers."
"'M came..." The brunette garbles, her mouth not quite under her control yet, same as her brain. "Wiss jusd his fingehrs..."
Once Amy regains some of her lucidity and Vicky has decided upon a suitable place for you all to converse, your little group is off to order some coffee, though you decidedly get whatever has the most milk in it and dump a bunch of sugar on top.
You can drink it, but you never really liked coffee as such, plain and simple. Of course, that does mean you eye Amy with a healthy amount of suspicion, the girl (still wearing that choker you got her, if you might add) drinking her coffee black. Without anything.
You aren't quite completely sure, but you won't start on a tirade against coffee for the time being.
"So, uh, you're... Cain, huh?" Vicky, ever the extrovert, is the one to break the thin layer of ice that'd formed once Amy switched her brain on after a bit of leaning on your shoulder. "I just realized, but mom would kill both of us if she ever found out."
"What, that we knew and didn't tell her?" Amy snorts. "Or that we fucked him? Because we did both and both were fun."
Oh, if only they knew.
"Well, what she doesn't know..." You trail off for a moment. "Still, if you have any questions, feel free. I won't give out any classified information, but I'm sure you'd like to know a bunch of stuff."
"What's your power?" Vicky immediately asks, sitting at attention. "Nobody really knows, everyone has their theories and it's the biggest mystery of the century."
"Well, that's a complicated and actually fairly deep story, but suffice to say my power is 'fuck physics'," you elegantly declare. "That's all I'll say on the matter. Next!"
"How much money do you actually make?" Amy asks, taking a sip and immediately unpleasantly reminding you of Ozpin for a moment. "You said crime pays, but how much?"
"Amy!"
"What? It's a legit question. I actually want to know."
"I'm not exactly going to print out the exact breakdown of the Crypts' monthly income," you half-joke, knowing you could probably do it if you really wanted, "but rest assured I have a couple million dollars every month to play around with."
An understatement, but hey, if Sarah gives you pocket money, you aren't complaining.
"Right, the Crypts. Why would you... well, found them? Did you just go out and decided you'd be a villain or what?" Vicky is trying to hide it under a jovial tone, but you know this is actually a question deeply important to her, that glint in her eyes is pretty self-explanatory.
Thus, you shrug. "It just kind of happened over time, honestly. At the start, though, yeah, I kind of knew I'd have to go villain, for personal reasons, so joining up with the Protectorate never really was a choice." Thinking back on it, finding Kate by following the sounds of gunshots really was a godsend. Without her, things would have been a lot more complicated just after you crawled out of the grave.
"And why wouldn't you be able to be a hero? Sorry if I'm prying, I'm just trying to understand," Vicky says.
"Oh, you know, the whole eating people thing isn't theatrics," you say, casually mentioning the one topic both of them have been dancing around this whole time. "Gotta drain people's blood both to survive and to grow stronger both, which kind of doesn't mesh with the Protectorate's PR. And in the first place, being a hero isn't really all it's cracked up to be, I know how they operate and all, and you've seen what I've done, both on the streets and in my streams. No organization I didn't create myself would ever be okay with that."
"But-" Vicky begins, only for Amy to interrupt her with a raised eyebrow. "So you're saying you're doing more good by killing people than not?"
"Not at all," you smoothly deny. "I am doing unprecedented amounts of good. I cured cancer for free, that gives me all the good karma, even. Doesn't excuse me personally killing a lot of people, just puts it into perspective."
And your bullshit about philosophy and morals lets you use that perspective like a knife to ram into people whenever it comes up.
It seems to work, if nothing else, both Amy and Vicky seemingly lost on how to answer your little verbal thrust.
"And, no, I won't be telling you exactly how many capes the Crypts have by this point," you say to drive the conversation back into gear, a sly smile on your face. "Also, I would've expected one of you to ask me not to seriously hurt any of the heroes around by this point. Seems like the kind of thing you'd do with an opportunity like this."
"... Well, are you?" Vicky asks, sitting up straight. "You've been making a point not to kill or even fight heroes when you can avoid it, so I just didn't think we needed to worry about that."
"Point," you shrug.
"Wait, how old are you, actually?" Amy asks, her coffee drained to the last. "We know you can shapeshift now, so we have no idea how you really look. That would explain why my power got confused trying to analyze you, too!"
You smirk at her.
You smirk at her some more. And you really, really put all of your smug into it, to the point it becomes a nearly physical thing.
"No, really, this is important," Amy insists, crossing her hands as she glares at you. "If I find out you're actually a minor, I am going to have words with you."
"What, a little boy- or girl- pulling a gang like the Crypts out of the ground and making the PRT look even more incompetent than they already are?" You can't help yourself but grin. "Sure would be amazing, wouldn't it? But hey, what do you think, Vicky, how old would you say I really am?"
"... I plead the fifth?" At Amy's evil look, the blonde sister relents. "I dunno, I'd say you're... either actually a teenager or just a little bit older? No older than college age, I'm pretty sure."
"Mhm..." You don't actually let either of them know how close that guess is, though you will admit you never really bothered to change things up so it stands to reason Vicky could intuit it with a bit of luck. Assuming she knows a couple of college students, anyways.
Things go on from there for a bit, with you answering following questions accordingly; everything from how you apparently defeated Lung the first time you fought him (someone was fighting him already, so you just jumped in and finished the job before he could out-escalate the power hard-countering him), a quick mention of the following night that saw several members of New Wave (incluing Vicky) actually help you clean up the rest of the ABB and so on and so forth.
Questions such as why you had so many people killed all over the place (because you wouldn't allow them to live, of course, as per the basic decency you pretend to possess), how you actually cured cancer and so on and so forth. Still, by the end of it, you feel you have answered a great many questions and assuaged a great many concerns.
Still, one thing keeps coming up.
"So you really just... get more powers? That's really unusual, you know?" Unpacking her complementary coffee cookie, Vicky is tilting her head at you a little. "Even if they're just minor powers, that instantly puts you right up there with all the A-listers there are. And would make your threat classification Trump, after all, which means I was right all along!"
Well, I'm more than just one kind of Trump, you know?" You smile at the sisters. "For one, one of my many, many powers is the power to give my powers to others, as long as they refresh them regularly. You want some?"
"Whoah, wait, I'm pretty sure this is one of those stranger danger situations," Vicky replies, waving her hands around.
Amy, at least, seems more interested. "... What kind of powers are we talking about?"
"Amy!"
"What? If it's cool, I'd be up for that."
"Well, we'll need a quiet place where you could take the time needed to drink some body fluids, because getting this stuff done for the first time take a while," you explain, receiving a glint in the brunette sister's eyes as your answer.
It takes approximately ten minutes to get everything squared away, but before long you find yourself smuggled into the women's bathroom of the place you were drinking coffee at, squeezing a little to allow the toilet stall you're in to hold all three of you but nevertheless fitting your little group inside, with Amy sitting on the toilet itself and you and Vicky standing to her sides.
"Okay, so-" You begin, but Amy raises a hand, stopping you. Fiddling with your pants, as she is sitting at approximately crotch height, she proceeds to get your dick out and ready, glaring up at you.
"I'm only doing this because I want to have taser hands, got it?" Not waiting for your answer, she begins stroking and licking your cock, her actions putting her words to shame with how enthusiastic she is.
Vicky, looking at you, seems a bit lost for words. "Okay, so do I have to say how weirdly awkward this is? Because it kind of is," she says, demonstratively ignoring Amy making out with your cock, her wet tongue sliding over your head as she takes you deeper.
She isn't exactly a professional at this, but she's spirited, at least. That makes up for a lot.
"As I was saying," you say, clearing your throat, "this is how this usually goes. I feed you my blood for a couple hours, most of the actual stuff happens on my side and all you need to do is drink the stuff regularly. Boom, copies of my powers, except a little weaker. You can actually train them, though, which I figure is a cool little add-on considering powers don't usually work like that."
"Wait, then why is Amy-"
Taking a hold of Amy's head as she tries to pull it off your dick, you fill her mouth up, the tip of your rod juuust barely poking into the tight confines of her throat, the girl's widening eyes finding yours as she looks up, her hands raised halfway as though she isn't sure what to do about this.
"I choose to assume she is simply being a horny Amy and sucking my dick out of gratitude for this chance to earn new powers, right Amy?" Gently bucking your hips, you start to carefully fuck the brunette sister's face, who, sitting on this toilet in a public restroom, chose to go for your dick all by her own initiative.
Choking a little as you push past her mouth and properly into her throat now, she just glares up at you, but still lathers your cock with attention, her tongue sliding along it as you thrust inside.
She puts her hands onto her legs, choosing to just let you do as you please. For some reason, this really reminds you of high school, back when you had to hide in the toilets to actually get some lunch into you before people tried flirting.
"Anyways, let's get started over here, too, shall we?" You ask rhetorically, making the quick cut along your wrist and taking control of the blood, Vicky's eyes darting at the casual use of two different powers in quick suggestion. "Just drink this and I'll do the rest."
Vicky looks down, at Amy gobbling your cock, and the increasing speed of your thrusts, choking sounds coming from Amy now that you're fucking her face without reservation. "Alright, I guess?"
When you fill Amy's stomach with cum, she doesn't really have any way to do anything but swallow it, deepthroating it as passively as she is, and her stomach is filled with your load in short order. As you pull out, your wet cock smeared with her saliva (and still hard, of course), you don't give her a chance to say anything, just plugging her mouth with your wrist.
Vicky, of course, was filming everything. Because what else was she supposed to do? Not to mention Amy never so much as looked up once you started properly pushing her to her limits.
Once both girls have their shiny new range of powers, you just make sure they know to be careful with them, and that Amy won't try to shoot herself to test out how being bulletproof works ("Where would I even get a- Okay, but no, I won't!"), you leave, giving them a thumbs up as you walk out the women's toilets without a second thought.
Naturally, after you made sure nobody was looking with bloodsight, but it's not like anyone else would be able to tell.
So, poking at them with telepathy (and making sure their permissions are set to exclude contacting anyone but you), you get going right away, seeing as how you have to meet up with Kayden and get some new clothes, a moment to age up and to grab anything you may need for this from the bunker.
Being the impeccable gentleman you always are (especially when you're a rude ass on purpose, by the way), you arrive at the restaurant twenty minutes in advance, taking a seat at the table reserved for your litle date and simply sitting there, waiting.
Honestly, you have no idea why some people just do that. Sit there and wait. Perhaps that is one of the reason smartphones are such a big thing, honestly, just having something to occupy yourself with to kill time when you need to wait for something has to have been the biggest thing.
Then again, you probably shouldn't judge, given your way to do the exact same thing consists of flirting with Sarah over telepathy.
Anyways, sitting there and pretending to be a proper businessman, it thankfully doesn't take too much time for your date to arrive, just a couple of minutes early, and soon enough you're both looking through the menu, having said your greetings and getting the orders out of the way before the meat of the matter arrives.
Oh, and you order wine, of course. You honestly never quite got the hang of why people enjoyed drinking the stuff so much, but hey, appearances matter and all.
"So, how have you been these past couple of days? Terrible thing with the coastal parts of downtown, I hope you haven't been affected by the fighting?" Of course she hasn't been, but it doesn't hurt to go and be polite about knowing everything about the person you're talking to.
"Thankfully not, no," Kayden answers your inquiry. "Things have been fairly contained around that corner of the city."
And of course she never really quite conceptualized the E88 was burning down homes and shit when they can't ruin livelihoods otherwise. Ah well, no matter.
You take a moment, making some small talk and such once you've successfully ordered, before you bring up the main reason you arranged for this little date.
Among others, of course, but it was the imperative cause.
"So, Kayden, I originally wanted to just invite you to look around the club I originally contacted you about- once again, great work on designing its interior, by the way- but certain developments as of late have been forcing my hands, a little," you tell her, giving her an apologetic smile.
Kayden, sitting opposite from you and doing her damndest to look good, has absolutely no idea what you're on about, but nevertheless can play the part, at least. "What... developments, exactly, might you be talking about?"
Your smile never leaving your face, you reach downwards, for the small briefcase you brought with you. "You see, your ex-husband has been at it again, and in a way that might or might not seriously impact you, so I simply thought to warn you ahead of time. This," you explain as you show her the small stack of paper you printed the pictures you took from Anders' office onto, Kayden's face growing paler and paler with each passing heartbeat, "was simply something I thought to bring to your attention and quickly and as confidentially as possible, hence the meeting in person."
"Where... How did you get these?!" To literally nobody's surprise, Kayden is shocked and appalled at pictures of her naked body coming up out of nowhere.
"Max Anders may or may not need to change his password more often," you reply, leaning back in your seat. "They were inside a folder named 'Blackmail', inside another folder labeled 'Not Porn'."
"That little... He took these without my knowledge, not to mention consent!" Well, someone sure is seething over here.
"Which is exactly why I wanted to let you know. I'm sure this must-"
"Married him and had his kid, but the little shit had to pull this on me?" Hissing furiously, Kayden sorts through the printed pictures. "Some of these are from just after we did, too. Some are from just before I left him. I can't believe-"
She takes a couple of deep breaths, trying not to break out into furious screaming. And probably blasting off lasers strong enough to bring down the restaurant around you, which would be a shame given the dishes are just arriving.
You quickly collect and hide the sensitive materials, the fuming woman in front of you letting go of them without further words.
Once everything is in place, food arranged and waiter walking off, you take your cutlery in hand, smiling your most impeccable smile despite the unfortunate way Kayden's lipstick is smearing from how badly she is pressing her lips together.
At first, you make a show of eating, it's some kind of fish with salad and everything, and though Kayden needs a bit to restrain herself from blowing up, she follows suit in short order, perhaps afraid of messing this up even further than she already has.
Not like you're about to let her just do that in peace, oh no.
"Naturally, it stands to reason that Mister Anders, or should I rather say Kaiser, would want his heaviest hitter back in the boat at this juncture." Kayden's barely aborted spray of wine as she was taking a drink is disappointing- you wanted to see how far you could push her, honestly.
"How do you- he left something on his computer, didn't he?" Sighing, she covertly looks around, apparently under the impression you actually care she used to be a nazi villain.
"Partially, yes," you agree easily. "There's also the fact I am literally Cain and like to keep an eye on the competition."
Perhaps your casual tone has something to do with it, but it takes the woman in front of you a few moments to place your words, ending in a small coughing fit she does everything she can to hide.
"You-" Swallowing heavily, perhaps to let her avoid choking to death, after all, she glares at you. "Why would you tell me that, even if it is true? Why now?"
With a genial smile, you simply shrug. "Because it felt like I should mention it? Because a meeting at Somer's Rock has been called for tonight by none other than Kaiser and things are rapidly developing to the point bringing you into the loop makes more sense than not? Perhaps," you say, winking a single eye and converting it into a shadow for a single moment to prove your claim, "I was simply tired of hiding it from you?"
This time around, Kayden blushes, but forges on regardless. "You're a mass murderer!"
"Please, aren't we all, in the end?" Really, she was a nazi, she should know better than to try that tune.
"Well, I am not! I actively aim to reduce casualties not directly related to enemy combatants!"
"Funny, I'm sure enemy combatants appreciate the distinction," you drawl, genuinely amused by her reaction. "Besides, arguably I've been exercising far more restraint than you have, I am just very good at finding 'enemy combatants'."
"You're a cannibal! And is this why you ever even contacted me?"
"You wound me," you pretend barefacedly. "I genuinely needed someone to take care of interior decorating. Your name just came up because someone was investigating you as a possible part of the E88, so I decided to hit two birds with one stone."
"The rules-"
"Are a sham only the kinds of people that can't ignore them need to care about," you interrupt her before she makes even more of a fool of herself. "Besides, it isn't like I was planning to act against your civilian identity, I simply prefer to have... options. As does your ex, honestly, though I'd like to think I am much better at this game than him, if I want to be."
Taking a bite of the fish, you can't help but admit that it was probably worth half its price tag. at least. Fragrant, soft, delicious. You're already thinking about ways to make humans taste similarly good, though perhaps you should've ordered a dish with chicken for that, instead... maybe beef, at most.
"The fact of the matter, Kayden, is that there is very little keeping me from doing whatever I want, even if you blowing up this building we're in would be quite rude. More importantly... Kaiser is willing to go quite far to get you back under his thumb, considering these pictures and videos and more he's apparently collected, and you are quickly finding yourself with very limited options if you want to remain seperate from the Empire."
"So, is that what this is? You know I'm being backed into a corner and decide to make your move? You know that a personal scandal like these getting onto the internet would ruin my reputation and prospects in my civilian job, so you 'charitably' extend an offer?"
Ahh, Kayden... She really is so much fun to toy with.
"Perhaps, perhaps, not," you say, smiling still. "What you should consider more than this, however, is the fact Kaiser will be getting a talk he wanted tonight, at Somer's Rock, and I genuinely believe that my reaction won't be what he wants. He's being backed into a corner himself, and that means he'll be fighting dirty on all fronts, now."
"And what do you want me to do, huh? He's arranged for a meeting with me himself, you know, just after this," Kayden says, gesturing around. "He'll be putting pressure on me, one way or another, and if I don't have any other way to keep a roof over Aster's head, I know what I'll be doing."
Oh, she's getting feisty now!
"Well, there's a few things to consider here," you say, folding your hands into each other. "Kaiser will do with the pictures he has of you what he wants, which means that unless you give him what he wants- or appear to be heavily considering it, at least- they will end up publicized. That said, let me make you... an offer. Free for you to consider. The Crypts prize themselves for several advantages over the Empire, you see?"
Scoffing, Kayden crosses her arms, but still waits for you to make your spiel.
"For one, better pay and hours. Flexible hours, too- you're a young mother, that should come as a given, but either way, we can be very accommodating for needs and desires of our members. What's more, daycare can be arranged easily enough and you wouldn't even be required to do much actual fighting; having you on tap as an interior designer is honestly the biggets draw of hiring you, your powers are just the... cherry on top, shall we say."
"And should I assume you have dental, too?" Kayden asks sarcastically.
"Please, I literally cured cancer, what makes you think we don't have full in-house healthcare?" Smugly grinning at her now, you lean forwards. "So, what exactly is keeping you from being employed by someone that actually values your talents?"
Biting her lip, Kayden looks around, releasing her arms and meeting your gaze after a moment. "... I wanted to make the world a better place, okay? For my girl, once she was born," she says, sounding just a little insecure all of a sudden. "I looked at what Max was doing, really looked for the first time, and decided it was the wrong way to do that, so I left. I don't want to just get back into that exact same situation, so... Can you promise me that it isn't?"
"I can," you easily reply, looking right back into her eyes. "The Crypts may be committing crimes all over the place, but on the grand scales, we would have to put in some actual effort into being purely evil to make up for the good we've been doing."
It helps you're actually being completely honest with this, you feel. Like, really, for humanity at large, being subservient to you and whoever you push into actually controlling it. The occasional criminals you would cook and eat while still alive would be a small price to pay, wouldn't they?
"... Okay. Well, I guess I'll just tell Kaiser I'll have to think on it, but for the time being? As long as you keep your promise, a ruined reputation won't stop me from doing right by my baby." And there it is, the reason you actually bothered with her in the first place.
She's trying to be a good parent, at least.
From this point on, convincing Kayden to let herself be thralled by you is child's play, requiring nothing more than you mentioning you'd hate for her daughter to grow up without a mom because a certain someone got desperate.
Honestly, it's kind of weird just how gullible people are about you offering to let them drink your blood. Sure, you're absolutely trustworthy and only have their best interests at heart, but still.
Anyways, it takes a bit, but you do manage to finish things on a positive note, just taking the time to talk to Kayden and discussing how it is to be a parent.
Anyways, though, she has a meeting to get to, whereas you have a stream to perform before it gets late, so you say your goodbyes for the evening and return to the bunker, Kayden having expressed the desire to stay in her apartment for the foreseeable future until her ex stops being a problem, at the very least.
Ahh, here you are, dressed in nothing but jeans, a tank top and your shadow transformation warping our face and head, inside a faithful recreation of the very first hastily set up 'art studio' of its kind, back when you were operating out of the old warehouse base.
Feels like years ago by now, though it's been more a couple of months... just a few, really, counting only local time.
Either way, time to get the show rolling. "Hello, everyone, and welcome to Painting with Cain! I must say, it's a pleasure to see you all again, but let's see about getting started right away, hm?"
On some days, the villain known as Cain starting up a stream of any kind would have the vast resources of of the PRT's departments all over the country scramble to analyze and interpret his every move; it was not every day a significant criminal figure like him was willing to expose himself on camera to be seen by everyone that cared to look, after all, not to mention the global impact of several of his actions.
This time, however, things had changed. For the first time, there was concrete proof a power influence was being transmitted through the images, something researchers had been combing for from the very beginning.
Of course, the only victim of said influence kept on telling everyone else in simple terms they should go fuck off and get back to work rather than pretend her finally snapping from too much stress and Brockton Bay being what it was did complicate matters to an extent, but truly, would Emily Piggot know if she was mastered?
Depended on the power in question, of course, hence the generally increased level of caution.
Naturally, comparisons were drawn and conclusions were made, and soon enough certain elements made it known they expected Cain should be brought to trial for repeating the crimes of one Bad Canary, also known as just Canary, aka Paige McAbee, a former idol, singer and future inmate of the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, better known as the Birdcage.
The answer to such remained that this was the man that had cured cancer all over Earth Bet, the recipe and use instructions for the simple cure spreading as far as Earth Aleph, and that in order to do so he would need to be apprehended in the first place, which had never happened to date.
Unbeknownst to the man in question, who remained blissfully ignorant to all of this as he happily moderated a poll and chat forum on the internet, the debate raged on.
It was, Missy Biron would never tell anyone if they asked, always a pleasure to watch as Cain moved in that revealing tank top, his every well-defined muscle visible to even the barest inspection.
What was less of a pleasure was that she ended up watching the newest issue of her... usual material, inside the room of her temporarily missing and horribly violated friend, Mary, having gone to visit her together with Ashley.
Which was, all kinds of inappropriate. She was pretty sure.
"What do you think he's drawing?" Mary was asking, her eyes unusually intent as she stared at the screen of Ashley's phone, the three of the huddled together.
"Dunno, the topic just says 'Snow', so... could be anything, I guess?" Mary didn't have any more of an idea than herself, at least.
Observing the lines Cain was sketching out, Missy frowned, trying to divine their meanings. "I'm pretty sure it's going to be much deeper than just a snowy landscape from how he's been playing coy."
"I know, right?" Mary asked, her face beaming. "I'm sure he's thinking a lot-"
"You two are weird," Ashley mumbled, drawing both of their gazes towards herself. Meaning she was the first to recognize something. "Is that a flower?"
"Huh. Maybe a white flower field?"
They puzzled on the eventual theme of the picture for a while longer, one suggestion more outlandish than the next. Perhaps it was a snowy forest? A lone flower standing out in the snow? A snow sculpture formed into a flower, even?
Then again, none of these came anywhere close to the truth.
"There we are, one snow maiden," Cain announced as he finished with the rough outlines, rapidly moving through the rest of the picture as the scales began to fall from everyone's eyes. "A bit melancholy, but I assure you she isn't sad by any measure."
Missy, Ashley and Mary were quiet for a bit, only for the latter of the three to break the silence. "... Wish this was the Abel stream."
"Mary!" The other two hissed, scandalized, Missy continuing on. "That one is for adults only!"
"Yeah, and you-" Ashley couldn't bring herself to say it, though the all finished the sentance in their thoughts.
"Pfeh, my parents said the same thing, until I told them I've had much much worse than some naked boobs," the rape victim announced, crossing her arms and, for the first time, acknowledging the whole thing anywhere either of them could hear. "If I wanna watch that one stream in particular, I am gonna, you know who makes them and you should know I would want to watch."
Yeah, the whole thing just became more and more awkward...
Valefor threw up his arms, knowing that their prayers had been heard. Theirs and the ones of all the people he converted into worshippers on the fly.
"Behold, brothers and sisters! The Blind Prophet has shown us the approaching end times! Only the Chosen Ones will last to see the last end, as the gods usher in the final days of mankind and bring upon us all final, true, deliverance!"
And indeed, deciphering the hidden messages left behind in his past recordings had been worth it, for it had allowed them to catch a glimpse of the ultimate fate of the world ahead of time by simply presenting the right word. Like a code, or a passphrase, of sorts.
Of course it would be 'Pilgrimage'. It was all so obvious in hindsight.
"The sky and the sea and the earth will bend and break, collapsing into each other as all will be united in destruction, and the era of mankind passes! We shall-"
It was there that Valefor was interrupted, though nobody else but him could truly comprehend by whom. "Hello Mama, did something happen?"
Honestly, 'Magical Jungle' is... You'd have expected them to go for a magic forest or something at that point, though you aren't exactly going to complain. On the contrary, even, the less predictable and downright boring the reader suggestions were, the less you will have to consider changing how you do these things.
"Well, don't mind me, everyone, this will take a bit," you chuckle at the camera, rolling up your nonexistant sleeves and watching the comments go wild at the notion. "All these leaves will take everything I have."
And there you go, sketching and thinking up plant after plant, almost completely randomly making your way through the scenery as you decide where to put what. Oh, hey, why not add a river, in some nonstandard color to stay on theme?
Yeah... Yeah, you think you have a nice idea.
"It's almost a shame how little real nature is around in the bigger cities, these days," you absently say as you work, putting all your usual effort into your art. You may not be exercising your hobby as often as you would like, being generally too busy with other things, but that just means you have that much more passion to put into it when you do get your pens and brushes out. "Not like I'm the first to say that, of course, but it does bear mentioning every now and then. Not that I would complain about a lack of mosquitoes in summer, of course!"
Because fuck anything that tries to skim off the top of your damn food source. That blood is all yours, dammit. "Not that any of those would be found in here, of course, not in my jungles, thank you very much."
Honestly, the coloring takes the most time on this one, and you actually need to use a couple of new techniques you read up on to get that faint mist just right, but honestly, you'd say it's worth it.
"Oh, too bad, it looks like we're running out of time already. I would have liked to continue on a bit longer, but you know how it is; we'll just have to continue here next time around, won't we?"
So, there's honestly quite a lot of work you have to get done before you can get to the fun part of this evening... or night, or whatever you call this general time after the sun has gone down.
First, you haven't really been paying as much attention to Carol ever since returning to Earth Bet... and though it hasn't really been that long for her, you still feel like you should let her know you 'care'.
Some flowers should do the trick, delivered at a time and place when it is most likely she, and only she, will receive them. Should make for a fun little nighttime exercise for Sarah, if nothing else.
Next, you take a few subjective minutes to look through the reports you made your science-ey souls write up every now and then, making sure to note down what you want each of them to do next. In fact, you even set up a big cooperative project, all mostly on a simple, but very important issue.
Insulin is a pretty big thing, especially in America. Simple and easy to produce, but you can essentially extort any price you want for it. It is so simple and easy to make, actually, that any old drug lack could make some.
Hell, a high school chemistry class room would work, even.
Would sure be a shame if someone were to... say, put together a simple and easy-to-understand set of instructions on how to make insulin, huh? Sure, you fully expect people to fuck it up at some point, but that isn't really your problem. As long as this shit is out there and you can claim credit for the people that can get insulin on the cheap from their local drug dealer, you'll be satisfied.
Anyways, you'll leave that to these guys, particularly Yoshi and maybe Indigo? You'll just declare them to be in charge, they can do the rest.
Next off, all you need to do is go create a couple of secretary aura minions for Henley, not like he has any better use for his aura, and decide how you'll make your appearance at Somer's Rock... And you probably should hurry a little, Sarah is already starting to nag at you.
Uyehara Yoshiaki was, as always ever since his second death, caught between a rock and a hard place as he was forced to obey a monstrous madman's every command, though the complexity of the saying's applicability had been... increasing, as of late.
"So, he's totally intending to spread easy ways to create insulin just like he did with the cancer cure, isn't he?" He asked, looking over the new orders neatly summarized on a small piece of paper, probably coming from the more rustic workshop or the artsy areas towards the top of this structure he found himself in.
"Prolly," Nolac replied, the insufferable little accumulation of psychosis lounging on a couple of chairs they went and put together. Speaking of the reason he was being careful to refer to them like this...
"That's wonderful news!" Indigo, aggressively optimistic as ever, cheered, spinning in her own chair. If there was one thing this proper lab had, it was comfortable seating.
"He'll still be using this to further his own goals, you know...?" Yoshiaki muttered, using the lab's connection to the library to get as much data on the substance known as insulin and its creation as possible.
The one good thing about so many dead people in one place; chances were, someone would know what they needed to know about.
"What are you talking about, Yoshi, any gains he draws out of this pale compared to easy availability of vital medicine, okay? Just keep that in mind when while we figure this out!" He tried to dodge, but he didn't exactly have all that much space to maneuver, and so he was once again caught by Indigo's grasping arms, her soft bosom pressing against his side as she smiled up at him.
"That's right man, think about the upsides, yeah," Nolac added, agreeing with the woman that had pressed Yoshi to refer to them in the gender-appropriate pronoun despite his general dislike, distaste and other words with dis- in regards to them.
Only to then shift into their female form, mirroring Indigo's motion as Yoshiaki was pinned down already, soft female bodies surrounding him on all sides as he resolutely stared forwards, completely missing the frown on one side and the cocky grin on the other being exchanged.
"Nolac, you know that makes me uncomfortable," Yoshiaki tried, only receiving a chuckle in response.
"If you really didn't like it, I wouldn't be able to... and do you really mean to tell me you'd turn down this bod?" Ignore ignore ignore the grinding of an objectively beautiful woman.
"It's alright, Yoshi," Indigo said, patting his back. "It's a purely physiological reaction, you can't help it. I forgive you."
That only made it worse...
"Hey Bro, whassup?" The voice came as though from nowhere, causing the young man that had been looking over his costume's helmet to drop what he was doing as he turned around.
"Aisha! What- where have you been and what are you wearing?" The confusion and disbelief in his voice warred with outrage, a perhaps natural reaction to realizing his sister had been missing for months without him so much as noticing even once, and doing so in nothing but a miniskirt and cropped top to boot.
"Well, funny story about that, hehe... Also, what's wrong with my clothes?"
The perhaps worst part of it was just how she genuinely seemed to mean that question.
Adjusting your suit one last time, you step out of the invisivan, immediately starting towards the front entrance to Somer's Rock, the worn-out dive bar that is, apparently, a big thing in Brockton Bay's villain scene.
For some reason- it's not like you particularly care all that much, but perhaps a few renovations shall be in order at some point. By which you mean tearing this eyesore down and just moving its current function for the criminal underworld towards the night club you are having set up. Perhaps you should take some time out of your busy schedule to take a look around the place one of these days; nothing like getting a personal eye on these things to correct any mistakes that will inevitably happen ahead of time.
You are the artsy vampire, you get to be a snob about these things.
Anyways, thoughts for later. Right now, with a small collection of capes trailing behind you consisting of Kate, Okita, Skitter, Jeremy and Trainwreck, you go right on ahead, constantly in telepathic contact with all of them and especially making sure to keep an eye on Okita.
Stormtiger is dead already, so you don't think she will randomly be annoyed and kill him the moment he shows up, but still.
Opening the door, you come right inside, taking in the dimly lit somewhat crappy establishment (if you're inclined to be generous, though then again it's not like you really care all that much, you've just been getting used to high-class restaurants and the like recently) and the people therein.
Knowing the Undersiders will arrive and when, you consider the other apparent participants in this little meeting. One is easy to recognize, as well as the most expected; Kaiser is sitting there in all his pig iron glory, his unnecessarily spiky armor protecting his body and identity equally. That is, not at all from you, but just barely adequately against most others.
He has the twin bimbos with him, as well as, of course, Hookwolf, Cricket and one other cape, Alabaster, though all of them are sitting on one of the side tables arranged around the walls of Somer's Rock. Your own 'honor guard', so to speak, wordlessly seperates to go sit on another table of their own, leaving you to go for the big table in the middle of the room by yourself.
It's a round table, which is probably a good thing, as Kaiser would have undoubtedly taken the head seat leading to you probably murdering him just out of principle and to take his place for your own, because screw the consequences.
Speaking of, the only real way for this meeting to be any more than dress-up to the Empire's execution is also in the room in the form of the other participants, which makes them infinitely more interesting for you. Starting with the known variables, there's a woman with a welding mask over her face at the big table, her costume dark and flowing as though a mix between riot gear, stereotypical martial arts outfit and dress. This would be Faultline, a hypothesis that would explain the two Case 53s sitting in the corner towards her back.
Not far from them sit two guys, one pretty tall and broad-shouldered, one scrawny and slouching a bit, their costumes reminiscent of Mario and Luigi, which would make them Uber and Leet. Naturally, they're keeping the hell away from the big leagues.
That... is pretty much everyone as for the locals around the place. However, there's a few faces you don't recognize, too- One man with a very spiky hairdo dressed in a snappy suit not quite unlike your own, his mask a black and white affair with a red crescent of a leering grin cut into it. If you had to guess, the dozen or so unmasked mooks with beers in front of them belong to him.
On the other hand, there's the stylish woman in the yellow evening gown, notably physically beautiful in a way that's rare to see outside of vampires or pretty thralls, in your experience, her blonde hair done up behind her head and a yellow mask hiding half her face, the lipstick on the lower, openly shown half yellow as well. She has a guy in another costume sitting nearby, but that's all.
Naturally, you share your discoveries with your sister, who is about to come in herself. Bastard Son from the Elite and Citrine from Accord's Ambassadors, she whispers into your mind, letting you immediately make the connection between the precious stones studding the latter's mask and her name. Be very careful.
Wordlessly, you sit down, every movement perfectly controlled as you wait. You also simply stare at Kaiser, in a way that seems to be unnerving a few people in the room, though nobody at the table shows any emotion.
Well, you are completely motionless as you do this, nothing more, nothing less.
There's a few murmurings at the side table, but you don't pay them any mind; you are busy enough as is talking via telepathy as you peer out from your shadowed face. Before any of the other big boys decides to say anything, the Undersiders arrive, Rachel having been strenuously convinced to take fully human form for once. Filing into the room, she, Alec, Brian and Aisha, for some reason, head for a side table of their own, Sarah strolling right up to the big desk.
"Ah? The fuck are you doing, thinkin' you deserve a place at the table?"
Must. Not. Immediately. Eviscerate. Hookwolf.
Luckily enough, Sarah is ahead of you in this as you suppress your immediate reaction of pulling out Last Embrace and gutting a son of a bitch with your bare hands. "Well gee, I wonder why we would? Maybe because we're big enough of a thing to deserve a seat at the table? Or maybe because nobody asked you, Hookie."
Bastard Son's guys seem to find this hilarious, if nothing else, quiet laughter and giggles heard from their direction for but a moment.
Silencing them with a glare, Kaiser turns towards his underling. "If they want a seat, let them have one. All the better for our... business, with them."
"Heh, if you're quite done with the local 'business', we have a meeting to get to," Bastard Son says, his voice immediately grating on your ears just a tad.
"Yes, this should be everyone," you agree magnanimously, leaning back and visibly releasing the tension that'd been building up ever since you sat down. "I suppose we might want to get this over with already. So, Kaiser, would you mind telling the class exactly why you felt the need to call this meeting?"
"With pleasure," the annoyingly unphased man replies under his tin can of a helmet. "As you all might have noticed, the situation in the city has been... deteriorating, ever since the ABB was disposed of only recently."
Oh, now he's trying to make it look like your fault, huh? "I would say it's more an issue of the nazis in the room being unable to hold any territory beyond what Allfather established back in his day, considering exactly what half of the city is on fire right now," you drily remark, secretly smirking at the shuffling over at the nazi table.
"Perhaps it is only the sounder of mind that would see fit to obstruct a literal cannibal, then," your opposition counters, tilting his head with a small scraping sound. "Be that as it may, if the situation continues as is, it is merely a matter of time until the national guard is called into Brockton Bay, to put a stop to the fighting if nothing else, hence this meeting."
"Correct me if I'm wrong," you ask, "but I wouldn't exactly describe the Empire fighting the Protectorate all over downtown as fighting between us villains. You wouldn't be trying to ask everyone present to take responsibility for the senseless escalation the E88 has been one-sidedly involved in?"
"The Underbitches kept on stabbin' us in the back, too," Hookwolf reminds you, slamming his mug of beer on the table. "Wouldn't that be something?"
"Quite," Kaiser nods. "This is one of the reasons, too. As long as the Empire keeps on being attacked, it will strike back, but further escalation," he continues, nodding at you this time, "with the situation inside the city as it is, is merely to the detriment of everyone present. Therefore, I would like to suggest a truce between the city's villains with no overt use of force against one another until the situation has been resolved."
"Heh, the Elite doesn't really care, so long as we can negotiate a few... advantageous deals in the meantime," Bastard Son cuts in, looking around the table. This, it seems, serves as somewhat of a signal, as the other participants step in now, too.
Her fingers rapping against the ancient wood they are laid on, Faultine leans back. "We do not operate within the city, and therefore do not have any stakes in this matter."
That's everything there is to be said from her side, it would seem.
Citrine, her posture still as impeccable as it has been this whole time, gracefully nods. "If I may say, the current chaos within Brockton Bay is... counter-productive, meaning a truce would be well-regarded in Accord's eyes."
Mh, Kaiser really went all-out to make actually agreeing the least of bad choices, didn't he?
"If you want a truce, it's going to come with a few concessions," Sarah says, words rapidly exchanged between you via means of telepathy and nobody in the room except your own people having any idea about so much as the possibility. "You want the Undersiders to agree to this, you have to stop all dogfighting in your territory for the duration of the truce, otherwise Bitch is just going to keep attacking them, and none of us aren't going to help her."
This does, visibly, get the effect you wanted to get... Hookwolf getting pissed. "Don't take part, then, and see what happens, bitch. If you thought the Empire can't deal with-"
Only to be cut off by Kaiser.
"Will that be all?" He coldly asks, his gaze outwardly steady, but with your power you can tell by the subtle shifts he's keeping an eye on Hookwolf.
"Yup, that's really all we want to keep our hands off the Empire," Sarah grins, her domino mask letting everyone see her facial expression.
Incidentally, Faultline is faintly smelling of dislike, best you can make out... you'll put her on the 'only maybe murderize' list.
"You can't be fucking serious! We aren't gonna be-"
"Hookwolf," Kaiser states more than anything, not fully looking at his underling still and shutting him up. Now that's what you're talking about!
In your minds, you and Sarah exchange a high five.
"Now then, as for the Crypts..." You trail of, making it a point for the entire room's attention to gather on you before you continue. "You see, we are not particularly interested in this truce, but I suppose I might just be convinced. For starters, let us discuss what we, as the only really local power- no offense, Faultline- would consider a full and proper truce. After all, not fighting each other doesn't say anything about other ways to interfere in business, you see?"
Citrine, her costume moving with every twitch of her muscles, tilts her head. "Yes, it would be in poor taste to arrange a truce only for conflict to move into less open dimensions."
"As such, let us add an agreement not to bother each other at all, how about it?" You ask, a single hand raised with your palm pointing upwards. "Êveryone stays in their own territories, business is conducted as usual and no shipments in and out of the city are interrupted."
Of course, you are claiming the whole city as your territory already, but you don't need to tell them that.
"That would be... acceptable," Kaiser agrees, no doubt already considering why exactly you would insist on this. Joke's on him, though; you don't really care as such, but Citrine does, according to Sarah, and so you did not just get points with her for agreeing not to interfere with any business Accord has with the Empire, you also set things up for someone to take responsibility should someone mess with a delivery through the city.
And you don't intend to be the one taking responsibility, that's for sure.
"In fact, while we're at it, how about we extend a gesture of goodwill, Kaiser?" You continue, exerting your good mood as visible cheer that has obvious effects, everyone in the room once more growing apprehensive at just how aggressively friendly you are being. "As you seem to have so much trouble administering to your territory, how about the Crypts lighten your load a little? I'm sure you hardly even use the northern parts of downtown anyways, after all."
The grinding of Kaiser's teeth is audible even under the light buzz of conversation from the sidelines... and you relish it.
It takes a bit of pulling, that is, out of his nose, but under your consequent attentions, he eventually decides to just give you what you want to make you shut up already.
And so, just like that, the 'official' lines that'd been drawn mainly by your people simply not going any further than the ABB had been back when it was around have shifted a couple streets towards the south, meaning Captain's Hill is now officially within your territory, if just partially by virtue of technicality.
You have just a little more than half, if you remember your maps correctly, which you always do. That's enough by your reckoning.
It's honestly not that big a blow to the E88, but the sheer fact you're pushing for Kaiser to give you territory along your shared borders and he has to agree is the real takeaway here.
The fact everyone else is here to officially witness the whole thing is just the cherry on top. Speaking of, though...
"Now then, with that cleared up," you pleasantly say, "let us move on onto other topics for this meeting, while we're all here already anyways. I, for one, would be quite interested in knowing exactly what two of our number are even doing here, given they aren't exactly local, unless I missed something. Are Accord or the Elite looking into expanding nowadays?"
Bastard Son, having followed the conversation so far with no small measure of amusement, is a bit slower to answer than Citrine, who has clearly been waiting for this inquiry. "Accord does, at this time, have no interests to operate within Brockton Bay directly," she states in clear words, the visible parts of her face betraying no emotion whatsoever. "All that the Ambassadors are meant to do is to ensure a secure way to transport wares into and out of Brockton Bay."
"And how about the Elite, then?" You drawl, turning towards Bastard Son. "I didn't know there was an expansion into the east coast in the works already."
"Heh, that'd be what you think, wouldn't it?" Bastard Son raps his fingers onto the table. "But nah, this is more of a... recruitment drive. We're just here to have a few little 'talks' with a few little people. Say, the Undersiders over there."
Must remain strong do not go monster form do not blow the horn
"I see," you continue, resisting the urge to do terrible things to this man's entire family line. "In that case, I suppose it's a good thing everyone is gathered already."
"Not interested and nobody likes dealing with the sales rep," Sarah blows him off with a wave of her hand.
"Good thing I ain't one, then." You would imagine that, if someone wasn't as amazing as Sarah, they might be intimidated by that statement. Then again, there is nothing that should be able to, since anything with a chance to succeed and inclined to try would just get eaten by you with great prejudice.
The ensuing telepathic conversation is brief, but fast, with you repeatedly asking Sarah if you really, really can't just murder Bastard Son, but in the end, things come to a head when she has to give an answer, outwardly speaking.
"You're welcome to try shit, of course," she tells Bastard Son in no uncertain terms. "This is Brockton Bay, though. Just keep it in mind."
Because yeah, you ultimately ended up deciding to leave this to her, all the while making it a point that Brockton Bay is very much not a place one should enter lightly.
The meeting devolves from there a bit, a couple of wild accusations here, Hookwolf being subtly riled up there, but all the actually important things are over and done with at this point. There's a bit more posturing, a few subtly threatening words exchanged, but overall, you don't really see any actually interesting news anymore, save for Sarah getting everyone else as pissed as she can.
She's pretty good at this, in fact. That's your Sarah, great cuteness and great acting in one adorable blonde package.
Taylor Hebert, also known as Skitter in her villainous identity (that she was extremely sure was tainted beyond any hope of recovery from a normal person's point of view after how many people she'd used her power to kill by this point), came out of the smoky atmosphere of Somer's Rock with a new understanding of how villains worked more often than not.
That had been... a lot of posturing, she thought, compared to what Cain, or Gabriel, usually did. Everyone had been making a point of throwing around their weight without doing anything truly impactful beyond the core of the cause for this meeting.
Except when Cain had told Kaiser that he was taking territory and there was nothing the perhaps greatest Nazi leader on the east coast could do about it. Watching it had been a great show.
Delving into her swarm, Skitter made sure none of the other gangs were moving suspiciously, but the Undersiders were already gone by this point, Bitch's dogs carrying them far within moments, and everyone else was remaining behind at the bar they had just left.
Everything was looking to be in order, unless her sense of her bugs was acting up again... though last time it had, it had actually become easier to figure out what they were hearing, so she wouldn't complain.
Bug sight was still really weird, though, and Skitter wasn't sure she'd ever get to see through their eyes.
"Well, that sure was something," Trainwreck said, his armored bulk maneuvering into the invisible van they were using for this occasion.
"Eh, not really," Kate shrugged, the fit woman already past the black portal in the air. "This was honestly pretty tame far as these kinda things go. Nobody made any actual death threats, anyways."
"Bored," the girl Skitter only knew as 'Okita'... agreed? "No clocks."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
"Anyways, this meeting went pretty well," Cain announced. "We got what we wanted, which is all you can really get."
"... Is a truce with the E88 really what we want?" Skitter didn't know the man in the costume, only that his name was Thunderstruck, but she did agree with the sentiment.
"The truce is a farce, of course," Cain chuckled, the doors already closed as they drove off. "It will last until convenient for us and then a couple of skinheads will be fucking it up at the worst moment for themselves. Completely coincidentally, of course. And in the meantime, things for the E88 with just continue to deteriorate, so it's not like our own plan in regards to them has to change."
"What is the plan for the Empire?" Skitter asked, deciding she probably should appear casual and as present as everyone else, even if she felt nauseous from just being in the same room as so many powerful villains, some of which were the worst of the worst from what was being talked about on the thought network.
"Well, funny story that, you see," Cain began, as though he was gearing up to tell a joke...
"Hello everyone, and thank you for attending this weekly meeting of the Lord Street Crypts." Introductions are important, they give people context and put them into the right frame of mind. "As we had an improvised meeting earlier in the week due to certain new developments, let us begin by going through the usual quick update on important operations and move on from there, shall we?"
Looking at your side, you expectently stare at Kate, who sighs and waves you off. "The girls've been doing fine, we've just been abusing the teleporters and the manufacs to sell craploads of weapons to Accord up in Boston, and whoever else has the cash so long as they aren't in BB itself. Pretty sure he's been selling them on to the Empire, but that's not our problem, they'd get guns from some other place anyways. 'Side from that, drug sales have been going well and since we don't really demand much protection money, there's been no trouble on that front, either."
"Wait, we demand protection money?" You ask, genuinely confused for the first bit in a while.
"Yep, it's mostly just a nominal fee, but me and Sarah talked it out and decided that doing things like the earliest mafia guys would work out the best. You know, build up a sense of community. Money's negligible, but it means everyone that participates can say they're contributing, while not paying it doesn't actually do anything," Kate explains, shrugging towards the end.
"Yep yep, drug production is up to double from last week, too, mostly because I finally got most of the processes automated," Cupcake interrupts, a hand held high into the air. "With the new employees taking care of everything else, we can basically create as much product as we have materials. Someone should probably look into setting up a bunch of UV lamps so we can grow our own 'crops' somewhere."
... Well, good on her to figure out the basic automation needed for this stuff, honestly. You could've probably done it in five minutes, but hey, priorities.
Henley, seeming to consider that his turn, clears his throat. "I won't bore you with the details overmuch, but we are, in fact, pulling a tidy profit, both from our illegal and our legal activities, including, but not limited to, gun running, drug sales, investments, stock fraud and similar. Material costs keep on being a constant drain on our sources, of course, but as you can see our income outstrips our expenses."
Passing around a couple of papers detailing the Crypts' economical situation, Henley once more proves why you let him live and work for you. You don't actually look at it, of course, as details like that are for people who give a fuck, but the thought counts.
"Tinkering is going well, anyone trying to fuck with us on a large enough scale gets fucked," Sherrel reports curtly, though you just give her a nod- you were a part of that project, you know what she's talking about.
"And the situation with the Empire has been thoroughly discussed and dissected over the Thoughtnet," Sarah adds, concluding this part of the meeting.
With the current situation cleared up, it is, you suppose, time to consider some of your plans and ideas in light of the recent... developments, to be taken under consideration.
First off, the docks. You've been having the whole thing up your sleeves for a while now, but still, it is perhaps the best moment to try and completely remake the cheaper area you have bought up pretty much entirely, actually turn Brockton Bay into a proper port city again if you were so inclined. There are more than a few of your capes that would love you doing so, such as Jeremy and, you think (aka Sarah told you) Taylor.
Question is how to do so. Sure, if you really wanted? All it would take would be a slow afternoon of work and you'd have a giant army of Bob robots swarming all over and remaking the whole area at a blistering pace. Issue is, that would be very obvious, and nobody wants to have comparisons to the machine army drawn- that way lies Brockton Bay being walled up just in case, and that would be quite a bother.
Not so much to you, personally, but more in general.
More subtle options do exist, especially with the PRT preoccupied with the Empire... such as just hiring dockworkers to make everything look above board while secretly employing robots. Or simply sneaking through the night with the doomtruck, repairing Brockton Bay one block at a time by releasing its contents, then running away again- you imagine you could get a decent amount of space done that way, at least.
So, you will need to actively plan in arranging for this stuff... using either your false identity of Gabriel Wilbourne, being forthright about your criminality as Cain or otherwise, you'll need to talk to one... Daniel Hebert, Chief of Hiring in the local Dockworkers' Association.
That or send someone else to do it for you, you suppose, not like you can't just delegate in case you're too busy or just plain don't feel like it.
Next on the agenda, there's the idea of setting up several stockpiles of various materials necessary for running a gang, just to have reserves on hand in case raw supplies become scarce, your machinery is shut down or just plainly for things you can't just have your manufactories screw together- food, water, medicine, drugs, ammo, some weapons and additional backup materials just in case.
Nobody really disagrees, seeing it as a minor investment into being prepared for emergencies, and so one such stockpile is slated to be set up right inside your bunker, one further towards the middle of the city and one over in Boston, with a quick clearance level system hammered out to make sure that in case any of your actually important people end up stranded or unable to contact the rest of the Crypts, they have some support on hand right there.
As for those drug farms Cupcake suggested, they are considered, but nobody really felt that converting parts of the base into one would be worth the bother when it's just as viable to just do that on the surface and transport things around from there. Producing the amounts of weed, cannabis and similar plants you are talking about at your level of business would simply take up far too much space- though you generally have some decent amounts of it underground where you are, you still have to consider that even Endbringer shelters aren't unlimited in capacity and all.
Therefore, that one got postponed until the docks and trainyard are repaired and operating under your full control.
One other, semi-unrelated issue does crop up, too, however. "Oh yeah, Gabe, remember that sudden rapping you did the other day?" Sarah asks, almost as though she forgot and only just remembered.
"Yes, the Lilith's Lullabies stream, what about it?"
"What do you know about Canary, that one pop singer cape?"
"Wasn't she on trial or something? I've been kind of busy, so I don't really pay attention to stuff outside of the Bay," you say, thinking of every scrap of news you watched, heard or read recently.
"Well, she's getting birdcaged, mostly on principle over being a human master, and her transport is slated to pass through Brockton Bay the day after tomorrow, on Monday," your sister explains, everyone else perking up at these news. "Seeing as how she's a professional singer and you have a new hobby, apparently, I thought I'd mention her."
"Ah well, guess we might as well nab her in transit, I suppose," you shrug, seeing no particular harm in it. "We have teleporters and if nobody else wants her, the Crypts always have an open room."
"A-fucking-men," Kate mutters with a sly grin.
"Worst case, we can always just off her if she's actually unstable or unable to control her power, seeing as how it's apparently pretty obvious in effect, and as vampires are pretty much immune to stuff like that in the first place... Anyways, anything else we should discuss?"
"The fairies," Sarah reminds you, bringing to mind the one thing you've been deliberately ignoring all this time.
Because yes, the fairy avatar is, once again, flying in circles while repeatedly shouting for you to listen. Someone sure is eager, huh?
"Ah, yes, my semblance- if any of you don't know what that is, I'm smacking you, I went out of my way to have Nora write up an introduction to aura precisely for stuff like this- lets me do a lot of fun stuff, which is why I will be putting a couple of fairies I designed with the ability to summon sweets into the cafeteria, if anyone wants to try them out just feed them aura and they'll give you whatever you want to eat so long as it counts as sweets for their abilities. Now if you'll excuse me, we're going to be turning a bunch of new vampires in twenty minutes."
Man, these meetings take forever sometimes.
Meeting everyone that is about to become an undead monstrosity against all that is good and right, you briefly confirm that everything is in order, and the wide range of human sacrifices you had Sarah, among others, prepare for this little 'ceremony' of sorts that's about to go down.
Well, there you are. Lea, who has been chosen by Sherrel, Jeremy, because Okita told you to choose someone with powers for her, and three of Kate's girls, the original gang having priority on this stuff.
"Nervous?" You ask Jeremy, joining the future vampires in waiting. The others are taking abit, so you don't see any problems in making small talk.
"A little, yeah," the redheaded man admits, rubbing his neck. "We've all been told how this is going to work, and I'm still feeling a little queazy, but... Well, it was going to happen eventually either way, wasn't it?"
"Likely, yeah," you agree, seeing no point in disputing the obvious. "With your power and other enhancements, there's not really that many things that could stop you in the first place, so adding being a vampire on top of that just made sense. Don't worry too much, though, it'll all turn out alright."
"Isn't that the whole point?" Jeremy grins one-sidedly, letting out a sigh. "I just hope it'll be quick, you know? For everyone's sake."
Funnily enough, there's a reason you never told anyone about the sudden sociopathy vamping causes. Jeremy won't have to worry about his future victims much longer, after all... and hey, the thralling already did quite a bit of work on the formerly scruffy homeless man, turning him into a handsomely scruffy, less homeless one! Progress.
But alas, it isn't much longer until the appointed time, and soon enough five living humans will join you among the number of the undead, their throats bit out for a bit before they engage in an orgy of blood to reaffirm their new position in unlife.
And hey, nobody is going to miss a bunch of nazis and similar undesirables Sarah assures you will be assumed to have either fled or be murdered by their own comrades.
Watching your new vampires tear into their bound victims, you nod with satisfaction, the growth as they fill their bellies almost visible to the naked eye.
For the most part, though, you just hang out with the girls that just finished turning the five, idly commenting on the bloodbath vaguely reminding you of a locust plague swarming over a lush forest. Lots of blood spurting in all directions, lots of muffled screaming, bared fangs, the works.
It's actually a little funny to watch.
Idly, you realize Lea has been shaping up through her period of thrallhood quite a lot, though you can't help but feel that her new 'cape getup' after realizing the implications of going vampire may just be a little exaggerated. Like, Sherrel didn't have something like what she used the manufactories and her own designs to make, and she never really got an actual costume as far as you know.
Not that she's complaining, of course.
"This. Is. Awesome!" Clenching her hands a couple of times, Lea looks over to the group of older vampires. "I can literally keep on going forever now. C'mon Sherrel, let's break my new body in!"
At your curious look, your tinker vampire gives you a helpless shrug. "We aren't like that, honest! I have no idea why she's like that sometimes."
"Like what?" Lea asks. You just wave her off.
"You go ahead and play, just ask Sherrel for the way to the feeding tank later if you get hungry." And yes, that's what you've decided to call it. You're the head vampire, you can decide stuff like that.
With her taken care of, and the three other newly minted female vampires already busying themselves with the telepathy network (that you refuse to call thinknet), you turn towards Jeremy instead, a little curious as to how he's doing.
"Hey, Cain, I'm... well, I guess I get what you meant earlier, at least," he chuckles with a troubled smile as you approach. "I kind of feel like I should reorder my priorities at this point."
"You do that, Jeremy," you say, not really bothered. "Just make sure to ring me up if you need anything, seeing as Okita isn't exactly going to be all mentor-like." Because yeah, normally, you'd just have the vampire that turned someone help their newly spawned vamp out a bit until they're on their own two legs, but... Okita.
"Yeah, I can see that." Jeremy's throat is still a little raw where the careless bite tore it open during his turning.
You have, lately, been feeling that your city could do with some less nazis infesting it, seeing as how you generally feel like it should be yours in full and all. Which is why, after some thorough deliberation, you have come to the decision to tighten the noose you have been fashioning as of late, so to speak.
Or, to put it into less convoluted terms, Sarah told you where Shadow Stalker is forced to spend most of her days outside of school during this current mess you engineered (it's actually the Wards Quarters inside the PRT HQ, an obvious place and quite obvious for anyone that cares to look) as well as, funnily enough, the time and place she leaves the PRT HQ.
And where she goes, which is a safehouse not too far from there. Apparently, the PRT wants to keep a close eye on her all day round.
Which is, of course, an opportunity... The only question is how you will exploit it. Finding Hookwolf shouldn't be hard, but how do you approach him?
Here you are, having covertly watched your (currently awake and all, thankfully) dupe for a bit, waiting for just the right moment to do your magic.
Not that magic, the kind without the reality manipulation.
Anyways, once you judge you have a decent hold of this guy's speech patterns, you slip off into the night, your shadow transformation making this task once again laughably easy, leaving you standing up on the roof of the building he is currently inside of- a safehouse towards the eats of downtown, organizing the E88's efforts in the area.
You'll have to thank Sarah again for finding you a good scapegoat for this crap later.
Anyways, modulating your voice a little, you talk aloud for a moment, making sure you've got him down perfectly. And pull a burner phone out, purchased precisely for this moment.
Naturally, you also have everyone's numbers. "Come on, pick up..." You mumble to yourself in the voice of Edward Hoeson, the exactly same way he would if he was actually doing this.
Your cheap phone rings a couple of times, but your wishes are, as so very often if you really want something, granted. "The fuck's calling at this time o' the night?" Brad Meadow's rough voice asks, the cape obviously either sleepy or busy with something.
"Brad, it's Edward," you say, the half hurried, half exhausted tone the guy has been talking in all night perfectly mirrored in your own voice thanks to your voice-related powers; they're really, really coming in handy for this stuff.
"Had to tell you something without anyone knowing, no matter what you do you didn't hear it from me, okay?"
"Sure, man, whatever," the man on the other side of the call says. "Out with it already before it gets any later than it already is."
Well, no better time than the present, as they say. "Kaiser's been hiding the Stalker bitch from you," you bluntly state, imitating someone looking around while on the phone for that extra authenticity even as you subtly state that you're closer to Hookwolf than to Kaiser by use of cape names. "Found out recently, but I needed an alibi while I called you. I don't have much time, but she's at a safehouse corner Eighteenth and Maple Street."
"... Ed, thanks," Hookwolf gruffly says, the groaning of metal audible over the connection you're sharing.
"Don't mind me, just letting you know," you metaphorically wave him off. "Not everyone agrees with Kaiser pussyfooting around nonstop. You do what you have to, I have to get back before anyone gets suspicious."
The breathlessness in your voice is partially because 'Edward' speaks like than when stressed, and partially because you just want to laugh at just how easy this was.
This is exactly why you just tell people things. Credit to Kaiser, he's managed to keep his little empire running this far through base cunning and befuddling the simpletons he calls his underlings, but really, it was just a matter of time until something like this bit him in the ass.
Once again, all hail listening devices, and their use in gathering information such as one little Kaiser Boy hiding certain little secrets. You'll really have to cuddle Sarah a couple of hours when you get back just for being attentive and wonderful and letting you land this blow. Now to wander off and watch the fireworks for a bit...
This was a real load of bullshit, Sophia Hess thought to herself, as in, everything about this situation. First Piggy got pissed over those nazi mooks she disappeared (she'd been 'disappearing' them ever since she became a Ward and nobody cared until it went public), then she was blamed for a kill she didn't even get in (she'd looked it up, this Kyle guy had those kinds of friends) and was shuffled off to hide in some crappy shithouse whenever she wasn't either in school or in the Wards HQ.
And now? Now there she was, lying in bed and waiting for something, anything to happen that would keep her mind occupied, the unfamiliar environment and sleep schedule adjusted to sneaking through the city at night not conducive to sleeping in the least, when all of a sudden, the wall next to her collapsed with a fucking loud crash.
Her very first reaction was to shift as she jumped away, just in time to avoid more than a couple of splinters and some dust impacting her, becoming solid again so she could land and turn around.
Sophia clicked her tongue. She was pretty sure that was Hookwolf, the giant mass of serrated edges currently shredding the bed she'd been sleeping in for the past while hard to mistake. "Found ya, girlie," came from inside it, sounding a lot like knives being rubbed against each other to produce screeching sounds.
Her eyes flickered around the room. Shit, she hadn't been allowed any weapons and they'd actually controlled that shit, so she didn't even have a crappy knife on hand. "Yeah, too bad I don't wanna be found."
She knew about where the cables ran through the walls through long experience, and so when Hookwolf launched himself towards her, taking the form of a wolf he was known for to stretch an arm for her, Sophia phased again, pushing herself off and through the wall next to the door at the last moment.
Out in the pretty featureless hallway of the place she had to live in for the time being, she saw one of the two troopers stationed to keep a lookout (but really to keep an eye on her), running towards her room. Loud crashing had that effect, Sophia supposed.
"Get some fucking confoam!" She screamed at him, or for anyone else close enough to hear, not slowing down a beat. Using every bit of speed and little trick for sprinting she could, Sophia kept going, gritting her teeth as the sounds of Hookwolf scraping through the walls and floors and ceiling echoed behind her, the moron that didn't immediately turn around pretty much dead.
She could feel blood splattering at her back, but she refused to stop running. This was why Hookwolf was so dangerous, he could just shred right through you by running-
Turning the corner and nearly laying herself flat on her face, Sophia's fingers scraped over the walls as she pulled herself forwards instead of down, eyeing the other doors in sight. She just needed to-
Coming out of the troopers' room, the second guy on shift raised his gun, firing off a couple of bullets before throwing it away. Sophia didn't spare him another glance; if he was going to die, she'd just hope he bought her a couple of precious seconds. She had to get out somehow, and- there!
The death screams of another minced PRT Agent behind her, she ran into the kitchen slash dining room, the one place in this deathtrap with the biggest window. Just as she was about to jump through, Hookwolf tore through the doorframe, showers of dust and wood spreading from there much as before, ramming a metal limb into the oven and tearing it out to throw it at Sophia. She wanted to go shadow, turn gaseous and hard to hurt, but she knew if she did she'd be a sitting duck the moment she turned back, and she couldn't just stay intangible forever.
In that moment, looking over her shoulder, she noticed several things. One, the gas main was torn, so she'd best get moving fast. Two, she had to somehow not die in the next few seconds. And three, fuck that trooper but he did good.
Wedged between Hookwolf's hooked pieces of metal was a grenade, one she recognized; one of those new confoam things. He had to have heard her and grabbed it, but died before he could pull the pin.
Fuck her, this was going to hurt.
Arresting her momentum as best she could, she slowed down, turning back towards Hookwolf and- there! Using her power, she phased right through his oversized projectile, becoming solid again right in front of him with her arm already outstretched. Faster than she had ever been in her life, she hooked a fingertip into the pin and jumped away again, deliberately not looking at her arm.
With a muted fwoomp, containment foam, that new shit they'd just gotten as Dragon, she thought, was marketing it to the PRT for just a couple of days, spread out, through the mass of blades and Hookwolf's whole body, solidifying and holding him in place.
For a moment, she could already hear him hacking through it with brute force, despite everything she could see being covered. "I'm gonna get you, bitch!"
"The fuck are you even doing, shithead?!" She shouted back, one hand cramping around her elbow.
"You know what you did! Don't try and fuck around!" Right, she wasn't getting anything here. Phasing right through the window, the one place she was pretty damn sure no wires lead through, Sophia immediately started to climb and jump, using her power to keep moving at her best speed.
She'd need to tear up her pajamas, wouldn't she? Missing half an arm was pretty bad.
She thought. Could just be the blood loss messing with her brain.
It was pretty weird, to just... not go to Winslow anymore. Or to school in general. That said, Taylor was not going to complain; she'd never really noticed, just thinking of it as that time she spent in school, but she had a lot of additional time in the day now.
Time she didn't spend forcing herself to ignore everything the trio did to her. It was immensely freeing to just... not have to see them every day, anymore. And still not have lost to them, because she was going to settle that score once and for all soon enough.
Eventually. When she got to it. And worked up the nerve to plan things out, because holy fuck so much could go bad when it came down to it, and Taylor wasn't sure she wanted to add kidnapping to the murders on her rap sheet just yet in case she was caught and-
Anyways, she was getting to it. In the meantime, she had a lot more free time, which she used constructively as best she could, seeing as with her dad at work all day anyways she just had to go outside every now and then to pretend to have been gone for longer than him two days of the week.
Not that Taylor spent all day at home, either. She could actually work a lot more freely on her costume down in the underground base, and the tinkers and engineers working there actually helped her- it was looking a lot more realistic and impressive by the day, and more importantly more useful as an actual costume.
Those machines could just print insertible armor plates of much better quality than the bug shells she'd been using so far, meaning she could actually endure much worse than one hit to a given body part at once combined with her silk. Lea had been talking about designing the optimal distribution of plates to distribute as much force as possible, too, but she was busy over the past few days; something about getting more powers from Cain.
Taylor resisted the urge to create a few stinging and biting insects with a mere stretch of her hand. She was in her civilian clothes right now, and she had no idea who might be watching.
... Well, she did, using her insects to keep an ear out, but they weren't foolproof. In the first place, bug senses were really confusing and misleading a lot of the time, and so to be sure she would have to absolutely cover her surroundings in them, using their limited senses as part of a greater swarm.
Which, again, was not a good thing to do out of costume.
Taylor was taking a break at the moment, having been sent off when Kate also had to go do something and couldn't help her work on her aim anymore (without insect-guided shots), she didn't really feel like training with any of the others around and her costume was at home at the time.
So after a trip to the cafeteria (which had unlimited sweets now, so long as someone had the aura reserves, and she was still getting giddy about having a forcefield to protect and strengthen herself now), she went on a walk just around the area and towards the boardwalk, just to see if there was anything noteworthy happening.
If her power let her, anyways.
Which was not exactly what she ended up finding, but... The sense of taste her bugs had actually translated pretty well in a cruel twist of irony, and so the iron-y taste of fresh blood attracted her attention as Taylor went around.
Not a strange thing, in Brockton Bay, but uncommon in this area, it was usually kept in better condition... and it was up on a nearby roof.
She took a quick look around, noting that morning traffic was only just starting to move as people began coming towards their jobs before the sun even rose, and shuffled into a nearby alleyway devoid of people.
Looking up at the walls surrounding her, Taylor thought very hard for a moment. Then she touched one of them, rough bricks giving her some purchase. She did have the tonics to make her stronger and faster, as well as aura, so...
Jumping up, Taylor scrambled upwards, scuttling up the wall by pushing herself up through her feet, just barely grasping the roof's edge before she would have fallen over backwards. This was... close. Too close for comfort.
Next time she'd take along a silk rope in her emergency kit for her normal identity.
Taylor followed the blood trail for a bit, soon directing a few flies to search ahead of her without arousing attention and almost immediately finding what she was looking for, dashing and jumping along as she prayed nobody was there to see her face, but hurrying towards the collapsed person bleeding a lot.
Her legs impacting the concrete, she saw it was a girl wearing blue pyjamas, with black skin and a severely wounded arm. Turning her around, she...
"Sophia Hess." This was a surprise.
"Hebert," the voice of one of her big bullies answered. "Fuck're you doing... here?"
And with that, she passed out. For a long, long moment, Taylor looked down at her face, considering what she should do.
Then she grabbed for her satchel, pulling out the stimpack she kept on hand for use in emergencies. Which this probably counted as.
Taylor would need to talk to some people...
Max Anders was sitting in his office, his face long since having gone stone cold as he scanned through office reports received from his people in the PRT.
And witness reports. And news feeds of all kinds. And-
"Dammit, Brad!" He groused (absolutely not shouting). "You had one job! Just one damn job!"
It was all over the news. The moron had just driven to the place, gotten out of the car with his mask already on and transformed before just ramming himself into the second floor. Didn't even care there were dozens of smartphones pointed at his escapade.
Then he went in, killed a bunch of PRT mooks, didn't even finish the job with the Ward held inside and got himself stuck, only to then fight it out with Armsmaster once he arrived at the scene, drawing bystanders into it and causing enormous amounts of property damage.
Two buildings, dozens of cars, a fire hydrant and thirty-one casualties at last count. And that wasn't even considering the escalating hostilities as Cricket ended up rushing to help Hookwolf and Triumph joined to support Armsmaster to subsequently get his eardrums burst.
And had no idea how hard he was even shouting anymore, his own power severely wounding even more civilians too stupid to leave the area by that point, not that the PRT publicized that part.
Now people were looking at the Empire, with a place in the actually good parts of town torn up by one of their most prolific capes and, worse, the news swarming the incident like flies, going so far as to compare the 'savages of the E88' with the Lord Street Crypts.
Max didn't even want to look at what PHO looked like at the moment.
So much for consolidating while they burnt down the asian districts nobody actually cared about. Staring at his computer for a moment longer, not really seeing anything anymore, he balled his fists until his fingernails dug into them hard enough to draw blood.
Something had to give, because he couldn't accept this... this utter shit.
Standing up explosively, he backhanded his monitor, reducing it to crumpled pieces of plastic. Blades of metal were growing all over the floor and beginning to cover him, but he didn't even care, too occupied with his rage to pay them any mind.
Stomping through his office and tearing metal underfoot with screeching sounds, Max Anders went to grab the special telephone from where it was hidden, slamming in a number. He knew Hookwolf and Cricket had gotten out, so-
"Brad, I am giving you one minute to explain your fucking ass!" Max shouted as soon as the call was taken.
"You were fucking hiding Kyle's killer from me, what did you expect would happen?!" Hookwolf spat right back, neither of them much in the mood for pleasantries.
"I expected you to fly off the handle like an angry toddler with a tantrum to throw, which you immediately did, why did you think I didn't tell you?" If there were words to describe rage beyond incandescent, they were failing him, but Max imagined they applied here.
"Could'a fooled me, Max, you really could'a," the man on the other side of the line said with an eerie calm, immediately telling Max what was going on with him. "What with your newfound sense of pacifism. Wouldn't want to piss off any of the people that went and murdered our capes, now would we?"
There it was. He so much as admitted it. Brad Meadows just up and told him he didn't believe in his leadership, because the liittle shit... "Are you seriously trying to rebel against me over a god damn hissy fit over Kyle's death? One I fucking told you we were going to avenge anyways?"
"Fat lot of that you did, knowing where the little bitch was hiding and sucking everyone's cocks at Somer's as you were," Hookwolf scoffed, the derision clear in his voice. "Tell me, did you ever believe anything you were saying or did you just say anything that would get me to shut up and play along? Because newsflash, iron boy, I ain't anymore."
"So that's how it is, huh," Max bitterly remarked. "Years of covering for your hooked ass, and the first time you have to wait for something you want you pull this. Do you even know what you were doing? What you've done to all of us?"
"You, Max, done to you." Max Anders very much did not like what Brad Meadows was saying. "You've been lying and manipulating everyone, which was okay with me until you went and fucked all of us over with the Stalker thing instead of paying them back for what they did. Everyone in the know is laughing at you, you know? They think you're pathetic, and I can't blame 'em."
"Careful, Brad," Kaiser said, his armor now fully forming around every part of his body except his head. "The way you are talking, someone might think you are making... unwise decisions right now."
"Fuck you and your doublespeak, Max, we're done," Hookwolf answered, laughing. "Consider this your official resignation as leader of the Empire Eighty-Eight."
Max crushed the phone in his hand.