"Okay, so let's go through everything we know," you say as you feed your blood into Cherish, having told her to shut up and take it if she wants more powers. Which, to her credit, she did. "The S9, powers, personalities, the works."
"Jack Slash, leader," Sarah immediately says, serving as the wonderful sister-based database you always knew she was deep inside. "His power is to project edged weapons outwards, essentially giving him a ranged slash with any knives he has on hand. He's also the oldest living member of the Slaughterhouse Nine."
"Crap power, so we're probably missing something. That or he's just that good," you note.
You both look at Cherish, but she just shrugs, pulling her mouth away from where you're directing your blood. "I'd have to take a look at them in person to know which song is which, and I wasn't going to get close to the S9. I just kept track of them because they were so different from everyone else."
"So you're experiencing your power's sensory components as music? Interesting..." Really, if you had a little time, you'd totally be into just gathering data on parahuman powers and comparing it while doing all the research you can to figure out where they actually come from. "How would you describe what you heard from them?"
"I kind of give them names in my head? The way they sound, I mean." At your gesture to go on, she straightens her back. "They just don't really make sense for anyone that doesn't hear them like I do, I guess. One of them sounded like a Petulant Little Shit all the time, but that doesn't really tell you much outside of that."
"How many did you hear?" Sarah interjects. "One easy thing to confirm, at least."
"Nine, duh. Like, they're the Slaughterhouse Nine, so..."
"See, that's good to know, because according to the latest reports, there should only be eight of them right now," your sister declares triumphantly. "So unless you're mistaken, we have at least one unknown cape with them. Okay, as for the others..."
And there you go, Sarah going through everything she can pull from the PRT and random reports on past S9 encounters. Bonesaw, childish tinker. Biotinker, to be precise, with an unknown exact specialization, though she is noted to be extremely dangerous and capable of at least a little of everything within that field.
Considering biotinkers tend to fall within horror movie standards more often than not, that's actually very objectively horrible for any of her victims. Bright side, she's on the more reasonable side, according to Sarah, as long as you avoid swearing in her presence and get her to talk.
Next off, the other big hitters. The Siberian, naked woman seemingly completely invulnerable to, well, physics. Famous feats include severely injuring Alexandria and killing Hero, so you're inclined to believe she's probably best avoided until and unless you find a way around her invulnerability.
You have a few things that may work on her, but as friction and such are non-existent for her, you aren't sure you actually could fuck her if given the opportunity. You're mildly stumped for once. Oh, and she's also got a habit of cannibalism, though it took you a moment to realize that as something unusual given your own whole thing about that.
Crawler started out as a normal human, but he has some pretty insane regeneration and can adapt to anything that damages him. All-or-nothing annihilator effects or otherwise just running away are the obvious choices for him. Personality-wise, he actively throws himself into anything that might help him grow his powers, and gleefully acts the part of the monster at everyone he gets to fight in the process. Or that just comes across him in general.
Shatterbird, the one big issue for you right now. You went around putting craploads of your turrets... basically all over the city, by this point, though about half of them are as of yet inactive and uncalibrated- you didn't exactly want to accidentally kill off half the Bay's population on accident. Still, her power to completely destroy electronics through her silicakinesis as well as her tendency to just use it over extreme ranges all at once as a sort of 'opening attack' is going to wreck all of them. And kill a bunch of people all over the place, too, you suppose.
Apparently, she also considers herself the Nine's primary recruiter, from what Sarah could tell based off of the data available, and also tends to exhibit a lot of pride in general. A point of interest, if nothing else.
One more Brute among their lineup would be Hatchet Face. Serial killer of capes even before joining the S9, he was apparently maimed by a parahuman, likely a Brute himself, during or before his trigger event, as far as Sarah can speculate together with you, his power being twofold; a considerable amount of brute strength and durability, to the point you would actually have to put effort into murdering him, and a sort of Trump power to nullify the powers of parahumans in his vicinity.
As in, powers themselves are unaffected, but once a cape is too close to him, they'll find they can't really use their power anymore, turning any close quarter combat into a fight between a dangerous Brute and a mundane person.
He's also none too bright and seems to have a particular hatred for capes, especially Brutes, along with absolutely no idea just how retarded that makes him for not just killing himself.
Best bet, someone convinced him he would kill more capes by rolling with the Nine or something.
Another somewhat 'iconic' member of the S9 would be Mannequin, formerly Sphere, a tinker with a specialization in closed systems. He's actually surprisingly dangerous for a guy on permanent tinkertech live support, and you maintain your position that he essentially maimed himself to stuff his organs (including his brain) into the mannequin-like suit he got his name for after going insane following his family's death.
The Simurgh, man.
Anyways, he doesn't really do large projects anymore, only ever working on the suit protecting himself instead of others, and seems to favor stealth, ambushes and generally pretty much what you would have done in your earlier days. He's also got a thing for targeting rogues and tinkers, those trying to make the world a better place in particular.
He may or may not also have a deathwish, but you do somewhat doubt Sarah's accurate interpretation of his body language. Just to tease her.
Last but not least, excepting the unknown ninth member, you have... Burnscar. Former inmate of a parahuman asylum and picked up by the Nine following her escape. There's actually a lot of information available on her as a result, but to keep it short, her power severely influences her state of mind, bringing her from depressed whenever she isn't using it to reckless sociopathy when she is. Said power is, well, being a fireproof pyrokinetic that can teleport through fire.
If that doesn't sound overpowered, you don't know what does. Well, not compared to your own powers and shit, but as far as normal capes go, she'd be a total A-lister if it wasn't for the mental issues. Her pyrokinesis is completely freeform, too, which just makes things worse.
All in all, you do have a lot to work through in regards to all of these, and a few plans to finalize before you'd be ready actually facing the Slaughterhouse Nine. Either way, though, you do kind of refuse to just let them stay inside your fucking city indefinitely.
With a telepathic network in place, you can quite literally spread the news at the speed of thought, and so things progress blindingly fast in combination with your teleporters. Just as quickly as you give out the orders, your people start moving.
Except... not all of them. Because somehow, things started happening just moments after you do, once you get into the meeting room where the usual suspects are already gathering.
On a street somewhere in Brockton Bay, much like any other inside any decently sized city, a few women were walking, openly carrying tinkertech rifles to make sure everyone knew not to fuck with the Crypts.
Except there was a giant black-colored motherfucker the size of a van blocking their path, standing on a bunch of legs and rumbling in a low, almost pleasantly gravelly voice. "Heeey! You with the Crypts, huh?"
They looked at each other, trading glances for a moment as they exchanged thoughts, almost instinctively at this point. "What's it to you, motherfucker?" One of them asked.
Laughing, he lowered his head. "Means I found the right message! C'mon, hit me!"
And just like that, he charged, they scattered and opened fire and chaos broke out in general.
Naturally, you wouldn't be too worried usually; you never actually built a vita pod out of general paranoia, but you do keep the one inside your soul updated with DNA from everyone inside your gang that's at least mildly important, after all. Still, there are some reasons for... concern, if you're reading this right.
The Siberian walked through another set of walls, letting them crumble behind herself. A group of PRT agents sprayed some foam into her path, but she ignored it, too, like she did everything else.
Around her, panic was spreading as everyone inside the building tried to evacuate. And the lower floors likely would, in all truth, as she wasn't hunting them down by any means. That said, she was still taking out the supporting walls of the PRT HQ ENE, and no amount of training would allow its occupants to get out in time.
She was taking it slow precisely to give them hope that maybe, they would be among the ones to get out fast enough.
None of the heroes present dared to try and stop her, instead evacuating the surrounding buildings. Interestingly, as mannequin had found out, the Wards were quartered inside this place, too, but they had simply flown out as soon as the alarm came ringing.
Up above, William Manton could make out a helicopter landing on the roof. It would save a few lives, too, but how many? And how many would be left behind to die?
He grinned as his daughter continued to tear through one wall after another.
It also, you would dare say, doesn't help that apparently, the Nine are being active all over the city, in various places and attacking various parahumans.
If you didn't know better, you would think they timed it with you deciding to act against them, but as it is, it is all you can do to try and call Vicky's number just in case New Wave isn't under attack right now.
"You get the fuck away from my sister, you little creep!"
"That is not a nice thing to say, Victoria Dallon," the little girl wearing a butcher's apron over her dress said, waving the bloody knife just torn out of a hospital patient around and splattering red fluid onto the ground. "Calling others names is not very polite. Also, I am claiming your sister as my own."
"Yeah, right," Amy Dallon said, eyeing the mutilated cyborg corpse she was keeping paralyzed with one hand. "What if I'd prefer to just reduce your limbs to sludge and wear you like a backpack?"
"Amy!"
"What? It's the least I could do to her."
Bonesaw shook her head. "To get that far, you'll have to catch me first! And I wonder if you won't be too occupied with your rude sister first..."
Amy sighed. "Vicky, what did you do this time?"
"I didn't do anything!"
"Tell that to the parasites snaking inside your brain right now."
""... What?!""
"... Hey Elle," Mimi said, numbly walking though the wall of flames she'd called.
"... Hello Mimi."
All in all, shit is just going tits up, and you can't quite help but want to just use a particular transformation of yours and blow into a particular big fat instrument that comes with it right this moment.
"Okay, so uh, anyone have anything else we should be aware of before I go shank a bitch?" You ask, your eyes glancing around the room as they leave the big retractable sixty inch flatscreen plasma TV you had someone install inside the meeting room.
"Just one moment, one more incident," Henley says as he changes the channel. "If this is the last time we pay my people for watching as much TV as they can, it'll be one time too many."
What you see on the screen drives you to feel that, if you were currently alive and stuff, you'd have a big throbbing vein sticking out on your forehead or some similar comedic sign of anger.
Jack Slash in the flesh, holding up a news reporter's severed head and putting up his best ventriloquist impression as he makes it announce the weather, that of being rains of blood and similar.
(And if Mannequin was currently facing off against two little girls of all things that managed to intercept him as he was infiltrating Cain's base, nobody had to know).
"Alright," you say, ignoring Jack Slash babbling about something completely unimportant. "Guess we're splitting a few people up, then. We need this whole situation handled asap. Sarah, would you mind taking care of our friend Jack over there, he looks like the kind of person to appreciate a good talking to."
"How badly do you want his death to look?"
"I don't care, just make it bloody," you request. "The real fun starts after his death, make sure he regrets ever being born by then. I'll personally take care of Shatterbird, whom does that leave?"
Cupcake raises a hand. "Uhm, how will we find them? I don't think they'd make it too easy..."
"I have my ways, don't worry about it."
Sherrel speaks up at this point. "Guess I should be on standby. The truck's awesome, but kind of too big for small fry like these guys. I think Alice got a few good booms ready for shit like Crawler, though."
Right, you did give everyone a quick summary of your discussion on these suckers on the way. "Gotcha, we'll have her try her shit out. If it doesn't work, too bad. Any other volunteers?"
"Oh hey, can I take Mannequin?" Kate asks. "Should be easy enough to take apart."
"Take the cluster girls with you, make it an educational experience," you suggest. "How about Bonesaw?"
I'll go take a look and make sure the hospital is safe, Nora interjects for everyone to hear. She isn't physically present but that's precisely why you're openly 'streaming' this meeting for everyone that might need to hear. I'll take that new toy, see if I can't capture her, or at least keep damage to any victims to a minimum.
"That's that," you shrug. "Burnscar?"
"Faultline is dealing with her and the Palanquin is on fire, I say we leave them to it and pick up the ashes afterwards," Sarah snorts.
You shrug, again. No sweat off your back. "Anyone want Hatchet Face or should we just send Okita? I figure she'll hit all his buttons."
Nobody objects, though Sarah gives you a very malicious grin. She knows as well as you do that Hatchet Face will get murdered very gruesomely shortly, by someone physically stronger than him- exactly the kind of people he hates the most.
"I'm guessing we're just staying away from the Siberian?" Henley asks, bringing you back around to the issue at hand. "And just leaving this mysterious ninth member be for the time being."
"I mean, unless anyone volunteers, just let her work her way through the PRT. We can figure out what to do about her later."
... I'll go, Taylor, of all people, throws in. Just to help evacuate and distract.
"Sure, whatever floats your boat. Now, unless there's anything else...? Let's get a move on, everyone," you say, getting up. "Lea, mind manning the teleporters for the time being?"
Next thing you know, you're in the sky above Brockton Bay. Well, it works for you, at least. Turning into a raven, you immediately turn on your compass soul, overlaying it with yourself and flying into a random direction to help you triangulate the position of every S9 member you can find.
... Why the hell is Mannequin inside your base?
Perhaps this was not Mannequin's best day, but it had to be said that nobody could have expected there would be this much opposition lying in wait.
Or perhaps 'this many children' would be a more appropriate expression.
"We have you surrounded! Surrender and it will be quick!" The brunette girl that'd been the first to find him said, a finger stretched out at him.
He ignored her, instead keeping an eye on the only adult to be found, the tattooed woman handling her shifting weapon with both arms. "Don't worry tin can guy, I'm sure you'll make for a valuable educational experience. Hey kids, wanna see a dead body?"
The half dozen young girls that'd arrived with her looked at him, tilting their heads almost as if synchronized. "Me first," one of the black-haired ones said.
In the next moment, while Mannequin finished cycling out his limb attachments and prepared to slice through as many of them as possible before continuing on now that he had been discovered, several things happened. The white-haired girl jumped at him, so he swiped at her, only to discover that she had appeared behind him on his sensors.
She left behind a clone he hit instead, except it was just an image; his knives went right through it. She also did, however, leave what looked a lot like candy wrappers behind, dropped to the floor.
Mannequin jumped backwards... except one of his legs was malfunctioning. Abandoning it, he watched as his sensors glitched out- or rather, he lost the ability to interpret the signals sent to his brain.
Regrettable, but expected. Some kind of power nullification. And just then, the objects separately left behind exploded, too, not strongly enough to be a danger to his outer shell, but certainly shaking it around.
They were all parahumans, obviously. He would need to act quickly- this amount of unknown capes spelled trouble.
However, before he could act on this decision, he felt a touch on one of his limbs. His secondary poisoned blades reacted, but were stopped by a forcefield of sorts.
The girl that had called out earlier was standing there, holding onto him. He considered abandoning the segment she was holding, but ultimately resolved to avoid losing too many this quickly- he was likely going to need them.
Instead, he transformed his other limbs, turning them into a heatblaster, a poison dispenser and one laser, directing them against her... only for a blonde girl, with doll-like expression, to interfere with a kick that sent him careening off to the side.
Looking again, he saw... a copy of himself, in armor and rapidly switching extensions all over his body.
His doppelganger drew knife-fingers against each other, stretching one out for him. Mannequin prepared to detonate the bombs contained within his expendable parts to make some distance, only to find himself teleported to the other him's position all of a sudden.
... Surround- "Told you we had you surrounded! 98.69 percent chance you are absolutely fucked! Now hold still!"
Missy used her power harder than she ever had before. Not that that was hard, with the Siberian of all things going at the building below her.
The employees inside found that they had to take a tenth of the steps they usually would have needed to go to get to the nearest windows, and that nearby roofs were only a small jump away from there. Missy would have made it shorter, but with how many people there were in the whole area, her power was a little limited.
It still helped them get out, though, which was half the point. She was up in the chopper Director Piggot had called in as soon as the black and white woman was sighted, the other Wards already evacuated much like everyone else was.
"Yes, I am aware she is a Ward," the portly woman sitting right next to her shouted into the phone she'd been busy with ever since this whole mess started, the noise of the helicopter requiring a louder voice to be heard. "No, I do not care. In fact, let me be clear, the fucks I give are negative! I am getting as many of my people out of that building as I can, and if you think the Youth Guard's regulations are what's going to stop me, I will personally feed you to the monochrome bitch!"
She hung up, looking out of the window much like Missy was. "How's it going, Vista?"
"Upper half of the building is clear, but the Siberian has started trapping people in the rest," she said, the tinkertech binoculars she'd 'borrowed' from Armsmaster's lab at her face. He'd said they were for emergencies, and this counted. "I think she's playing with them, but it's hard to make out from here."
She wasn't complaining, either. All she was seeing were thermal signatures, mostly, but even so she had a pretty good idea of just how badly the Siberian was tearing people apart.
Next to her, she could feel the vibrations of the Director grinding her teeth, she was pretty sure. "Nothing for it. Try to delay her and open up ways out while-"
Vista blinked, looking around for anything that might explain why Piggot would stop like that. Not that it was hard to find; a biblical plague of this size was easy to make out.
When the noise washed over the area, it was almost painfully present, a tidal wave of black chitin crawling over buildings, flying around in solid clouds and constant movement flooding over the PRT HQ from every direction. Within moments, it was hard to make out the building under what had to be millions, if not billions of insects.
Even the chopper's noise was drowned out under the wall of sound washing over everything in sight, a low constant buzzing and clacking that Missy was pretty sure might give her nightmares.
"Guess the Crypts noticed, too," she murmured.
Brockton Bay is, all in all, not a small city. Not a particularly big one, either, it's certainly not on the level of Boston, but it does have a very decent population and covers a lot of ground.
Which for you means that you have to consider all that ground as to possible locations for Shatterbird, your primary target- much like you already told the others, too. Honestly, without your trusty compass soul, honestly the one you'd say you use the most out of all of them, finding her would be nigh impossible.
As it is, you have to thoroughly abuse your overlay with the guy to scan the Bay, narrowing down the place she's staying at right this moment bit by bit.
It doesn't help that she's actively moving around, you're pretty sure, but still you eventually get a good enough idea, homing in on the trainyard, of all things.
You really should get around to clearing that shitshow up and modernizing it once you own as much of it as physically possible.
A bit of closer searching later, with the rough locations of the rest of the S9 as best you can tell transmitted to everyone else, you manage to, y'know, actually find her, a blood signature in the distance flying above rooftop level. She doesn't actually seem to be using her power beyond that, however, as a quick check-in with Sarah confirms that you would be able to hear it through the vibration of any and all glass in the area to let her control proliferate through.
You follow the the bitch, but her flying speed is actually pretty fast; it's hard to keep up without immediately going full size and using levitation jumps to match her. Given your immediate plan is to get a little closer first so you don't have literal tons of sharp glass in the way between the two of you.
This kind of power is kind of a pain to deal with, after all. You aren't exactly sure if you can negate her scream through producing the sound of silence, like you did with Cricket, but you do doubt you could do the same for her more immediate control range.
Still, while she's taking her time to fly around, you close up to her somewhat, and notice she seems to be almost... On the lookout for something?
Huh, she's patrolling, is what she is, back off towards the east into the direction of the ocean. You follow along, making sure to keep an eye towards the ground just in case, but what you see is mostly just the usual Brockton Bay population.
All the way over the dilapidated industrial areas, then the docks, and finally out over the open water. Shatterbird turns around, then, and seems to look around the area, as if she was actually searching for something, dressed in her costume made of colored glass kept together by her power.
It is also what's letting her fly, you'd imagine, together with the 'wings' made of broken glass at her back, more of the stuff trailing behind her.
All else you can make out, a decent bit off, are a few sunken ships with a few blood signatures here and there.
The fight raging through the deepest parts of Crypt territory was pretty damn wild, everyone involved would say for years to come. Crawler, as someone had figured out by actually listenin' to the thought announcements, was one tough sonuvabitch, and he actually could just take the disintegrating blasts they kept peppering him with.
In fact, he just kind of regenerated body parts faster and faster the more they blew their loads all over them. It came down to them actually using the railgun modes for their fancy rifles, more to just pump him full of steel and force him back with the impacts- fucker was heavy, but they did pack a lot of punch.
Until he stopped spitting globs of that fucking acid at them (and missing mostly, though a couple of arms and legs were lost to the stuff) and started shooting back with his own metal spikes, ramming through buildings and shit while they kept moving to avoid him.
Shit. Was fucking. Wild.
'Course, then the boss' tinker girl showed up, no, not that one, the Asian one, and nodded to herself a bit. They knew that she was talking via telepaphone, but none of them were going to actually put that into the subtitles of the vids they uploaded half an hour later, filmed with their actual smartphones.
She cleared her throat. "Hey, big ugly!" It did get Crawler's attention when she shouted, gotta give her that. "I got a big, fat stash of tinker bombs lying around over here, mind holding still so I can fucking obliterate your fat ass?!"
Crawler grumbled in his fucked up voice. "Bring it! I'll just get stronger and come kill you when you run out!"
Alice just pulled out a little thingy, fiddling with it. "Okay, so start with the friction removers."
And the rest, was fucking history, and it led to the Slaughterhouse Cain Memorial being where it was ever since.
Parian ran through the street, panting like a dog at the exertion. She'd been at the boardwalk today, putting on one of her shows, when it happened.
First, there'd been news. People showing around footage of the PRT HQ, about Jack fucking Slash taking over a news station of all things. Sabah had done her best to stay calm and calm down the people around her, but she was a university student, not a trained professional for this kind of thing; she'd just told people to get to safety as a convenient buzzword while she desperately thought about how to get to some semblance of safety herself.
The Slaughterhouse Nine were not known for their policy of limited collateral damage.
Unfortunately, however, it turned out she was never going to be able to do that in the first place, as a sudden grunt, a booming impact and a cleaving slash proved in bisecting half the bystanders, a giant hulking man covered in scars and wielding an oversized hatchet grinning at her in broad daylight.
Sabah was counting her lucky stars he was wearing pants, at least, if nothing else. She might also have been in shock.
A lot of shock.
"I'm gonna catch yoouu!" The deranged literal axe murderer bellowed, the people around just doing their best to get out of the way. And some of them were actually filming all of this happening, the fucking pricks!
Like, what the fuck even was that?! Why would you just stand there and not, like, run? Or at least show some respect for a woman about to be horribly dismembered?
The hairs on Sabah's neck tingled, the warning being received for what it is. She threw herself out of the way, the hatchet swishing through the air and smashing into the nearest wall, blue and black paintjob split apart just as surely as the stone below it.
Sabah scrabbled onto her feet again, cursing the fact she couldn't use her power for the umpteenth time. She could've at least animated a few of her plush dolls to distract the madman and get away, but as it was, all she could do was hurriedly fiddle with the phone in her hand and hope to Scion Cain would pick up.
"No use running away! I'll still make you screeaamm!" Hatchet Face was literally a deranged axe murderer. When did her life become a cheap horror movie?
Just then, though, the oddest thing happened. A young girl, teenager that looked pretty Asian, stepped into the path the other bystanders had cleared, holding out a giant sword. "What are you- run!"
She just shook her head, the biggest tits Sabah had ever seen following the motion under her black clothes.
"What's this girlie, want to die first?!" Hatchet Face jumped at her, his weapon raised overhead... only to be struck by the girl as it came down, blown out of his hands and raining onto the ground in smithereens.
Why was- Everything was so quiet all of a sudden. Almost in slow motion, Sabah looked around... And up on the nearby roofs, out of the nearest alley and from everywhere around them, dogs were coming, in all shapes and sizes.
They were perfectly quiet for a long moment, watching as Hatchet Face bellowed aloud, screaming at the Asian girl only to be silenced when they all began to grow.
They were, Sabah realized, all keeping just outside of his power's range.
"AwoooooooOOOOO!" The biggest dog she'd ever seen, or maybe it was, like, a wolf, it looked really different from all the others, howled, the entirety of the other canines around barking and howling themselves as they grew in size more and more.
"Good doggies," the girl said.
Okita tilted her head, looking at the weird man she was supposed to fight. He was very bad at fighting, she thought.
"I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!" He was just wildly swinging his arms, so Okita just backed off a bit so she could swing her sword. She put her back into it, too, and twisted her feet to really put some power into it.
The man's lower arm flew off. Good. She'd been worried he might be tough, but clearly the Sarah had been given wrong information. He was just a little tough.
She noticed it, but it could have been because she was feeling a little bored and imagined things. She did that sometimes.
"RAAAGH!" Maybe if he tried less screaming and more fighting, he would be better? As it was, it was as easy as sidestepping, swinging, rinse and repeat.
Sadly, she misjudged the distance once and accidentally chopped through the shoulder, but got stuck inside a bone.
That was okay. She just did the thing where she moved really fast to use the momentum and free her weapon. And tear out his shoulder.
She shook it a little, but she needed to use the blood thingy to make it slide off. It was a very stubborn shoulder.
The man was screaming some more, but Okita just jumped up on a roof, patting the chief doggie. Doggies were nice. Sometimes they were very barky and annoying, but these ones were very well behaved. "Doggy."
Down below, a lot of doggies dogpiled the man (so that was where the English word came from), their teeth dragging him apart. They had to have been very careful, as they were very large doggies, but despite the very vigorous struggle, they did not pierce his skin.
Or pull him apart. Okita would have liked that, she thought; it'd have looked very funny.
Ah well, she might as well eat him. Readying her sword, she jumped down at him, thrusting it downwards to impale him through the chest.
Then all she needed to do was drink a bit and she could go back to trying to kill the air this time.
You think that maybe, Shatterbird might just have figured out the bird accelerating towards her at increasing speeds is something somewhat unusual, but sadly for her you don't really give her much time to react; as she pulls her glass towards her front and center, building it up into a large wall of spiky glass to intercept you with, you transform back into your full Cain-sized glory, suit and all.
You open your mouth, and scream, two voices at once impacting her position.
... You idly wonder if Shatterbird is feeling like many of her victims so far may have.
Immediately, two things happen. One, everything goes silent. Vibrations can travel just fine, but sound specifically ceases to exist within the reach of your scream. The sound of silence does tend to do that when it's screamed loud enough.
The sounds of the city drifting over the water, the waves lapping at the shore, the wind itself- all of this is still going on, it just goes entirely silent.
And as for effect number two, well... You did overlay Animos as you came in. Animos who, after being eaten by you, just so happened to get a bit more flexibility into his power- simply put, you don't need to transform to use his power-negating scream.
Which you deploy, just as you let up on the silence, ensuring that Shatterbird never has the time to let off her scream and fuck up your preparations... or your city, for that matter. You do need to actually let the power-negating scream be heard, else you'd be negating your negation scream, but alas, you'll just have to make do.
As it is, you're just making sure none of Shatterbird's bullshit can get anywhere.
Her glass falls freely into the ocean, no longer held up by anything, and the same goes for her costume, leaving the wide-eyed woman just kind of standing there in the air to fall, entirely naked as she is.
A shame she's a psychotic bitch, 'cause damn, but alas you'll just have to do as you have to. Impacting her, you let your claws pierce through browned skin, holding onto her shoulder and waist as you rear back to bite her.
"You will suffer for this! You will-!" Too bad for her that she doesn't have any time to make good on those threats, her struggling legs impacting yours to little effect.
Then space warps inside your chest and you're very happy to have aura all of a sudden.
You can feel the effect of whatever power is being used on you; some kind of attack, you're pretty sure, given the way your aura is lighting up around your chest like crazy right now.
However, while you're losing a very generous amount of aura right now, not to mention feeling the tearing sensation as something tries to tear apart your body, your aura is protecting you just fine. Moving out of this attack is a little harder, as though you were moving through molasses, but it isn't like you're caught inside it or anything.
Shatterbird, still caught inside your grasp, tries to wiggle out of it while you're distracted, but you adjust your grip, making sure she won't escape. "Not getting out of this that easily, sorry."
Shifting your hands to sit at a thigh and the side of her stomach indeed, you drown out Shatterbird's answer with another power negation scream, seeing how you're perfectly aware she's already trying to bring her glass back up. In fact, she is doing so behind your back right this moment, water dropping off the shards and letting you knew precisely what she's about to do.
You just brace your feet against thin air, stuck where you kind of are right now... and trigger your Flash Step. It does sting a bit, but you tear yourself free, rapidly moving off towards the horizon with your prey clutched in your claws. Shatterbird screams, the whole experience quite uncomfortable for her, but really, who gives a fuck?
Nobody, that's who.
That said, even as you race off into the horizon, you don't really want to give Shatterbird too much time to try to come up with some way to defend herself, and so you bite right into her, your teeth piercing through mocca colored skin... And not much further.
For fuck's sake, she has some kind of subdermal armor, too? Fuck it, this will take a moment.
Shatterbird. Born in the United Arab Emirates, unknowingly consuming a certain substance far more usually handed out in vials, she gained her power, prompting the deaths of thousands as confused silica control and deserts do not mix.
Or mix extremely well, if one asked her.
She ended up traveling, both because she could not exactly stay without being hunted down and because she could feel it every time anyone so much as walked across the sand in her rather expansive range. It was rather distracting.
Taking the opportunity, she decided she may as well tour the world like she'd always wanted, with her new powers and a newfound sense of freedom in doing so. It was, after all, one thing to imagine eviscerating the latest rude shit she met on the street, but it was a wholly different thing to be able to do it with casual ease.
Ultimately, she ended up coming to America, where she soon found a new project in the Slaughterhouse Nine. Not only did she have a sheer inexhaustible supply of meatshields between herself and any real danger, a more organized manner of mass murder was greatly beneficial to her continued studies and enjoyment of the human psyche.
She took up the role of primary recruiter, selecting promising psychopaths and similar to be granted the privilege of joining their little group, and greatly came to enjoy the effects of her 'opening acts' whenever they visited a new place- not only did she kill and maim many, she also traumatized their loved ones for decades to come, and forced them to live in the ruins of their former lives henceforth.
Truly, her power was the greatest gift anyone could ever have given her.
In the end, it was not a hero that took her out, nor a desperate survivor searching for a sense in their life, but rather a monster just as great as any of them. Really, it was a shame Cain did not join them... But alas, perhaps watching on as he continued to act as himself was an acceptable fate for her, in the end.
She could also watch recordings of his past, and why, that human banquet looked most amazing from a bystander's point of view.
Emily looked over the map, trying to keep ahead of the changes all over the place. "Okay, that's Mannequin, Crawler, Shatterbird and Hatchet Face down. Siberian's at the PRT, Jack Slash is still playing the clown, Burnscar was last seen around the Palanquin and Bonesaw was at that hospital, right?"
"A-a-and the one u-u-unknown m-member," Tammi added. "N-n-nine total."
"And four already dead. Score!" The two bumped fists. Outside the room, Kate was leading eight girls along, one of them pushing a little cart filled with metallic-looking odds and ends. If one did not know better, they would never suspect it to be the corpse of Mannequin, widely feared tinker infamous for his appearance and activities as a serial killer.
"Okay girls, what'd we learn today?" Kate asked, visibly enjoying the idea of being a deranged elementary school teacher taking her students on murderous trips.
"Tinkers have a wide variety of options available to them compared to most other parahumans, making them exceedingly tricky to fight whenever they have the time and materials?" One of them, Beverly, asked, her voice bearing no particular inflection at all.
"Well, that too, but I mainly meant that brutally outnumbering and outgunning your enemies is the most reliable way to win against them," Kate explained.
"Jack, Jack, Jack... Slash. Or should I call you Jacob?" Sarah was kind of enjoying this, she wasn't going to lie. "You know, really digging that 'hopped up homeless guy' look you've got going."
"Oh, quite alright; we can't all be teenage girls in skintight outfits," the little shit grinned back at her. "Lovely city here, Brockton Bay, by the way. Just as much of a tourist spot as the last time we came to visit."
Analysis attempt/unknown power/incorrect attitude taken
Conclusion: Jack Slash has a secondary power that lets him subconsciously analyze others, likely parahumans. It does not work.
Thank you, power, Sarah sarcastically thought. That were quite a lot of words to describe something not actually being relevant. "Oh yeah, being beaten black and blue must've been a lovely experience for you, huh?"
"I would definitely recommend it. But oh, let's cut the chatter and get to the point, shall we? Our lovely viewers are just dying to see it, after all!" Ah shit, he was deliberately mimicking Gabriel, wasn't he?
That meant he was going to the special hell once Sarah got her hands on him.
"Oh, sure," she faux-cheerfully agreed. "Let me just grab the grenades really quickly and we can play hobo dunking really quickly."
"I have no idea what you even mean, and I refuse to ask," Jack said, looking back at the camera.
The look of his face she had was enough to trigger one of her powers, though.
The world is a madhouse and everyone in it followed suit/Nobody understands/That blank dank room he does not want to return to
Mhm, good enough, she supposed. Normally, Sarah would dissect these fears with her power, weigh them and let them melt on her tongue before spewing the results out in cascades of hurtful words, but Jack kept on talking.
"Now, me and the Nine, we had a little talk about what we wanted to do, now that we finally got back here, and wouldn't you know it, we just jumbled right into all these lovely Crypsters lining the streets!"
"Get to it already, we don't have all day," Sarah sighed. She had to interrupt his narrative- that was how idiots like Jack worked.
"Oh, you don't want to know about how Shatterbird will sing her song all over this city the moment any capes from outside it try to interfere? Or the-"
"Yeah, funny story that," she grinned, "Shatterbird's dead. So's Mannequin, because you literally sent him to his death in the Crypts' base, so don't expect anything to come from that."
"I do wonder exactly why I am even keeping you alive, Tattletale," Jack said, changing tracks as he fingered his knife, always at hand as it was. "Perhaps we should talk about a little... change of priorities here, hm?"
"What, you think I'm gonna be intimidated the moment you point at what's left of the studio audience?" She raised an eyebrow, gesturing for the people hacked apart where they'd been sitting, Jack too slash happy for them to get far in the initial panic. "Because newsflash, you're an insane idiot."
Jack flashed out with his knife, always close at hand, only for Sarah to go intangible, the attack fading through her and carving a dent into the wall- not for the first time, from how this place was looking. "Oh, a surprise! Too bad I hate pointless surprises that only ever delay the inevitable anyways!"
"Funny thing to call the entirety of your life, but hey, at least it will end soon!" Now she was actually cheerful about saying it. Grabbing herself Vine and Flower from where they were hanging on her person, Sarah let her weapons cycle once to shift them into whip and knife mode, respectively. "Let's see, you needed a little girl's help to 'perform', but how good is Bonesaw's work really?"
"Hold still, this is hard enough as it is!" Amy Dallon was, perhaps understandably, not having the best of days.
"Amy, I am literally being mind controlled right now!" Her sister, Victoria Dallon, was flailing around whenever Amy wasn't actively suppressing the weird organisms in her brain. "I genuinely can't help it!"
"Shut up and hold still, you skank!" Yes, she started cursing when things got too hectic, but could you blame her?
The entire hospital had been evacuated of anyone capable of being brought out already, but that still left the sisters... as well as any of the patients that Bonesaw had gotten to, who were now crowding the hallways and in serious danger of trampling over each other whenever they reached a new floor.
Some had mechanical additions to their bodies, being forced to march while unable to control their bodies. Others had some sorts of mind control viruses implanted, or just various additions to their bodies not under their full control, and all of them were slated to go nuts as soon as the sisters, or specifically Amy, left the building.
Somehow. Because tinkers.
So Amy had to go through every part of this stupid retarded hospital, get these morons up and running again without triggering the failsafes Bonesaw had left in them and do it all quickly enough the brainworms that started to violently dissolve into nonbiological toxins when disturbed left inside Vicky didn't trigger on the way so she got to take them out once they deactivated... Which would only happen once they left.
Apparently, it was supposed to be some deep moral test to see if she'd abandon all these suckers or sacrifice her sister instead or something. Instead, Amy had just isolated the worms as best she could without lobotomizing Vicky and went on to work through the hospital.
Speaking of which... "Vicky, I swear, if you keep on groping me, I am leaving you behind!"
"But it's not me, it's the evil rapeworms making me do it!" Her sister whined.
"They're brainworms, and they are not; I would know if they did! Now get your hands off my ass so I can get back to putting this man's arms back onto his shoulders!"
The patient whined, his throat currently playing host to a biological bomb full of nasty shit Amy wasn't even going to look at as she dissolved it.
"How did Bonesaw even operate on so many people without anyone noticing?" Amy asked as she did as she was saying.
"She probably took out the security first, duh," Vicky said. If she had control of her body, she would be shrugging at the moment, but well, evil brainworms.
"You know, you're really relaxed about all of this," Amy mentioned instead of talking about this more, the thought obvious in hindsight. "I'd have expected you to freak out a lot more about the whole, brain parasites thing."
"Eh, I have absolutely no control over my actions and stuff. Freaking out would do absolutely nothing, and I trust you to get me out of this just fine, so what's the use? May as well chill out."
"If you see it that w- Hands off the merchandise, missy! I swear to God, if you grope my breasts one more time..."
"But Aaaamyyyy!" Amy had no idea how, but somehow Vicky was giving her the biggest puppy dog eyes. It was hard enough to even preserve her ability to speak of her own volition at this rate.
Just then, the hospital wall exploded, a pregnant woman (still far from giving birth, but getting there, Amy reflexively assessed) jumping inside.
She took a look around, black hair swaying in the now openly flowing wind. "Uh, hey there, either of you see a kid, about this high and blonde? I was supposed to come pick up Bonesaw and stuff her into the containment system downstairs, but..."
"... She's already gone," Amy sighed, completely done with all of this. "Look, I don't care who you are or why you're here, but could you stay out of the way while I take care of all of the everything, that'd be really nice."
The woman shrugged, gesturing for the stairs down to the next floor. "I don't know about you, but there's a couple of pretty obviously bad types waiting. I'm talking integrated guns and flamethrowers at the least. I probably should go with you."
"What do you care?" Amy's mood was still falling.
"Oh, I don't know, my baby daddy did mention he's claimed you, so it'd be kind of rude to just leave you to get yourself killed."
"Wait, you know Cain?" Amy asked.
"Wait, what? Gabe knocked you up?" Vicky asked, flabbergasted.
""Wait, 'claimed'?""
Amy's eyes narrowed to slits. "One more thing to ask him questions about tomorrow." Then she thought about it. "If we're still on, anyway."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," the pregnant woman said, bringing around some abomination of a weapon to literally cut through the door at the base of the stairs. "An Endbringer attack couldn't stop him from seeing someone he likes."
"Okay," Vicky interrupted, murmuring a bit because one of those worms was slowly burrowing around to her speech center again, kind of burrowing through the calcium sheathe Amy had grown around it, "I feel the exact relationships here need to be cleared up."
Alice pondered over her options, considering which of them the fat sack of meat she was supposed to get rid of wouldn't just regenerate out of, or if it did, which adaptations would be easiest to deal with.
"Okay, Jerry, try this one next," she said, the guy in the dark red costume sighing as he held out a hand for the deceleration bomb she'd actually modeled off of him... and as a counter against him.
"It's Thunderclap in costume," Jeremy reminded her, blasting around the corner and hitting the now jet-powered, flying Crawler with the explosive before coming back around, moving just way too fast to be fought against. "And even if we use civilian names, it's Jeremy, okay?"
"Whatever you say, Jerry," she grinned, listening to the sounds of Crawler now moving very slowly, his jets sounding more like very long, drawn-out farts than anything else.
Come to think of it, that's kind of what biological jets like those were, weren't they?
"Just... Can we just go for the transmutation bombs already? Or could you at least use that soul the boss specifically gave you for moments like this?"
"No fun in that, and I'm pretty sure Oni Lee's power would be recognized later on," Alice disagreed, prepping a separate case of explosives. "Okay, so you want glass, stone or wood? And you're sure you don't wanna try out the annihilators or time stoppers?"
"And risk being caught more than usual? No thanks," Jeremy drily retorted. "Let's just try glass first, then go from there."
"Whatever you want, Jerry."
Okita tilted her head, looking at the funny puppet woman with the blonde wig.
"Really, thank you so much, I was sure I was going to die and-"
She was standing a bit too closely as she talked a bit too fast, but according to the souls of her advisor people, that was more because she just came out of a near-death experience than any attempt to position herself for an attack, so she allowed it.
However, she did wish she had some way to getting her to stop. It was getting a bit too much and she couldn't count the words properly anymore. "How can I ever thank you enough for this, I don't think I can but-"
Right, she had a trick for this. What would Gabriel do in this situation?
Ignoring the cry to stop and not do it, whatever it was, Okita grabbed the doll woman, pulling her to her chest where she made a very amusing gurgling sound, but she didn't let up and smooshed her a bit more. "It's okay."
"O-okay. Uhm..." Oh right, Okita hadn't introduced herself, had she? How embarrassing.
"My name is Okita," she said, enjoying the way the doll woman was a bit shorter than herself. It was very cuddly.
"P- My name's Sabah," she said, doing something with her head and showing she had a second head underneath!
"I see," Okita said. Idly, she wondered if she should let go or smoosh the woman's face against her breasts now. "Want to come with?"
"Yes..." Good, she wasn't opposed. Okita was totally going to keep her at this rate.
As Gabriel showed, one could never have too many friends, whether they be girlfriends or boyfriends.
Taylor paused, listening to the telepathic whisper she was receiving. It explained a lot about both the current situation and things in general.
She looked around, her bugs once more fanning out throughout the surroundings. The Siberian was a projection, and her controller had to be somewhere close.
Inside the PRT HQ, the Siberian was just moving faster and faster, jumping through the halls and walls, up and down the floors in an attempt to do... something, Taylor had no idea what. However, most of the people inside were already evacuated, something she suspected the projection's controller did not know.
A carpet of cockroaches spread throughout the streets, even as flying variants began covering any surfaces she could find.
According to what Cain was had told her, there should be... There!
William Manton was not having a good day, which was really quite the shame considering he was supposed to be killing off the ENE Wards right now instead of having his daughter wade through masses of bugs.
She couldn't feel them, but that didn't change the visceral disgust she felt for them!
Never mind, he had no idea where all the people had gone and he couldn't see where the space warping Ward had gone, so they'd best move to a different vantage position. If him or his daughter couldn't find their targets, they would just move on and reorganize with the others, he decided.
And so as he shifted gears and tried to ignore the crunching of the van's tires as the seemingly omnipresent insects were ground under them. It was possible their controller, some cape by the name of Skitter if he recalled correctly, had sensory feedback through them, though William doubted it, privately- few powers would have the kinds of range, fine control and number of affected organisms they were seeing and still allow this variety of cognitive change, though he could be wrong.
Even then, however, he would simply seem like one of the bystanders in the area moving away from the obvious wide-area power use, so he did not expect to need to worry so long as his daughter kept on demolishing the local PRT HQ.
And under all the noise, from the tires, from the bugs impacting the van's frame and the overwhelming sounds of insects rustling and clacking against each other even as they chirped and otherwise, he never did hear the full-blown team of insects digging tunnels into the corners of the vehicle's construction back out of his sight, just big enough to let exactly thirty adult female black widows infiltrate without ever being seen by him... Until it was too late.
If only he'd taken the risk of recalling his daughter, she might have been able to warn him...
"C'MON JACK, IS THAT ALL YOU GOT? YOU SHOULD'VE JUST STAYED RIGHT IN THAT BASEMENT AND STARVED TO DEATH AT THIS RATE, FOR WHAT YOU REALLY MANAGED TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE!"
"I'LL CATCH YOU AND I'LL CUT YOU INTO SO MANY PIECES THE PIGS WON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY EAT!"
"CUTE, IS THAT WHAT YOUR DADDY TOLD YOU HE'D DO?"
Brockton Bay's local news had gone from sudden and horrifying, making the city screech to a figurative halt as the realization of the Slaughterhouse Nine's presence spread throughout the populace, the butchered news anchor and, well, everyone else present notwithstanding, to quiet hope at the interruption of Jack Slash's broadcast, the cape barely even known under the name Tattletale confronting him by first playing along, then starting a fight with him on live TV.
"STOP RUNNING AWAY AND DIE ALREADY!"
"WHAT, CAN'T STAND IT WHEN PEOPLE SEE WHAT SHIT AIM YOU HAVE?" Tattletale then proceeded to showcase a very much thief-appropriate power, after all, rather than being the Thinker her wiki page took her for, as she used a pair of tinkertech weapons to great effect, what would later be called an epic duel for the ages taking place in front of the cameras.
Parries, evasions and sudden offences were being traded just as freely as insults, though many that later saw the footage would agree that Tattletale had the upper hand fairly quickly and was merely playing with Jack. "NO, I JUST WANT YOU TO DIE ALREADY!"
"WELL, THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, ISN'T IT? YOU'RE JUST AN OVERGROWN TODDLER THAT'S THROWING ONE BIG FAT TANTRUM! HOW'S IT FEEL TO BE THE WORLD'S BIGGEST LITTLE KAREN?!"
That was when a sudden stab by a now straight weapon where before was a whip pierced Jack Slash's crotch, the man howling in pain... Until he lunged, apparently completely fine.
"Nice try, but I don't feel pain."
"Of course you wouldn't, if you did you wouldn't dare to do half the shit you do."
Getting yourself from where you are, also known as somewhere over the ocean after you used all the speed and distance you could get out of your flash step, back towards Brockton Bay is thankfully fairly simple and straightforward, thanks to the teleporters back at base; you just need to ask Lea and just like that you're back somewhere you don't need to swim for the next twenty minutes while dragging Shatterbird's body with you.
Because hey, you may need it to get that stupid bounty paid out. You never know!
For now, though, time to add another body to your pile. Leaving the naked Arabic woman's corpse behind, you turn into a shadow, keeping Shatterbird's soul on supplying you with all the information she has on the S9- quite a lot, as it turns out. Apparently, she actually declared herself their official recruiter and spent a lot of time filtering possible recruits and how they'd get along with current members.
One Siberian Master will hopefully like the surprise attack once Taylor finds him!
Next off, though, you have a new asshat to deal with. Calling himself Warped, Shatterbird actually didn't like him back in her time because of how he just kind of invited himself along to the Nine, but held her tongue to try and arrange for his death at some point down the line.
Apparently he had some kind of vendetta against you, and so would either have died while pursuing it or else proven himself, in her eyes, one way or another. You don't quite agree with the logic, but don't really see any need to argue the point.
From what she knows, his power is to warp space occupied by biological matter, usually to lethal results. He also can use it to heal himself, though, and seems to be able to sense biological matter in his surroundings based on her observations.
Which is why you're currently a shadow, figure that!
Anyway, it doesn't take all too long to find a certain little bastard sitting inside one of the sunken ships making up the Boat Graveyard with your senses, particularly the one for blood, muttering to himself as he holds a pair of binoculars to his eyes and looks out a bare metal window. "Gonna find you, gonna find you, gonna find you..."
Eh, you'd feel flattered, but you'd prefer a pretty young girl after your ass instead of a middle-aged man dressed in a torn and ruined business suit. He's also got a bald spot and runny hair, is obviously used to a very different standard of living than that of North America's prime murderhobo gang... In short, quite outside of your strike zone.
Doesn't change he just kind of tried to attack you and is apparently holding a grudge over some slight, real or perceived, and so he will just have to die either way, you suppose.
You already know from experience with Shatterbird that Bonesaw has taken the liberty to... install some improvements, shall you say, on members of the S9- the same enhancements that necessitated you ruining a perfectly fine pair of boobs to eat her, in fact.
Seeing as this guy is likely to have the same stuff, from enhanced titanium bones, apparently, to subdermal armor actually too tough for your teeth to pierce, you pounce him from behind with your claws outstretched and the intent to maul him so as to open him up, so to say, to the prospect of being eaten instead of going straight for business.
Sometimes, you gotta be a bit more charming than shrugging off your clothes and letting a girl admire you, you would know. It's worked for you in your past, especially that one time in high school when you had to hide in the girls' locker room and stuff, but enough about the good times, now it's time to put some gross bald man into your mouth for a change.
The things you do for power, really.
When it happens, it happens quickly, because screw being caught out by his power unnecessarily- you'd hate to waste aura, and it does twinge a bit. A flash of movement, a screaming man turning around, a pair of clawed hands tearing into his face, clawing out his eyes (surprisingly tough and easier to pull out than pop), then just the sounds of ripping flesh and the screeching of torn metal.
In the end, though, this is literally the oldest trick in your book (of fighting and killing, that is, you have a different book for talking and flirting and stuff). He never really stood a chance before the kind of lethal predator that any given vampire is, but especially you- where your wives are tricksters and marksmen, fighters and tinkerers of all sorts, none of them have experience in the kind of determined, endless fight that is keeping a single vampire without much protection fed and growing stronger without the kind of support network you have built up by this point.
Good old days, where you didn't have a convenient mass of easy sources of blood sitting in the basement. Truly, to take is the best way to grow, especially for a vampire.
But alas, enough about the past. Not giving Twisted or however he wants to be called any time to resist, activate his power through some way other than his eyes or any such thing, you ram your claws into his throat, drawing them downwards with both arms to get him open, enough to get access to his circulatory system (much as it is fucked up and changed up by whatever was done to him) and immediately start to feed.
Avery Carmichael, once upon a time a perfectly presentable businessman and lobbyist. More a lobbyist than anything else, truth be told, but he did hold several positions in several high-profile pharmaceutical companies and similar, letting their voices be heard in congress and beyond, wherever it served their interests.
Some would call it legalized bribery, what he was doing. Avery would call them idiots and what he was doing merely making full use of the rights and liberties granted to all of them by the United States of America.
And so things went, not that his job was all too hard... He got to know the right people, talked to more of them and just like that, legislation tended to go the way it was supposed to. They couldn't just do anything they wanted, of course, that would be absurd, but as long as insulin could be sold at several hundred times the price it was in any other place in the world, something was done right.
Until it happened. Cancer was, to date, the most secure cash cow that any hospital, company or researcher could rely on- it was the holy grail of his profession, when one thought about it. So long as cancer existed, his work was being done.
So then when some asshole decided he would go and cure cancer, giving out the way to do so openly over the internet and without even profiting from it. Which was quite a bother, given that meant the whole thing could hardly even be censored, minimized and reduced to the maximum.
Not that people didn't try, but legally speaking, it was very, very hard.
And then this one bastard of a cape just didn't stop, and all of a sudden an entire industry, one Avery had built his life around, invested his life into, began to crumble.
When it happened and he stood up from where he'd fallen off his office chair (normally he would title that a work accident, but for once he had something more pressing to do), he knew what to do. What... and how.
A few dozen horribly murdered people to test his power later, Avery Carmichael had found himself the perfect instrument for his revenge, noticing the small truck with the people inside of it and an unusually big person, too, the size of a damn van himself. He wasted no time to introduce himself, having everything he needed on his person already, and joined the Slaughterhouse Nine.
They even had an opening, a most wonderful sign!
Especially so as they were going to Brockton Bay, the same place he had been slowly making his way towards after stealing and embezzling as many funds as he could, just as a last 'fuck you' to the world. But he had to go and kill Cain. It was the only way anymore.
Cain had to die. Cain had to die. Cain had to die.
Once they arrived, their current leader showed himself reluctant to engage, but with enough pressure from his gathered subordinates he eventually told them he was planning something- that the whole travel to Brockton Bay had been hasty and that they would need to carefully coordinate things once they attacked to ensure everyone got what they wanted- and Avery knew that one way or another, he would get his shot.
He would get to pull Cain into his crosshairs, and twist him apart just like he'd done with him.
Except then he got to be part of the trap, doing just like Jack had planned... and it didn't work. He had to try again, he had to twist and twist and twist and-
There was something behind h-
You do make sure to stash both the bodies in a secure place, also known as a random roof whose location you will remember for later, before you officially declare two out of nine to be taken care of by yourself.
You aren't bragging by the way, just stating the facts. And no, Sarah, Twisted, or Avery Carmichael as you are making him tell you at the moment, totally does count despite being completely unknown until today. He was acknowledged by the other members of the S9, that means he's a member, one way or the other.
Taking a quick headcount of the Slaughterhouse Nine's members, as you're fairly sure you're aware of all nine of them, you quickly realize only three are at large by this point, the rest having been eliminated by the Crypts one way or another. The Siberian, the unkillable Brute, immovable object and unstoppable force in one, has been killed through its Master, as it turned out to have been a projection all along.
You're sure a certain subset of pervs on PHO and... a lot of sites allowing for more NSFW content will be sad to hear about it, of course, but most should be appropriately happy at the news of the death of Hero's killer.
Mannequin? Dead and dismantled, awaiting analysis inside the workshop by whichever Tinker gets their hands on him first, Sherrel most likely. Crawler? Turned into a massive statue of glass, last you heard. Hatchet Face? Reduced to a dismembered corpse that Okita gnawed on for a bit until she had his soul and grew bored.
You yourself killed and ate Shatterbird and Twisted, which leaves Jack Slash, whom Sarah is insisting on killing personally so she can take his soul for her collection (aww, she's totally coming after you), Bonesaw, who apparently ran away from the hospital she cornered the Dallon sisters inside of (you would be pissed, but Nora insists they're alright) and Burnscar... Who seems to be setting about a quarter of the city on fire at this point, last you heard.
Mhm...
Throwing out a call for whoever is currently in charge of ordering around the mooks (What can you say, the Crypts have a very... fluid command structure?) to organize some firefighting efforts, you also explain to anyone that will listen (which happens to be the entirety of the telepathic network, nobody wants to miss something important enough for you to bother) that you will be making it rain to help with the inferno.
Nasty business, that. You'd hope people would have gotten out in time, but you never know... and with Burnscar having the power she does, you're pretty sure that she just got too out of control in one go and is just kind of spreading the fire around.
With any luck, your people can get the situation under control. And maybe even make it easier to off Burnscar, or else talk her down- her whole thing are the mental issues caused by her power, not the same kind of malevolence or insanity driving most of the S9.
Nevertheless, Bonesaw is still... around, somewhere. You should probably take care of that before it becomes an issue and you have to work through hordes of zombies that are, notably, not citizens of Brockton Bay for you to reign over as you shake a wine glass full of freshly pressed blood or something.
Or a giant cybertronic suffering robot make of people. Or maybe city-wide plagues or some such shit. There's a reason people don't like biotinkers, and the various horrible kinds of shit they can do to others are a big part of that.
You don't really care exactly, but it is an issue, to put it like that. And so, once a steady rain drizzles down onto Brockton Bay, with the approximate area currently on fire instead getting something more along the lines of what you'd probably see around a rainforest.
You can, in fact, do a lot with your power over the weather. That said, your actual task lies elsewhere; now if you were a Bonesaw, where would you be?
The rain now sweeping across the city, controlled by you and coming in from the west as though to wash all the dirt into the ocean (pure folly, of course- it would far more thorough pressure washing by you to actually clean Brockton Bay up noticeably) doesn't divert you from your task, of course. Few things can really noticeably do so when you go shadow to snoop around and use compass guy to find your way.
His power does tend to work much better the more of an idea you have of what you are looking for, and while Bonesaw's power is this... ill-defined idea of a dangerous biotinker by all accounts, you do have enough about her to get a reasonably good sense of direction in regards to her.
Gotta love the internet, and people willing to read through it for you on the off chance you might just get some data you needed.
When you sight her, it is inside a house. Nothing particularly stands out about it; not particularly large, nor particularly small. In fact, if you weren't led towards it by the visionary path manifesting whenever you overlay your compass, it would in no way stick out of the neighbouring buildings.
As it is, however, you can see what is unusual about it on closer inspection. Mostly from your bloodsense; one of the people inside has quite a bit of blood outside of her body, you can tell, and she, as you will assume for now, is fairly short- everything lines up for Bonesaw.
There's also a few others, most likely a random family of civilians she is about to do horrible things to. At least you don't recognize this address or anything, so it's not like you'd have a better idea just from this.
Well, come to think of it, while you're at it you may as well make use of all those undead you have lying around- particularly the ones you haven't deployed somewhere around the city yet.
Keeping a Mr. X or ten on hand could always come in handy and all. Just like right now, when an obvious bruiser would make sense to send ahead.
... In fact, you ask Lea to teleport two of the lumbering giants to your location. On a side note, re-using cellphones as teleporter beacons to actually do half of the things you have people do with them was a genius move and nobody can convince you otherwise.
"Okay, you two open the door and get inside, cover for me and defend me. Otherwise, don't attack until I tell you otherwise." Receiving grunts from them as affirmation for your orders, you gesture for the house's front door... And one of them actually fiddles with the knob a little, soon finding the door isn't actually locked.
Well, that's convenient. In several ways, really, you'd been kind of expecting it would just bust down the door instead.
Coming inside, you can't help but hear the sound of the television over in what you're assuming is the living room, the ground floor's biggest space expenditure and location of everyone you can see inside the place- everyone that's alive, at any rate, you're pretty sure at least a few corpses are lying around elsewhere. Naturally, that's your first stop.
Only, then, to be greeted by a few dozen of immaterial figures, massacred and equipped with a whole bunch of cybernetic improvements; spikes shooting out of their chests, tongues replaced by lashing vines, arms replaced by a few fleshy tentacles on one side and a retractable spear on the other.
Also completely useless against both yourself and your two bodyguards. "That's not fair," a young woman's only mildly childish voice complains from the living room as the three of your proceed towards it, heedless of what you're pretty sure is Crusader's power. "Are you spoofing the manton limit somehow?"
"You could say that," you drily remark, coming inside. The room is fairly open and warm, with cream-colored furniture currently partially covered in blood, the blonde young woman that is assuredly over eighteen with a butcher's apron over a simple dress sitting inside of it and watching TV. Next to her are two people you immediately recognize as Crusader, who got Bonesaw'd which resulted in the projections obviously following suit, and Alabaster, the completely white man currently gurgling slightly with every breath.
It's probably got something to do with his insides being replaced by, well, more machinery than he had insides at some point.
There's also a couple of mechanical spiders scuttling around the room, though you wouldn't be surprised if they incorporated, like, toddler brains or something.
"Oh, you brought your own toys for the party," Bonesaw says, chuckling to herself. Her attention is still on the screen, where Sarah is currently sticking her rapier through Jack Slash's dick. "... Are they alive? They don't look like they are."
"They very much aren't, no." You come inside, mentally ordering your Mr. Xs to remain by the door. "So, you want to wait until they're done or should we start things over here already? I'm fine with either."
Bonesaw scrunches up her nose. "Uncle Jack is going to win either way."
"Oh yeah? Because I don't think he will," you say, deciding to approach her. She hasn't flipped out and sent anything to attack you yet, which you'll take as a good sign for the time being.
"Mister Jack always wins," she says distractedly, the little duel between Sarah and him proceeding.
"Why not make a bet, then?" Now you have her attention, the girl's eyes swivelling around together with her head to focus on you. "If he loses, you have to do any one thing I ask."
"... And if he wins?"
"Well, the opposite seems fair, doesn't it?" You take a seat on the couch next to her, not too close but still noticeably next to her. "Any one thing you ask."
Bonesaw shrugs. "If you can make it more difficult not to just take it, sure." At a snap of her fingers, the creatures filling the room start moving towards you... Only for you to demolish them.
Crusader's ghosts are summarily ignored as you tear off his head and crush his brain, just to get rid of them and because you do not approve of tentacles directed at you. The spider robots require a bit more stomping and clawing, but you're actually pretty strong, physically, and so they don't stand much of a chance, either.
Alabaster, on the other hand, is kind of a pain. "So, did you disable his power somehow, add the tinkertech enhancements and then let it commence?"
"I did! It was very fiddly, and I needed Sibby to hold him down for a few repetitions of his resets, but he's very useful now," Bonesaw giggles. "Even if something breaks, his power just resets it along with the rest of him."
As you can feel right now, mostly due to the spikes running throughout his body as he keeps trying to clobber you with them. Your aura protects you, but you aren't quite sure how to kill him, really.
In the end, you just have your undead minions hold him in place for you as your claws pierce his skull and mash up his brain. You aren't a specialized researcher or something, but at a bet, getting rid of his corona should stop his power- which it does.
Bonesaw is pouting. "Aww, you didn't even deal with the poison! So, how do these two work?"
"It's a power thing," you wave her off, settling in to watch and thinking at Sarah to tell her to make sure that Jack's brain is destroyed whenever she's done. "I basically took a bit of biomatter, transmuted it into the necessary materials and just fused the whole thing together, then I animate the end result. I would ask how yours work, but we all know how tinkertech can be," you finish off grumpily.
You think you're getting the hang of how to interact with her, after all. And now that the air is cleared, figuratively, and Sarah is starting to deliberately score hits all over Jack Slash's body...
"So how do you work?" She asks, drawing you from your thoughts. "There's something weird about how you move, but I don't know what."
"Oh? Would you like to see a little more of me?" You smile at her teasingly. Now you're talking.
"Hmpf, when I win the bet, I'll just dissect you and find out," she haughtily declares, playing a little with her fingers.
"If, not when. And I sincerely doubt Jack will be alive for much longer." You lean back, gesturing for the screen. "The girl about to end him is my sister, and let me tell you, once she gets going, nobody and nothing will be left, Jack Slash or no."
Bonesaw is quiet for a long moment, but eventually puffs up her cheeks, getting up and trotting over towards you. Wordlessly, she turns her back to you and squarely sits down on your lap.
"This eager for some close contact?" You whisper, amused. This is turning out to be a lot easier than you'd expected.
She just crosses her arms and looks forwards, even as you pull an arm around her midsection.
"Because I do have my own plans for when I win that bet," you continue, pulling her closer towards you even as you coordinate with Sarah a little. "And I figure you may need a new... Well, everything, pretty soon. The Slaughterhouse is being foreclosed, you see; only three members are left right now, and Jack won't be around much longer."
"I don't believe you," Bonesaw says, wiggling a little on your lap. "Uncle Jack always makes sure that-"
"He isn't making sure of anything right now," you interrupt her, pointing at the guy in question losing at arm. Both him and Sarah are still screaming at each other. "And once he's gone? You're mine."
You growl that last bit, and she goes conspicuously still in response. If you didn't know better, you would guess that she might just be affected by your usual charm.
You don't understand it yourself- you would never feel anything for the man known as Gabriel Livsey if he approached you like you do the world in general. Then again, Sarah told you you're incredibly charming and handsome both, and her word is both absolute law and incontestable truth as far as you're concerned.
When Jack Slash dies, he doesn't go quietly. He screams and curses, throwing a tantrum about how he hates the world and its unfairness and all those things you'd imagine some people would waste their last words about.
Sarah just tells him to shut up and deal with it before latching onto one of the many by now bleeding wounds all over his body, clearly displaying her teeth- clearly inherited from yourself, they just just like your own.
"That's seven down," you idly note. "Shame I only got two myself, but it can't be helped, I guess."
"... Who else is left?"
"Only you and Burnscar, and that's mostly because she set too much fires and I'm waiting for those to be taken care of before I have a talk with her," you say, hands roaming over her taut stomach even with her clothes in the way.
"How did you defeat Sibby?" She asks, not moving to push you off or anything.
"Projection, had Skitter target the controller, obviously." You look down at her, the difference in height between you and her large enough you can get a good look of her blank face. "Would you like me to summarize how all of them died?"
"No, that's alright." Bonesaw's voice still remains eerily quiet and even, but you aren't too worried- you have a good feeling about this. "Sibby was just kind of the family pet, so I'm a little sad about her."
On the television, Sarah completes the act of the newscaster, announcing the end of the Slaughterhouse Nine at the hands of the Lord Street Crypts and the minimal casualties suffered throughout the whole thing before ending the broadcast by shooting out the cameras one by one.
"I see."
Riley Grace Davis didn't really know what to feel. Maybe the footage shown on TV was fake? Or maybe it had been a decoy, and Mister Jack would jump out at any moment and-
"Too bad about that, but I guess your new family will just have to make up for it," Cain drawled, his fingers slipping down to play with the hem of her dress. "Unless you don't want to? It would be rather awkward at this point."
She leaned back, trying to feel the man's heartbeat and coming up empty. It was strange, a mystery she had noticed when she'd watched the freely distributed streams and been intrigued by ever since, but right now she didn't really have the energy to be excited about finding out more.
Mist- Jack was dead. Riley had been going along with him for so long it was hard to imagine a life where his presence was not ever-present around her, telling her how to go about things and what kind of art to make of people.
"It's alright," she said without even thinking about her, her thoughts remaining blank. "If it happened, it happened."
"Mhm," Cain made in response, pulling her dress up her legs and over her waist. He was wiggling it a bit to make it go under her butt, but he did it without much trouble. Riley blinked. "If you don't mind, good."
He tugged on her dress, and she raised her arms, letting him take it off of her entirely. Riley tilted her head. "Why are you stripping me?"
"Because I want to have my way with you. Do the hanky panky. Have sex." Cain shrugged, his hands touching her chest. "Unless you don't want me to, it's your choice."
Riley took a moment to monitor her brain's contents. Some endorphines, some other miscellaneous hormones... None of them affected her, but she did build in a way to see if her brain chemistry was changing, as Mister Jack had told her to do with a simplified version for the other members of the Nine.
None of them were indicative of a negative response, though some of them looked like the basic fight or flight response she had read about in some journal years ago.
Nothing to make her refuse, though. Just one thing. "I just want to be a good girl."
"Then I'll let you be the very best girl," Cain whispered, feeling her body and not finding any of the changes she had made. Because she was good at what she did.
She felt something flutter inside her belly, but Riley didn't know what. It couldn't have been the bio-reactor.
"That's good," she said, and when the man on whose lap she was sitting reached for her panties, she just hopped up a little so he could remove them. Riley knew about sex of course, she'd seen enough naked people and stuff to figure out what genitalia were for, but she'd never had anything like it, because yuck.
But M- Jack was gone, and she didn't dislike Cain. He seemed like he would be fun. He wouldn't be a replacement (nobody could ever replace her family no matter how much she tried she tried she tried sh- Calming drugs were released inside her brain), but he would be... A new start. Yep.
And if doing this was part of it, she would do it. Not because he had some very nice muscles and limb that she liked.
Now naked except for her socks and shoes, Riley twitched when she felt something big and hard press against her butt. She knew what this was, and had even seen its kind erect before. All the same, she had never touched one despite being over twnety years old, and it felt very, very big.
She wiggled her hips a little to get a more accurate idea of its dimensions, but she was sure she was correct. "That is a very big penis."
"I've been told that before," Cain remarked, reaching around between her thighs to open his pants' zipper and free the fleshy appendage, jutting out between her legs with its size. It was fully erect, and Riley had to pull herself out of the ideas that looking at it gave her- it would make for a very funny biological gun, she thought.
Cain's touch went for her vagina, though, and she froze at the amount of hormones flooding at her bloodstream again. It took her a moment to filter them out when it became apparent they were not any attempt at mastering her, and by then he was already stroking her down there and putting a finger inside and... Doing sex stuff.
It felt good. Riley clenched her legs shut, the burning warm pillar of flesh now trapped between them just firing even more nerves. "Are you doing something with your reactions?" Cain asked.
"I am," she admitted, not seeing any reason not to.
"Can you turn it off?" The question caught her off guard, but it was gentle and relaxed, so she just nodded. "Do it."
Riley did, and next thing she knew she was shivering and moaning, one hand clutching Cain's wrist as his fingers burrowed into her, the other gripping his penis tightly.
"Thought so," a grinning mouth whispered, despite being invisible under the shadows. "You like it."
"A lot," Riley mouthed, pulling every part of him she could grasp towards herself-
Cain did something inside her, and she shouted in surprise, and a lot of fluids built up inside her vagina, her inner walls clamping down. A part of her was objectively observing this even as the rest of her was writhing in sudden pleasure, unable to think much.
"Good girl." Then, he just withdrew, his hands going elsewhere on her body. Riley was lifted up a bit, feeling the hard core under soft flesh that was Cain's penis slide over her skin until it pointed right at her entrance.
She was breathing very loudly, unable to keep herself still... And then she plummeted what felt like twenty floors of height, taking the penis inside herself in one go.
Riley heard screaming. It might have been hers, but she wasn't sure.
When it stopped, she was speared on Cain's penis, held immobile by his strong arms as she hung over his lap. "You good?"
"... I'm good," she brought out, putting out a hand that he took. This felt... right. Maybe even good.
He took her hand into his, fingers entwining. "You know, normally only my sister wants to do this while we're having sex," he joked, but Riley perked up.
"Then I'm your sister now," she decided, slowly regaining her capacity to breathe normally. This was actually pretty nice!
"I'll have you know any sister of mine has to endure a lot of cuddles on a regular basis. I'm not sure your body can take it."
He bounced her on his lap, punching the air right out of her lungs again in an automatic reaction that had her wish for her body control to be turned back on, but she couldn't concentrate enough to do it, instead just holding tighter onto his hand.
"Then again, only one way to find out if you can! Try to keep up, Bonesaw."
This was highly unfair and Riley was going to complain later. For now, though... "Call me Riley."
"Then call me Gabriel," he replied, the darkness covering his face disappearing into thin air so he could kiss her cheek unimpeded.
Riley waggled her legs as she moved up and down, every bit of her insides and then some being worked over by his big fat adult penis. She was already filled with ideas- internal nubs and nerve bundles, oily fluids that would just make it better for everyone involved, maybe even small tentacles to-
Then another orgasm tore through her, and she saw only white for a bit. And again. And again.
She was going to lodge an official complaint to... To big brother Gabriel! Just... Later. Much later, if she had anything to say about how long they would be coupling.
Cherie leaned back in her recliner, watching as something random and most likely entirely banal was happening on the screen somewhere towards the front of the room.
In truth, she was mostly just listening out with her brain, because that was a thing now. People were talking a lot, and a lot of it was done on 'all frequencies', so to say, which was why she knew the Slaughterhouse Nine was pretty much done for by this point.
She fucking made the right choice, after all. Saw the writing on the wall and shit. Still didn't stop her from doing this one in person, though.
"Hey, Jean-Paul, you're a dick."
"I know." Her brother continued playing his stupid video game. "You gonna do Anything else today than tell me every five minutes?"
"No." She damn earned herself that much. "Unless Cain comes around and screws me on the pot, I am not moving a single toe."
"Eh, suit yourself."
Über scrolled through the feed, speed-reading the thing his power was focused upon. Next to him, Leet was doing much the same, just with a quickly slapped together device instead that was supposed to create and scan recordings for particular words, actions and stuff like that.
"I can't fucking believe it," he said, coming to the conclusions that it was really happening. "They're actually all dead or disappeared."
Leet raised both hands, rapidly looking around their base. "Look, the S9 are done for, but at least we're still safe in here. And hey, bright side, we, uh, apparently don't merit overkill?"
"Overkill like any single one of their capes being sent after us, you mean."
"Let's just wait until it's confirmed by the PRT?"
"Not like we can do much else," Über sighed, leaning back and grabbing for the chicken bucket replicator. "And so long as those psychos are dead, the other psychos won't get riled up and accidentally stumble onto us, will they?"
"Not with the Reality Hacker working as it has been," his partner in crime said. "It's actually suspicious at this poin-"
He was cut off by sparks and the sounds of howling winds makings its way through the apartment they had torn out of reality and replanted into a slightly divergent dimension.
He wasn't the Tinker between the two of them, but he trusted Leet to only do something dumb if it would be epic. "Should probably look into fixing that."
"Yeah, yeah..."
The Shard scowled, or did the equivalent of what its kind could and would do when in question. It did not like its host, but it refused to fall into a trap set by its kind.
It did not know what, exactly, happened to shards like the [Negotiator, the [Kineticist] or, it seemed, even the [Queen Administrator, but they were behaving oddly. However, it would not be fooled, not at all!
Its host needed to be kept away from the anomalous activity recorded on its sensors, and if that meant it had to keep it alive for longer than absolutely necessary, then so be it. The device used to hide it and its co-host would need to continue functioning until such a time any of the central nodes responded to its missives or quries.
Until then, ugh, it would need to provide them with sustenance and a hiding place. If it could feel emotions, it would be verily disgruntled at this fact.
As it was, however, it was simply following its directives, as it always did. As it always had done.
Daniel Hebert was, to say it in a word, worried. He'd been at the office when the news came, much like he was every day ever since the... thing, had happened, and needed to stay where he was- it was far too dangerous to move through the city as it was.
That didn't keep him from keeping track of things, and if any indication of anything happening near his house was to be found, he would screw it, grab his shotgun and get to his car faster than a man could see.
Until then, he just called home, hoping Taylor was safe. She should be back from school already, or maybe she had found shelter somewhere, but he had to keep trying anyways.
Danny just prayed she would be fine.
"... And here's a room for you to stay in for the time being. Don't worry, if you need the fire too much, you can just ask someone and they'll have things arranged so you can just go somewhere where it won't hurt anyone else."
Burnscar, in the end, turned out to be pretty easily persuaded to come along with you. Like, really easily. You just told her that she would be really, really sad once she turned back to normal and that she would just fear and hate herself more over it if she didn't stop.
"Is that... really okay?" Burnscar herself is far from the mildly imposing pyrokinetic you talked down earlier. Now you have a young woman obviously in it beyond her depth and with an air of resigned acceptance for everything in front of you instead of, well...
That.
"No need to worry, we take employee benefits and special needs like that very seriously here with the Crypts," you cheerily announce, giving her a polite smile you actually mean.
"Okay..." Seriously, your blessings upon capes that just need to establish their mental equilibrium through setting things on fire and be held back from overdoing it. It's much more like managing a drug addict than, you know, how normal capes are supposed to be.
And her poison of choice is free of charge, even!
"Anyway, make yourself at home for a bit, take a little time, someone will be along to make sure you're doing well later." And with that, you have officially either murdered or recruited the entirety of the Slaughterhouse Nine, with Bonesaw asleep and naked over in your bed.
Some good work you've done, really. Now all you need to do is to wait for the fires to die down and take care of the rest... Or, more realistically, stall things out while you wait to jump to another dimension again.
Thralling your two new capes doesn't take all too long, thankfully, and thanks to Sarah and Kate, of all people, taking to your new 'sister' eagerly enough, Riley is looking much more presentable than she probably has in years, with newly brushed hair, a freshly created dress and a little bow on top, too.
(IMAGE DELETED)
"Is this really alright...?" She asks as she comes into the room you set aside for this. "We... I did a lot of things that would be... You know?"
"Of course, pretty much every cape in the Crypts is a monster in some way," you say light-heartedly. "Or, well not literally everyone, but enough to be a significant subset, at least."
"So how does this work?" Burnscar, on the other hand, still seems to be in her apathetic phase and all.
"Oh, it's pretty simple, you just drink some of my blood and I will take care of the rest. I've done this hundreds of times by this point, so you don't need to worry about anything going wrong at all!"
As is somewhat customary for you when thralling people, you naturally go out of your way to actually talk to the people you're feeding your fluids, both to actually have something to do and to get this particular's power effects kickstarted in the easiest and most direct manner possible.
Which is how, after just a bit of small talk that you need to carry with both of your interlocutors being just this side of monumentally awkward, a couple of the big questions are coming in. Such as, including, but not limited to, your exact family situation, something Riley in particular is finding herself greatly interested in.
"So, if I'm your little sister now, then how about Sarah?" She asks, gulping down a bit of blood.
"She's my other little sister and your big sister, of course," you explain, gesturing idly. "Same as all my other wives, I'd say. If you ever need anything, just ask one of them. Except maybe Okita. Or her in particular, depending."
Momentarily distracted by the thoughts of Okita and Riley in the same room and the complete catastrophe that would inevitably follow, you're caught off guard when Burnscar steps in. "Your other wives? So... You're doing your sister?"
"Yup," you shrug. "She was really insistent about it, too."
"Huh."
"I see." Riley on the other hand seems to actually be happy about this revelation. "Are there any parents?"
"Nope. Or rather, we have biological originators, but they aren't parents, don't worry about it," you wave her off. "Then again, I'm gonna be a dad pretty soon, three of my wives are pregnant right now, so there's a few mommies, too."
"Ooh, can I see them later? I want to see if pregnancies by whatever you are differ from the human norm. And I want to ask if I can touch the tummies."
"You can ask at least, no problem," you smile at her. "Oh, and Burnscar, would you get the door really quick? I asked Ethan to get us some cake and cookies earlier."
"Sure. And actually, just call me Mimi, I guess." While she's up and distracted, you pat your lap for Riley, quietly opening your zipper with a wry smile. She immediately gets the idea and happily climbs onto your lap, adjusting her dress so she can tease your bared cock along her slit for a long moment while it hides the action.
By the time Mimi is back, carrying a big plate filled to the brim with baked goods, you're buried halfway in Riley's snatch, the girl doing her thing to keep from showing any outward signs of what's going on. "Ooh, cookies!"
"So..." Setting her load down, Mimi tilts her head at you. "You doing every member of your family you actually like?"
"Kind of? It's not like it's a default thing, I just comprehensively love them and they comprehensibly love me back," you think aloud. "Why, you interested?"
Mimi's cheeks redden a little as she looks away with a quick glance at Riley, who is smiling innocently. "Maybe later..."
Heh, you still got it. For now, though, you just lean back to let Riley's insides squeeze down around you. "Suit yourself. So, I always kind of wondered, how is it like as a member of the S9? Like, how did you even transport Crawler around without sticking out like a sore thumb?"
"A trailer and a lot of pushing," Riley grumpily remarks. "He really could've stood to slim down a little. What happened to him, actually?"
"Oh, last I heard he was turned to glass wholesale, Alice is still bragging about it..."
Honestly, all of this S9 business is being blown out of proportion right now, but if it serves your interests to make a show out of things, then so it shall simply be, you suppose.
It is with this in mind that you begin organizing things. For starters, you're taking along the people that at least arguably killed the Slaughterhouse Nine, and only one for each; otherwise, you would feel the need to take along each of the nearly wild dogs that helped with Okita's kill, and that would be way too much chaos and confusion.
Even if it would be hilarious.
That leaves you with yourself, Sarah, Kate, Alice, Okita and Taylor. Which isn't the big issue, honestly. No, that starts with the bodies.
You did keep Shatterbird and Twisted's bodies more or less in one piece, and retrieving them is as easy as sensing someone over for pickup and teleporting them back together with those. Mannequin is, well, there, though he's also reduced to so many pieces you don't even want to bother counting after your tinkers were through with him.
Jack Slash's body was mostly brought along by Sarah, though she only bothered with the torso, leaving his limbs at the TV station they fought in. No big loss, you still do have what you need. You can't really bring Crawler without breaking him out of where the PRT has already set up a barricade in all directions, but on the other hand he's also very demonstrably taken out of action, so you don't see the need to interfere on that one.
Taylor did end up breaking into that van and taking along the corpse of the Siberian's controller, a man who turned out to have a certain dove tattoo and an uncanny resemblance to one Doctor William Manton... Who purportedly disappeared quite a while ago. Well, the timelines match up and all, and just like that there go your theories on him being disappeared by some shady government organization.
Now, as for Hatchet Face... Okita kind of just left him where she killed him. It's your fault, really, you never thought to specify she should keep it, and she was kind of occupied with Parian, the doll-themed cape currently unconscious after she, and you quote, 'Did the Gabriel thing to do'.
In other news, you're oddly proud.
Last you know, the body should be in PRT custody at the moment. It hopefully won't be too big of an issue, but if it gets down to it, you can always just play the karen until you get what you want.
Now, as for Bonesaw and Burnscar...
... Eh, you'll just pretend they're dead. Not that that doesn't make sense; you have disintegration weapons and cause to suspect Bonesaw could be dangerous if just killed, whether by releasing a whole host of last 'fuck you's in terms of tinker viruses and shit or by turning out to have transplanted her brain into her stomach and using her intestines to pump blood instead so she could survive decapitation.
As for Burnscar, it is completely possible her power stopped protecting her from fire and heat the moment she died or something. You'll just have to keep things vague enough while letting the people you'll talk to come to the conclusions you want them to, you've done this a million times by this point.
"Everyone ready?" Looking around your gathered mooks and minions, you receive nods and other signs of affirmation, Kate in particular just grinning and shifting her weapon into assault rifle mode. "Good, let's go."
Emily Piggot, Director PRT ENE, was, in a word, unhappy.
Actually, scratch that, she was absolutely and completely pissed at the moment. Though this was probably owed to the fact she was simply using anger as a way to push through the overall situation she had found Brockton Bay's PRT in.
Sure, it could be worse. But if she had a choice in the matter, it would be better, significantly so.
47 dead, mostly paper pushers and five of the agents that tried to distract the unstoppable serial killer, to buy time for the rest of her people to evacuate. All of them would receive the highest honors, 47 medals to be handed out posthumously and years of financial support paid out to any family they had.
She wasn't going to have it any other way, and if anyone complained she would forever be able to point at the Siberian's end as the reason. They didn't just get killed, they sacrificed themselves to buy time for her destruction.
... Now if only someone figured out exactly HOW it happened, but while the Siberian entered the PRT HQ, she didn't leave it, and with numerous other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine dead, she was going to say that was because it got killed. Somehow.
In the meantime, the PRT had to reorganize in the temporary backup HQ, which was thankfully a thing. While a random office complex and a far cry from the reinforced structure they'd been using to date, it was better than not having had another location up their sleeves.
Which brought her to the second issue she was dealing with. The Protectorate, specifically the Protectorate ENE, and the fact that no adult hero was present when the S9 attacked. Of course, this was not actually how it happened; the Rig had been... Sabotaged. To say the least.
If she were to be honest, Emily would say that her nightmares were manifest upon that place, with the forcefield generator downed and scores of monstrous creatures released all over it to slow down and harry the heroes who, coincidentally, had been gathered for a meeting on the occasion, but the public was not going to see that.
To the people, it all looked like the Lord Street Crypts had been single-handedly fighting and defeating the most stubbornly surviving band of serial mass murderers in the US. Which, credit where it was due, was mostly how it happened- heck, Cain's very own hatchet men had interfered with the Siberian to let her people escape, not to mention the one with the sword smacking Hatchet Face down like the angry toddler the oversized Brute had been.
On another note, Skitter's MO was being updated- not a single casualty was noted in this appearance, making for an unusual showing of the insect-based cape. Perhaps they were actually capable of exercising restraint, after all.
The deaths of the confirmed S9 casualties were, however, already spreading on the internet in general. Crawler had been turned into a glass statue after a running battle, pictures of the result already on PHO, Hatchet Face's spectacularly brutal takedown, Jack Slash's death on live TV, the list went on.
Not all were verified or had even been sighted, but fighting had, by all accounts, been going on ever since the Slaughterhouse started its attack only to meet prepared Crypt capes going after them wherever they showed themselves.
Speaking of Emily's constant headache... "Ma'am, uh, Cain is there, he has a bunch of bodies he wanted to verify for bounties? And to claim the kills of all nine Slaughterhouse Nine members?"
... She wasn't even going to mention only eight were known so far. "Just... do the usual bounty processing. Follow the handbook, it isn't that hard."
"He's also claiming that Bonesaw and Burnscar's bodies couldn't be retrieved after what was done to them?"
"Just give him the money and tell him to go away," Emily said, entirely unwilling to bother at this point. "The Nine are down to zero, we can have a party later. Now get back to work."
You'd honestly expected this to take a bit longer, but as it turns out, the PRT apparently just wants you to take the money posted on the S9 when you come with all the people proven to be deserving of a bounty and then some, showing off the bodies you brought along.
Sadly, getting the money paid out in bags with dollar signs on them isn't possible when you inquire, and so you just have them put it all into a bank account made specifically for that. Getting the details and everything you need to actually access your newfound wealth inside a sealed envelope, you have pretty much everything you want.
And it's, uh, not an inconsiderable sum of money you're talking about. The way that bounties for capes with kill orders specifically work is that, once someone has been declared de facto outlaw and their death sentence declared, it becomes legal to post bounties on them, often through the PRT itself.
The organization then, well, organizes them, and takes responsibility for paying them out upon confirmation of the cape's death. It's all got a very 'Wild West' feeling to it, but hey, you certainly aren't complaining.
It also means that, through enough people posting bounties and adding to them over time, quite a bit of money can come together as incentives to kill particularly vile capes the public wants gone, donated from grieving family members, celebrities pulling PR stunts, general donations given from the public and so on and so forth- and some of the Slaughterhouse Niners you killed over the past day have been murdering people left and right for decades.
Looking at you, Jack Slash.
In short, you have a lot of disposable funds all of a sudden. You're... Probably not the richest man on Earth Bet, after this, but the cash you have access to is... quite a lot, even if it wasn't possible to get it as physical currency.
A number in the billions will do that. Two digits into them, in fact.
Technically, of course, everyone that killed a member of the S9 is entitled to their specific share of the accumulated bounty money, but, well, while you did have fun asking Taylor if she wanted a couple billion dollars for her college funds, you all decided to pool the funds and use them in the interest of the gang as a whole.
Or, as Okita put it, some just "Don't care."
Surpisingly enough, by the way, you're sitting at one of the highest bounties yourself just from killing Shatterbird; Jack Slash was at this longer, but she was the big beatstick that brought small towns and the occasional city to their knees.
She technically killed the most people, too, just due to the sheer reach and effect of her power when used with the effect she is kind of named for.
All in all, these guys' deaths are actually kind of a windfall. Not every day you get a band of golden geese walk into your kitchen, after all.
Speaking of, you also did briefly consider just giving the bounties of the surviving S9 members to them, but... Well, not to put too fine of a point on it, but you do want them to be dependant on you in as many ways as viable, so you don't actually voice this at any point.
Now then, how to actually use that money...
Eh, you'll just leave it to Sarah. And maybe ask her to throw a couple millions at Brockton Bay's education system; while it is somewhat entertaining to watch from the outside, you are what's amounting to a dictator in the process of taking over a fiefdom, of sorts, and investing into schools is one of those things that literally can't go wrong when you're taking over a place and are guaranteed to live long enough to benefit from a smarter populace seeing you in a positive light.
It's also on your list of things to do at some point if you ever take over a part of Africa, in fact. It was originally just a stupid little thought experiment, but now that you're in position to do it... Well, why not?
Somewhat more pressingly, however, it turns out that your ADAM-based enhancements actually kept changing in unexpected ways over the time you have been using them, which kind of distracted you from the question of what to use this windfall of money for once you discover it- mostly through your science team actually keeping an eye on your physical condition and repeatedly throwing ADAM into various substances inside the lab inside your inner world and realizing something was happening.
You did order them to report anything potentially useful or dangerous, and this counted as both... So now you're fairly sure you could actually add more semi-genetic complexity to the mess that is your body without its nature immediately undoing the changes.
In other words, you should be able to support at least another plasmid, as well one more tonic, if you got Nolac's half-audible mumbling right. Which, hey, progress! Incidentally, literally all your other vampires also showed that exact same change upon samples being viewed through a microscope, which is suspicious to say the least. Then again, you always did suspect the stuff to be somehow eldritch in the first place, considering the kind of reality warping it can literally do.
It could have something to do with how you took the samples, by extracting fluids from them using your mouth, but hey, neither your sister nor any of your other wives complained, so you'll take what you can get.
Sudden revelations and the like aside, as well as your quick rush to your manufactory specifically laden with ADAM for the exclusive use of the stuff (you didn't really want to spread it around to every one of the things, considering how many there are lying around and with the way ADAM is... what it is), you still did have other plans for tonight than to linger on them.
So once you have a shiny new plasmid and tonic combining with your already preexisting loadout, you get right to work, having already adjusted the timer earlier, and making sure everything is in place.
A quick mustache applied to your already shadowed face, tweed suit thrown on, and just like that you're ready to go. "Hello, 'dear' viewers. Welcome to Abel's Sketching Stream. I am sure you do not care about the pleasantries, being... Who you all are, so let's get right to it, shall we?"
As you put everything into place and start the poll to let your viewers decide what the theme of your drawings shall be tonight, the comments immediately launch into a massive flood, though you were expecting that. "Yes, yes, I was originally planning to attend to this... Stream, earlier in the day, but that little kerfluffle all over the city caused me to be delayed a fair bit. Some people, really." You shake your head. "But alas, let us not dawdle on those kinds of ruffians, time to do your dirty business- I figure I am at the very least doing society a favour, keeping you degenerates focused on drawings instead of real people. Better for the gene pool, that way."
"And once more, the internet proves humankind's inability to come up with new ideas. Never change, you... Let's just say 'people', for the sake of brevity," you say. The poll came back with calls to draw another version of Vista, after that last barely veiled attempt to get the girl in a cow girl outfit.
Not that you really disagree on principle, mind you; and with your latest victories, not to mention actually talking to her in person, you don't really see any reason not to go for it.
Doesn't mean you won't do it carefully. "Now, do keep in mind that this stream does not, in fact, have anything to do with actual people in any way, shape or form. Thus, no matter how much you uninspired buffoons ask about capes to be drawn naked, my answer will be and remain 'no'."
While you speak, you take some of your yellow-beige paper, figuring it'll do for some fitting background, and begin sketching. "Therefore, let us begin with this completely anonymous piece of livestock. Really, I said this before, but this dismaying tendency to try and reduce members of your own species to such really is one you should seek a professional about, if it has gripped you, too."
Naturally, you aren't actually drawing Missy Biron, that much goes without saying. At most you simply... Take some inspiration from how she looks, but really, that's all. More importantly, time to do just as she did during your first encounter and draw all the attention to her ass.
Dark blonde hair in a twintail, big blue eyes with little white hearts for pupils, standing upright and shown from the back as she very obviously strips off her cow print bikini.
Add a tag as her choice of hair ornament and a cow tail plug stuffed into her undersized bottoms, and you have exactly what you want- and perhaps your mix of ranting, berating the viewers and talking about why people should really reconsider their life choices is entertaining, too, while you're at it.
Either way, this came out rather well. "There, take a good look before it is banished to the abyss of my drawers," you announce. Of course, you throwing the picture into your desk doesn't mean you can't take it out again later, but it is the thought that counts. "And next..."
You nearly do a double take. Nearly. "After Cain, you want Lilith, too? You shameless perverts, keep in mind I take no pleasure in revealing my 'siblings' like this. All the same, for all that she appears gentle and reserved, Lilith is far from as chaste as she makes herself out to be. Woman could stand to wear clothes on a more permanent basis when at home."
All technically true. You really do tend to just not wear clothes when you shift genders, unless actually going out around other people that aren't your wives.
"So let us talk about Lilith." And you do, though most of it is just some background for the role you've begun playing when turning female. It's not particularly out there, by your standards, but you do feel it is important to have a clear idea of these things for later.
That's just how method acting works, really. And it isn't long, too, when you finish drawing out and coloring what you saw in a mirror, once.
"She really does think too highly of herself, for all that she succeeds at everything she does," you confide in the audience.
"And finally, your very much challenged brains have collectively come up with a mildly novel idea," you proclaim at seeing the third and likely last theme of this stream. "Not extremely so, but there is only so much one can expect from you."
The poll's winner is literally just 'naked animal girls'. Luckily for the people writing these things, you immediately have an idea, though, so you'll just go on ahead and run with it.
First off, a modern environment. "Most people simply do not appreciate all these modern conveniences, but I'd like to believe at least some of us enjoy the virtues of all-round climate control."
You certainly do, even now that you are mostly invulnerable to any environments that wouldn't already be inimical to human life in the first place- you lived most of your childhood unable to do much about the cold aside from curling up into a ball under some heavy bedcovers, or about the heat aside from wearing thin clothes and pretending you enjoyed it.
Your parents somehow found a way to only have an AC in 'their' part of the house, or perhaps they just never turned it on anywhere but the areas they were most in- and therefore the ones you avoided on principle. Good times.
In the sense that their sudden and painful deaths will be very good indeed.
"Do excuse me if not all of these end up having obvious signs, but do rest assured," you grin into the camera under your shadow, "all of these women are animals."
Indubitably so. After all, humans are just animals themselves.
Finishing things off, and making sure the condom on the desk looks just right (you do so rarely dealt with these ever since rising from the grave, after all), you tap the desk with the back of your pen. "And with this, I assume I am released from the torment that is all of you. Do not come back, I am not planning to stream again, in fact feel ashamed about even watching this one. Goodbye."
Missy had fought long and hard. After what'd happened over the past day, she bloody well earned it. The Siberian, getting out, getting everyone else she still could out. Hearing about the fighting. Armsmaster, with what'd looked like half his face missing, no matter what everyone was saying. Assault, Battery. The latter would never walk again without Panacea's intervention in the coming days.
Growing back a leg would take some time, even with her power. She'd need to eat a lot and see her regularly, it seemed like.
So yes, Missy Biron was exhausted, aggrieved, the PRT people were still mostly in emergency counseling after everything that'd happened to them but at least alive and she had absolutely no energy left to deal with her parents' bullshit.
So when they'd started an argument the moment they saw her, her mom accusing dad for being the reason she was so 'ill-behaved' and 'moody', she'd just sat down at the home computer, put a mile or two between herself and the rest of the house and participated in the NSFW stream Cain was doing.
If he did it after dealing with the Slaughterhouse, she was just going to be happy to have something to take her mind off of things. And if the reason she managed to convince people to vote for the option she wanted was because she got them to agree that Vista was a big damn hero that deserved to be perved on just as any other, all the better.
Not even that stupid ass HealingHand42 could stop her, that was how much she didn't care at this point. And hey, she really would look that juicy in that outfit, she thought.
Maybe she should look into getting a buttplug like that. She'd been the next best excuse to prominent long enough to pick up on a fair bit of stuff like that, any heroine did at some point she was pretty sure. Any amount of the more disgusting fans would do that.
"Healing Hand No Jutsu! Art of the 168 Accounts!"
Amy grinned. She'd gotten the best of them in the end, after all. It just took a bit of momentum for the bandwagons to become filled. And if she only dreamt of Lilith's ripe, juicy form for the rest of her life, it would be a good thing.
"Hey Ames," her sister tore her out of her thoughts, still not damn knocking like she'd told her a hundred times by this point, "Crystal's there and wanted to see you. Oh, am I interrupting something?"
Amy glared at Vicky's smug grin, very well aware she wasn't wearing pants nor panties at the moment. "One of these days, I am going to do something about this," she said despite the tingles alighting in her loins at Vicky seeing her like this. "And it will be either horrible or amazing."
"Aww, love you too, sis," Vicky smiled teasingly, completely missing the danger she was in right that moment. "Seriously though, you doing okay?"
"I'm just fine, just going to be swamped with work from the PRT for a few days," she waved her off. "Now unless you want me to paralyze you from the neck down and use you for your tongue only until I'm done?"
"Damn, Amy," Vicky shook her head. She'd never have thought an idle comment like she'd made at the hospital against that little monster would've stuck with her like that, but-
Bad Amy. Bad. Down.
"Anyway, come see me when you're done with Crystal. I still wanna know what the two of you do when you're all alone... For an hour..."
Dammit, now she was giving her even more ideas. "Out, Vicky. Begone thot."
"She really does think too highly of herself, for all that she succeeds at everything she does."
Alexandria wrote the one sentence she was going to use as leverage down and circled it twice, just for the look. She did not need to do something as 'pedestrian' as take notes, hadn't ever since she took her formula, but it helped sell the look.
And if there was one thing she was aware was important in this business, it was appearances, whether as Chief Director Costa-Brown or as Alexandria. Appearing to be in control, appearing to be invulnerable.
Her eye tingled, like it had always done ever since that day.
So it was, a few minutes later, Cauldron determined to keep things on track every time this category of widespread power interference took effect, that she stepped through a glowing portal and sat down with aplomb. "Cain has access to the Path."
David ignored her. Or, no, that wasn't the right word; David ignored her statement. Disappointingly so, she'd been looking forward to this. Instead, Eidolon, the most powerful man in the world, held out a bucket of popcorn in one hand and fried chicken in the other. "Nevermind that, the Siberian is gone. We never went after the Slaughterhouse for a reason, but that doesn't stop us from celebrating."
Grudgingly, Rebecca took the fried chicken. The whole bucket. "We are still doing this later, you hear?"
Contessa, sitting to the side and chewing on a chocolate bar, nodded. "You will."
Good enough for her. And hey, if even Doctor Mother ended up bullied talked into hanging up celebratory decorations into the otherwise bare base of Cauldron, she was going to count it as a win.
"Do excuse me if not all of these end up having obvious signs, but do rest assured, all of these women are animals."
Riley didn't chuckle, even though it was close. Of course they were, all animals were animals!
Next to her, Mimi was still vacantly watching along, but remained content to stay still. She always was very boring without a little fire nearby, but Riley didn't light one up because Mi- Jack wasn't there anymore to make her.
"Oh, I wonder... Making surface-level changes to give someone ears and a tail isn't hard, but it'd actually take a bit to make them functional," she reasoned aloud, considering the operations necessary to give someone the actual parts. It would probably be easier to just make them separately and then transplant them, but... Mhm...
"We were scheduled to meet him again after this," Mimi said in response, for some reason. "Also, aren't you too young to watch this?"
"I can murder hundreds of people, I can stomach lewd art!" It was perfect logic that Kate had taught her when she and Sarah had taken Riley to get cleaned up properly for the first time in years. "Also, it's probably nothing big."
After all, they had done lewd stuff together and she was sure they both wanted to do more, so Gabriel would never throw them out. Well, maybe Mimi, but she could always try to talk her into doing what Sarah had called a 'threesome'!
Just then, the door opened, and Bonesaw realized more time than expected had passed while she was lost in thought. "Hey, Riley, Mimi, let's talk about your future!"
"Okay!" "Alright."
"So," you say, taking a seat in the meeting room, one of many open ones available to anyone that wants or needs a semi-secluded place for various activities.
It's a requirement in a place like your base, really. With this many horny women all over the place, the amount of lesbian sex going on at any given time would have ruined the public spaces' furniture a few times over by now just with all the fluids spreading everywhere.
But back to business. "The two of you do have a bit of a difficult background, so we'll need a get a little... inventive, to work around that- if you want, anyway, if you'd prefer to just stay around the base all day and do your own thing, nobody will mind."
"Oh, oh! Can I do cosmetic surgery to look old enough to buy alcohol by myself?" Riley asks, raising a hand.
"Why would you need to, if you want alcohol you can just ask," you reply. And wordlessly add the fact that she'd stay in someone's company that knows what they're doing so she doesn't accidentally biotinker a world-ending threat together while drunk.
Dealing with parahuman kids, ladies and gentlemen. Always such a joy.
Mimi sighs. "I... Don't really mind one way or another, but I don't think I can make that call right now?"
And, of course, parahumans with mentally distorting powers! Because you are totally actually trained in dealing with this crap.
Well no, you aren't, but it's not like university degree in America actually holds any real worth beyond letting you get a job, something you only ever tried to deal with once.
And it killed you, so screw the American economy's opinion. "Don't worry, it's not like we can't change our decisions here later on, whenever you feel like you want to do something different."
"And if I never do?"
"Then we'll just see about doing something together," you wave her off.
Mimi is suffering from what your expert opinion would describe as PTSD and depression mixed with the equivalent of long-term drug abuse without any of the typical physical side effects... Meaning, what she needs is not some psychologist or therapy, at least not right now.
No, what she needs is something much simpler and more direct. Certainty. Control. Optimism. The genuine belief things will turn out alright. It's the first step, really, and the one thing you can really help her with, because fuck trying to medicate her with her whole... Thing.
You generally don't really believe meds are the answer, at least not them alone, for anything that isn't directly related to medical issues, whether it be some hormone discrepancy screwing up your brain or your body literally killing you.
Ultimately, everyone agreed that while it would be hilarious to just have both Bonesaw and Burnscar walking around openly, the alternative of just having them stay in your underground refuge is just the safer and more reliable option.
That doesn't mean you'll just stuff them into a corner and forget about them, though. For starters, that just gives a bad impression both of their new living environment and you as an employer (and yes, you're still on about that). Furthermore, you actually genuinely want to reach out and stuff, seeing as what you got here are at the very least technically traumatized people.
Sure, Riley is taking it pretty well, but you have the distinct feeling she does have to deal with things still. Learned sociopathy, rather than an inherent thing. Whereas Mimi, well... The sheer amount of fuckery her power is doing to her mind whenever she uses it says enough about her situation.
Any capes having mental health issues tends to be a bad thing for their surroundings, and here you have two powers that just scream to be abused horribly in that way. Quite obviously, something needs to be done.
Your solution, weird and out there as it may seem, is to sit down with them and ask them about things they would like. Anything from asking Ethan to make particular sweets or cakes for them (they don't have any real favorites due to past living condition(s), but you get them to agree to try things from the cafeteria) to asking for requests and figuring out a stress-free way for them to spend their free time.
One note, you may want to look into a way to connect your base's internal internet to the gaming consoles you'll be setting up- Riley isn't particularly into the idea, but Mimi seemed interested, so hooking her up with Alec and/or his collection may be a good idea. And as for Riley...
"Please please please can I stay in your room?" Her eyes are shining as she makes her request. "I promise I won't mess anything up and behave!"
Someone clearly wants some more close contact with The Gabe. Not that you mind, of course, the more people you can pile into your bed, the better, far as you're concerned. And you do doubt she would mind the no-clothing rule, with how... enthusiastic she has been so far.
All the same, maybe it'd be better for her to have her own room? It's not like you'd mind if she came to visit you all day anyway after that, but having her own space may be genuinely beneficial for her development, too.
For some reason, Sarah is torn between exasperated amusement and annoyed smirking when you walk back in with Riley in tow, both of you completely naked of course, and announce that she will be living with you from now on. "And here I thought Rapture was bad enough."
Then, of course, she is hit by a blonde little weapon of mass destruction, Riley's arms wrapping around her in a bear hug as she smiles up at her new big sister. "Big sis! Big sis!"
Sarah's heart immediately melts.
"Well, that's that, I suppose," you shrug as you watch Riley hold on as Sarah pats her head, a hesitant smile on her face. "Can you make sure she knows where everything is? I've been to the bathroom maybe thrice ever since we moved in here."
It depends on whether you count that one time you just took a look around shortly after Coil's death.
"Of course you were," Sarah sighs, throwing you a little kiss and bending down to take Riley's hand. "Come on, I'll show you what you can use to take care of your hair first. We actually have a really well-stocked bathroom if you'll believe it."
"Okay," Riley beams up at her new sister. "Also, can you tell me about all the naughty stuff big brother Gabriel likes to do?"
"Of course," your biological sister grins. "Let me tell you all it. For starters, you'll want to make sure your butt is squeaky clean all day 'round..."
Hey now, nobody has had any issues with that in your presence yet! But alas, you'll just leave these two to their bonding time for now.
You, in the meantime, have a city to take care of! By which you mostly mean making sure the damage isn't too bad and that recovery efforts are going smoothly. While the collateral damage has been remarkably low thanks to the Crypts just going out and murdering the murderhobos too fast for them to do much, that doesn't mean Burnscar's accidental inferno didn't play murder on some property prices...
It's easy to see how and why the fight, if it can indeed be called that, between Burnscar and Faultline's crew happened and from where the fire explosively spread as a consequence. The Palanquin, the nightclub technically owned by her, even if nobody would say as much to an officer of the law (at least nobody from whom the words would matter), is... Honestly pretty fucked.
To the building's credit, most of it is still standing. Most. All the same, as you stand before it, it looks suspiciously like a burnt-out ruin, with blackened walls, some smoke still coming from the surroundings, soot-stained floors and smoky air filling the area.
Well, that and the heat you can still taste, even hours later. It's honestly weird how your enhanced senses turn out sometimes, but you get a very good idea of there having been a lot of heat and some of the building even still being hot to the touch by this point.
You also notice, taking a good long look around, that a few blood signatures are still in the general area, and you doubt it's the people you sent to help clear the debris and secure survivors together with actual relief forces. For one, you can distinctly tell that at least one of them seems to be an actual lizard person, sooo...
Lizard guy, one big guy who seems to have circulation issues, one female humanoid and one small female humanoid. Unless you're mistaken, it would seem Faultline's crew is in full attendance, though why they're standing around Labyrinth who is lying down you have no idea.
"Knock, knock," you announce yourself as you come into the room, the full team team of capes assembled inside immediately going into high alert and readiness. "Anyone call a Cain?"
There you stand, in your suit and shadow, ignoring the various powers brought up just in case as you stroll inside.
"Funny," Faultine drily retorts. She, at least, seems to be in costume, the modified welding mask and weird dress safety equipment thing she's wearing looking strangely suitable for the circumstances. "Did you just come here to crack jokes, or...?"
"Oh, I just thought I'd come by, see if you're all still alive, maybe mention that Burnscar won't be a problem anymore," you casually say, loftily shrugging your shoulders. "Just in case you're interested."
"Nice to know, but we actually still have a functioning radio," the mercenaries' leader says, stepping to the side to impede your view of Labyrinth's prone form, the younger girl resting fitfully in a sleeping bag someone had to have stashed somewhere. "The news stations weren't quiet about this. Now if you happen to have nothing else?"
You get the distinct feeling Faultline doesn't want you nearby right now, but then again, since when do you give a fuck about that?
"There is one thing, actually," you say, giving a noncommittal wave. "I wanted to ask if it was possible to hire you guys on retainer, get a bit of a longer term contract set up. But before that, that would be Labyrinth, I presume? She need any medical attention?"
"Labyrinth is quite fine, merely exhausted after we fought off Burnscar," the somewhat snail-like gentleman (mostly due to the transparent skin and bits of shells you can spy) you assume to be Gregor the Snail say. "She just needs to rest and she'll be fine."
Right, which is why nobody thought to move her so far. You don't exactly buy it, but hey, it's their business, in the end.
"Right. So, you open for the prospect of being paid a bunch of money to sit around in case I need something done but don't feel like getting any of the Crypts' capes?"
Faultline seems hesitant for a moment, or at least she doesn't say anything while considering things. "We will have other commitments on the side, I was under the impression that most such arrangements preclude other sources of work."
"And if you only really wanted money, I'd just pay you until you shut up and take it, but that's not how this little outfit rolls, hm?" She freezes, confirming your expectations. Honestly, it's not like a handful of mercenary capes specifically picking up Case 53s seem like the most typical kinds of mercenaries around by definition. "Doesn't matter. You can take jobs however you want to, just notify the Crypts beforehand so we're aware and we won't mind. Do we have a deal?"
Faultline's head tilts, her mask keeping her expression hidden still. "Let's talk about money first."
Heh. You should've seen it coming. Then again, just sending them out to do the force projection in your stead will save you time and attention for later, well worth the money of hiring a bunch of capes "Yes, let's."
And hey, if you happen to have something you could actually use their services for, all the better.
Sometimes, you can't quite help but consider the times you age down a couple of years and pretend to be a teenager again fondly. Not, extremely fondly, but still mildly so all the same.
It's just fun, you see, to trick your surroundings like this. To build up different and varying expectations and you can exploit to your advantage. Not that any of that really matters right this moment, but it is a thing that you like to play around with.
But right now, you simply unlock a door and lead one Victoria and Amy Dallon into the last place you nailed their mother inside of, the little warehouse art studio slash apartment arrangement you had set up what feels like ages ago by this point.
Good thing you're finally getting some frequent use out of it.
"Whoa, this place is lit," Vicky says, floating upwards into the great ground floor's main room to take a look around. "Is this where you do your streams?"
"Nope, just a little side retreat," you return as you walk after her, Amy staying near the door nervously. "It's got everything I need for doing my own projects outside of my actual lair."
"You have a lair?" Vicky asks.
"Like, uh, sculpting? Of heroines?" Amy adds.
... Well, clearly someone here knows something.
"Oh yes, I did in fact sculpt your mother naked," you freely admit. "We have a little arrangement she somehow blackmailed herself into, it was actually pretty amazing."
"Wait what?" Vicky comes floating back down, rotating to look at you. "You better not have been getting grabby with mom, mister!"
"And what if I did?" You throw out to smoothly deflect the accusation. "Consenting adults not breaking laws can do anything they please. And if she saw the need to hide it behind some kind of excuse to herself, I am not judging that."
"How about the fact she's married?" Amy interrupts your little speech to be. "Isn't that cheating?"
"That's between her and your dad. And don't tell me you don't like the thought of her statue being sculpted in her just so she can get bent over and fucked hard for hours on end while holding onto it hot," you smirk. They are teenagers, after all, which means they're horny by definition.
Amy's expression turns thunderous, while Vicky's grows thoughtful. "You can't just-" "You're right."
A betrayed look, an apologetic one, a pair of sisters off to huddle into a corner while you go on ahead and get a couple of things ready- specifically, two slabs of stone not unlike the one you carved Carol Dallon's statue out of.
Obviously, since they're pretty much identical. Your enhanced eyesight can make out a couple of very small differences along the edges, but to the human eye they're the same.
Side note, you do wonder when they will wisen up to the fact that you can hear them whisper in their furious voices just fine.
Ultimately, they come to the conclusion that whatever you and their mom are doing, they can't actually stop it, whereas Vicky thinks it's actually kind of hot and Amy is totally fantasizing about it already and just against it on principle by this point.
Can you mention again how wonderful the power to thrall others is? You don't think this would've gone this well a week ago, but by now you just need to mention something regarding sex to keep them on your hooks.
And well, if they actually managed to see the statue you made Carol take with her...
"Okay, so let's say we were okay with this," Vicky says once they come over to rejoin you, "what exactly is that 'arrangement' you have with mom?"
"Well, she was worried about the art I made of the two of you, particularly the more naked kind," you explain, "so she came to demand to speak to me at that art auction Vicky wasn't there for, if you remember?"
"That lo- dammit mom, we talked about this," Vicky says, visibly resisting the urge to facepalm. "She always gets like that. Speaking to the manager is not a good thing."
"Mom being a karen aside, why would she... You weren't actually going to, y'know, sell those, were you?" Amy comes to her sister's aid in her time of need.
"Of course not, the whole auction thing was about SFW art only," you scoff. Which does have the advantage of being true, if nothing else. It's not that you'd particularly care about it one way or another, after all.
"Good. That's... Good."
"Mom went and shagged what passes for our shared boyfriend, how is that good?" Vicky asks, now reclining in the air as she floats around.
"It's good because this means she doesn't know he's our boyfriend, and it's not like we're exclusive with him or anything. I don't know if you've noticed, but our relationships are kind of a mess."
"Wouldn't call it that," the blonder of the two sisters says. "You're having a lot of fun with them, aren't you?"
You clear your throat, calling attention to your presence. "I was thinking, your mom got a statue of herself, how about you two? Want to complete the set?"
Amy and Vicky look at each other, then at you. "Yeah." "Yes."
"Alright, then strip. Time to get into position." If your smile didn't give it away, Vicky immediately groping her sister would have.
"Vicky!"
"What? We both know what he meant. Have to let those creative juices flow."
"Is that what we're calling it nowadays?" You interject.
Either way, the sisters are easily maneuvered where you want them, whence you begin your insidious and unforeseeable scheme to get them naked. You tell them to strip.
"So, did you want to do this with your clothes on, or...?" You ask, casually leaning against the big chunk of stone you'll be using first. "Just curious."
"Right, mom did this naked, too, huh." Somehow, that fact seems to actually cheer Amy up a bit about the inevitable. "You sure you want me to-"
"Of course, Amy, that's like half the point," Vicky interrupts, giving her sister a hug from the side. "If it makes you feel better, I can strip too? To make it less embarrassing?"
"... Please," the darker-haired sister brings out. You know, this would be pretty sweet if it wasn't for your sense of smell informing you she's totally immediately horny at the thought of Vicky naked.
Teenagers. Never change.
In short order, you have both of them taking their clothes off one at a time, Vicky decisive and direct, cloth hitting the ground one bit at a time so she can proudly and boldly display her body, whereas Amy is more hesitant, preoccupied with ogling her when she thinks she isn't looking and awkwardly shuffling when warm air hits her naked chest.
Fun fact, Amy actually has bigger tits. You know about this, but you thought it relevant enough to confirm it once again.
In general, too, the sisters are a study in pleasing contrasts and differences. Where Vicky is skinny and lightly muscled (she has to be able to actually work out despite her power, somehow), her complexion clear and slender body relaxed as she stands there, Amy is hunching up to hide her hefty breasts, a small layer of fat all over her body showing that no, she does in fact not work out.
Not that you'd call her chubby or anything, she's just obviously less active than Vicky in general. A bit more heavyset, too, making her look absolutely delicious.
You could totally eat her up. Oh, and then there's her freckles, heavy smatterings of which are on her face with more going down to her collarbone and her shoulders, too.
They could be ugly, but on her they just look kind of cute.
So, here you are. "Alright, let's get started," you say with a mischievous smirk, fingers turning into bared clawed where you let your hands rest on the stone, even as you eye Amy to take her measure. "Feel free to try and pose a bit, find something you can hold comfortably for a bit. I'm fast, but not that fast."
And so you begin to carve into the solid rock, claws parting it not quite like butter but still producing a pleasant grinding noise and feeling. Scooping and tearing out bits comes first, as you know you won't need that much around the neck portion, for one, not to mention the sneaking suspicion you have of what you can get the sisters to do while you work.
Once you have a roughly humanoid figure standing there, kneeling down to work out the legs, you you look up at Amy, who is blushing with one arm left hanging at her side, the opposite hand pushed against her waist and the girl trying to affect a casual, bored look.
"Alright, let's see about the details, yeah?" You say, getting back up and smirking at them. "Feel free to copy what I'm doing if you want to tease your sister, by the way."
"Wait wha-" Amy's exclamation is buried under the motion of Vicky flying right behind her, two soft hands lying on her upper arm and beginning to softly knead it.
"Ah, stay in position please," your grin grows outright malicious, your fingers defining Amy's right arm and wandering all over it rhythmically now.
"Vicky, I am going to make you pay for this, you hear me?" The brunette says between grit teeth. "It's your turn after this."
"What if that's what I want?" Vicky's 'innocent' question freezes Amy's brain, it seems, or at least she is experiencing a bluescreen for a moment and needs a bit of time to reboot.
Meanwhile, Vicky gives you an apologetic look. Sorry if I'm hijacking this a bit, but I wanted to build up her confidence a bit, she thinks at you.
Don't worry, I don't mind, you return. Feeling desired is probably the easiest way to do this.
Gotcha.
With Vicky murmuring softly and telling Amy how much she likes touching her, you make some good progress along her body, carving her hair, her neck and shoulders, carefully working along her face and making it look somehow aroused, with just slightly lidded eyes and lips pouting just a little bit.
Then you go for her chest. Vicky's hands land where yours do. Amy's hot breath hitches. And you carve and pinch, creating a pair of hard nipples just as Vicky squeezes down on the real thing.
You maybe do spend just a little long on the perky globes you copy into the inert stone, but before long you move on, playing with the smooth belly and cute little belly button you give your work. Fun fact, Amy is actually really sensitive there, almost breaking out into shivers.
And growing noticeably wet downstairs, a sheen visible between her thighs.
Speaking of which, her delectable thighs are where you go just after you're done with her hips, meaty and soft as they are. You grow just a little envious of Vicky for a bit, but hey, you can always go get a good feel yourself once you're done.
Vicky grins at the prospect of touching Amy's feet, something explained when she almost immediately starts stomping and trying to get away. "You know I'm ticklish!"
"Exactly!" You just keep on going as Vicky chases her sister around a bit, deliberately slowed to give her a chance.
Finally, however, the time comes. "Hey, I'm about to move on," you say as your clawed fingers grow closer to the statue's groin area...
Immediately, Vicky is on Amy, all pretenses of the latter posing forgotten. Staring at what you're doing, she throws both arms around the brunette sister's waist, not that she tries anything to shake her off.
Slowly and deliberately, you poke and prod and carve off splinters of stone to bring a clitoris into existence, Vicky immediately hammering her sister's button. Amy's feet lose the ground, she is held up only by Vicky's grip as she comes without a second thought, eyes wide at the development and staring at you just as much as Vicky is.
And here you haven't even gotten started on the rest of her. The engorged lips, cute butt and all the erogenous zones in between.
Amy doesn't get to stop coming for a full five minutes, in the end. Vicky really doesn't show any mercy, huh?
It takes a bit of water, a few snacks and ten minutes of rest before Amy regains the strength to stand on her own two trembling legs. "That was..."
"Fun, right?" You finish for her before lightly slapping her butt, something that has her jump a little. "Come on, Vicky is about to get her turn."
"What if I want to give you one?" She glowers at you as you go back to where Vicky is twiddling her fingers, returning to the main floor. You did take her upstairs to lie down and rest a moment, after all.
"Are you okay? I hope I didn't hurt you or anything or-" This time Amy interrupts Vicky, with a kiss right on the lips and a possessive arm slung around her back.
"Don't worry, it was just a bit much for me," she smiles at the blonde, squeezing her butt with a grin. "And now it's your turn."
"Meep," she smiles, but obviously doesn't mind. Good enough for you, really.
So, Vicky. You need to carve away more material just because she's that kind of slim, but her bust size is still very much appreciable, a sentiment Amy seems to agree on judging by her very enthusiastic perusal of said mammaries, Vicky holding back her moans just a few minutes in. Not that she seems to mind trailing fingers over her face and head, either, especially when you get to the hair.
"Oh, this feels really good," she says when she gets the impromptu head massage. "We should do this more often."
Amy just blushes and keeps quiet for a second, but once you literally give her a line to blurt out via telepathy, she does react. "Do you mean this?" She asks, giving her sister's scalp a little rub. "Or do you mean this?"
And with that, your hands are gliding down a statue's sides, coming to rest at the sides of its waist.
"Yes," Vicky moans in response, obviously not caring about which question she's answering to anymore.
When the time comes to sculpt out her privates, Amy's intensity grows exponentially, air escaping her lungs quick and hard. Not that Vicky is any better, of course, flushed and widening her stance just a little bit to give her sister better access.
"You like this, don't you?" Amy asks, pinching her clit and pressing herself against her from behind. "You just love being played with like this."
"I do," Vicky admits, smiling. "Especially by you."
Amy twitches, following you when you work on Vicky's behind and turning her around with a push against her side. "You know just how many things I could do to you like this? I could make you a hundred times more sensitive, it would just be a little switch in your head. I can still see the things I left in there to deal with Bonesaw's shit, it would be as easy as making a little 'mistake' when I finally remove it."
"Oh please... Please..."
"Or I could do something down here," Amy continues, spreading her sister's butt cheeks and showing you her asshole, the suddenly exposed muscle twitching at the air hitting it. "I could make it so anything in your nasty little asshole felt ten times bigger and twenty times as good. You'd like that, wouldn't you you little slut."
Vicky smiles, holding back a laugh at the sudden bed talk. "Oh yes, I'm your slut Amy?"
"My sister slut," the brunette confirms. "Would you like that? Would you like taking it in the ass for me?"
Your response to this display, of course, is to quietly unzip your pants as you walk over to them on silent feet, giving Amy a wink when she sees you coming.
"Amyyy..." The needy whine comes from Vicky, so her sister swallows thickly as she realizes that yes, she is about to do this.
The scent of the clear fluid between her legs tells you what she is thinking.
"Yes, Vicky, I think you would love to be my sweet little buttslut sister," she says, groping and massaging the cheeks she's still holding onto, kneeling to Vicky's side. "I think, I think I'm going to make you one."
Standing up, but not once letting go, she finds herself looking up at her sister a little, fingers digging into soft skin. With a kiss, she brings her tongue to bear on Vicky's mouth, frenching her as deep as she can even as she holds her open for you. Now, she thinks.
You stand behind Vicky, your hard cock at the ready, and when it touches upon the teenager's twitching asshole, she immediately begins moaning into her sister's mouth. It doesn't stop you, however, and so you begin pushing just a little.
You immediately slide in, Vicky's ass eagerly opening up to accept you inside. Amy takes a moment to kiss her longer, but she does seem to be running out of air, if nothing else. "That's it, just take it," she gasps at her equally breathless sister, "take it all and love every inch."
You find that what stops you the most when you plunge deep into the blonde is less how tight she is, but rather how tight she becomes, squeezing and massaging your dick with her insides.
"It's so big," Vicky is already panting, leaning forwards and letting her breasts squish against her sister's. "Bigger than normal. And it's feeling so gooood..."
"Because you're such a good little buttslut," Amy agrees, a hand wandering down to her sister's pussy and quickly starting to finger it, soon masturbating her furiously in time with your intrusion on the other side.
Speaking of which, once Vicky stops holding you in place with her inner convulsions, you really start going at it, finding that she is actually self-lubing now, letting you easily fuck her up the ass no matter how tight she gets.
And fuck her up the ass you do, gripping her hips tightly and rutting her harder than you would most girls- with your strength, it's really always a matter of how much you're holding back rather than anything else, and right now you're fucking Vicky hard enough anyone without a forcefield would be bruised pretty heavily.
She just seems to enjoy it, though, pushing back towards you even as she bends down to lick and kiss at Amy's nipples, the dreamy girl's eyes meeting yours once the blonde is down.
You smirk at her awe-struck impression, even as her hands are still offering her sister's anus up to you.
It isn't long before this 'stalemate' is interrupted by Vicky's orgasm, her ass spasming around you and growing a set of internal bumps that have Vicky scream out in pleasure as you keep on fucking her.
"Yes, just like that," Amy murmurs, only audible over Vicky thanks to your senses. "Don't stop, keep coming."
Naturally, you take that as a request you all too eagerly fulfill, adjusting your angle to really rail Vicky, her asshole clamping down on your cock and her insides rioting in response.
But, like, in a positive way.
With hardened nerve clusters stimulated by your tip time and again, the blonde and current buttslut isn't calming down anytime soon, and soon enough you yourself come, filling Vicky's butt with your seed and causing Amy's mouth to hang open for a moment, the girl staring into the distance as her arms reach down to pull her sister's head towards her crotch.
"That's... Huh. I think... I think I could make it so she could live off of nothing but your cum."
You do your very best to hold your chortle back, the sentence bringing you right out of the mood. "Well, are you? Would the modification have other effects?"
"No, it's just... there. She could do it now. And she won't even produce waste from it," the freckled sister says. "It's just a slight tweak of her ass, and while I'm at it..."
"Congrats, you've just found a way to produce unlimited energy with sperm. I'm sure you're proud," you smirk at her, stroking Vicky's back as you begin your other strokes anew, the girl under both of you mewling in response. "Also, uh, did you disable her speech?"
"No, that's all her," Amy rolls her eyes. "And I'll have you know I'm not the pervert here!"
"Says the sperm generator girl," you laugh, a long, slow movement as you ram yourself home inside Vicky once again and fill her up properly driving her into eating her out harder. "Bets we can fry her brain for an hour or two?"
"Hey, don't break my Vicky," she objects, a sly smile spreading on her face. "Only I'm allowed to do that."
When Vicky had woken up after the wonderful nonstop cumming session as Amy and Gabe double-teamed her, a short talk had followed during which they'd decided, as a group, to leave the two gorgeous statues inside the remodelled warehouse, not really seeing any way to store them elsewhere safely.
And hey, maybe their mom would get fucked against them like Gabe had mentioned with that wry smile she never could figure out. Like, bit weird, but if she enjoyed it, that was her decision.
Then there was the weird feeling in Vicky's butt. The feeling that she learned was a whole bunch of things Amy had used her power to put into her while Gabe's bitchbreaker of a dick was busy inside it.
Something they had, again as a group, decided to keep for the most part. Amy did insist on doing a thing before she left it be, something about making it easier to keep normal in daily live, but at the end of things Vicky had a butt that was basically just as sensitive and good to have something inside of as her pussy.
Technically more, as several clits were now inside of it according to what Amy was saying, but same difference.
And, Gabe being Gabe, went off to rummage through one of his rooms and came back with a remote controlled vibrating buttplug he proudly showed them, actually formed after his own dick. "To help you think of me," he'd grinned with that smile that was the real reason Vicky couldn't imagine actually fighting him despite knowing how bad he was.
And only once Amy had put it inside of her did the both of them remember to put on clothes.
Now Vicky was flying, holding her sister in her arms and wishing for nothing but a good few hours in bed followed by a long hot shower. "So," she said, looking anywhere but at Amy, "that was fun."
"Yeah," she agreed after a long moment, "yeah it was."
You find yourself with a few minutes once the girls set off to do your own thing with, and so after a moment of consideration that ends with you not messing with the statues you made any further (they're finished works, you have nothing more you can do to improve them, you feel), you instead consider what you still needed to get done before later tonight- the 'chain' is nearly completely wound up, your ability to jump dimensions nearly ready to launch once again.
Oh yeah, you did actually use a few things from inside your shadow storage while you were on Remnant, didn't you? Time to refill.
Which really amounts to adding a few stimpacks, freshly fabricated by your little industrial complex underground, checking over your toolbox, grabbing some more completely mundane explosives, water and food (aka disgusting rations that nevertheless keep people alive when in question), changing out a few tupperware containers you used at one point or another and restocking both some of your spare art supplies and the biomass you always carry in there, courtesy of your eternally regenerating undead.
Oh, and you take the time to look over your baby photos of Sarah because awwwww. Did you need anything else?
Unfortunately, you don't exactly have enough time to actually have a few of the Thulian souls you threw at some of the girls running around the base translate a bunch of technical books on agriculture, buuut you certainly can google a few, casually scroll through the text and therefore have copies of them inside your soul palace library.
From there, it's just a small effort to simply order a few of the souls inside you to translate into Thulian, which is demonkind's written language over there. Few of the humans you ate actually know this language, none of them handily having your awe-inspiring powers of just being able to ignore minor issues like language barriers, but Philip and a few officials do have that going for them, at least- and as all your souls inherently understand the print of your soul, it shouldn't take them too long to work through the whole thing.
As in, the figurative pile of books you just scanned through with your eyes.
Aside from that, you just grab one of your ion pistols and a bunch of fusion cores, just in case you end up needing some, but overall, you'd say you're actually already surprisingly well equipped for your coming adventures.
Then again, it's not like you need much in the first place. Must be an educational thing, teach someone not to have much and they won't need much, heh.
The nightclub. It has been a thing for a while now, this nebulous concept you felt like turning into reality on a whim and went from there, using the opportunity to talk Kayden Anders into your camp or at least get the first of your hooks into her, and here, finally, it is before you.
Done. Completed. Built from top to bottom, just like you'd envisioned it. This, you consider, is not at all like the birth of your first child- that's still going to be happening later, no question, but it does come close.
Looking around the dance floor, you can see the employees setting up, making sure everything is in place and taking care of the last-minute stuff- the bartenders, because yes, you needed a small team to man the extremely long hyperbar, as you like to call it, sorting their glassware and the overpriced alcohol they'll be selling off in small doses at even more overpriced prices, the dancers checking and making sure the keys of their cages are secure in the hidden spaces they can reach from inside whenever they need to, the employees manning the upper floor aka the VIP loft are chatting and waiting and the other hookers are already relaxing in their compartments.
A quick reapplication of your anti-inhibition curse on the building and you're just about done, you'd say. Really, you can hardly wait to lounge on your floor and behold the lesser masses below you like the king reigning over them you are.
That said, you never did get around to adding a few pieces of art upstairs for the S9... Ah well, the banner above the door reading 'Slaughterhouse Cain Party' will have to do for the moment.
The people seem to agree, or at least there's an actual line outside. And by 'line', you mean you had to send a few of the girls that volunteered to play bouncer out to keep order amidst the mass of people gathering outside your doors.
It would seem someone let the word reach the right ears, or at least there are so many people out there you're fairly sure they might be physically unable to fit inside. Sucks for them, you suppose.
Note to self, figure out a way to generate more of a red light slash party district around the nightclub. May help with diverting some of the prospective customers around, anyway.
So, there you are, sitting up on the loft and drinking some abomination made of vodka, wine, soft drinks and way too much ice, a couple of the girls (the gang ones, not the hookers) spread throughout the building just in case and to party once the fun starts in earnest. You did make them promise to keep an eye out for trouble, if nothing else, so hopefully they'll remember to do their jobs.
That and a few cameras should do it, you hope. But fuck it, not like you particularly care; anyone trying something funny is getting fucked up one way or another and if not, good on them, they probably earned it.
It is time. The doors open, and the first of many, many people stream inside, a deep bass-y music already playing as the caged hookers begin dancing and waving for their new audience.
Let's see how this goes.
Being a whore was, at the very core of things, about money. Few women went out to sell their bodies for the sheer heck of it, after all, even if some may actually do that, but they were in the clear minority all in all.
Pleasure for cash. It was considered the 'oldest profession' for a reason, and nobody that ended up in a brothel or a street corner to sell their bodies to whoever paid for it was going to argue the point. Prostitution happened because someone in no position to keep themselves fed and clothed otherwise went out for it, because there was no better alternative or, it had to be said, because someone was forced into it one way or another.
Brockton Bay had, until recently, not really been a safe place to whore yourself out in. Forget customers, with the city's climate you basically had to have a pimp on the ready that was working for one of the gangs, otherwise you were good as dead a week in at the latest, and neither the nazis nor the Asian nazis had been particularly gentle about it. Unsafe work conditions didn't even begin to describe things in the Bay; it'd been a goddamn mess all around that only the gangs were profiting from.
Then Cain happened. Then the gangs were replaced by the Crypts, and only them, and things became, well, better.
When things were properly organized and streamlined and some basic trust a given, being a hooker suddenly became much simpler and easier, not to mention safer. The girls just linked up, looked out for each other and talked to whoever was in charge, then they were given jobs and places to be if they wanted to.
There was a big brothel being built, but until then they were just directed towards secure places regularly patrolled by the Crypt enforcers, the big silent guys that all seemed oddly identical to each other, or someone else, and even as it was, the night club holding the biggest party celebrating the S9 thing ever was hiring a bunch of hookers to do stuff.
The looks they'd given themselves with that tinkertech machine sure did help, but with that and in general. A few of the girls had even gone off and gotten themselves actual jobs, but nobody said anything about it- if they wanted to do it, good for them.
Meanwhile, inside The Club, there were girls dancing and stripping, moving to the beat ringing through the air and riling up the people; more than a few articles of clothing were lost near the cages, funnily enough, as people went overboard and went along with things. One corner even devolved into an outright orgy around a particularly zealous stripper, the raw sexuality of everything in sight spreading as though infectious.
Then there were those acting as waitresses for the side rooms, though their services were oriented more towards servicing the people inside them with their bodies. Didn't stop them from wearing uniforms and bunny girl outfits, though. And then there the glory hole shifts, something that took mere minutes to see action.
Those amongst them that were actually into the flesh side of the business? They were having the time of their lives, stretching their bodies to suck and fuck however they pleased. A few lucky ladies could even do both at the same time, and a steady rotation was soon established to make sure they were resting and coming back for more regularly.
The numerous secret passages to let them move around did help a lot, even if a few were pretty tight. But, as the joke went, not as tight as themselves after the operations that'd become a staple among them.
And if a couple of unrelated women stumbled into certain unlocked toilet stalls and were drawn into joining their occupants for some hot lesbian sex while they serviced a bunch of dicks together, one after the other? It was taken as an investment into the future of the club.
Really, it was a great place to work. Safe, simple, easy and it paid great. More than a few hookers fell in love with it- they would keep working the place for as long as they'd be paid, regardless of technically getting less cash than if they joined the brothel in the future. It was just... magical, in how it brought out sex and pleasure in everything.
Loud music, bright lights, a throng of people dancing and making out in the dark; The Club was the cornerstone of what people wanted these days, or the exact example of what old people condemned the youth for, alternatively. Everyone wanted in, to be part of the crowd, but few could get inside, with the bouncers, amazonian chicks with trained bodies and enough muscle to smack anyone getting too rowdy around, stopping people from getting inside after just a couple of minutes.
Admittedly it had filled up pretty fast.
So what did everyone left out in the cold do? Well, before they could start a riot or anything, a couple of people brought out a bunch of boxes that were set up in short order, and more music was streaming out of them quickly enough.
So things escalated down a different path, and a couple of food stalls were set up somehow as the whole block became an open-air party, a few people filtering into and out of The Club every now and then.
Booze, food and a couple of people that never seemed to run out of fine white powder made things a blast.
"So, sweetie, you here for the big opening, too?" The one guy in a pink shirt with rainbow stripes asked, leaning against the counter of his food stand. It was pretty close to The Club, so it wasn't hard to figure out what he meant.
"Yeah, I mean, who isn't? Oh, and what's in those?" His current customer asked, pointing at a cake with a slice already gone.
"Ah, it's a mixed fruit cake- apples, pears, blueberries, with some cinnamon on top. Want a piece?" The wink made it clear he didn't necessarily mean only his wares.
"Uh, sorry mate, not my cup of tea. The cake looks great, though. How much?" And so the night went on, with Ethan flirting with every guy that crossed his stall. For some reason, though, he also found himself with a whole lot of girl friends, too, that hung around him.
Hey, he wasn't complaining. More company while ogling boys was always nice, and if he couldn't convince them to try coming behind the counter, someone else almost assuredly could.
Incidentally, he had a lot of fun with those that were amenable to his charms. He always wanted to try the whole playing customer service while someone sucked him off, and it was surprisingly fun.
There always was that one guy, of course. You know the one, the pushy asshole that doesn't understand that no means no. Luckily enough, however, those were also the type that never really realized when they bit off more than they could chew, and that was the least that could be said about the guy trying to land one of the women that'd been sitting at the bar since before the place was open.
That then got grabby and was told off, only to try for something- maybe it'd been an attempt at an 'apology', more likely a try to salvage some sort of pride by touching her or something. It was hard to tell after he was smacked halfway over the bar, dragged back by a leg and taken to one of the side rooms.
What many did not know, of course, was that all senior members of the Lord Street Crypts had access keys to the real play rooms, where some of the real kinky shit was hidden and just waiting to be used.
Case in point... Once the would-be smoothtalker regained his consciousness fully, he found he was suspended in the air by by arms and legs, facing the ground. "What the fuck?!"
"Good thing you're mentioning that," came from beside him, a look revealing the woman he'd been trying to get into bed. Except almost naked, well-trained and mouthwatering body bared. the issue was, well...
The strap-on around her waist, yeah. "Guess who's about to get fucked real good, eh?"
"Hey, wait-" His protestations went ignored, something cold hitting him where nothing was ever supposed to go. "We can talk about this!"
"Sure we can, once I'm done and all the girls had a turn," the bitch said, spreading his butt cheeks and shoving her thing inside, making him scream in pain. "Oh, and next time you try anything on Crypt turf? We turn you into a girl and rape you forever, and that's the best you can hope for."
Suffice to say, when the sun came up, the man's ass was raw, his dick in its own set of bondage it would take him a week to get out of and stories did end up spreading of why you didn't try any shit in certain parts of town.
"Colin, are you ready?" He was, actually. The new and improved version of his miniature camera and all around recording device was securely fastened to his clothes and already running.
But that likely wasn't why Shawn was asking. "I am, no need to worry."
"Good. If I never need to tell you not to wear a suit again, it'll be too soon," the fellow hero joked. And to be fair, he was probably right- Colin had just went for his usual out of costume clothes, but he was also very out of touch.
A month or two ago, he would have been bristling at the reminder, of course, but he liked to think he was getting better about his reflexive dislike of Shawn.
It had never been terribly rational, of course, but his determination to rise in the ranks and become a better hero had backfired on him. It was something he was still reflecting on after the epiphany back during the Crypt Raids.
The name wasn't his choice and it was changing almost weekly, but internal affairs and analysis would do as they did.
"Not my fault I look better than you in one," he joked back after this moment of internalized pondering, adjusting his top.
"You wish." For all that they had been chosen as the only suitable infiltrators for this 'event', Colin had absolutely no idea what to do as they finished eating the festival food, apparently, they had bought at one of the stands.
The gay baker had been a bit on the nose, but nice enough once they'd talked a bit.
"Actually, yeah, I do. Now come on, let's see if they're letting people in again."
"Oh come on!" Shawn knew that Colin had his issues at times, but really?
"I genuinely want to know if this building is up to code, what's wrong with that?" And when listening to him, one could almost assume he was being reasonable, too.
"I doubt the bartender would know, is all. What's recommended?" He asked, raising a hand as he leaned onto the bar.
"Bloody Siberian," the bald guy in appropriate dress replied with a smile, obviously amused by their antics over anything else. "One moment."
It really didn't take him long, a series of liquors and other ingredients deftly arranged inside a glass. It was, surprisingly, appropriate to its name.
"Black and white with a cherry on top?" Shawn asked with a raised eyebrow. "Isn't that... You know?"
"Appropriate is what it is," the man shrugged, Colin listening intently from the side. "With how things happened and all. We also got a Shattered Bird and a Hatchet Job, with little toy hatchets instead of the little umbrellas, but nobody's figured out a good drink for the others so far."
"I see," Shawn nodded neutrally.
"No need to beat around the bush, we all know who this place belongs to, in the end," the bartender freely admitted, somewhat shocking the hero in disguise. Insofar that he'd just come out and say it. "No better time to celebrate than now, really. Have you seen reports of how some other places are going nuts over it? Not many of the big cities, but every town out in nowhere the Nine hit at some point is having a damn riot through their streets right now."
"Figures, if any kind of place would," Shawn shrugged. Now how would he-
"Hey boys, you free tonight?" Shawn and Colin turned around, seeing a pair of the most beautiful women he, at least, had ever seen smiling at them poutily. "Us and a few of the girls have been so pent up lately, we wanted to ask if you had some time..."
"What are you thinking of?" Colin asked, Shawn giving him a sharp glance.
"Colin!"
"What? They asked."
He had no idea what he was agreeing to, did he?
"Oh, you see, there's a few of these special rooms you don't normally get into, but we talked one of the guards into giving us a key," the second woman said, dangling a key indeed between her fingers before dropping it... right onto her bosom, where it fell between her breasts. "You interested?"
"Lead the way," Colin said, and it was all Shaun could do not a cry. This was going to be a horrible mess, wasn't it? "You coming, Shawn?"
He was conflicted for a long moment. On the one hand, gathering information. On the other hand, he had his kid at home, no matter how single he was at the moment- Would he ever be able to look Addison in the eyes again if he did this?
Dammit. As long as he didn't get attached again, then. "Yeah."
Following the two beauties through a throng of writhing partygoers, him and Colin made their way over to one of the walls.
"You owe me one, by the way," Shawn dourly informed Colin. "Just letting you know."
They couldn't make a scene at the moment, but damn if he didn't want to.
"And that's that," you say aloud, reclining in your comfortable leather chair. "Honestly, this is going better than expected, all in all."
"What did you expect? The timing was perfect right after the Nine," Sarah shrugs.
"Well yeah, I was more worried about how many people actually knew about the club's existence." That was really the main worry before the masses of people you ended up with started gathering.
"Did you know people are already starting to call it The Club? Did you ever put any thought into naming this place or are you okay with that moniker?" Sarah asks, taking a sip from her own glass. "I mean, I don't really care, this whole place was your brainchild."
"The Raveyard," you decide after a moment of thought. "I think that fits the best."
"You just liked the wordplay, didn't you?"
"Hey, it's a long-standing tradition for places like this to have witty names like that," you protest.
"Sure, you keep telling yourself that." Getting comfortable on your lap, Sarah sighs, her luxurious hair of spun gold (anyone saying otherwise gets smacked until they see the error of their way) brushing against you. "Are you sure I can't convince you to stay like this a bit longer?"
"Sorry, but I have to get a few things done before later tonight," you apologize. And still give her a kiss. You can't get enough of of the feel of her soft skin against you. "We'll have a lot of time to flirt and bond afterwards, okay?"
"Sure, just remember not to ignore me to fight your little wars again." Aww, Sarah is pouting! You have to seriously hold yourself back to not pinch her cheek.
"Don't worry, I do have my priorities," you joke as you gently push her off of you. "See you later, sis."
Next stop, a random warehouse over in Boston, owned by the Lord Street Crypts. Time to make some actual use of the bits and pieces you kept from the corpse Taylor brought you once she was done, after all.
Alright, everything is about in place with this. You have the vita pod, the powerful revival machine you stole from Rapture, built within your inner world and summoned before you inside this mildly dusty warehouse. Next to you is Hatchet Face, the Brute visibly straining against the orders Okita gave him but unable to so much as try and attack anyone or anything until and unless she orders him to.
To your other side stands Painfire dude, that one probably insane raider you ate all that time ago on Earth Fallout. While you are not sure the Siberian is capable of feeling pain, from what Bonesaw was able to tell you when you asked about it it should be likely that none other than William Manton, its controller, would feel anything his projection does.
It's just that physics are a joke to it, so it isn't like it would ever feel any pain in the first place. Hence, Painfire Man.
So, there you are. A bit of Manton's finger, registering him with the pod aaand...
When it happens, it does so pretty quickly. The vita chamber's insides light up, the Siberian appears. Hatchet Face is present, and his power still does work, you checked with Okita earlier- but the projection is there anyway.
Painfire dude uses his power on her, the thing twitches, which you see as a good sign, then you step forwards, attracting its attention even as you work towards breathing the vita chamber back in.
A flash of black and white stripes lashes out at you, only for you to dash to its side, a clawed hand raised. You never really tried this out, but, well- you have aura and can just shrug off missing an arm, so what's the harm?
You slam your claws into the Siberian's face and- the projection stops existing.
Huh. Guess your claws really do work on just about anything. Coming to a stand in front of the silver mist that your summoned machine has now turned to, you breathe it in in a big heave, leaving nothing but a shivering old man holding his hands over his head.
"Where... Where'd you put her? Pl- please gib her back!"
Ignoring his whimpering, you grab him and drag his neck to your mouth, absent-mindedly breaking his arm when it gets in the way.
Nom.
William Manton, researcher, member of the organization known as Cauldron, loving father. Though he hardly did any research in his later years, truth be told, and he did let his daughter kill Hero so he hardly felt he was welcome among Cauldron's ranks anymore.
He also killed his daughter However, he did make sure to keep his daughter's needs and wants in mind whenever he could how could he, so he imagined her was a rather great father what had he done.
His daughter was great, and so naturally they had gone out to find a few friends her age that shared some of her interests, such as being horrible monsters physically active a lot. It helped, of course, if they were liked animals and small children.
Really, she'd always been like that what did he turn her into.
Happening upon the others of the group she got along well with had been a horrible tragedy great stroke of luck for his daughter, and so William made sure to stay around in case she needed him, but hide keep out of sight otherwise.
Why why why why why why why suffer suffer suffer suffer suffer suffer
they all had to suffer like he had
They made friends and lost them, having a journey all across the USA like she'd always wanted before he killed her. And then-
And then-
What was her name again?
"So, sorry about the short notice, but you know how hard it can be to get things taken care of around here," you joke as you sit down, waving for Taylor to take a seat herself. "Just wanted to check in with you, see how you were doing after the good work you did with the Siberian."
"I'm fine," she neutrally says, not that you believe that's all she has to say for a single moment. "Really, I am," she insists at your patient look.
"Taylor, you killed the Siberian. Don't tell me you don't feel anything about that," you ask her. "I'm not telling you to bare me your heart or anything, I just want to make sure you're feeling fine after all of that."
"It wasn't..." She struggles for words a moment. "... Wasn't a big deal. It was just one more."
You know, if she was a vampire, you would take this at face value, but then again if she was you wouldn't be following up like this. "If you're sure," you allow, giving her some room to talk about the matter.
"I am. It's... easy, killing with my power. I never really thought it'd be like that, but a big enough swarm makes anyone without a brute rating powerless." She's doing that thing again where she hides her emotions, you're pretty sure.
"Hey, think of the bright side. Another horrible mass murderer taken care of. You know the old saying, if you kill a murderer, all that means is the number of murderers in the world stays the same, but if you then keep on going, every single one after that is a net plus," you suggest with a smile.
"... I don't know what's worse, the fact I'm sure you're only saying that for my sake and don't really care or the fact it's actually making me feel better," Taylor mutters blandly, absent-mindedly staring at you probably without really thinking about it.
"The virtues of working for a vampire," you shrug nonchalantly. It's not like you're hiding how little fucks you give about human lives you don't own yourself. "Anyway, changing topics in my usual inimitable way, how's your pet project going? You know, with the pets you're training."
Taylor blushes, looking away. "I don't really... Here, I took notes."
She picks a small notebook out of her jacket, handing it to you. You feel an eyebrow rising as you skim through a series of descriptions, Taylor counting off how much 'punishment' she has handed out in a given day and adding it all up to count against her 'total bitch counter', notes on how and where Sophia reacted to what stimuli and, finally, a series of weekly summaries of her progress.
Apparently, Madison is hard to deal with because she's just viewing everything as some sort of fetish fuel no matter what Taylor tried or threatened her with so far, so she's just been limiting the interactions the girl has with anyone to the minimum and trying to have her imprint on herself as an authority figure of sorts.
Also her only source of food and pleasure, by tying her arms behind her back for long periods of time and keeping her gagged when not in her own presence.
Sophia, on the other hand... Well, she seems to have accepted that she's in the situation she is and to have hunkered down for the long haul. That's about it, though; for all that Taylor is applying corporal punishment, in no small part to make herself feel better about the former track star in general, Sophia is gritting her teeth and probably telling herself something about toughing it out until she can get free and take revenge or something equally tripe.
Mind you, that's just your opinion, and you're far from a qualified professional.
"Honestly, this is actually pretty interesting to read," you comment as you page through the notebook. You also get the distinct impression Taylor might be horribly embarrassed, but hey, that's a sacrifice you're willing to make. "Did you have this much planned out when you started, or did you just try to do things and go from there?"
"I wanted to punish them at first," she says, now going full dead fish mode. Though given the way her body language is changing, it'd probably better be described as waiting spider mode. "But I liked the thought of doing that by... You know."
"Mhmmm," you make as you lean towards her. "I can't know for sure until you say it," you whisper with a wry smile.
"... I want to make them mine," Taylor admits after a long pause, looking away. "Twist them like they twisted me."
She seems to wait for some sort of response, so you just lean back again. "Hey, better reason than many other people have for the shit they do. So you're trying to find a way to 'own' them, to make them acknowledge that they have an owner and that owner is you?"
"Yeah." Taylor's voice is quiet. "I wasn't, I didn't know how to say it... Yeah, what you said."
"Any thoughts about how you're approaching the third one, Emma, then, once you catch her?" You're genuinely curious about this.
"I..." Taylor sighs quietly. "We used to be friends, long ago. And she always has these little barbs about things we used to do together, they always bothered me the most when I still went to school." She looks up at you. "I was thinking about doing that, just in better. This time, instead of playing heroes, we're playing villains and victims. I'll be the villain."
You have to hold back the urge to laugh. Sure, a bit of recreational rape with that as roleplay would probably be nice, but she's actively working towards defiling childhood memories as violently as she can if she actually goes through with this.
Somehow, you doubt she doesn't grasp that.
"Good on you, really," you say, smiling at her. It is perhaps the most genuine smile you have ever directed at Taylor. "If you still want her in your life, you just have to make sure she's there on your terms and your terms alone. As always, if you need any help, just ask someone."
You smile turns sinister. "Always happy to help and all." Particularly as she's one of your capes, again not something Taylor doesn't understand.
Colin Wallis was glad he had his recording device running the entire time, as otherwise remembering what to write in his report would have been troublesome once he had two dozen coffees down.
Contrary to certain rumours, he could not, in fact, create tinkertech caffeine to refresh himself more efficiently, much as he wished he could. He compensated with the sheer quantity of cheap office juice he consumed, instead.
He hadn't had enough time to extract footage and construct a fitting presentation of his findings while he and Shawn infiltrated the location, but luckily he had thought ahead when constructing his device- It could reconstruct all 3D footage it took through most simple computers well enough.
"And here you can see the secret access to a basement not included in the publically available floor plans," he pointed out, gesturing at the top-down map view currently shown on the big screen as it panned over to scans of the building taken at the time.
For some reason, Shawn was holding a shaking hand over his eyes. It was probably the hangover; Colin felt it coming, too.
"Armsmaster, why does the footage show you and Dauntless in the company of what looks suspiciously like a pair of scantily dressed women?" Director Piggot said, her voice sounding like it was grinding past mountains of granite.
"Don't worry, it took more than them to stop us from searching," Colin assured her. Shawn's forehead met the table. "Anyway, beyond the secret basement, you can see small secret rooms and what might be connecting passages inside the walls; unfortunately, my equipment is not perfect, and so we cannot be completely sure."
"Are that... Are that even more clubbers joining in?" Assault's question was tinged with a mix of awe and shock. For some reason.
"They are. Next," Colin continued, scrolling forwards a bit and showing the inside of the room they had entered, "pay attention to this area- More secret passages connecting everything. The entire building is filled with them, and though we only had limited access-"
"Why," the director interrupted him, temple throbbing, "Armsmaster why, am I looking at what seems like an orgy going on and you discarding your clothes into a corner as a small army of women is piling into the room and doing the same?!"
Shawn was holding both hands to his face now, indistinctly mumbling something to himself repeatedly. He had to be taking the alcohol really badly. "We had to infiltrate the location, of course," he explained. "Which is why we engaged in sexual intercourse with no less than eighteen women over the course of three hours. And consumed a distressingly large amount of alcohol, though we avoided the more worrying drugs bandied about at times."
He went into fast forward again; the next bit was mostly uninteresting, just him and Shawn having sex, like he'd mentioned. Interestingly, however, there was one part he vaguely remembered...
"I'm not sure we should-" Velocity began, only to be silenced at the sight of a two foot tongue stretching into the air sensuously.
"As you can see here, several of the women were physically modified in various ways. Mostly subtly so, but they got careless once me and Shawn cooperated."
"You mean you. ugh, penetrated the same woman," Miss Militia clarified.
"Indeed," Colin confirmed. "We then-"
"We know Cain had close contact to Bonesaw and somehow gains powers by facing or defeating other parahumans. He might well have gained a tinker power to counter Bonesaw's. Both of you get into quarantine right now."
"We already checked as soon as we had the opportunity after extricating ourselves, but there is nothing indicating any transmissible-"
Colin's protesting was cut off by the director once again. "I don't care, get yourselves checked by an independent source, then we'll continue this."
"But Director, this information-"
"Isn't time sensitive. What are we going to do, give Cain more powers?" She derisively snorted. "Protocol for operating in any city Cain has been sighted in is still being written, but I imagine it will have a lot in common with what the Butcher or the Fairy Queen would warrant."
Colin couldn't exactly say anything against that. Shawn, on the other hand, finally looked up. "Told you you owe me one," he whispered.
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Topic: Brockton Bay Vs Slaughterhouse
In: Boards Cities Brockton Bay Local
CryptBag (Original Poster) (Cape Groupie) (Crypster)
Posted on April 29, 2011:
As of today, the Slaughterhouse 9 has been sighted inside of Brockton Bay city limits. All citizens are hereby encouraged to seek shelter and avoid calling attention towards themselves unless specifically targeted by a cape on any side, in which case run like hell and pray.
Updates to be added as the situation develops.
Update: S9 activity registered and noted.
Jack Slash: Engaged at local TV station (DELETED) by Tattletale
Tattletale revealed to be Lord Street Crypt affiliated
Jack Slash deceased in glorious single combat
(LINK)
Bonesaw: Unknown, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation
Siberian: Engaged at PRT HQ by Wards and Skitter
Presumed deceased after disappearance and PRT confirmation
Shatterbird: Unknown, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation
Hatchet Face: Engaged by rogue Parian
Unnamed Crypt cape (Not calling her 'Big Knocks) interferes and kills him with help from a lot of dogs connected to Undersider Bitch
Mannequin: unknown, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation
Crawler: Engaged by Crypsters and Thunderclap in cooperation with unknown Crypt cape
Turned into a glass statue and presumed deceased
Burnscar: Engaged by Faultline's crew at the Palanquin, fire spreading uncontrolled
Presumed deceased several hours later after PRT confirmation
Twisted: New S9 member, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation (including of his existence)
Well, looks like that's it. All of the murderhobos were taken out in one swoop; for all intents and purposes, Brockton Bay is where they went to die
(Showing Page 18 of 100)
Valkyr (Wiki Warrior)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Say whatever you want, but it's weird how many capes the Crypts have just lying around
Space Zombie
Replied on April 30, 2011:
@Valkyr What do they even need capes for when they have Cain already? Dude is a beast.
Laotsunn
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Yeah, pretty much nobody cna keep up. Do you know how many capes survived after he actually fought them? None.
Bagrat (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Look, I seriously feel threatened in my niche here. Who's this CryptBag and why don't they have at least one of my tags?
Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Bagrat you'll just keep asking that won't you?
Whitecollar (Cape Wife)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Can we get back to what is going on? Brockton Bay is a warzone right now from what I heard.
Bagrat (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
@Brocktonite03 Yes
@Whitecollar Surprisingly little property damage, at least so far
Mac's Dual Rocket Propelled Grenades
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Now we know why, Cain took out Shatterbird already from what Tattletale said on TV
Chaosfaith
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Keep updating, nobody else can see what's going on
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 ... 98 , 99, 100
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Topic: Brockton Bay Vs Slaughterhouse
In: Boards Cities Brockton Bay Local
CryptBag (Original Poster) (Cape Groupie) (Crypster)
Posted on April 29, 2011:
As of today, the Slaughterhouse 9 has been sighted inside of Brockton Bay city limits. All citizens are hereby encouraged to seek shelter and avoid calling attention towards themselves unless specifically targeted by a cape on any side, in which case run like hell and pray.
Updates to be added as the situation develops.
Update: S9 activity registered and noted.
Jack Slash: Engaged at local TV station (DELETED) by Tattletale
Tattletale revealed to be Lord Street Crypt affiliated
Jack Slash deceased in glorious single combat
(LINK)
Bonesaw: Unknown, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation
Siberian: Engaged at PRT HQ by Wards and Skitter
Presumed deceased after disappearance and PRT confirmation
Shatterbird: Unknown, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation
Hatchet Face: Engaged by rogue Parian
Unnamed Crypt cape (Not calling her 'Big Knocks) interferes and kills him with help from a lot of dogs connected to Undersider Bitch
Mannequin: unknown, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation
Crawler: Engaged by Crypsters and Thunderclap in cooperation with unknown Crypt cape
Turned into a glass statue and presumed deceased
Burnscar: Engaged by Faultline's crew at the Palanquin, fire spreading uncontrolled
Presumed deceased several hours later after PRT confirmation
Twisted: New S9 member, presumed deceased after PRT confirmation (including of his existence)
Well, looks like that's it. All of the murderhobos were taken out in one swoop; for all intents and purposes, Brockton Bay is where they went to die
(Showing Page 78 of 100)
Cryptonite (Crypster)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
I'm telling you, this is gonna be the one party you don't wanna miss if you're in BB
Ekul
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Yeah, I dunno about you, but Cain's still kind of a cannibal monster
DiggyDiggyHole
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Yeah well, if you get eaten by him, you probably deserved it somehow
Mr. Fabuu
Replied on April 30, 2011:
So wait, are you telling me the Crypts have a freaking replacement for the Palanquin already there and set up just waiting for it to burn down?
Robby
Replied on April 30, 2011:
The Crypts work in cryptic ways
Cryptonite (Crypster)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
@Robby Finally someone sees sense
@DiggyDiggyHole Anything you eat in Crypt territory probably deserved it
TheGnat
Replied on April 30, 2011:
Can we please stop letting criminals advertise here
Brilliger (Moderator: Protectorate Main)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
So far no infraction-worthy offenses have been committed. This threat is under close observation, however.
Cryptonite (Crypster)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
This post has been deleted and infracted
You were warned.
-Moderation
Crypstest (Crypster)
Replied on April 30, 2011:
I propose that MLM also begin protesting for the freedom of PHO posting, the mods are fucking fascists about their rules and show tribunals
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 ... 98 , 99, 100
Greg nodded to himself. It really was great to live in Brockton Bay these days. now that the Crypts were around keeping some actual order. So what if their leader probably had to eat people and could spread it around to other gang leaders like Tattletale?
And that was totally how he worked. He wanted to tell people the truth, but he didn't want those nazi mods to globally ban him again- he needed PHO to make a few arrangements and talk to people, for once.
Speaking of. "Mom, come on, it isn't dangerous to-"
"Gregory Veder," she said, making him wince at the full name, "you will stay inside and wait until things are sure to be safe like everyone else! I don't want to hear any talk of your activism group!"
Dammit. But the truth would win out! Justice for Kyle! Justice for everyone the Nine had ever murdered in cold blood!
That was a great idea, actually. He should write that down before he forgot.
Taylor adjusted her seat, glance up at the moon whose light she was using to read. It was nice, not needing to sleep as much as usual, and since she did have her library card, she had more than enough to do during those times.
Staying up all night and reading was quickly becoming one of her favorite pastimes these days. She'd found herself having an easier time hiding her new sleep schedule just staying outside, and with the night's natural light bright enough for her new eyes, she'd turned towards the places that offered the most comfortable seating.
Which was how she'd found herself frequenting a certain park she used to visit sometimes as a kid. It was pretty placed right where she needed it to be without being too obvious about it.
She turned the page, her eyes lingering on the letters upon it. Sometimes, it still felt like she wasn't paying full attention to what she was reading, even when she most definitely was.
She was just also... Doing something else. Working on her aim.
"Ow!" Emma tossed and turned, sleepily waving a hand in front of her face.
This was the fourth time this week. Something had to be in the house or outside of it, but some kind of bug somehow always found its way into her room.
This one stupid thing had flown right into her closed eye hard enough to immediately wake her up, and now it was just buzzing around somewhere.
It was going to keep her up for hours, dammit. But still better than that one nightmare she'd had, about that one cape with the bugs. It was totally because of the buzzing, too.
But that was silly. Not like a cape like that had any reason to target her. Now where was the fly swatter again?
You go through a last check of everything- you just resupplied the stuff you're keeping inside of your shadow, so that isn't too much of a bother at this point, and so you're mostly just waiting for the people that are going to accompany you.
Sarah, Okita and Emily. Okita looks a bit confused today (there's a very mild tilt to her head and the corner of her mouth is twitching every 28 seconds), so you ask if anything's wrong, but as it turns out she just has a weird feeling about having forgotten something.
You both brainstorm a bit, but come to the conclusion it's probably nothing important, something that satisfies Okita as she thought so earlier as well.
Meanwhile, Emily is just about on time, running herself ragged and bursting through the door in her full getup, mask, weapon and all. "I'm on time!" She gasps as she finally shows up, her approach already noticed by you far ahead of time.
"Good, then just give me the stuff you want to keep once we go so I can stow it away," you comment as though you were casually chatting with her already. "Do remember we all land there naked, so things get a bit fiddly."
You see the blood concentrate on her cheeks under her mask. "N- Of course, yeah. One second."
One funny thing of note, she's doing her damndest not to look anyone else in the room in the face, a fact not lost on Sarah- especially when Emily just keeps her line of sight away from Okita's chest.
You laugh with her via telepathy as you stretch out a hand once you're done safely storing her flamethrower and muzzled mask, the bare minimum to let her make best use of her power. "Alright, all aboard the Cain Express, I suppose."
"Come on Gabe, we've all ridden that one before. Let's get jumping dimensions already," Sarah drawls, drawing another blush from Emily.
Nearby, Okita nods. You have no idea to what.