Cleanup after the big battle took a decent chunk of time, even if most of what you did was repairing the two big undead you threw into the battle and retrieving the Ghouls that somehow managed to get themselves killed by jumping right into the thick of things that one time the humans started to pile up a bit and the shamblers created by their big miasma unloading didn't really have the time to kill them fast enough to stop them.
Aside from that, you kind of just oversaw your minions doing the other stuff. You did insist the demons go out and gather up the frozen corpses of the army, not about to just waste the enormous capital of dead flesh on your hands.
Repairing the fortress's front wall, a thick and stable construction made to weather literally anything imaginable, will take a longer while, especially where the actual magical cannons blew craters into the magically reinforced stone. It's some kind of stuff that, again, seems to be unique to this dimension, but it boils down to extra durable rocks, essentially.
Durable enough you have to work on carving into the stone with your claws, which is saying something.
So yes, getting replacements and having them installed will require a decent amount of effort, though thankfully not yours. Beyond that, the shoveling of dead bodies undeterred by the residual cold (it's not like it instantly goes away just because you stopped increasing it constantly) is going on, supported by your undead and their rather large carrying capacity, there's more than enough room to put them for the moment (at least until they begin to thaw and rot) and the demons don't need any of your personal attention to do their jobs.
Which brings you to what you're doing now instead. During the concurrent ambushes and battles, you have eaten a lot of people. Far from all that died, of course- practical limitations mean that you 'merely' chomped down on and stole the souls of well over a thousand people, but...
You still kind of more than doubled the amount of souls inside your stomach. In one fell swoop, from swarming all over as a giant swarm of bats violently drinking blood both directly and through hemokinesis and just striding around as a giant wolf literally eating people whole all over the place all throughout the night, you have gained an immense amount of raw materials, not to mention the skills they all had, trained for as part of the army only to let you sup upon them en masse.
You'd be surprised just how much you can learn from simply gathering the experiences of a couple thousand people and comparing them, though most of that happens subconsciously for you.
In fact, absorbing all of this new knowledge and these skills and experiences caused a sort of congestion inside of your inner world, where the raw ability you usually skim off of new arrivals into it built up for most of the night and only slowly trickled through and into your own self, insofar as you and the souls you have eaten really are separate.
More importantly were a few of the things you noticed about particular souls you ate. The vast, vast majority are nothing more than dross, of course- grew up in a village, town or city, through one way or another joined the army or realized they had magical talent and learned some magic, then joined the army once they qualified as battle mages, lots of training, some were veterans of previous battles and stuff, some weren't but by and large, army grunts whether of the mundane or magical variety don't merit all that much attention at this point after death.
One thing your wolf-self was completely right about, if nothing else.
However, two of them stuck out, being true souls, respectively, as well as bearing a few particular... peculiarities. One, it would seem as you realized even before eating him, has some formless form of soul-energy, if you had to describe it, affixed to his soul. The mage of the two you're looking at, to be precise, currently running around your inner palace with a slowly, but steadily morphing sign on his forehead.
He's also a crazed serial axe-murderer using magic to commit his murders and turn his victims into various kinds of food he then either ate himself or served to others, preferably family and friends of the 'suspicious roast beef', among other things.
Or rather, he used to be, but hey, details.
Despite your best efforts, you haven't really been able to figure out what exactly this thing is, beyond the fact that the black and red energy seems to be going through a sequence and sketching out certain symbols you have no idea about, so for the time being you just had him isolated from all your other souls just in case he's contagious.
As for the other true soul, somewhat of a polar opposite of the first one... It seems to be a reincarnated one again, a phenomenon you are starting to think might be more common than you would've thought. For once, however, it would seem the soldier's past life was in some fairly unremarkable clone of Earth Aleph or something, without the Bet connection as far as your new little informant knew, but that isn't the most concerning aspect of this.
Most of everything in his memories is completely mundane, but as it turns out the sucker actually had one particular bit of info tucked away in the corner of his skull. Yoshi alerted you to it when he realized it in his attempts to pilfer any modern media and setting them up for being shared with either you or the rest of the soul network, his little passion project starting when you made him figure out how to record Dragon Balls inside your soulspace having spiraled out of control from there quite a bit.
Specifically, what you're looking at is a fragmentary rendition of a certain piece of fiction. 'Worm', by Wildbow.
It is kind of a trip, and not just because of that stupid asspull in the middle of the story that actually obliterates any amount of proper story, meaning you have barely any context or details after it.
The Taylor you know would never go and join the PRT as a Ward, and especially not after the Sophia reveal. It's just all kinds of stupid from both a storytelling and character perspective, even if you can excuse the latter on account of some nebulous perceived necessity of the action.
Not that the first half of the story is quite all there, either, but as far as you can tell, it's actually a fairly close similarity with the real Earth Bet, sans your absence of course. And obviously, you not being there makes everything infinitely worse from a global perspective.
Reading through what you have available, the memories faded and vague from long years of disuse and yet still present enough to give you some of the text to work with, you consider the biggest surprises still contained within the related remnants... as well as a few nuggets of knowledge in adjacent remnant thoughts.
For one, apparently Dragon is an AI, if this actually maps to the real Earth Bet. Small world, huh. More importantly, if you managed to work with the Thinker, you see no reason you shouldn't be able to do much of the same with her, though she's much more of a self-actualized person than your first AI acquaintance.
More importantly, it would seem the Endbringers, if this stuff is to be believed, are some kind of... semi-autonomous drones? With a faulty setup of course. To be honest, you don't quite believe everything you're getting here, but you didn't get to this point by disbelieving unbelievable things, either.
More importantly, it would seem that you really need to have a chat or two with Riley at your earliest convenience. Apparently, she knows a thing or two about these 'passengers', the actual sources of parahuman powers if your new source can be trusted.
If it's true, it's really big, but the details are frustratingly vague and incomplete. Just a repeated mention of 'shards', 'spacewhales' and 'it's all Eidolon's fault'. Which... tells you something, but again, details are important.
Still, even if none of this turns out to hold water, it's a funny little thing you've found. Definitely on the list of things to be shared with Sarah later. And worth spending the hours to parse and decipher the more diffuse memories, something you usually just don't do simply because all reliable memories are recorded in your library automatically anyway.
It really was worth the couple of false positives Yoshi's standing orders of alerting you as to anything relevant to your current, past or continued existence he happens across.
Clearing your head once you're outside of it again, you set towards doing your thing with all of the corpses now available to you, piled up in the outer courtyard like firewood and being divested of their armors and weapons slowly, but surely by the squads of demons taking care of this whole thing for you.
All the while you telepath at Sarah, of course, but you can do that in the background just fine.
Unfortunately, you are planning to use your undead in varying environments from here on out, so simply fusing them all together with ice as you did previously would likely be an issue once the stuff melts and the effective exoskeleton slash endoskeleton you are using to let your haphazard giant abominations function despite their size and weight becomes useless.
So you need to draw upon your original design, using metal forged into the appropriate shapes as connecting elements. The fundamental idea was to simply utilize your wide industrial base to get all the raw materials you could need for this, but seeing as you refuse to simply plaster manufactories everywhere in this dimension until you have full control of everything and nobody can use your technology against you, you need to get a little more... creative.
The obvious solution, then, is to simply recycle the weapons and armor the demons are pilfering off of their defeated enemies on a large scale, but you still need to find a way to turn the stuff into the things you need, the large metal beams and spikes and similar.
You consider summoning a manufactory just for a bit, but in the end the solution was before you all along.
A couple of mages to heat the metal up, a couple of other demons to beat the metal into shape with improvised tools and there you go. Ruling over a species whose bodies can be used as industrial equipment without issues does have its perks, for all that they are an utter pain in the ass at times.
So you go ahead and get right to work, repeatedly fusing the bodies together into several large, roughly humanoid masses as per the usual when you create Zombie Giants. Constructing them around and into the slowly completing full frames, what you are doing resembles large-scale construction work more than anything else for a bit, but still, things are proceeding just fine.
It's nice to have that whole giant army business taken care of. It means you have some time to do stuff at your leisure again.
The metal is, perhaps a tad bit substandard, seeing the circumstances under which you had it formed and the diverse pieces of equipment you are using as raw materials for it, the better pieces actually set aside to be used or sold later on not to mention the actually magical stuff, but still, it more than does the job. You did design the whole Zombie Giant setup to require little expert skills and time, after all.
Relative to the size and strength of the end results, of course. It's still taking quite a bit until you're done fusing all the bodies together in ways that don't inhibit their use as parts of a greater whole.
And, naturally, imbue a bunch of soul pieces into them once you're done making them. You have... more than enough lying around right outside the fortress to replenish your supply of the stuff, after all.
In the end, you're looking at a solid dozen of the lumbering undead, crude spires of metal integrated into their construction and keeping them upright and moving as intended. Adding the one you made with ice you personally molded into place, you have thirteen of them in total- a significant amount of fighting power, when leveraged correctly.
Something you are certainly planning on doing, of course, but for the moment you just have them stand around in the Border Fortress' courtyards completely motionlessly, awaiting the time you have a use for them. A full day's worth of work, to put them all together, but at least you had enough helpers to let everything go reasonably smoothly.
The demons are almost overly eager to do everything you, as the demon king, order them to do lately, probably just one of those cultural quirks you keep on stumbling onto every now and then. Well, it's certainly not something you're going to complain about anytime soon, for once.
Turns out a couple of the people currently manning the fortress actually do have some experience with metalworking, too. Everything just adds up together sometimes.
Of course, with the sheer amounts of people dying sudden and violent deaths as well as the types of said deaths, the number of soul fragments floating around is simply staggering compared to the amounts you usually get to deal with. Meaning, it would be a complete waste if you didn't use at least some of that wealth before it dissipates.
So, having an exceedingly small amount of capacity for actually storing the stuff, you need to actually exert the raw soul matter left behind after pretty much most deaths that don't involve peacefully dying in your sleep into something useable right away. And, well, with the big fat fortress you want to keep under your control for a long time to come right there...
Suffice to say, it's about to become extremely haunted. Many of the fragments you pull off of the battlefield are a type you didn't exactly see before, but easy enough to figure out with some minimal thought and confirmation- the first indistinct figure made of snowflake fractals and ice powers you create by throwing some of them together is enough for that.
So yes, more of that theme, expressed even clearer than usual- soul fragments are 'colored' or attributed or defined by the way the person that shed them upon dying, well, died, and that 'typing' lets you do a lot of stuff when you use them.
A hundred or so spectres conjured out of solidly fused soul shards and bound to random parts of the Border Fortress later, you are rapidly running out of patience to keep going, of course. The areas you bound them to are somewhat colder than normal, but not immensely dangerously so, until they come out to attack anyone defined as an attacker that is not a demon, and in the meantime they're pretty much nonexistent, watching and waiting in an entirely noncorporeal form.
Many of them also exhibit various... interesting... attributes, particularly the ones you added some other fused fragment types to. Some have claws, others have nightmarish faces (or especially mouths), some come with haunting whispers whenever they're near or some other random esoteric stuff, but all in all they're a varied and generally cold bunch.
Ba-dum tiss.
Still, for all that you are stashing away a veritable army of spectres and spirits, you're also kind of grazing through all the easily available fragments still waiting to be picked up. You're doing what you can, but it's just taking a bunch of time to gather them, fuse them together into something properly useful, repeat until your capacity is full and return to the fortress to unload them and repeat ad nauseam. You could keep going. Perhaps you should, even.
Thing is, you really don't want to, so screw this noise. Sarah wanted you for something, so you'll just go off and tell Rakul you've made the fortress into a haunted house and where to find you if he need anything (he can just telepath you, it's no big deal either way) and to hold down the fort while you're gone (literally), then hopping into your trusty bone carriage and riding off into the dark.
You would use the sunset instead, but it's night already and all.
Tada Mizuki, Matsui Michi and Nakatani Kazue, the three heroines collectively known as the 'weapons trio' among the other classmates summoned into the world of Gaia at the moment, the latest in a series of sometimes more, sometimes less flattering nicknames given to the three friends often spending their time together.
It wasn't like any of them particularly cared about the appellation, of course. It wasn't wrong to say they were thick as thieves, and once they were reunited following the events of Tada Mizuki's disappearance in the wake of the Border Fortress' surprising loss and the subsequent surprise hiring of the other two, but what truly counted was that they were together again and the issues that led to them temporarily splitting up were resolved... somewhat.
Yoshiaki was dead, as was Masashi, the only two of them also in the fortress at the time, but... None of them were estranged from the fact that people died in a war. It happened. Heck, most of them had died, at least for a couple of seconds or minutes, during a particular fight- and one couldn't always be lucky enough to have Eiko-sensei on hand.
The Healer Hero's presence was the reason what felt like half the class was all staying in one place, after their experiences. Her, and Yuka-sensei.
The Brave Hero was an inspiring presence even to the other heroes, amusingly.
But none of that mattered now. They were back together and ready to roll! Of course Matsui was busy hanging all over Tada, while Nakatani hung in the background smiling at them while playing with one of those little fairy thingies.
The battle for supremacy between sweets was still ongoing, for all that they were busy with something else at the moment.
"Tada-chwaaan! Why won't you let me rub your shouldeeers?!" The same as usual, really.
"Because I know you'll get grabby again, stop it!" Using her powers, Tada pushed Matsui away a few times as much as she should be able to, the Spear Hero's attempt to perfectly grope the smaller girl's bust fruitless on the way out.
"Ta-chaaan!"
The Sword Hero, on the other hand, was watching with warm eyes, vaguely aware of the real feelings hidden by Matsui but unwilling to step up and say something on the matter. However, even as the physical struggle between her friends reached a new pitch, the dark-haired and tall girl suddenly had a thought.
Or, no. Rather, it was something she'd been thinking on for a while already, but simply been taking her time with. "Hey, so, Sarah-san is in love with Gabriel-san, right?" It was still weird to use their first names so casually, but they'd insisted.
Immediately, her two friends stopped play-fighting. "Yes, I think so. They were pretty lovey-dovey and they have a kid, so..." Matsui switched into her serious face, but she was sure it would only be temporary.
"And Tada-chan is also... like that with him, right?"
"I... yes?" Tada blushed, playing with her fingers, and Nakatani had to keep on talking really quickly so Matsui wouldn't become a steaming teapot again.
"So how does that work from a relationship standpoint?" She therefore asked. "We know they're from Earth like us, but is it like a harem or a polyamorous relationship or..."
"Huh. You know, I never thought about that," Matsui agreed, turning back towards Tada towards whom her arms were still stretched out. "Tada-chwan, how do you fit into Gabriel-san's love life? Spill the beans! Confess!"
"Yaah!" Tada hit Matsui on the head, leading her on a merry chase around the room. "Stay away! And for your information, it's not like I do much, I just sleep with him sometimes, so I have no idea about any of that other stuff!"
"..."
"... Tada-chwan, this is not okay. You are extremely lovely and beautiful, there's no way Gabriel-san wouldn't include you deeper than that." Somehow, Nakatani was still surprised at the part Matsui took issue with. "This needs to be fixed! Posthaste!"
Scratch that, she was taking it as a personal offense. "Are you sure? After all..." A silent understanding passed between the two of them, Tada still completely in the dark.
"Yeah, everything else comes later, but right now, my lovely Tada-chwan's honor is at stake!" Somehow, the spear heroine seemed even more determined. "Come! We shall pick out lovely dresses and accessories and show everyone what a Goddess Tada-chwan truly is!"
Just like that, Tada was caught- and dragged along by the nape of her neck like an unruly kitten. "Ma-chan, do we really have to?" The nickname seemed to cause Matsui to stagger on her feet, but she continued. "I think if I wanted anything more out of this relationship, I'd just need to ask Gabriel-san himself directly."
"No! Unacceptable!" It seemed to be hard, but Matsui persevered. "You need to entice him to keep him on the hook properly! This is a castle, I bet there's somewhere we can find pretty clothes and makeup! Cat Rangers, Assemble!"
Urgh, that was how she'd called their group way back when they first met, because Nakatani was all into those cute cat videos. Mou, did she really have to...?
She did. Sighing, Nakatani got up, stuffing the fairy into one of her roomier pockets and marching after her two friends. "You owe me one for this."
When you arrive back at the castle, the guards around the capital long since used to not questioning it when your carriage passes by, things seem to be mostly normal, if a bit wild; you can see three blood signatures, somewhere on the castle's third or fourth floor, running around and acting strangely, but if it is a fight, it has to be a fairly unusual one.
Or at least none of the servants slinking around in hidden passages all over the place seems to take notice of it.
Of course, when you stop out of your carriage, you are immediately confronted with the sight of none other than Sarah, looking up at you with big pleading eyes and giving you a big ol' hug without delay. "Hey Big Gabey..."
Oh, you know that voice. She's either messed something up or wants attention. "Hey, Little Sarah. What's up?"
"Nothing, just..." She rubs her face against your chest, an act you magnanimously allow her any time she wants to. It isn't even a question. "I just missed you..."
"I missed you too, sweetie," you reply and stroke her hair, petting her head simultaneously. "Happy to see you in person again."
"Mhm..." Sarah seems to be happy just smelling your scent, doing so for a long moment before answering properly. "Telepathy isn't enough... I want to feel you, too."
Her big eyes return, with a vengeance. You shift towards stroking her back with your other hand.
"I mean, it is fairly accurate to the truth, as far as we know," you suggest, having relocated with your sister in your arms and sat down to enjoy some tea or something (you are never quite sure what the stuff you're drinking is, in this dimension, it could be some monster juice for all you know). "It's only really a shame we don't have access to the whole story to make sure."
"I don't care, it's still stupid." Sarah, for her part, is still pouting. "Any world you aren't in is stupid, and Earth Bet is obviously not going to work out without you."
"I know, right?" Figures Sarah would come to the same conclusion as yourself. "And a bunch of people just act stupid. I mean, the PRT and Protectorate are pretty close to how they should be, even if Armsmaster is a bit iffy in the story, but far as we know things could have turned out this way. Just worse for everyone involved, which is pretty crazy if you consider the difference between the story and reality is me."
"If anything, the me in the story is the most pitiful of them all," your sister insists before opening her mouth. Naturally, you feed her with some of the cookies- what else were you going to do?
She chews a little and swallows before continuing. "Without you there, she's obviously worse off in every way imaginable and knows nothing of true joy or happiness. Her entire existence is without purpose."
You chuckle, giving Sarah's forehead a kiss. Which is made easier by the fact she's sitting on your lap, naturally. "To be fair to her, most people are in the same boat, I reckon. Few indeed have discovered the purpose of their existence."
"She's still extra pitiful because she won't ever be able to find it," she grumps up at you. So cute. "Also, what's with the way Taylor is portrayed, I mean, sure, she's legitimately like that, but the way her character development goes in the parts we know about is almost regressive rather than progressive. It makes for a shit story."
"Yeah, choice of protagonist is rather important," you agree, having tried your hand at writing yourself once upon a time. You still have the original manuscript of Dawn: Chained By The Night lying around inside your soul palace. "Also, can we talk about how much Coil was hyped up in there? He really was much more of an issue because of his preparations and mercenaries, but his power isn't really that big of an issue in the end."
"It's an insult to claim that any version of me in existence would not eventually outsmart and undercut him to tear his life down around his ears." Oh jeez, your little Sarah is especially grumpy today, isn't she?
She gets some extra pats.
"Exactly. It's also pretty clear your power had to be arbitrarily limited even more than it already is for half the story to make sense because let's be honest, if you were at full strength, half the stuff in there just wouldn't have happened."
"For one I would've manipulated Taylor a lot more and a lot easier, but for some reason that version just let her run around put herself into a corner," Sarah agrees, kicking her feet out to your side. You just smile indulgently and adjust the angle of her back where you're holding her up on the opposite side. "Mm... You think there's any merit to this stuff? That out there, there's some version of Earth Bet without you?"
"Could be," you shrug. "We've confirmed the existence of parallel dimensions a long time ago, and my own dimension hopping heavily indicates the existence of some sort of multiverse. I don't see why there wouldn't be a world out there without me, but with everything else more or less the same... Or a world full of nothing but Sarahs, for that matter."
You boop her nose as you think about it. Just, everyone is a Sarah. A whole planet (or more) filled with nothing but her.
Marvelous. Magnificent, even.
"... Do you think we would ever go there?"
"Maybe, it's always possible."
Sarah trace your muscles through your loose shirt, fingers gently digging into your front. "If we ever do, let's make sure to adopt her. That me. That way she can finally find true love."
Aww. "I don't know, she wouldn't be you," you point out. "Wouldn't have made your experiences and feel like you do. I'd be a complete stranger to her."
"Doesn't matter," she states with absolute certainty. "Any version of me will love you. It's as simple as that."
You just smile and hug her to yourself. She really is just so sweet sometimes.
A brush worthy of your Sarah is, of course, not a simple thing to create or even envision, representing a project that requires patience, care and absolute dedication if you wish to ensure that she receives the amount of pleasure she deserves with every stroke.
So you sit in the lab, looking up how brushes are made in the library through the search functions the modern environment offers you- as opposed to just asking said library, of course, but hey, having things in one place is always nice.
And yes, one among the literal thousands of souls you have devoured by this point used to work in a brush factory, and although it was a paintbrush factory in particular, you can work backwards from first principles easily enough.
So the main body of the brush will be made of the finest sandalwood, something your workshop supplies you for internal projects like this. You would have used ivory instead, but you never did get around to hunting down and eating an elephant or similar, so you'll make do with what you have available. Story of your life, really.
Now, as to the big question, the brush bristles. The most important part, as they are what you will use to soothe Sarah and brush her fur, as well as the most problematic. After all, there are several ways you could go about acquiring them, but not all of those are equally valid.
For one, you could use stretched nylon, as a paint brush would see in use, but you feel like that would be a bit... unpersonal. Lacking in conveying your feelings. It does remain an option, but you shall call it 'Plan B' for a start. Animal hair would be another option, but again is not what you shall be doing; for a start, none of the 'animal' souls within your inner world have suitable fur or similar.
It's an issue in general, really, considering most of those you do have are just mutated and mutilated humans and that one sea king. Unsuitable in the extreme when they aren't just lacking hair at all, really.
So you shall have to be a bit more creative, in the end. Luckily, you do have a source of all kinds of strange and unique materials viable for this, however: The Garden, reigned over by those three slightly bitchy fairies and home to all kinds of plants and fungi (and probably a couple animals, too, going by scientific definitions).
In order to craft an acceptable quality of brush, you shall simply have to find out what kinds of plants there exist in it, whether they can be used as brush bristles through some kind of processing of their part(s) and how well you can use the resulting final product.
Good thing you have a massive workforce you can call upon at any time and a few overseers you can put most of the consequent burden on, isn't it?
"No," Yoshi begs. "Please, no."
"Oh yes, my little friend," you malevolently smile at him. "So much yes. Think of the bright side, a thousand or so people and we should be through the trial phase in an hour or two."
The former scientist quietly sobs.
"Hey Sarah, can I try something out for a minute?" You aren't even going to comment on your sister cuddling with you while you were busy sitting around motionlessly and busy inside your inner world.
"Mhm, always," she easily agrees, holding onto your sitting form with both arms.
She's really just such a spoiled girl, isn't she? It's your own fault, of course, and it isn't like you won't take responsibility for it.
You breathe out your newly created FoxBrush 4000 and, holding it out behind her, gently stroke it through Sarah's hair. She twitches, her entire being hitching for a moment, only to let out a long, drawn-out sound of pleasure. "Fuwah~..."
"That's what I like to hear," you whisper as you use the variable length of the bristles to carefully massage her head. "Would you like to try being brushed in your fox form?"
You would be lying if you said you've ever seen a quicker transformation into an animal in anyone but yourself, but any such thoughts are vastly secondary to the simple joy of thoroughly brushing every inch of fur on Sarah's little fox body. And playing with her paws, and giving her head little kisses behind her perky ears.
"I lost the last time, but I refuse to accept you still!" Arakawa Gina was, as any of the other summoned heroes would be able to tell you, one of the most obstinate people imaginable, always determined to prove something. It didn't really matter what she was proving, as soon as anyone else didn't agree with anything she said or did it became a hard-fought struggle to convince her to do anything.
In short, she was as stubborn as ten mules stacked onto each other, Tada thought. She was also right often enough to get away with being like this, but still, this time around she was going to get her ass handed to her, to put it bluntly.
"Let's just make the rules clear again," Gabriel-san replied, unconcerned by the hostile look he was receiving by the Sword Dancer Hero. "Just pure fighting ability, no tricks, no magic. One on one with weapons in hand."
"Yeah," Gina-san said, her red hair bobbing aggressively with her nod. "If you don't take me by surprise, there's no way I'll lose to someone like you...!"
Matsui-chan leaned back in her seat, hands intertwined behind her head. "So... Anyone want to bet on the fight?"
"No bet," Nakatani-chan immediately denied. "We all know how this will go."
Tada 'hmpf'ed and puffed out her (not actually that small, thank you very much) chest. "I'll bet she immediately loses in the first exchange, hands down," she announced. "Any takers?"
"Oh, now you're on!" Matsui-chan grinned, Nakatani-chan sighing in the background and shaking her head at their antics like usual. "If you lose, you'll have to wear the stuff we found and ask Gabriel to accompany you!"
Tada blushed, but grit her teeth. "And if I win?"
"... You can win a date with me?"
"Uhm... Is he really that strong?" Tetsuo-kun was still a bit awkward about this whole situation, but he was going to deal. They all had. "I know he's technically the Demon Lord's successor, but I don't want to believe there's any more guys like him out there..."
"Mhm," Tada nodded, agreeing with the Archer Hero's point. "I haven't seem him fight that much, but Gabriel-san is weaker in a straight fight, I'm pretty sure," she assured the Archer Hero. "He's just a lot trickier and meaner. Just watch."
Meanwhile, in the middle of the courtyard serving as an improvised arena, offering a mostly flat and even paved surface for the fight about to take place, Gina-san and Gabriel-san were still facing off, the former baring her teeth at and trying to menace the latter with her dual swords. "Come on! I'll show you who's boss!"
"You will note I've been waiting for the last five minutes," the summoned Demon Lord replied drily, raising a clawed hand gesture for Gina-san to come at him. "Time to put your money where your mouth is."
"Hah!" Gina-san threw herself at Gabriel-san, blades rising into what would be a whirlwind of strikes if it weren't for a determined push towards both of them by her opponent.
Claws met curved edges and for a moment, they were evenly matched... But then a quick kick by Gina-san went awry when Gabriel-san countered it with a leg sweep, her eyes wide open as the relaxed smile of the Demon Lord beamed down at her.
Then he let go of her swords, sweeping them out towards the sides and pinning Gina-san's elbows with his hands, landing right on top of her and squeezing down on her arms.
Within moments, the sharp claws broke through the struggling heroine's aura, disabling it and letting their owner claim victory very clearly. "I won."
Gina-san glared, but didn't disagree, knowing intimately that if not for the protective field, she'd have lost both arms. Aura was a bit weird, but they'd all found out that much about it through trying it out already, at least.
"Glad we've got that cleared up, then," Gabriel-san nodded, curtly standing up and walking over towards where the rest of the heroes present in the castle (sans Yumi-san) were waiting. "So yeah, there you go. Last time I beat her, she didn't have aura or anything and I got off a weakening spell first, so it was even easier than this," he shrugged at them.
"Told you so," Tada smugly announced to the others, promptly receiving a tackle hug when Matsui-chan got up to squeeze her like a toy. "Stop it!"
"No way! Matsui-chwan' just too cyuuute!"
"... I still want to go on," Gina-san sullenly muttered to herself, slowly gathering herself up again. Gabriel-san, in turn, turned around.
"Well, if you insist, I suppose I wouldn't mind sharing a few pointers and teaching you how to properly use aura," he said. Tada could hear the grin in his voice; he was having fun deliberately aggravating Gina-san, wasn't he?
The Sword Dancer Heroine grit her teeth, but bowed. "Please take care of me, sensei."
"This gun be good." Nakatani-chan had picked up a thing for weird phrases like that when browsing the internet for funny and cute cat videos, but nobody was taking issue with it now.
"Yeah, this might actually be educative," Tada agreed, leaning forwards in her seat to push her head past Matsui-chan's bosom. "This aura stuff is pretty complicated and anything helps with using it."
Lana seems to have seized a side room of the royal library as her 'study' of sorts once her progress through the works stored therein picked up steam, meaning you can find her there when you decide that Okita doesn't need your attention at the moment and you might as well catch up with her a bit.
Of course, when you do you're confronted by nothing else than a sleep-deprived thrall (which is impressive in itself, considering how little sleep they need) staring at you with bloodshot eyes and angrily waving papers at you. "How!"
"How what?" You feel like this information is relevant to the question at hand.
"How do you work!"
"It's magic," you shrug. "It just works."
"No!" Either everyone's a critic or Lana is airing some kind of grievance here. "Magic doesn't work like that! Some kinds of monsters might be able to use instinctive magical powers, but few have more than a handful, and the sophistication of the thralling ritual is far beyond anything random mutation could produce!"
"It's literal reality warping, its entire point is that it doesn't have to obey any rules," you counter-argue. "If I say that's how it works, it does."
"Can't be," she grumbles, the purple-haired (and dressed) woman glomping onto you, her voluptuous, soft globes pressing against you as she starts to pull your shirt off. "Magic has to be precisely guided by either intent or calculation. It has to be either of those. You can replace one with the other and combine them if you're good, but the fundamentals never change."
"And yet here we are," you intone once your head is free of your clothes again, the busty mage pouting at your musculature and feeling it with both hands.
"Here we are indeed..." Good, she seems to be calming down. "Let's conduct a few tests. They're not voluntary."
"Whatever you say," you chuckle as Lana starts sniffing at you. "But only if you tell me what you're doing and the theory behind it in exchange."
"Deal."
Of course, now that a lull in the big war between you and humanity (with the demons standing around awkwardly to the side, mostly) has hit, you have a bit of time to recover certain parts of your arsenal that were lost or used up during the last couple days of fighting. You are talking, of course, about the little bunch of undead under your direct control you kept around and expended midway through the attack that forced your enemies to come to you if they didn't want to freeze to death pointlessly with the loss of most of their warmth stones.
It was a good moment to spend them, of course, can't nobody tell you otherwise.
So yes, you did in fact bring a bunch of the corpses you had harvested off of the battlefield with you inside the carriage, the roomy insides of which had little issue holding a good couple dozen of them once you stacked them properly. The process was a lot closer to playing Tetris than anything else, of course, but what counts is that you got everything into the available space in the end.
You only needed to tear off a couple of limbs, even. Somehow, you are reminded of your first ever victim and how you hid the guy's corpse inside of your own emptied grave- heck, is the corpse still in there?
It probably is, really. You don't see why it wouldn't be.
Anyway, creating a reliable set of undead does take a decent amount of time, mostly because you have to do a lot of modifications and fusions to get what you want, but before long you have a good two dozen Avengers, a couple of Biteworms and Watchers and a whole bunch of Hunters, all ready and waiting to go and kill some stuff for you.
Which you will have them do, much like you used similar groups of undead to hunt down and fight Grimm back in Remnant- a continuous test and practice session, as long as they can find enough monsters.
In fact, you may as well make it a whole thing and have a couple of demons interested in living 'the lifestyle' ride along on the Hunters' backs to join in the fights and gather the bodies afterwards. Waste not, want not and all that, plus it's an easy way to ensure that no boneheaded idiot looking for a good fight picks one with your creations instead of, y'know, some monsters.
Not like there's any lack of the things.
Incidentally, one of the servants suggested using some more advanced metals to create the armors you are putting your Avengers inside of, but the idea was shot down on account of the inherent expendability of your smaller undead like this- if they're walking a small fortune around, you'd have an issue with sending them to their inevitable destruction, after all, whereas some good iron serves its purpose and doesn't cost all that much thanks to the constant stream of ore mined and processed in the kingdom on a daily basis.
And wouldn't you know it, the mountain ranges forking off of the Border Mountain Range most of this kind of industry is based in within your domain will be the next place you will be looking into, but first you have to take care of Sarah.
Sarah who, in a surprising (?) turn of events, turns out to have potential for magic, something you suggested she and Rose actually check out at some point once one particular part of Lana's hour-long lecture came up. Specifically, all summoned individuals on the humans' side seem to be able to use magic, so why wouldn't Sarah be able to, too?
Turns out, no reason, she just never thought to have it checked. The procedure is easy enough, apparently, and as it turns out she can now do some basic magic with a quick lesson by none other than the demon princess herself.
Go figure, really.
Of course for all that progress is being made across the board, you still need to keep moving and proceeding with your plans and overall strategies. That is, a certain someone did ask you for a favor, and you would be remiss not to take care of that at some point.
Timeline shenanigans notwithstanding, of course. Look, you technically have forever to do it, but you want to get it done is all.
Which leaves you with somewhat of a conundrum, of course. That is, Sarah has learned a spell in the time it took you to finish everything up, one she immediately put to good use once you told her you'd be gone for a bit.
It is, quite simply put, a fairly basic spell. All it does is letting two objects adhere to each other with minor force. Which means that, right now, you have a little Sarah sticking to your shoulder like a limpet, looking at you over it with pleading eyes.
"Of course you'd want to come along," you indulgently smile, giving her a little kiss on the cheek.
"It's been a while since we went on a trip like this together. You know, properly like this instead of jumping dimensions together."
"Come to think of it, you're right. It just doesn't feel like it with how you're always with me wherever I go."
"Literally." Sarah's mischievous smile is one of those things you can never get enough of, and you have to violently hold yourself back to avoid pinching her cheeks in your happiness.
"Yep. Oh yeah, want to do something together during the ride? I usually just use the time to train whatever is available, but now that you're here already..."
"I wouldn't want to keep you," your sister demurely fends you off. "But~ if you were to insist, I wouldn't say no, either..."
Considering she is entirely naked and spreading her arms inviting you into an embrace, as well as her legs inviting you to something else entirely, clear liquid slowly covering her delicate folds, you can hardly hold yourself back now can you? "Oh, fine, just a round or two won't hurt."
A passionate kiss and associated tongue wrestling later, she happily pants up at you. "Just one or two?"
"Maybe three or four... dozen..."
It is little surprise when you find yourself unable to concentrate much once you and Sarah start having your 'fun' all over the bone carriage, a stray thought suggesting to rename it the 'boner' carriage at some point before being ruthlessly squashed by your higher priorities.
Higher priorities like smashing Sarah, smashing Sarah and, of course, smashing Sarah. In the sexy way of course, the kind that only vampires can really manage in your experience.
"Gaaabe~... Love you~" Her supple skin seems to almost invite you to do whatever you want to it...
You kiss her all over, biting at her skin and aura and receiving your own bites in exchange, razor-sharp teeth ripping and bleeding both of you regardless of how easily minor scratches like that flawlessly heal within minutes. At first you lifted Sarah in the air, letting your horny minx of a sister bounce on your hastily revealed cock to her heart's content and your elongated tongues wrestle with each other, but soon enough you proceeded to fuck Sarah all over the room, and the next one from there and so on and so forth.
"Just like that! More~!" You milk one peak after another out of it, but she never stops moving, acting, demanding, even with your hand fisting her hair and locking your lips with hers.
Pressing her against the walls, putting her on the chairs or sitting on them yourself for her to go wild on your lap, flipping the beds out of the walls and ramming yourself home inside her doggystyle or missionary, playing with her perfect breasts and bouncy butt and, of course, fucking her cute little ass in turn when she spreads her cheeks open for you.
"Take it," you gasp aloud as you fill it up, "take it all!" She's just so hot and tight and writhes around you inside and out, clinging to you like a drowning person and still doing everything she can to match your rhythm and receive more of your seed.
The two of you just can't get enough of each other, physically devouring each other's bodies as thoroughly as you can and sating your ceaseless appetites on the other's flesh so thoroughly a mortal would have just gone catatonic an hour in, but you just have to keep going because you want more.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" You mate her like an animal in heat, except your union has nothing to do with such basely chaste behaviour; what drives you and her is a lot deeper, darker, hungrier.
More and more, feeling Sarah's soft body and tight, hot pussy and even tighter ass, kneading her all over and breathing heavily over her skin just to stimulate it even more and knowing it just won't ever be enough, everything you do returned in equal measure and desperation.
"Such a good little foxy girl..." She also does transform, of course, giving herself ears and a tail for you to play with as you befoul every inch of her body to her intense jubilation at the act.
Your sister especially seems to have taken to licking all over your chest, her long tongue hanging all over it as she lovingly stares up at you and receives your pounding, and groping your ass as though to drive you to fuck her harder.
"More! More! Make me feel it forever!"
Which you do. You use every ounce of strength you have, roughly and downright brutally fucking Sarah so hard the carriage is shaking despite its impressive shock dampeners, pumping her full of load after load of your baby batter to make sure her body knows whom it belongs to.
In short, you have a very good excuse as to why you didn't really get to do much of the whole training routine. Because, well, priorities.
You have them and you apply them, and making absolutely sure Sarah knows how much and how thoroughly you love her in the most primal ways possible takes absolute priority at the moment, all the way until the sun rises again and you arrive at the cult town you found when you first went to investigate this area.
If nothing else, Sarah seems very, very satisfied by the end of things. Good work, if you do say so yourself. Yes, the passion of your shared love knows no holding back in moments like this.
The cleanup after your bout of intense lovemaking takes a good bit, neither you nor Sarah having been gentle nor discerning in where you spread your fluids, but the two of you take it with good humour, laughing at how silly you're being and making out a bit longer. Your hard cock is still within her grasp, pulsing against the palm of her hand as she strokes it slowly and soothingly, just as you are rubbing the button of her clit and fingering her still squeezing pussy.
Maybe you're taking longer than you strictly should, but in your defense, your sister is just too tempting not to go at at every opportunity. You really got it bad for her, don't you?
Then again, you always did spoil your Little Sarah...
By virtue of a small miracle, you and Sarah are actually wearing clothes when you carry her out of the carriage, your sister unwilling to let go of you still but at least content to be in close contact with your body by this point rather than... Well, what you just finished doing together.
Incidentally, you're having the bone carriage vent all of the air inside of it by opening the various windows along it while you're gone, just to get the scent of sex out of the thing at least a little.
Once outside, you take a quick look around, the light of the morning sun rising off in the distance leaving you unbothered even as Sarah winces a little and climbs out of your arms onto your back like a little monkey so she can hide her face in the crook of your neck.
She's just too cute. Though you should probably ask her to turn into her fox form before long just in case she gets a bit too cumbersome down the line.
It is kind of weird to be surrounded by nature again for once, after how you kind of completely wiped out all plant life back at the Border Fortress and only sped through the landscape here and there without paying it much attention from there, but at the very least you didn't really miss much, judging by the couple of goblin corpses sticking to the carriage's front and a couple of the spine arms once again.
You may or may not have made a point to harvest those earlier to use as materials for your undead, but that's neither here nor there.
Before you, the mining town you last saw completely deserted of all life is bustling with activity, smoke rising from several buildings and the steady rumbling of moving mining carts audible all the way outside of it. The demons you see as you approach are just as any others you can recall, on the face of it, but even so it is hard to mistake the unusual ardor seeming to have grasped the inhabitants of this place in their entirety.
You call out to the guards keeping watch on several raised platforms as you approach, seeming to be paying more attention to the sky than anything else while on duty, and it takes mere minutes for you to go greet the mayor slash foreman of the town.
Nobody says anything about Sarah hanging onto your neck, so you just leave her be as is.
The usual pleasantries take just a moment of you telling him why you've come and getting directions towards the mine cart line that will take you directly to the underground settlement uniting most of the cult's bases deep under the mountains. They're actually surprisingly efficient with getting all the necessary infrastructure in order, if you do say so yourself.
The drive underground is mostly spent with you and Sarah idly conversing with the attitude of two people that just spent a lot of pent-up emotions for each other (in a positive way, of course), utterly relaxed and at ease with one another. You also do forewarn her about the exact nature of the friendly acquaintance you're going to meet, while you're at, something she acknowledges in stride.
The network of caves and tunnels you arrive to is, if anything, even more expansive than the last time you were here, though the basic pattern of an even number of big tunnels leading away from a central point with a mess of spaces dug out between them remains the same. Meaning it is just as easy to find the chamber your eldritch friend is focusing its consciousness into in this dimension.
""ThErE yOu ArE, WE/I wERE exPeCting yoU," the small crowd of possessed demons standing around inside chants in unison as you enter, swirling geometric shapes that still do not make any sense according to how they should work twisting through the perfectly smooth rock surface and the air. "aNd YOU BRoUghT a SPLIt Part OF youRself, ToO, HOW DELIGHtfuL."
"She certainly is, though I don't think you asked me to come here just to ask about that," you say with a vague gesture around the room. "Shall we get right to it?"
"YES, YeS, we/i dId NeEd YOU TO DO SOmEthinG. SIMPLy Put, TheRE is a SPAcEtime IrReGulArity iN pRocess thAt NeEdS tO BE stoppEd, BuT our/mY oWn INTERvENTIoN WOuLd HaVe BeEN UnsUItaBLe fOr fiXINg it," the thought entity (or at least you suspect them to be something along those lines) explains. "wE/I Have SecurED cOOPErAtiON Of THe oRIGinAL CAUse of ThIS IssuE, So ALL You NeEd to dO Is To WORk wiTH tHEm tO end An INFiniTelY repEAtiNG chain Of evEntS caUSiNG nO SMaLL amOUNt oF quANtUm UnCerTAiNtY BeYOnD WHerE IT sHOULD in a WaY that tIEs uP aLl LOOse EnDs."
That... tells you what you need to do without explaining much about the issue itself. You're probably supposed to ask whatever caused the problem in the first place and go from there.
"aNy quEstiOnS?"
"How long should I expect this to take?" You're quickly thinking over the time requirements of travel and your plans for rapid response in case anything serious happens in this dimension as you ask. "I have some leeway, but only so much time I can spend at any one point."
"TImE iS hard To TELL, BuT it SHOULd NOT bE lonGeR tHan A... YEaR? nOt loNg. mayBE JUst a MinUtE. aND iT WiLL alL bE NOTHiNG BeCAUsE I wilL USE ThIS MomENt AS aN ANCHOr POINt To REtuRn yoU To."
Oh great, free time travel. Or maybe it's the same as when you return to the same moment you started from when you hop dimensions. Either way, if your friend of indeterminate shape will take care of it, that's good enough for you, even if you have exactly no idea what you're in for still.
"I'm going to assume you're helping me find the thing or person I'm supposed to help fix this?" You haven't agreed to anything yet, but so far this sounds a lot like a standard job for you, though you reserve the right to change your opinion on that at any moment.
"Yeah, and what's in it for us?" Sarah asks, for the first time since entering the chamber focusing on a single spot instead of letting her yes try to take in all the shapes darting around at once. "I get you're friends with each other, but this still sounds like a pretty big thing to just ask someone."
"Of coURsE, i/WE WOUld nEVer ASk fOR HELp wItHOUT RepAyinG tHe FAvOr. yOU CAN rest aSSuReD wE/i hAve PrEpaRED/wIll PrEpARe/AM/aRE PREpARINg suItABLe reComPenSE." Ugh, here they go again with the multiple tenses. "and YES, yOu ArE AbouT To/aRE/wilL mEEt tHEM!"
Just like that, all light around you ceases to be, complete darkness surrounding you and Sarah for a single moment stretching into eternity until it is suddenly fading, replaced by surroundings that look like everything and nothing at once, reminiscent of a clear stream of water washing by, a city and the sky all at once.
"Worth it to ask, at least," your sister huffs at your back, "like hell I'd let anyone take advantage of my brother."
You just smile and pat her butt from below. She wiggles it, pleased.
How long you are there in this weird location you couldn't say, a big clue towards the nonexistence of time within it, but for all that you'd like to complain you haven't even gotten Sarah to stop clinging to your back and get ready to react to anything that might happen by the time something does happen.
A pair of people appears, an obvious family resemblance between them. One man and one woman, with the same color of brunette hair and even fairly similar postures, wearing mostly the same overall brunette and brown outfit save for the ankle-length skirt replacing the pair of pants on the female one.
"It would seem they have arrived." "Yes, or maybe it was us that arrived?" "Functionally the same outcome, it could be said."
Oh. You recognize that way of speaking, as does Sarah. Both of you immediately close ranks through telepathy to prove that you are in no way inferior to the now obvious pair of siblings that appeared in front of you.
"Either way, we are all here now," you lead for Sarah to follow up. "Now if only we knew what for." "Patience, let them gather their thoughts."
"What thoughts are there to gather? Everything is laid out and ready to be done," the female twin sniffs. "Please, let us introduce each other first," her counterpart suggests. "We are Lutece," "and Lutece, at your service," she finishes with a polite nod.
"Gabriel," "and Sarah Livsey, likewise," your sister completes with an absent wave of her hand. "So, clones? Or..."
"Unimportant." "To the matter at hand, at least," the brother apologetically adds.
"Ah, dimensional counterparts," Sarah finally nods triumphantly, both of the twins giving her an unimpressed look.
"Forgive my sister, she can't help herself tease out secrets like this," you jump in like the social lubricant you are. "Regardless, shall we skip the pleasantries and proceed?"
"Yes, perhaps we should." "We would need to explain the situation, no?" "It does seem expedient."
"Go on, we can't hold our curiosity back," you retort drily. "Yes, what did you break that requires us to come all the way to fix?" "Now now, no need to be quite so confrontational."
You and the male twin exchange a look of understanding. Truly, sisters are the bane and boon of existence, huh? "It all began with an old experiment of ours..."
To sum the situation up to the best of your knowledge, essentially these two apparent super scientists that went and broke reality a bit once upon a time essentially took a baby from one dimension and the girl ended up attaining godlike powers due to a lost pinky and some quantum state shenanigans you don't have the heart to enumerate at the moment, ultimately leading her to be raised by the alternate dimension's version of her father who is sterile due to some issues with free radiation with one of their devices he overused.
He is also batshit insane, catholic and used the superscience they gave him to create a giant city in the clouds and eventually lead his (step?)daughter to follow in his footsteps and burn down the world at large with the use of her godlike powers and even more superscience.
There may also have been some kind of dimensional overlap or tearing due to repeated experiments regarding the nature of the multiverse leading to some kind of diluted use of ADAM under a different name and branding thanks to one particular dude that went and contacted one of the scientists that worked with the stuff in the Rapture you know to steal his secrets. Goes to show just what a small multiverse it is in the end.
Meanwhile, the twins (by which you mainly mean the male one) felt that letting it end as it did was a shame, and so they initiated another experiment in bringing over the original father of the girl to the dimension she ended up in to try and have him recover her, with the minor caveat that people seem to be having some form of cognitive dissonance when they cannot reconcile experiences they had in another universe with what they are currently experiencing and their minds consequently struggle to create memories where none exist.
Direct quote from the twins, by the way.
Ultimately, there's always some issues you don't really need to go into and the guy, named Booker DeWitt for that matter, ends up confronting his dimensional counterpart who is quite insane and has foreknowledge of what will happen down the line thanks to the mentioned device he overused, and in the end just commits multidimensional suicide with the help of his daughter to make sure no version of himself can ever become the crazy catholic version again, renamed as one 'Father Comstock', if that matters.
Leading to a paradox and the whole thing beginning again from the start because the twins can just travel back in time to try it again, and again, and again until your eldritch friend caught wind of things because they were giving them a headache. And throughout it all, one thing in particular just keeps on gnawing at you.
"And you never tried just... telling him what's going on?"
"We did, but the human mind is a most strange and inscrutable thing at times." "Once it is made up, it becomes incredibly hard to change it."
"Right, this just calls for a more nuanced approach," you sigh. "None better suited for it than you," Sarah snorts.
The obvious solution, by all accounts you can think up, is to simply adjust Booker DeWitt before he can fuck things up. "Okay, tell me everything about what DeWitt usually does right before he enters that city in the clouds."
"We have to row him to the lighthouse used as an entrance." "To specify, I have to row all three of us." "His mind makes up everything it needs there."
"Perfect first place to intercept, then," you reason. "If you can get me there ahead of time, I can just step right in and convince his flailing mind of whatever we need it to think. What else would we need to do?"
"... There would still be Comstock." "Yes, he would pursue her to the end of the world." "Also the Siphon." "A device made to constrict her powers and keep her under control." "Not necessarily a bad thing to stay standing, of course." "And then there is Songbird. Always an issue, that one."
"I feel we'd better get a list of things to do clearly defined and go from there," you point out. "Because from what you're saying, it sounds like there's a whole bunch of things that will need to die before we're done."
"And if we're doing this, we may as well do it right," Sarah opines.
Truer words were never spoken. Looks like you'll have to be thorough about this.
"I still think you ought to show some interest in rowing by this point."
"And I still do not believe in the thought experiment. I made that very clear from the beginning."
"It's a good thing we are ending it, then. Do you still want me to shoulder the burden?"
"No, but I still expect you to do all the rowing."
The twins' dialogue was interrupted by one Booker DeWitt, war 'veteran' and failed private investigator, blinking the mild confusion from his eyes. "Excuse me- how much longer?"
"Did you give him the box?"
"What box?"
"The box."
Booker took the small wooden box with his name on it- Booker DeWitt, 7th Cavalry, Wounded Knee- from the woman dressed in her yellow raincoat, inspecting its contents. Inside was a picture of some winged statue and a... code, of some sort, taped to the inside of the lid.
Also inside were... a gun and a picture of some girl, probably his target. He turned it around to check the back. 'Instructions to follow'. Huh.
Also a key and some strange coins.
"And there is still no point in asking him, because he still doesn't row."
"Ah, we've arrived. Your timing was a bit off."
Booker looked up, noticing the wooden pier and the ladder directly next to him. Time to go, then.
Climbing the rickety old thing, he glanced at the lighthouse stretching towards the sky on the small island the thoroughly wet construction led to. It was raining pretty heavily- did it do that earlier, too, or...
Didn't matter.
"I suppose there's no point in telling him when we'll be returning."
"True enough, we won't be if everything goes well."
"Hey!" Booker interrupted them. "Is anyone meeting me here?"
"I'd certainly hope so."
"I swear, if he wandered off already..."
The two continued to row away, leaving him stranded on this little outcropping of stone. "Hope there's someone inside," Booker grumbled to himself as he marched right on. His shoes produced loud sounds on the wet wood and then stone, ascending the steps leading to the lighthouse's entrance.
Pinned on the door was a message addressed to him. 'DeWitt, find the girl and wipe away the debt. This is your Last Chance.'
He knocked. "I-It's Booker DeWitt? I guess you're expecting me?" The doors were unlocked, and inside he found a table right up front. On it was a basin filled with water.
A big piece of embroidery hung above it on the lighthouse's central pillar, simple and reading a short sentence. 'Of Thy Sins Shall I Wash Thee'. He couldn't help bitter little smile at the thought.
"Good luck with that, pal."
"Not a man of god, I take it?" The smooth voice had Booker turn around, seeing the man coming down the metal stairs without making a sound. "I can sympathize. Not much the sucker ever did for anyone, hm?"
"Are you... who I'm here to meet?" It was hard to think straight, but this was important, dammit. This was his last chance.
"Me and none other," the stranger nodded and turned around. "Come along, and don't mind the religious messages," he said with a wave to more embroidery along the way, "they were left from the place's last occupant and I didn't see the need to remove them."
"Pretty... dark, this place," Booker noted as he followed the man with the brown hair.
"Just the ground floor, it's a bit more comfortable up here," he heard back. "Now then Mister DeWitt, let's have a talk as we go."
Shit, he didn't like how that sounded.
"Let me be blunt with this, you are not thinking straight right now, Mister DeWitt," the man said. Booker... wasn't? "Just follow the sound of my voice and remember what I tell you for later."
"I... will?" He was feeling a little strange...
"You will be going to a particular place to find a particular girl," the stranger with the strange features explained. It... made sense, didn't it? "Her name is Elizabeth, and she is important."
"Elizabeth is... important," Booker agreed.
"Once you find her, your job will be to get her away. To safety. Neither of these will be easy." They were on the next floor, a warm place with light and furniture.
"DeWitt Investigations... This kind of thing..." Why was it so hard to express himself?
"I understand." And somehow, he thought, the man really did. "Once she is safe, all you need to do is keep her safe from there on. For the rest of her life. Do you understand?"
"Find... Elizabeth. Get her out, keep her safe." Slowly but surely Booker was regaining his dewits. Even if he had no idea how he lost them in the first place.
They were coming to the next floor, just then, colder again with harsh light through the storm outside, no living arrangements anymore- and there he saw a man, bound to a chair with his head covered. Dead. There was blood everywhere, torture instruments- "Ahh shit."
"Remember, you are not thinking clearly," the stranger repeated. "Nothing you see can be trusted right now. You should have everything you need to proceed to the roof and find your objective from there."
"Oh, and before you go," he added, "take these. Your brand might be known, so keep it hidden."
Booker took the pair of smooth-looking brown gloves, fingerless. They wouldn't be an issue to use. "Sure."
When he looked up again, the man was gone without a trace. He shrugged. "Guess I should go to the roof, then."
And so he did, pointedly looking away from the corpse to the side of the room. Maybe it was still there, maybe it wasn't, but Booker wasn't interested in finding out either way.
Out in the rain again, it took him moments to circle the weird contraption taking the place of the lighthouse's, light. An angel made of silver was set above three bells engraved with three symbols, scroll, key, sword.
Booker took out the piece of paper with the code. This was as easy as matching symbols.
Ring once, twice and twice again from left to right. Except as soon as he did, a sound like a giant foghorn descended from the skies, repeating the rhythm of the bells.
The contraption sent out another iteration of the same sounds. Confirmation, Booker realized, that was echoed from the skies turning red with each note.
Or it might be synis... synas- synesthesia, right. He might just be starting to see sounds as colors.
The ground under his feet trembled, bells were rung, the thing he was working on opened up like a door while the weird contraption- it could have posed for a big lantern or something- was driven up to the roof, making place for a new platform to ascend and a fancy red chair to unfold on it. Was looking really high-tech and all, too.
"Alright... Looks like I'm supposed to sit in the fancy chair," Booker mumbled. Nothing for it, he guessed.
It was actually fairly comfortable and- his arms were caught in a pair of shackles snapping up from under the armrests! A mechanical voice started talking, but he was too busy freaking the fuck out to pay attention to what it was saying!
He was whirled around, stripes of metal driving up and around him and he was tilted downward- shit, his gun was just loosely sitting on his belt and slipping! "No, no, no, shit!"
It fell down into the void as some kinda rocket thrusters began firing and shiiit!
And all the way through Ascension, Booker DeWitt never did notice the shadow always keeping just behind him, following and hiding under him as he was shot above the clouds like the payload of a warhead and came to witness the city of Columbia for the first time, ripping him out of his panic (and trans-dimensional transferrence sickness).
One thing you have to give these religious nuts, they do have some nice architecture all around. Now if they replaced all the angel iconography with that of winged Sarahs, you could even describe the whole thing as an acceptable attempt at making a liveable city out of this place.
Sneaking in along with DeWitt is pretty easy, all things told, thanks to your shadow form and his addled state of mind if nothing else, and so you accompany him all throughout the frankly insanely ridiculous way of transportation onto the floating city of Columbia- which is a horrible name, by the way, but that's just your opinion.
The two of you land inside some kind of church-y complex with literal hundreds of candles lit all throughout it and a layer of water covering the floor- you have a sneaking suspicion this is not flooding but rather a deliberate infliction of water damage onto the building for some, excuse the expression, god-forsaken reason.
Or maybe just to reduce the danger of the numerous fire hazards all over the place. Seriously, it has to take dozens of people to keep this many candles lit all the time.
Incidentally, one particular guy also has a panel of colored glass depicting himself titled 'And the prophet shall lead the people to the new Eden', which... Well, it could have come from you if you decided you wanted a cult following or something, so good on him, you suppose.
From what the twins told you, this may be none other than Zachary Hale Comstock, in fact, but you'll get to him later.
There's a few more pseudo-religious messages strewn around the area, but you don't really pay them much mind- Comstock may have gone crazy after getting access to the Lutece Device and used his foreknowledge to make some kind of religion out of it by meshing it with Christianity, but all of that suddenly became a lot less valid the moment you entered the scene anyway.
Also, whenever you get around to taking over the world at some point, you must have more statues of yourself standing all over the place than him. You make the decision on the spot as the stone beard waving in some imaginary wind you see inside this weird greeting center offends you on a deep level.
Not to mention the background music. They have to have a whole bunch of speakers hidden around the place to get this kind of sound quality for an endless repetition of a female voice singing 'hallelujah' over and over again. Seriously, how have none of these guys snapped and murdered someone yet?
Booker spends a little time here, looking around confusedly and asking one guy in a long white robe (you will henceforth call it a dress) where he is, seemingly still disoriented. To be fair, so would you be in his shoes... And if you weren't yourself in general, you suppose.
The answer he receives isn't the most helpful, of course, but what did he expect from some religious nut? "Heaven. Or as close as we'll see 'til Judgement Day."
He just walks on at that point. To his credit, so would you have, if you didn't decide to just eat the guy. "It's best if I keep to myself, 'less I wanna be made," he whispers to himself, self-consciously tugging at his gloves. "Now where's the damn exit..."
The water is making it spectacularly easy for you to stay hidden and keep up despite the many light sources to all sides, slinking after DeWitt as he follows the sound of some madman screeching his message for all to hear. You don't bother listening- it's something about how if 'The Prophet' didn't do a bunch of things or did a thing, but didn't do another it 'would have been enough', but seriously, he's basically just verbally sucking his dick and nobody has told him to shut up yet.
Religious people, man. You'll never quite get them, you suppose.
And of course the congregation of obviously gay men in white dresses is blocking the way out. Just fabulous.
And already, DeWitt is having a problem. With this little congregation of morons in the way, he can't exactly leave this place, and him doing, well, much of anything in this situation is liable to get him called out on being a normal person.
Or a filthy unbeliever, as the case may be. Honestly, you can see why and how things never worked out when the twins just sent him up here as they have so far.
Now that you're there, though, it shan't be much of an issue for much longer. Covertly rising out of the water in a moment when nobody is looking in your direction, you shake your wet hair out a bit and step around DeWitt, the man immediately surprised and wary at your presence.
"You go on ahead in a bit, once I take care of this," you whisper to him with a hand on his shoulder, confidently striding onward right among the people standing around in a rough half-circle.
The priest keeps on preaching for a moment, but you shut him up by curtly unfolding your wings behind yourself, the believers behind you breaking out in astonished whispers at the sight.
Your snow owl wings are pretty big, relative to your own body, as they tend to be when you only shift partially- a useful little twist to your powers you make use of too rarely, truth be told. Keeping your face mostly cold and apathetic, you lower your wings and make a few of the robed suckers around step back in sudden reverence.
"Fear not, my children," you intone, "for today is a day of Deliverance in Mercy."
And just like that you've established the picture you wanted. Your clothes are simple, the wide black pants and shirt you've been wearing in Thule all the time simple and without need for details, your wings doing their job and your words echoing all around the room in an otherworldly manner. Your power over your own voice is coming in handy once again.
And yes, you are taking a couple of lines from the crazy cultists praying to yourself inside of your soul. No reason not to, and all you need to do to have the perfect idea of what to say is to network with the even crazier priest you ate in Rapture directly.
The man wrote a literal holy book for his new pseudo-religion about you and has people actually treat is as their new bible. May as well acknowledge the talent and dedication involved here.
The priest is shivering, looking at you with widening eyes, and it takes exactly three seconds for him to fall to his knees and prostrate himself before you wordlessly.
Now this is how people should behave when they see you.
"The Day of Judgement has not yet come," you tell everyone present without bothering to acknowledge them, "but your piety has been acknowledged. You may proceed to the Blessed Land at these hands."
"I..." The energy of the room has shifted, but only minimally. Everyone came to hear the priest preach at them, but now his answer is the one thing on everyone's mind, the congregation dead quiet in awaiting it. The people in the room are almost incapable of speaking now, never having expected this to happen and unlikely to speak up anytime soon.
Sheep, but useful sheep that will wander into whatever mouth their herd leader points towards. "Please, great one, would you tell us your name? This is..." Not that Mister Priest over here isn't somewhat lost for words himself.
"Ga-Bri-El," you answer, still emotionless and presenting an unfeeling mask even as you are laughing your ass off inside your head. Are they really gonna...
"HALLELUJAH!" The priest yells all of a sudden, standing up as though propelled by his faith. "Everyone, it's... It's a miracle. Everyone that has something holding them back from going straight to Heaven take a step back! BUILDING THIS INCREDIBLE CHURCH AND UNCEASING PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED!"
""HALLELUJAH!"" Not all of these brainwashing victims are equally intent on this whole deal, it would seem, but groupthink is acting to your advantage once again.
And of course, you don't forget to covertly motion for DeWitt to get a move on already as your teeth tear into the first of several believers, powers activated to make sure he feels not a bit of pain and, indeed, goes calmly and with nothing but a smile on his lips...
Booker DeWitt stumbled out of the flooded passageway and into the light of the sun, finally coming out of the damn church and emerging into some kind of courtyard filled with statues. "Damn priest should learn not to trust everyone wagging his tongue at him. Then again, had to become a priest somehow."
Statues more people were still praying at, of course. Because of course they were. Listening in, it didn't take him long to figure out these madmen had declared the founding fathers saints or something on top of all the madness he'd already seen so far.
Nothing beat his client growing wings and starting to eat people, but it was pretty out there all the same.
Didn't matter, though, so he shook it off and got his head back into the game. All that mattered now was the girl. What next?
Well, first things first, he had to find his bearings, figure out wherever she was. He could plan things from there. And with any luck, he'd avoid the man that was chewing through the idiots spending all day praying back where he just came out of.
Finding the exit to the place he was in didn't take much, the issue was that he had, in fact, not hallucinated everything else that'd happened. There he was, a Booker in the clouds and not a single dead body he had caused. For once.
There was a reason he was broke, okay?
So there he stood, watching as another island of buildings slowly aligned itself with the one he was standing on. Judging by the other people waiting both on this end and the opposite one, there might be a schedule for this shit, but he couldn't see it posted anywhere if so.
'Course he made it two minutes on foot before the next crossing was blocked off by a parade of floating carnival booth rejects giving him a quick history lesson about this Comstock character and just how awesome and great he was.
Booker didn't even bother to pretend to listen.
Disposing of the bodies once you're done is extremely easy thanks to the fact you're currently atop a flying island above the clouds with an easy 'hiding place' stretching in all directions once you get outside of the building you arrived in on DeWitt's tail.
Of course there are more people in the way, and fuck explaining to those why it is totally consensual how you killed all these people and are now disposing of the bodies, so you simply shadow them out one at a time, methodically disposing of any evidence of exactly where these people (and their souls) went off to.
The sky below you won't have any issues fitting a couple of dead people, you're sure.
Of course, DeWitt has already made his way through a significant part of the city by this point, not wasting any time once you opened the path for him, meaning he'll be halfway to the fair already. The Columbia Raffle and Fair, to be exact, seeing as it's a whole big event announced throughout the whole city.
Apparently, today is the anniversary of the city's secession from 'The Sodom Below', as official sources charmingly refer to the rest of the world in general and the United States in particular, celebrated widely and with parties and several events all over the place.
The central of which, as well as the oldest ones dating back to the very time said secession happened, are the raffle and fair. You don't know much about the whole thing, of course, except that the fair is about what you'd expect and one of the places DeWitt will always manage to find his way toward on his way to Monument Island, a tourist attraction turned golden cage for his target in this city, and that the raffle is where he usually fucks up his quiet attempts at infiltration.
Also, everyone is absurdly happy and festive, a fact demonstrated by how you've had to ward off half a dozen flirty women dressed like this is 1912 in a city that had no large-scale contact with the rest of the world since 1900, and people just keep on greeting you for no reason. You do play the part and greet them back, of course, pretending you care about the spirit exhibited by everyone around, but even so you can't help but consider whether to hurry after DeWitt or take your time retracing his steps with your own.
Figuring out where exactly this fair is being held is as easy as employing your compass soul as a quick overlay, and although shadows are somewhat sparse along the route you're going, the city being above the clouds and receiving the sun's light as hard as anything can making your Umbramancy a lot harder to use effectively, but hey, at least some amount of shadow is always around in some capacity at least so you can use it more or less fine even under these circumstances.
So all else you need are a few quiet, shadowy spots to disappear into, literally, to jump across the various floating islands constantly rearranging themselves into an ever-shifting cityscape on the way to the fairgrounds. Not like anyone is looking out for anything unusual in particular, making your traversal of Columbia fairly simple and easy if a bit monotonous.
Not that you complain, of course. The sooner you get to see Sarah again, the better, and she has been hanging around at the exact location you're working your way towards at the moment.
The fairgrounds are about what you'd expect from them, you suppose, a bunch of booths and loud-voiced people yelling some shit from every direction. Of particular note does seem to be a guy named Fink or something, seeing as his name is on half the posters and placards you can see around- apparently, his company is selling everything from automatic horse robots (you take that as a personal affront as they suck compared to your own design deployed only back on Earth Fallout) to some kind of powers in a bottle.
It would be funny it those were connected to Cauldron, the other organization you know to do some stuff like this, but no, those 'Vigors' seem to be some degraded form of ADAM-based technology as you'd already kind of expected. Or at least the few samples of the stuff you can find smell a lot like ADAM to your enhanced sense of scent.
All in all, though, it's a fairly decent fair, as those things go, you suppose. You, uh, you don't exactly have a wide set of comparisons to draw from, of course, but aside from just how obscenely open some of the booths are about being some form of propaganda against the 'Vox Populi', Columbia's very own set of terrorists made up of non-white people.
Gotta love all of that entirely unsubtle racism, you suppose.
"Hey Sarah," you greet your sister as you stroll across the fair, having found her flirting with a few of the younger women around the area, and immediately move to kiss her right then and there.
Your sister rises onto the tips of her toes to meet you halfway, eagerly exchanging saliva with you with her arms wrapped around your back. Scandalized whispers rise around the two of you, but if anything these prudish morons taking issue with your love for her just makes it better- like the difference between buying something and stealing it, one just adds that gleeful little punch of emotion as compared to the other.
"How have you been?" You ask once you're done with the customary greeting. "Columbia been treating you well, I hope?"
It better have, or else this city is done for at your very own hands.
"Quite well, but thank you for asking," Sarah responds with a repressed chuckle and smiling up at you, obviously seeing right through your train of thought. "I even got a fair bit of work done while you were taking care of our acquaintance. Did you know they have these 'skylines' they use for traffic of people and cargo? Magnetized double metal lines ranging through the air. They also conduct electricity really well."
"Oh, and how many of them had 'sudden' malfunctions ending dozens of lives today?" Sarah is and stays Sarah, no matter what.
"Oh, a couple," she waves you off. "Mostly policemen and soldiers, which is kind of the same in this city. They use the skylines for personal transport the most. More importantly, I got these."
Sarah shows you the little bag hanging on a strap around her shoulder, opening it to reveal several little bottles with very imaginatively shaped caps- a yellow or bronze horse, a female devil and one shaped like a heart. "Swiped these from around the area," your sister explains as she closes it up again and takes your hand instead, the two of you proceeding to walk around the fair and take in the sights. "Possession, Devil's Kiss and Bucking Bronco, respectively. Control over machines and people, flaming grenade generation and limited telekinesis."
"Good work," you praise her first of all, as Sarah always deserves all the praise. "More than I got done, at any rate. DeWitt took a good bit to get going at the start there, poor guy is completely fucked in the head right now."
"Right, he'll come around here in his own time," she shrugs. And takes your hand, her arm entwined with yours. What, these prudes have an issue with even that? Hilarious. "You know, I don't think I've seen even a single pancake stand all this time I spent around here. It's a crime I tell you."
"A critical lack of pancakes, then," you nod wisely. "Guess we aren't getting anything right this moment, after all."
"Oh, like you have any money in the first place," she teases you.
"Who said anything about actually paying money?"
You and Sarah have a good laugh, moving on through the fair and doing your thing while you wait for DeWitt to show up. A couple of the kids will hopefully learn something from the tips you gave them for handling guns- a few of them stand at the booths letting them shoot actual guns with blank ammunition that is still powerful enough to blast through very soft and thin wood used at them.
It's a different time, it's probably okay. And if not, well, they're probably all going to die at some point anyway.
You also make a point to openly make out with Sarah a little here and there, just to enjoy the scandalized townsfolk that still doesn't do jack shit about the situation that seems to be so upsetting to the local sensibilities, and you even get around to transferring one of the religious nuts you ate between yourself and her and back, just to update her on everything you know about Columbia as it currently is.
Using the kisses to hide the effect, of course. Can't nobody say you don't combine the pleasant and the necessary (tongue-wrestling with Sarah) with the expedient (everything else).
That is, until you arrive at one particular area where an announcer expounds on the many uses of the 'Incredible Handyman', a guy stuffed into a giant robotic suit with his head sticking out.
"Have you ever seen anything like it?" One of the men in the audience asks his female companion, drawing your attention as you do your best to hold back your laughter at the numerous mechanical failures you can see happening in slow motion, fingers entwined with Sarah's.
"He looks so sad," she responds not quite to his question, but close enough.
"Sad? When you're that strong, what's there to be sad about?"
You can't help it; you bust out a laugh, pointing at the stage with your free hand. "Sorry, but... quite a lot, actually," you chuckle, drawing the attention of the people around you to yourself. "For one, he's just a torso in there, see how the arms and legs are way too slim to fit them, not to mention all the machinery they need?"
"Oh my!" The woman you're addressing pulls her hands across her mouth, expressing shock at this knowledge. "Did he lose them in an accident, or...?"
"Most likely amputated to fit him into that suit, of course," you shrug. "Also, see how he's cowering and holding up his hands to cover his head? That's because there's microphones around his neck and someone must've messed up the settings, so every sound he hears is painful for him now. Or that's how he looks, at least."
"Mhm! Mhm!" The 'handyman' doesn't seem to be able to so much as open his mouth, most likely set to being silent by whoever is controlling him, but you'll guess he's trying to agree to your assertion.
"If you look closely, he's also got a couple of scars all across his head, they put a bunch of stuff into his brain, too," you continue. "The mechanical work for the hands is barely acceptable, too, I doubt he could so much as hold a glass of water with the manual dexterity he has with them. Heck, it's a miracle he hasn't hurt himself with them yet, and the weight distribution of his body means he can hardly walk upright, heck just standing is difficult for him!"
The people are listening to you now, even the announcer quieting down and dabbing a tissue across his forehead as he sweats like crazy.
"I mean, not to brag about it, but aside from the horrible mutilations, I could design a better body around a human mind controlling it with twenty minutes and half as much scrap metal used up," you bluntly brag about it, gesturing with one hand. "Make the legs a little stronger and take out everything that makes being a handyman a horrible form of torture, then work over the arms and hands to allow some actual use for them, maybe even let the subject keep their manhood in the grafting process."
You keep on going each and every issue you can see on the product before you, not even paying attention to the small crowd gathering and the couple of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, methodically verbally ripping Fink MFG a new one for trying to sell this to people as a way to allow disabled persons to keep up some standard of living.
That is, until one sweaty guy approaches you to ask you to come meet someone. This is going to be either free food or... Well, free food, really.
"I'm taking my companion here with me," you declare, Sarah silently smugging at everyone in sight.
Jeremiah Fink, founder and owner of Fink Manufacturing, as it turns out, has a thing about hiring anyone with any skills he might need in his company whenever he can, which is what the small amount of chaos behind the scenes with people whispering to each other was all about.
He is also in the middle of rehearsing something to do with the raffle, being personally responsible for announcing it once it gets going, acting as somewhat of the biggest sleazy salesman to be seen, explaining how and why he seems to have so many similarly sleazy salespeople employed under himself.
Anyway, the curtains are still down, but the apparent automatic backdrop for whatever he'll be pulling his sleazy salesshow is being pulled up and down a couple of times, a pair of armed guards on the stage to keep an eye on things having come in just moments before yourself. "There you are, there you are. Quite a stir you caused out on the fair, hm?"
Note to self, acquire a bigger hat, they seem to denote greater societal status or something. "Well, it's somewhat of a talent of mine," you drawl while you do everything you can not to stare at the giant mustache styled with some weirdly-smelling stuff. "Now what might you need me for? Not that I mind, but we were on a little date before we were interrupted..."
Sarah stays quiet, draping herself onto your side. Looks like she's determined to play show piece for the moment.
"Mhm, my bad, but I just had to have a talk with someone so uniquely insightful, my boy," Fink starts his spiel. It's so natural you'd believe he's actually extremely used to this kind of situation. "For one, it seems as though you and your lady friend are not actually known to Columbia's authorities, from what my men could find out- only an advantage, in some lines of work, of course. You see, it seems my chief engineers are having some trouble deciding on their successors for when they're fired, meaning there just might be an opening in Fink Manufacturing's Research And Development department if you can prove you can back up your claims from out there."
Yep, you fucking called it from the moment you weren't greeted by a man with a gun already drawn.
"You make an intriguing offer, but I have a better idea, even," you smirk at Fink, rapidly telepathing at Sarah. I take him, you take the goon brothers?
Can do, I got this.
"Oh, do tell, my young friend," he replies, a hand twitching to signal his guards just in case. "I'm always open for new ideas, you see."
"Well, how about this, then, I brutally murder you and enslave your soul for all eternity, and in exchange you get to violently tear down everything you've ever built in life?" You never stop smiling pleasantly, of course. "My sister here can take care of your little lovebirds in the background, of course, not to worry."
You don't wait for a response; after all, who would ever reject such a deal? Your hands turn into claws, tearing Fink's throat right out to keep him from screaming and letting you get some massive blood all over his expensive suit while you let your fangs follow suit.
Sarah is on point, of course. "Don't move a muscle," she casually orders the goons, leisurely strolling toward them and pulling their necks into reach of her teeth.
The minor massacre is done within moments, the bodies dropping to the floor discarded and emptied of blood. You breathe Fink back out, smiling at him sardonically as you twirl his hat, taken from him in his last moments, around in your fingers.
"See, you just couldn't resist such a chance," you chuckle. "Now guess who's about to go play his role as perfectly as possible while I go through his memories?"
Jeremiah Fink was, and always had been, in his own very humble opinion, one hell of a businessman, using his position and the resources at his disposal to rake in the cash however he could. Mostly, though, he did so by being white.
He didn't personally give a rat's ass a man's skin color, of course, but others did... And that meant when he introduced a standard shift of sixteen hours a day when he founded Fink Manufacturing, nobody cared about how his workers were treated or paid for those sixteen hours, and that in turn meant he could reduce costs to make a greater profit- obvious and useful, it was a small miracle nobody else had done something like this yet.
Of course his business was large all along, being the largest employer and company in all of Columbia, in no small part thanks to a couple of people he had discreetly smuggling along a few black convicts from down below, and using Comstock's prophet number made it easy to work with the man as he understood the good word may be good, but didn't raise no barn by itself, but the largest boost he had ever received came from listening to his brother Albert when he told him about those tears in reality.
Vigors! Mechanical horses! Handymen! Voxophones! All these and so much more, just by observing and using what he saw. It took a lot of effort to find the right rifts, of course, but seeing into the future to simply take futuristic technology for his own use and production was a most glorious and profitable endeavour, indeed.
Comstock was dependant on Fink MFG, so it was impossible to topple Jeremiah. The money he made he invested smartly into hiring whatever scientists he could find, and ensuring his own personal image was up to snuff! From the good suits to the giant golden statues, it was all a part of his image campaign.
Especially the statues.
So how was he supposed to know there would be that one man appearing out of thin air that cared not a whit about these issues, and indeed didn't have to?
Sarah seems to find this hilarious. You, on the other hand, don't really see why.
"Gabe! You are in that body! This is just too much!"
You sniff, twirling your rich moustache and waving your cane around, a little unused to being a good bit shorter than usual. "I have no idea what you mean, my dear," you say, emulating Fink himself as you're walking around in his shape. "Incidentally, how are preparations coming along?"
"Turrets all around the city are being reprogrammed as we speak, at least in most public areas," your sister confirms with a smile. "Scheduled maintenance times mean we can't really get at the ones inside Comstock's territory that easily and fabricating some reason they need to be reprogrammed on the fly would take too long to really get anywhere. We also have a couple dozen Handymen with a few 'sudden maintenance issues' that'll be ready for battle soon enough."
"Good, good," you nod slowly, turning back towards 'your' office's desk. You had several documents brought to you, most notably all the schematics for most of the technology Fink seems to have been taking advantage of- the majority is just recolored stuff a couple decades into the future, which for you is still ancient scrap, but a few things do stand out.
Oh, and a few of Comstock's people stationed in and around Finkton, the personal district Fink has been using as a factory slash slums for his 'workers' (the office you're in is right at the top of it) had to find their ends right in this very room not long after. You would've tried to work with them, or eat them maybe, but Sarah got pissed when they disrespected you and had them shot by the security detail also present at the time 'like the bleating sheep they aspire to be'.
She's just too caring, really.
"Next off, we will need to secure the spoils of this little excursion," you continue with Fink's voice. "I have scheduled for a few crates of samples to be brought to the warehouse right below, so we'll have all the standard vigors currently for sale on hand shortly."
"Then I'll go and have a little talk with the Chief of Security and make sure Fink's men are ready," Sarah grins. "Once we have them ready, all we need to do is push the Vox Populi to throw themselves at Comstock's men and infrastructure and the fun can begin."
"Yes, about that..." Now how shall you put this? "I'm looking through Fink's eyes right now, and it looks like DeWitt just decided he doesn't like overt racism."
"... What did he do?" Sarah sighs. "And how bad is it?"
"Well, it's fairly tame for our standards, at least. He's kind of butchered his way through a dozen policemen and stole their weapons and is now on a rampage through the city. He's also got one of those skyhooks, so he's just darting from one piece of Columbia to the next."
"Variables," a voice says, revealing itself to be that of the male Lutece twin.
"And constants," the female counterpart adds.
"Even if things change, they always stay the same." You know they just appeared from nowhere, you've been observing the entire area through your advanced senses all this time.
"The same events."
"The same issues," the guy sighs.
"We could have left things alone," the woman sniffs.
"So you're saying the raffle is a 'constant'?" Sarah asks, quickly grasping the same idea you are.
"He always gets stopped at it."
"He always draws the number seventy-seven," the male twin agrees.
"And he always draws Comstock's attention."
"We have tried to keep him from doing so, to no avail."
"Hence, a constant," she explains.
"Same with the hook."
"You could call him hooked."
"Hooked to what?"
"That is the question, is it not?"
"Which was first, the question or the hook?"
"Yes, yes." The twins really do have a bad habit of derailing into semantics whenever you let them talk to each other for too long. "The question is, what do we do about this?"
"Right, change of plans," you announce after a moment of thought. "I was going to take care of the looting first, but since I'm technically here for a job, I'll be doing it first of all. I'll go and make sure Booker reaches Monument Island in person, after all."
"Then I'll pick up the slack and take care of the rest here before I look into the Vox Populi," Sarah jumps in. She's just so reliable! Such a good girl! "Get them riled up and ready to start a fight with Comstock."
"Good. Any other groups of armed people in the city we can add to this chaos we're working on?"
"Cornelius Slate," the female twin says.
"He is opposed to Comstock," the male one agrees.
"Another constant, though variable in its execution."
"Both kinds, in fact. But some soldiers listen to him and rebel."
"We'll hit him up at some point too, then," you nod. "In the meantime, anything I should know about DeWitt's way to Monument Island?"
"It should be fine. DeWitt makes his own way," the guy says.
"One way or another."
"Or... another way?"
"Got it. I'll just keep on a lookout for anything our meddling will have changed so far. Oh, and in the meantime..." You grab a few pieces of paper, quickly sketching out a set of blueprints. "I'll just have a few of the factories change production outputs, a few of these bomb collars combined with the poor living below this place will be a great help once the time comes."
Booker DeWitt cursed under his breath as he ducked under a bullet flying his way, hurriedly reloading the gun he'd taken from one of those fascistic policemen earlier. Perhaps, he considered, accepting one of the lots in the raffle had been a mistake after all, and especially was having drawn the baseball bat with the number 77 on it, but screw it, he couldn't have known ahead of time.
Stupid cryptic telegram. If his clients would've just put it plainly, he wouldn't be in this position. Then again, he was totally fine with the stupid racist announcer getting the ball to the face, even if he had to then kill the stupid racist cops.
Ah, screw it. They had his trail now, even if they had no idea why he was there- good thing those gloves were hiding the brand- and right then and there he was being drawn into a running battle over the floating rooftops of this stupid racist city.
He regretted nothing. Even if the 'fireman' he had to put down had given him a couple of second degree burns that were smarting like hell. A couple of soldiers were in the way, he killed them off, and for a few moments he stopped thinking entirely; just like back when he was in the army, thinking just got in the way.
Aim, fire. Repeat until reload. Keep to cover or change positions. Using those vigors as the need to came up, he made his way through, in the general direction of the place on that one photograph- Monument Island, if he wasn't going completely crazy.
At least those weird twins had given him that suspicious glowing substance to drink when he met them in that restaurant on the way through; by this point Booker was entirely desensitized to imbibing whatever superpower juice people offered him. The magnetic field or however it worked had saved his ass a couple of times already.
Even if it was, apparently, astonishing it hadn't killed him when he took it. Those kinds of things people waited to mention until after you took the stuff they fed you.
'Nyway, there he was, using the magnetized skyhook to propel himself from one freight hook to another along a series of warehouses and residential islands that were close enough together for some reason, having shot his way through a couple of patrols moving around on their own little flying gunships, when he came upon a strange building.
It had a weird aura around it, some kind of mist on the streets around the flying island linked to them, and he had little choice but to go through to proceed. And courtyard, of course, had a particularly 'nice' statue greeting any visitors.
"'Comstock fights the serpent of nations', huh? Fucking jack shit," he murmured as he went by the depiction of a jew, a Chinese and a Black guy's head in as stereotypical a way as possible.
"They certainly don't bother with any semblance of subtlety, do they?" The amused voice of a man he'd seen before had Booker turn around, gun raised reflexively, but the guy in the simple clothes didn't pay it any mind. "Looks like you'll have to go through, but I'd recommend a gas mask or something- this entire place is stinking to the high heavens, and they have to have a fog machine or two in there for the 'broody atmosphere'."
Booker gave him a hard look, but still turned to look back at the building. "So what's your deal?" He asked. "Why do you and the cryptic duo show up all around town?"
"Oh, we're just all following our own agendas, like everyone else," the frustratingly smug asshole waved him off. "Including yourself. Speaking of, time's a'wasting, shouldn't you get a move on soon?"
Booker rolled his eyes. He wasn't the one that started chatting in the middle of something.
"Now first things first, let's look into avoiding a fight if we can," you tell DeWitt as the two of you open the wide double doors barring entry to the building in front of you. "Specifically just walk through and let me do the talking."
DeWitt, for his part, is gagging as a wave of air carrying the scent of old decay hits him. "What the hell..."
"I did warn you," you shrug. "These guys have a massive amount of rotting food lying around to attract these birds they like so much."
"No, seriously, what the hell..." Grabbing a vial of blue 'salts' whose color (and scent) reminds you of EVE, your companion shakes his head. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this already."
"What, the giant state of Booth over there doesn't say it all already?" It's literally a statue of the man with a pistol in hand, too, posing heroically.
"Isn't that the guy that assassinated Lincoln?" And to your (mild) surprise, DeWitt actually knows what this is about. Then again, it's all a bit more recent for him, isn't it?
"Exactly," you agree. "For confirmation look at that side room over there, they've got a picture of it."
"I'm not sure whether to be impressed by their tenacity in advocating for slavery and oppression or appalled at the sheer obvious stupidity of it," you continue when it seems as though your temporary partner is lost for words. "Come on, this way."
Up the stairs and off to the main display you go. "Don't quote me on this, but I think these are some of the most deluded, willfully ignorant people in the world."
"You haven't seen nothing yet," you say with a wave forward, using the elevated position you have to look down on the gathering of people in Ku Klux Klan hoods and that one guy with an honest to god coffin on his back and a bunch of crows circling around him preaching to them.
They are also twirling their hands around each other in unceasing circles and stomping onto the ground in place. "AND SO THE PROPHET LED US INTO PEKING! Where he demonstrated to the Sodom Below the true mission our Founders had given us. And when the men, and hypocrites of Washington..."
"You're right, this is just getting better and better," DeWitt whispers. "Now how do we get past these nutcases?"
"Same deal as last time," you whisper back. "You get ready to sneak past while I distract them lethally."
"I knew that wasn't a hallucination," DeWitt murmurs to himself, but doesn't otherwise do anything beyond creeping further forward, staying on the higher floor and readying himself to jump down and sneak past the mob of crazed zealots.
You, in the meantime, float right on down, spreading a large pair of black raven wings as you silently draw all attention in the room toward yourself. And, of course, quietly interrogate all the souls you ate in Columbia so far for any details on these particular guys.
Time to pull the same trick for the third time, make it a pattern and all. "Welcome, my children," you say with your voice reverberating just like ta that welcome center church, "to the Days of Deliverance. You have been chosen to be welcomed to the Afterlife for your deep devotion and steadfast beliefs."
You aren't even bothering to establish the 'fact' you're an archangel or anything this time around. These people are just... making it way too easy.
"How could this be?" The crow guy questions almost like a challenge, the lower-ranking racists still keeping up their weird little dance. "The Fraternal Order of the Raven exists to repent for our failures, for our inability to protect Lady Comstock from the disgusting negro attempt on on her life! How can we..."
That's right, these guys are the kind to enjoy continually chastising themselves for some perceived 'sin' they've committed. Seriously, religious people.
"Your repentance has been acknowledged; all sins are washed clean," you retort in your reverberating voice echoing around the room. "Salvation is at hand, for the Lord does not condemn you. Prostrate yourselves and thou shalt receive the judgement thou deserve, no more and no less."
Yes, you are seriously doing this. And yes, you are getting away with it, too.
"The City Of Columbia Shalt Be Judged Each Man To His And Each Woman To Hers And Each Child To Itself," you continue declaring, "And All Shall Receive Their Just Reward, From The White Man To The Black. Now Kneel, For You Have Been Chosen, For Your Diligence, For Your Faith, And For These Thou Shalt Be Led To Your True Fate Forevermore. Be Ye Soldier On The Ground Or Angel In The Sky, All Must Bear Account At The End."
The funny thing is, you aren't even lying about any of this. Just spewing technical truths.
It takes a little longer, with you posing and spewing a couple of lines your souls are feeding you (the soul known around your inner world as Father Wales is a great help with this), but soon enough everyone in the room is preached at enough to do whatever you want them to, including feeding each other and themselves right into your maw.
As for DeWitt, if there's one thing the man can be relied on it is to take the chances he is given. You also heard a couple of explosions and a bunch of gunshots, again, but surely he'll be fine- the man has killed his way through an honestly impressive amount of armed soldiers by this point, certainly more than you would have back in the day before you became immune to gunfire.
One little believer~, jumping down your mouth~,
Drink him out, pass him around~, eleven little believers left now~.
Once you're done munching down on everyone present, you proceed to use your corpse-reforming spell on them to morph them around a bit, barely even bothering to take off their clothes on the way- you can work around them easily enough, anyway, so why bother?
Only issue once you're done fusing them into a single, big Mister X as of your normal template, without the high tech components of course, is finding some clothes to fit the bulky humanoid to hide the bulging muscles making up the majority of its body. Have to fit all the strength they're supposed to be using somewhere, after all.
Meanwhile, the leftover bits and pieces are left to the side, thrown to the rest of the refuse lying around elsewhere in the building feeding the crows. You're working with limited time here, so you can't exactly be perfectly efficient with the materials; the stuff that doesn't work quite right and would otherwise require some time to be adjusted through magic, the soft organs and fat and all that stuff, gets thrown away as a matter of course.
Now then, you don't usually do rush orders, but even so, here you are; your new undead minion standing at the ready and DeWitt sent on with hopefully a little less attention than absolutely necessary. Progress.
Booker DeWitt eyed the turret suspiciously, the automaton in the shape of a man controlling a long gun swiveling around idly now that everyone else was dead, but ultimately decided to leave it alone if it wasn't going to open fire on him.
The defense mechanism inside the gondola station had been acting normally until he'd come in, making its ringing warm-up sound on sight, but instead of shooting in his direction, it had turned right around and opened fire on the policemen and soldiers around it, the whole place already turned into one big ambush prior to Booker's arrival.
And he didn't even use the vigor to mess with machines on it. Clearly something was up, but as long as it was helping him he wouldn't poke at it.
The gondola wasn't running, he didn't think, not with the many, many signs the whole access route to Monument Island had been shut down hard, but he'd just have to see and improvise a way through like he always did. A quick bit of looting got him a few magazines for these machine guns the people around Columbia used and some more salts- supplies were always good to have on hand, if nothing else.
Once outside, it quickly turned out that yes, the gondola was down- but the skylines were still around.
Booker spun up his hook.
Your new undead minion ready to rumble and sent in the opposite direction of where you're going with orders to kill people at random, hopefully serving as a decent distraction if nothing else, you proceed to walk after DeWitt, following the trail he's left behind.
You mean his scent, of course, rather than anything more obvious. Walking out of the headquarters of the particularly nutty religious order, you soon find that he's wasted no time using the weird three-dimensional infrastructure of Columbia again.
Luckily for you, you can in fact fly in contrast to him, so just a bit of using your compass and your bird forms lets you catch up with him pretty easily- or, not easily exactly, the man really can move when he wants to, but still you catch up with him easily enough.
Just in time, in fact, to see an airship catching on fire from somewhere inside of it, groups of soldiers coming toward it from all directions. "DID YOU BELIEVE YOUR TRUE NATURE COULD BE HIDDEN?!" A voice comes blaring out of, like, all the loudspeakers at once. "YOU WILL NOT LEAD OUR LAMB ASTRAY, FALSE SHEPHERD!"
Great, that would be one Zachary Hale Comstock, after all. Apparently, the tumours filling his skull didn't keep him from remembering how he used to look like, once upon a time, so it looks like DeWitt's been made, after all.
Annoyingly so. Did he have, like, cameras up or something? Are cameras even a thing in this city as of yet?
Comstock's around, but he's trying to smoke DeWitt out, Sarah thinks at you through your constant telepathic connection, the 'channel' between the two of you never actually closing for as long as you've had the power to do so. He was expecting his parallel dimension counterpart today already, so he's had an easy time figuring out it would be him when the massacres started.
Well dammit, looks like your decoy came just a bit too late. Nevertheless, he'll come in handy in getting Dewitt and the girl out of the city. This is why nobody likes prescient opponents, you grumble as you see the man you're mainly here for jump out of the loading bay of the one airship set on fire, hooking in on a skyline on the way- and dozens of armed soldiers dressed in these blue uniforms following him shortly on the same route.
Just... how does he manage to keep on getting into these situations?
Well, time to do your thing, you suppose. Following along the merry chase DeWitt is leading his pursuers on, you cut in on the next intersection of skylines, quickly detransforming and dropping down on the two lanes of bent metal beams serving as transportation around these parts.
The soldiers, hanging on to and being propelled along the same, sure do stare in shock when a grown man drops by on them from the clear sky, but you reckon they'll boggle even more once they get a taste of what's next. Stretching out your arms, you pump out electricity through hooked claws extended to both sides and firmly grasping both of the very, very conductive pieces of metal.
It's a bit awkward to hold yourself up just through that... But it is completely worth it, the material transferring the charge evenly and right through all of their own individual skyhooks.
The effect of high charges of electricity on the human body is a thing of beauty. In this case in particular, it is far from enough to cook or grill them from the inside out... But you still get the good parts: Involuntary muscle spasms.
They are holding onto the skyhooks to move along the skylines. Under them is nothing but air for a long, long way. And currently, all of them are being forced to rattle in place and let go.
The math just works out wonderfully, and their screams as they fall are almost enough to make you chuckle as you quickly transform back into your raven form. Almost.
They'll lose consciousness somewhere along the way, of course. But enough about the couple dozen people you just killed all at once, DeWitt isn't looking back and quickly approaching Monument Island, finally having found the direct route toward the giant angel statue tower containing the focal point of this whole little adventure.
Meanwhile, Sarah is busy hunting down one Daisy Fitzroy, local enemy of the state number one (aside from DeWitt, now) to eat her and pull another Fink, letting you more or less control two groups of people directly through their leaders, Fink's security teams and pretty much every oppressed person in the city willing and able to kill others with a weapon in hand.
Incidentally, the soul of Fink is currently busy being sent off to order a lot of weapons to be produced, just so you can arrange for the Vox Populi to be armed and ready for action once the fun starts. For the moment, though, Comstock's forces have lost track of DeWitt and your agent is well on his way to doing his part in this little arrangement you and the Lutece twins have pulled him into.
All he needs to do once he has found his biological daughter is to take her and escape from the city, then hopefully take care of her for however long they both live. Easy as pie, especially with all the strings you keep on pulling all over this place.
Why or how those lunatics stopped coming after him Booker had no idea, but if diving through a couple of clouds let him avoid any more gunfire in his direction, he'd take it. It wasn't like what they were doing made much sense in the first place; the moment that madman Comstock had shown up, they'd all gone completely nuts.
Damn sham of a prophet, too. 'Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt', huh? That wasn't what the deal was, but Booker sure wasn't letting him know. Not like it made much of a difference for the moment, the girl would need to be brought out of Columbia either way.
And there he was already, too, right at the door. "Monument Island," he murmured to himself. "Finally. Weird place to hold a young girl."
There he went, the place was barred up but a couple of magnetized freight hooks like they were used all over the city were his way inside. Time to finally do his damn job.
The inside of Monument Island's tower is... interesting. In the sense that it reminds you a lot of a few of the labs you saw once upon a time back when you cleaned up the secret parts of Fontaine Futuristics located under the public areas of it in Rapture. Several areas dedicated to various kinds of lab equipment, including at least one room you're fairly sure was used for human experiments, with one central piece of machinery dominating a central chamber right in the middle of the tower.
The Siphon is certainly one of the most unsafe machines you have seen to date- simply because of the arcs of electricity darting from it in all directions- but the idea of this thing as such affecting transdimensional powers like those this Elizabeth girl is supposed to possess is quite intriguing, from an academic standpoint at the very least.
For the moment, however, you simply snatch some of the runoff energy released as miniature lightning out of the air to recover your own charge.
6/6 Bio-Electricity Charges
You also do catch up to DeWitt again, the grizzled man just stepping into an elevator at the end of the whole tower, which... really strikes you as more of another hazard than anything else, considering you haven't seen any stairs so far, but hey, Columbia's building codes are their own affair, you suppose.
Well, the whole city is made up of disparate islands in the first place. If things go up in flames, everyone in place is apparently just supposed to die.
No matter, again, this city won't last long once your plans get set into motion. For the moment, you simply turn into a shadow, covertly joining DeWitt and suddenly appearing 'out of thin air' as he pushes the big button to get the elevator going. "So here we are."
"GH- Damn." The poor guy does seem rather jumpy, you have no idea why that might be. "It's you again."
"Me indeed," you smirk. "Say, did you put any thought into how you're going to get the girl to safety yet, or is that a work in progress? I'm genuinely curious."
"It's a whole city filled with flying things, how hard can it be to grab an airship and skip somewhere less unpleasant?" The ex-soldier asks rhetorically.
"You would guess not particularly, but then again things to have a habit of spiraling out of control around you," you shrug and lean back against the elevator wall. "Lucky for you I'm here to make sure you succeed."
"... Why are you helping me?" Ah, it would seem DeWitt is asking the right questions for once. Too little too late, but everyone has to start somewhere, you suppose. "Were you hired by the same people that sent me? Or..."
"Technically, the people that hired you originally work for me in this matter, actually," you open up, roughly estimating how much time you have before the elevator arrives wherever it will do so and adjusting your plans a little. "The point of this whole operation is to stop Comstock from continually fucking things up on layers of reality you can't even imagine, if that helps put things into perspective."
The fact that DeWitt and Comstock are the same person is secondary to this explanation, of course.
"I... What? Comstock's a two-bit fortune teller, the most he could do is..."
"There is, of course, the part where he has or had access to the Lutece Device," you continue unabashedly, "a device capable of at least some amount of interdimensional interaction including scanning parallel dimensions and possible realities and a few other things. He may just be a fortune teller, but there's a reason he's such a good one."
"So what, you're saying he's got a machine that can tell the future?" DeWitt, for all his scepticism, does have to consider his words after all the objectively insane shit he's been through today, it would seem.
"Not exactly, and it's not that simple; it's really a probability prediction machine, but it's close enough in practice you may think of it that way if you want," you shrug. It really doesn't matter. "The issue is that it's also spreading all kinds of radiation and-"
You consider the year and the amount of knowledge DeWitt is likely to have on the subject. "Simply put, he's got all the cancer because he used it too much and actually believes it's a prophecy thing. His tumor-addled brain saw a possible future where the girl in this tower- Elizabeth- burns down the world driven half by madness and half by her followers after she takes his place, and went completely nuts over it.
"So he'll do everything he needs to do to get that future, including torturing her for months and years as well as dying himself. This in turn has knock-on effects you really don't even want to think about and long story short, I'm here to cut all of that bullshit out and get you and that girl out of Columbia and live happily ever after. Does that answer your question?"
You're kind of bashing DeWitt's head in with all the exposition you're doing, but you think he really should know all of this stuff just so he gets an idea of what exactly you're here to achieve and what role you expect him to play.
"Okay, that explains why he knew I'd be coming, but why are you here doing this? What do you care? What's the rub?" Hah, he just doesn't trust anyone saying they're doing something unless something's in it for them, does he?
"Ultimately, I'm just doing a favor for someone, really," you wave him off. "None of what I'm telling you here really matters for what you have to do. Speaking of which, there is a plan in place for getting you and the girl off Columbia, if you're interested."
"... Alright, fine." And indeed, Booker DeWitt is a man of action and immediate moment rather than someone that sits around and thinks deeply about the information he is given. "What's that plan?"
"Well, simply put, the two of you jump into an airship and skedaddle right out of this city shortly before it's drowned in a massive civil war in which Comstock dies horribly." It's a good plan because it is simple and straightforward, with lots of space for spontaneous additions and changes.
"So... Exactly what I was going to do anyway?"
"Exactly what you were going to do with the addition of a lot of effort on my part to make a lot of fighting happen," you correct. "But yes, all you need to do is find an airship and disappear into the chaos. The more worrying part, as far as you would be concerned, would be getting the princess out of her tower in the first place."
"What, she won't want to?" You can already see how Booker is considering how to get her out anyway, better squash that fast.
"Oh no, Elizabeth will gladly leave. The issue is the thing they created to keep her here," you point out with a small grin. "Good thing you have me here, really."
Just then, the elevator arrives, and events are about to play out as they may.
Using the moment DeWitt glances towards the door, you disappear into your shadow form again, promptly positioning yourself right next to his feet and acting as just another layer to his own- a tried and true method of hiding your appearance while shifted into this shape.
And indeed, the man just sighs and shakes his head when he notices you're 'gone' again. "You too, pal," he grumbles, going forth into the highest reaches of this incredibly stupid tower.
Seriously, it's shaped like an angel, and not a particularly well-made one either. If it was shaped aesthetically, like, say, Sarah, it'd be another story, but... Really, maybe you just don't mesh with the local time's architecture very well.
DeWitt makes his way through a series of rooms all designed to spy on the occupant of what seems to be a fairly large set of rooms, making this whole situation distinctly questionable considering the one-way windows include a good look around the bathroom and the bedroom of the set, but at the very least you soon get to see the girl of the hour. Elizabeth Comstock, birth name Anna DeWitt, not that either of these two actually know about that.
Nor will they get to find out if you have anything to say about it. Judging by what the twins told you, DeWitt would just break down once he realizes exactly what's up and Elizabeth is liable to just murder him cross-dimensionally and essentially commit multiversal suicide to make sure no more Comstocks happen... Leading to the whole paradox because she and DeWitt don't exist anymore to kill off Comstock and everything goes into the vicious cycle that necessitated your presence to begin with.
In short, no thanks. Just have them fuck out of the city and go have a bunch of incest babies or something, you don't care as long as they don't become a problem again and the whole situation is resolved.
Anyway, DeWitt bumbles around a bit and follows along as Elizabeth goes her apparent daily life (you approve of the drawing room and make a note to use your semblance summons to add one to your own living quarters back on Earth Bet just out of principle), including a casual use of what seems to be her weird powers that lie at the center of this whole debacle- opening a portal to what looks an awful lot like Paris, of all places.
And hurriedly closing it again to avoid the ambulance racing right toward her. Ugh, seriously, girl really should learn some trigger discipline with that, she could very easily end up getting herself killed.
Then again, not your problem. You'll make DeWitt take care of it somehow.
He, with you on his heels, makes his way around repeatedly catching glimpses of Elizabeth until he manages to get into some space above her habitat, promptly stepping somewhere he probably shouldn't have and falling right down into it along with the loose platform he was walking across at the time.
A brief altercation happens when Elizabeth sees a person for the perhaps first time in her life and is shocked, throws a couple of books at him, Booker recovers from the fall, trying to hold onto a ledge and being thrown down by her in a panicked reflex, then being brained a time or two and, finally, when it seems like they're about to start flirting, is interrupted by a peppy whistle coming from some stupid-looking statue standing off to the side.
"Oh no, you have to hide!" If anything, Elizabeth is even more panicked now. "He's coming, I- Just a moment, I'm changing!"
"How about I get you out of here instead?" DeWitt asks, one hand disappearing into his pockets.
"There's no way out, you can't-"
"I have a key?"
"Where'd you get that?" Fun fact, the twins gave it to him when they sent him off. For all that they aren't good with people and continually screwed this whole thing up, they do try enabling DeWitt to do his part in general, at least.
However, the whistling continues...
Position, check. Waiting for the right moment, check. In contrast to the Lutece twins, you can't exactly just appear out of the blue wherever it is convenient; you have to carefully choose where you show up to preserve your image as that mysterious character that can just do that.
So it is that you 'walk in' on the scene as though you were elsewhere beforehand, startling Elizabeth again but quickly waving for them to move on already. "Yes, yes, you two lovebirds go through, now. I'll be taking care of Songbird."
"You can't-" Elizabeth's fate, it would seem, is to keep on being interrupted today, this time by DeWitt putting a hand on her shoulder. To you, he just gives a grim nod, heading right over toward that door.
Looks like his serious face has kicked in, huh?
"Whoever you are, you can't possibly defeat him! He's enormous and strong and... And he's my only friend and-"
"It is a chain meant to bind you in place," you clearly state, looking the girl you haven't bothered introducing yourself to square in the eyes. "You want out of the tower? Then it has to go."
With that, DeWitt has the door open and waves for her to follow, and although Elizabeth seems hesitant still, she follows after him. Stage one, clear.
Now all you need to do is to keep Songbird off the two fleeing persons of interest- and the piercing cry of the winged giant (relatively speaking, of course) brings you right onto that.
"Meh, they'll figure out a way out themselves," you shrug to yourself as walk out, watching the approaching figure with hands the size of a human body fly toward the tower.
You have actually been waiting for a little while to try out an idea for a semblance minion you've kept in the dark until now, this whole Songbird situation serving as the perfect opportunity to do so. The mechanical abomination hasn't seen you, yet, being drawn toward Elizabeth with a laser-guided focus, and so you have more than enough time for a brief moment of concentration.
A large chunk of your aura is used up as you draw upon it, using it as paint as you stir it up around itself and bid it to materialize, bright technicolor pink and blue and yellow settling around a roughly human body you are using as a base.
Within moments, the template you drafted out with your mind months ago by this point is filled out, bursting into life with a small bursting sound and a silly grin on its face.
"Whee! Here I am! I am here! Hack's in the game!" Fun fact, both pairs of eyes on your new minion's head are fully functioning... Though they're hardly the reason you created her. "Wooow! We're SO high up!"
"We are," you agree, vaguely gesturing toward where Songbird is currently ramming a clawed hand into Monument Tower. "See that flying thing over there? You think your power works on it?"
"Pfoof, that's literally what I was made for!" Rolling up imaginary sleeves with her big, poofy gloves Hack, as you have indeed decided to call her, does a couple of squats to warm up. "Time to get hackyyyyy!"
She runs along the walkway you're standing on and jumps down before you can react, diving through the air with a high-pitched squeak until she, moments before she would impact the metal hide of her first ever target, dissolves into a cloud of brightly-colored mist looking vaguely like a galaxy or something moments before she enters Songbird's 'body' through any cracks available.
Moments later, it lets up off the place you think DeWitt and his girl are trying to get through, judging by the scrabbling blood signatures you can see from where you are, and instead flies up toward you where you stand near the very top of the tower. Its big eyes, you can see, are now a nightmare of bright colors cycling through Hack's color scheme.
"Easy as pie taken from a baby!" The peppy voice of your minion chirps when it opens its beak. "Can I take this thing for a spin? Can I? Can I? Pleeaase?"
"First off, it still seems to be alive," you note, going by the circulatory system you can spy inside of it- whatever they did to create this guy, you're pretty sure they re-used a person and just... built a bigger body out of both machine and flesh around them. Complete with amputating most of their original body in the first place and instead adding bits of biology here and there as required. "Would you mind changing that?"
Hack is your designated minion created for the sake of infiltrating digital and mechanical networks, stealing information, modifying code and physically taking over and changing machines as you need them to be, all at the mere cost of craploads of aura to be pumped into it.
"What'cha think you're talking to, already done!" With a loud crunch, you can see things inside of the Songbird shift and twist, visibly stopping the blood from circulating all around the system. Good enough- with this, the machine is driven only by your minion. "Now can I pleaaaase go mess someone up with this? It's my virgin voyage, it has to be special!"
You know, somehow this is highly surreal all of a sudden, talking to a giant bird-person cyborg speaking in the voice of a young girl and asking what she is. Then again, your semblance is fundamentally weird like that, so you don't let it phase you.
"Just a moment," you ask your rambunctious minion. First things first, she needs a steady amount of aura to use her powers... including just keeping control of Songbird. As such, you need a way to keep control of it once she runs out and discorporates, because like hell will you just let go of a giant pre-built minion someone left just for you like this.
"Rise, my fleshly servant!" You cast, the ruined insides of Songbird twitching and straining against the mechanical chassis surrounding them. Within moments, systems are reconnecting and your surgically massacred zombie finds itself prisoner of its own body, much like how Songbird must've felt in his last moments under Hack's control. "This thing will actively help you now," you explain while mentally giving the corresponding orders to your new undead. "Also, I'm going to give you as much aura as I can, do you think you can make a few upgrades to this hunk of metal?"
"WHEEE!" Somehow, the animalistic bird cry has become even shriller under Hack's control. "I'm gonna have SO MUCH FUN in this thing, I'll give it machine guns in the wings and nerve gas breath to make EVERYONE DANCE and better paws and claws and..."
You kind of tune her out as you begin pumping as much of your aura as possible into your minion, many small but pointed changes audibly going on inside of Songbird's mechanical body.
So far, so good. "That's all I've got for now, now fly my pretty!" You tell the crooning intellect currently behind the steering wheel. "Go and raise some hell for me, would you?"
Songbird. The Protector Of The Lamb. The Arch-Nemesis of the False Shepherd, the ultimate hope of Columbia and her people for the future. The Prophet's divine hand stretched out protectively before his Lamb, He Who Punishes Sinners And Leaves Behind Nothing To Be Recognized.
All this and more, and yet all of a sudden the people's faith was being tested. Tested in a most unusual way, too, for the Prophet, Father Comstock, had never seen fit to do so- and especially not in this manner. For Songbird... was laughing.
"I'll get'cha! I'll get'cha all hahaha!"
In the voice of a young girl, even, while making sport of killing anyone he could see, whether man, woman or child. None had ever considered the thought of Columbia's greatest protector turning against them, and so none were prepared to react when the gargantuan fighter began to break one piece of their great city at a time.
"I believe I can fly~!"
Some tried to fight. Most just knelt down and prayed for forgiveness, for surely they had to have sinned for Songbird to target them in the first place. Perhaps they had wronged somehow, perhaps the rumours of the False Shepherd's presence amongst the flock had been true after all, and so they had to be punished for not recognizing the blighted twister of paths?
None of their prayers were answered this day one way or the other.
"I believe I can touch the skyyyy~!"
In gusts of wind, the ghastly form of the heavenly persecutor came upon the citizens of Columbia, any that did not die just from its mere presence thrown beyond the bounds of the protection of their Shepherd by the force of His wings upon the air.
"Haaahahahahaha! Come on, try to fall deeper!"
In a whirlwind of carnage, entire buildings were torn off Columbia's hallowed ground to be returned to the Sodom Below, their inhabitants still inside them. It was surely a punishment from the Lord indeed, for what else could this storm of violence dawning on them all be?
Several flying barges attempted to intercept Songbird at several points, but there was little chance mere mortals would have against divine will, whereas larger airships had no way to catch up to the swift thunder of His will in the first place.
All that they could do was distract Songbird from his course, and even this was not guaranteed.
"Look at me! I'm cloud-surfing! Bwahahahaha!"
Other fates in store for any that opposed the Lamb's protector included, but were not limited to, being riddled with holes, reduced to piles of meat unrecognizable as anything human (as was foretold) and being subjected to its breath that surely caused all that felt it to be tortured by visions of their own sins as they all writhed in pain upon the ground.
"Dance for me! Dance!"
None were spared, but that simply meant that all that were killed had obviously been profaning against the Lord, Their Prophet, been horrible anarchists and frenchmen in secret.
Sarah sighed, finding this entire exercise to be one of completely superfluously wasted effort. Sometimes, she really was reconsidering whether or not it was all worth it, as opposed to just trying to find a set of chains strong enough to hold and chain herself to her brother permanently.
... It probably was, in the end, but just barely. Still didn't mean she enjoyed running around all over Finkton. This whole place stunk, and she didn't even mean that in a fun way; poverty had a way to make everything worse, including the smell of things and people.
She also was rather conspicuous being the only white person around, but in contrast to Gabe she couldn't just shapeshift into some other appearance... and she refused to go in the form of a fox and get her fur all dirty and grimy.
Unacceptable.
So she was doing things as she had to, on foot because Finkton was a shithole and she couldn't even mug someone for a skyhook and just use skylines because there were none around where she was going. Really, why couldn't outlawed resistance movements ever just have an easily reached and well-known headquarters instead of all of this hassle?
It was trivial to find out where everything was for her, of course, but she still would've preferred to send a couple of goons to do the job. Sadly, they didn't have anyone actually competent working for them in this dimension, having only just taken over Fink MFG and the associated losers, so she had to go in person to ensure she would be taking the soul of one Daisy Fitzroy, as opposed to turning her into a martyr.
Always bad business, those. Much better to use her enslaved soul as a puppet and wring every bit of use out of the Vox Populi they could before everything in the city was either dead or irrelevant.
So there she was, trudging through the dirty streets of lower Finkton. The people were anything but white, except a couple of stereotypical Irish she saw around here and there she was pretty sure, and it was hard to see the sky otherwise omnipresent in Columbia- the entire place was simply very densely populated by buildings, mostly cramped apartment-style living space to save on costs, obviously.
"'Ey, dis ain't no part o' town for a white girl, you should-" Sarah shut the guy up with a charged palm to the face, letting him twitch and scream into her hand for a moment before she pulled him down to eat as a snack. All around her, people were breaking out into a minor panic, but she really couldn't be arsed to care- Daisy Fitzroy was so very close, and she wasn't letting the little cunt get away if she had anything to say about it.
More than enough time was wasted on this errand when she could've flirted with her brother instead.
Booker breathed deeply, reloading his gun as he came off the high of combat and took in his surroundings, for once. They were hiding on a couple of roofs for the moment, having dropped in on them after the wild chase out of the tower. The man in the simple clothes was good for his word- in the middle of their run through the areas above Elizabeth's... home, the thing had simply left, never to return, leading the two of them to find a way away from Monument Island and, hopefully, freedom.
For Elizabeth, anyway. Booker had been doing pretty well for himself on that before all of this one way or another.
Issue was, the elevator had been broken by Songbird's first attack run, and there was no other way down again that they could find. So Elizabeth had... shown him more of what he'd seen while spying on her.
Her 'rifts' had been weird at first, but the one she'd opened to reveal a set of skylines leading all the way around the tower in a spiral had been more than helpful enough to convince Booker she should keep using them at her own discretion.
Once down, they'd found that Comstock's men had naturally been waiting already, and what had followed was several shootouts as the both of them proceeded to hijack one of those smaller flying ships and Elizabeth proved a quick study in how to steer it while he held off their pursuers, finally losing them when a commotion that had somehow destroyed a couple of airships had happened.
Elizabeth said she thought it might've been the bird. Booker didn't care at this point so long as it helped them.
"Come on, let's go see if we can find a way out of the city," he finally said and gave Elizabeth a smile. "We'll be off scot-free before we know it."
"Mister DeWitt-"
"Booker," he corrected with a glance toward the side, keeping an eye on their surroundings. "No point in last names this deep in."
"Booker," the girl agreed. "I... When I was in that tower, I always dreamt of going out one day, of seeing the world and all the places I could only dream of. But I never imagined it would be so..."
"Bloody," he completed for her, reading Elizabeth's expression. He sighed. "Yeah, things rarely are exactly how we imagine them. If it makes you feel better, it couldn't be helped; these people have an entire religion around keeping you in that place."
"Why? What did I do to them that..."
"Your powers," he finished the thought, again. And not going into any more depth than that. "They wanted something about them, best we can tell. Either way, it doesn't matter, we're getting you off this city and leaving all of this behind."
"Why are you helping me then?" Booker couldn't help himself; he chuckled. The exactly same question he'd asked earlier in that elevator.
"I was hired," he said freely. "Someone wants to see you out of Columbia safe and sound, and I was happy to do the job. What happens once we're down on the ground we'll see when it happens, but if we want to go anywhere, we'll need to find ourselves an airship first."
"Very well, I suppose," Elizabeth said, still unsure and willing to go along with him for the time being. "I've always wanted to see Paris, you know."
"As good a destination as any," he shrugged. They were coming down to a couple of streets and- why were they covered in crushed corpses? "Let's just get out of this madhouse for now, though, holy fuck."
From afar, a hulking figure eyed the pair clueless as to its presence... and turned away. It would have to go in the opposite direction now, to distract the defenders.
The Siphon is... Well, it's many things, but simple it is not. Nor is it solidly constructed, admittedly, but that doesn't help you in taking it apart without breaking everything into uselessness before you're done analyzing it, either.
Still, you can manage, especially with the help of an overlaid Yoshi and some patience to be brought going into it.
To put it simply, the Siphon works by literally siphoning off energy when trans-dimensional interactions happen. So long as these interactions rely on some kind of effort to happen, this increases the effort required to make them happen in the first place- and actually does produce energy too, which is pretty neat.
This energy is where the electricity expulsed from the Siphon comes from, though that interaction ceases to happen quickly enough now that Elizabeth is gone from the tower. That still leaves the blue semi-liquid buildup contained within the Siphon, which you will call dimension juice henceforth, some very very energized stuff with as of yet unknown properties.
You were kind of busy with the Siphon itself, really. You should be able to copy the design as long as you have access to the materials, which presupposes a more advanced industrial base, but in principle you have what you came from.
The dimension juice has started evaporating now that you've pulled it out of the Siphon's container, but the process is slow... And you do wonder what you could do with it. Then again, maybe it would be for the safest to just leave it where it is and wait until it's gone- you can always do a few experiments once you have a new source for it, if you ever do.
You also do wonder if this process has any effects on Elizabeth, considering the Siphon has been the one thing suppressing her powers until this point, but that's just another thing to take care of at some future point. Your Mister X did see her and DeWitt, but you quickly had it head in the opposite direction and massacre a few more people in an obvious movement pattern to draw the police away from them.
Just another day in the life of Gabriel Livsey, you suppose. Now then, all you need to do to permanently disable the Siphon and release all dimensional juice is a quick punch here, using your claws there... And just like that, the entire tower is set to blow.
Time to get out of here.
The situation you find when you next catch up to the due of DeWitt and his daughter, vaguely feeling like you've been doing that for days by this point when it's been a couple of hours at most. Really, though, how often could DeWitt get himself into trouble involving gunfire and blood?
Turns out, whenever you take your damn eyes off him. For a brief moment, you wonder whether the condition might be hereditary- it would explain why the girl needed to be kept locked inside a tower- but you quickly shake it off.
Doesn't really matter. What does matter, however, is the small army between the pair and several airships, most of which are currently manned with Comstock's people hellbent on keeping Elizabeth right inside Columbia.
Which is an issue, you won't lie.
The battlefield is littered with bodies, DeWitt having taken up a defensible position and aggressively shooting down anyone coming too close while Elizabeth is superimposing a couple of things onto reality- chief amongst which are several mechanical fighters with white wings and crank guns installed on them, for some reason.
Seriously, though, just how do they keep turning what should be a quick and quiet getaway into massive battles against as many soldiers as they can find in the area? Mainly DeWitt, though. At least you should be rid of both of them soon, once they begin making their way down to the Earth's surface and away from the entire city of angry zealots.
Honestly, this is just way too much of a pain. Time to make it clear that these two are getting off these floating pieces of shit, in a way nobody can fucking mistake or stop.
You're not angry about the amount of effort you have to put into this instead of using the same on flirting with Sarah. Just... disappointed. Too bad for these people you express your disappointment with violence toward them in particular.
Step one, you fly up around one of the nearby roofs, eyeing the situation down below and charting out a course for DeWitt and his girl. Step you, you partially shift back into your human form, but then turn toward one of your other animal selves; sprouting fur and paws and growing larger in all dimensions, as you make use of the sheer sizes you can grow to, twisting and turning unnaturally with the sounds of bones snapping and repositioning wetly heard in your surroundings.
To be honest, it looks a lot worse than it really is, as for you it's actually a little itchy at most. Nevertheless you soon stand around half as tall as the building you're standing on, crouching as the people in the surroundings rapidly notice they are now in the presence of a giant fucking werewolf.
Your fur is a deep grey-black, your muzzle large enough to let you swallow a man whole, your pawed and clawed hands large enough to hold one inside and strong enough to throw them around like toys.
You roar, a flurry of snowflakes escaping your maw and spelling out the inescapable fate of all that oppose you. Literally, as you have some control over their movement just for a few moments and therefore turn them into a big, stylized skull directed straight toward anyone between the two you need to get out of here and their getaway airship.
Then you jump, and all hell breaks loose.
The screams of the soldiers in their silly blue uniforms frame you when you first land right in the middle of the battlefield, the lesson they learn within moments as the smarter ones quickly start firing on the giant target that is you being that no, their weapons are not going to do jack shit against your hide.
To be precise, their bullets, fired from machine guns and higher-calibre rifles, simply lose all kinetic energy the moment they collide with you, falling to the ground and rolling off the edges of the island you're standing on pointlessly.
A single swipe of your paw clears the street of all human life, many of them tumbling screaming to their deaths, though you do capture one of them to toss into the air and catch him in your jaws, chomping straight through his waist and eating him whole in a couple of quick bites. You glance behind you, at the pair cowering behind cover.
"Get a move on already," you growl with your comically normal voice- naturally using your powers to do so, as it isn't like your voicebox even still resembles anything found inside a human.
You don't give them time to react. A second leap brings you over to one of the gunships floating next to the floating avenue they're on, a hard slam of both intertwined hands tearing it apart in one move and letting you move on in turn.
You rip through the men shooting in your direction in a wild panic like a storm, breathing out surges of freezing cold air, its temperature low enough to flash-freeze people's skin and killing them outright in place when you aren't concentrating it into a beam of energy to blast at faraway targets.
Your muscled form is also perfectly suitable for physically clearing out and butchering your way through all the soldiers around. Ramming your body into cover to turn it into deadly projectiles squashing the people hiding behind it, squeezing your enemies to death, casually blasting them off of the ground Columbia offers them, using your claws to tear them apart and, of course, eating them at every turn, whole or in parts, including their whole bodies or just pulling their blood into your insatiable maw as you keep on going.
Down the street, following a short section of skylines and all over the following section of shops and cafes now devoid of customers and other, more civilian occupations at the moment you go. Nobody survives, your ability to sense living beings trivially easily ensures it.
DeWitt and Elizabeth do, in fact, get a move on while this happens, covertly hushing through suddenly empty streets. By the time they've made their way through what would've been a sheer insurmountable fight otherwise, you're already clearing out the nearest airship, having quickly disabled all other flying craft nearby by freezing them solid with your breath.
Also sending them plummeting down from the sky, incidentally. Not that they matter, in the end.
What matters is that the dawdling duo finally reaches the bridge by the time you're idly wiping your mouth for a moment, the last man inside lying lifelessly at your feet and yourself already back to your normal appearance. "Took you long enough."
Neither of them finds the words to respond.
"Okay, no time to waste, I want you two out of Columbia as soon as possible," you say as you stretch out both hands, grabbing both of them with one each and concentrating for a brief moment.
Brightly colored aura surges, the light of their souls emerging from within them, but you don't waste time acknowledging it much. Next, you draw out one body of a certain trusty template, the strict gaze of Carmilla falling upon her two new charges. "This is Carmilla, she'll make sure you don't die in the next five minutes. If you learn how to charge her up, you can keep her around for however long it takes, she's better than either of you in every way imaginable. Now go figure out the controls and get going, I'll keep Comstock from following you."
With that, you march right out. You have a lot to do and though time isn't a pressing concern for once, you are still loathe to waste it. Back inside the airship, once you walk out the bridge and the hallway connecting most of its insides to jump straight from one of its platforms back onto Columbia, the new terrific trio eye each other with varying degrees of emotion on their faces, but again not your problem anymore.
That said, you did leave Carmilla as both a guard and a spy, and so you know the general gist of things happening. She introduces herself to both Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth, quickly fiddling with the airship's controls and asking them where the journey is going to.
Elizabeth seems to be awkward and unsure of herself, but still stutters out the destination of Paris, something DeWitt agrees to firmly. And just like that, you're sending Hack, currently still in control of Songbird, to intercept any aircraft that might get in the way of their clean departure.
Please. You aren't asking much here, but please just let them fuck off and do their own thing henceforth. You're sure they can figure out the rest of their lives on their own, they just need to try it.
Things are moving fast all over Columbia now, literally everyone somehow related to one of the factions within the city mobilizing whether the rest of the place knows what's up or not. Sarah is the main organizer on your end for this, seeing how busy you've been on your end with the more personal touch you've needed to prime your VIPs to leave and trigger Comstock's... everything.
Speaking of which, Comstock's men, the Columbia Police Force and its Peacekeepers and any armed men sworn under any service around the entire place are scrambling at the moment, the 'Prophet' himself whipping his believers into a frenzy about how the 'False Shepherd' has 'taken the Lamb on his crooked path' and all that noise.
Simply put, they're all up in arms and readying to sortie come hell or high water. Which... about sums up what you're putting in their way.
Fink's security team is small in number, but a few quickly stolen airships and their superior equipment mean they're a serious threat to even a greater number of opponents. Of course, alone against the literal armies Comstock has up his sleeves they're nothing, but that's why you don't put them alone up against all those fanatics in the first place.
The Vox Populi have their own sets of arms now, not quite enough to put them on the same level as a real soldier, most of them just being untrained rabble now equipped with actual firearms now, but they shall do just fine as a big fat diversion all the same. If you gave things a bit of time and worked on letting them recruit from the shantytown under Finkton proper, they'd be a massive mob capable of doing major damage by themselves, of course, but alas...
You just can't quite be arsed.
So the Vox will serve as a nasty little surprise under Sarah's careful direction, but no more. Leading you to the next and, potentially, last part of your plan; having a little talk with one Cornelius Slate, war veteran and leader of a splinter group of soldiers loyal to him over Comstock himself.
And currently holed up in the 'Hall of Heroes', part of the propaganda park known as 'Soldier's Field'. As far as you know, he has some serious issues with the way Comstock likes to portray certain battles that have gone on so far in Columbia's past, both before and after it lifted into the sky.
Unfortunately for him, Comstock has bigger fish to fry at the moment. Or perhaps luckily, really, considering there was little doubt about how that fight would've played out.
So there you are, shadowing through an abandoned amusement park used for lots of pseudo-religious propaganda and sneaking right past disgruntled veterans and hero worshipping younger men and women.
Because, yes, admittedly, there are female soldiers and officers in Columbia, to your minor surprise back when you first found out, but apparently it is perfectly acceptable for a woman to take up a rifle in this day and age up here among the clouds. Though they are rather rare, admittedly, rather rare- not many actually seem to want to compared to alternatives like... Being a housewife and gossiping all day or something.
You aren't exactly an expert on this time period and you don't want to be, either.
Still, deep inside the surprisingly defensible ground, now that you've taken a look inside of it, you find Slate, the aged soldier with a broad frame and scarred, bald head, one probably ruined eye hidden under an eyepatch, a massive moustache decorating his face.
You have to admit, as a temporary owner of your own facehair, you're a little jealous of its size. Then again, it's not like the size of that particular organ is what's most important in your daily life...
"Cornelius Slate." As soon as you say the word, you have a short barrage of bullets coming your way, promptly ignoring them as they bounce off your immaculate skin. The old guy sure has some bite left in him- each of the shots was on point and fired from the moment he whirled around to face you. "I have to say, you sure don't match the wanted posters."
You brought one of them, too, waving it around in front of the old soldier.
"Sorry if I don't match your expectations, but it's not like Comstock ever stayed all that close to the truth in his descriptions." Slate reloads, but holds fire, obviously waiting for his men from outside to come in after hearing the gunshots. "What brings you to the Hall of Heroes today, boy? Last I heard it was closed for 'renovations'."
"I'm sure a makeover of this place would be fun and all, but no, I came for you." Slate tenses up, eyeing the surrounding for anything heavy enough to swing at you. "Specifically, to tell you a little secret about what Comstock will be doing today."
"... If you want to play that game, be my guest." He still doesn't lower his weapons, but seems willing to hear you out still. "Just know that I promise to use you as much as you use me and my people... If you prove you aren't full of shit first."
"Oh, no need for that. You see, Comstock's entire plan for the future revolves around his 'Lamb'... The girl I sent Booker DeWitt to fetch and get out of the city just earlier today. She's on her way out and Comstock's sending everything he has after them."
Slate's eyes widen just a fraction of a visible bit at the mention of the name you just dropped. "DeWitt. This means the rest of the city will be unprotected."
"I'd suggest you have your men suit up and ready, because if you want to pay Comstock back even a little for everything he's done, everything he's taken from you, now's the time," you finish up. One of your hands is keeping the door closed- it has to to keep the group trying to ram it in in check. "Incidentally, there's a bit of a party planned already, so I thought I'd come by and extend an invitation to you guys."
"Let's talk locations and coordinated strikes, then," Slate grins an ugly grin at you. "Unless you're lying, we're about to have a hell of a time. Just a shame DeWitt is already gone, he would have been the man for this job."
Yeah, you can fucking believe that. Damn fucker and his incurable bullet-seekeritis.
The city of Columbia was as though it was holding its breath- few indeed were the citizens that hadn't heard rumours. It was the day of their division of the Sodom Below, that blighted pit of sin and racial impurity, when they made merry and celebrated, but this day in particular was trampled all over.
First the False Shepherd, that poisonous viper, anarchist and probably half Irish, half French, ram amok among the fair, bringing a good eight god-fearing Columbians before the throne of their maker before absconding with the Lamb. Songbird, steadfast protector of the Prophet's word, was turned around to slaughter Columbia's citizens, destroying her architecture and still running wild possessed by the power of the devil, it had to be.
Some blamed the possession vigor. Others came to the obvious conclusion that Songbird had to have been taken over by some manner of demon.
Mysterious murders, the loss of the Lamb, widespread destruction- and despite these terrorism attacks, people could feel, deep in their bones, that things were not over.
Founding Day would have more fighting in store, yet, if only to rightfully reclaim what was lost. Perhaps, the people said, the Prophet himself would raise the flaming sword against Columbia's enemies like in the times of old, surely soundly bringing the Lord's will to bear against all evildoers...
The first attack was made by Slate's soldiers, well-trained and armed no less than their opponents and, more importantly, acting with the elements of surprise and momentum on their side.
From the Hall of Heroes they surged out across Soldier's Field, quickly and efficiently dispatching anyone standing in their way and leaving civilians untouched. At their head was none other than Cornelius Slate, the old soldier armed with some manner of terrifying weapon boldly cutting through solid steel like it was butter with a featherweight touch.
"Today, we are not fighting for glory. We are not fighting for our fatherland. Today are fighting to do what is right, and if Comstock has a problem with that then he! Is! Wrong!"
It quickly became apparent what their goal was, their numerically inferior fighters converging on the site of the largest battle in the area- and the location several gunships were flying toward in a futile attempt to stop them.
Within half an hour, Slate was calling for Comstock's blood as their hijacked aircraft was homing in on the center of Columbia.
Meanwhile, the Vox Populi were holding the city's factories up down in Finkton, where they were in the process of taking over several zeppelins thanks to a 'gap' in security big enough to let a few dozen armed fighters slip in and do as much.
It took a bit, but before long they had their own flying transportation taking them around the city. The oppressed of Columbia had their own sentiments to share with the 'whiter' parts of town, and so they deployed a few of their improvised weapons using what they'd 'scavenged' from 'unsupervised' stores.
Flaming cannonballs soon rained down on the fair city claiming to be the one place closest to God. They did not manage to target the place they were supposed to, a central launching pad for Columbia's Peacekeeping forces, but the chaos and mayhem they caused more than made up for it.
They were going to show 'em white folks how it felt to be at the bottom, and Daisy Fitzroy was personally ridin' their flagship tellin' 'em where to stuff it!
Simultaneously, all over the city automated defenses, from gun automatrons to mosquitoes, the flying turrets patrolling the skies, turned against it all at once, opening fire on combatants and civilians alike with little distinction between the two. And, under the guise of the general bloodshed, Fink MFG Security was covertly positioning itself.
The lousy idiots didn't want to actually fight, of course. So a certain puller of strings simply had them ready and planned for things to develop in such a way that they would either do as they were supposed to... or die. Of course they were going to die either way, but they didn't know that yet.
Either way the blood price was horrendous, the city in turmoil. Exactly as intended.
And while all of these little... distractions, needle strikes and small bleeding cuts are going on, you are availing yourself of the opportunity the current situation is giving you, hopefully, by forcing Comstock to go out and deal with it.
You suspect that even all those attacks around the city wouldn't have been enough to lure him out and into the more or less public eye, the whole Eleanor business being the actual, true cause he is seeing fit to leave Comstock House, as his home is called around Columbia, but either way drawing out his influence and his people all over the place to put out the fires you sparked is still enough of a reason to bother with the rest.
Also, it's been the work of, what, a couple of hours? Not even a whole day has passed since you came to this city, so it's not really been that strenuous to arrange several minor rebellions.
When you find the good Father Comstock, guided by your compass soul and flying in the form of a raven, it is inside of a pretty massive airship, the 'Hand Of The Prophet' if the nameplate you find on its side is to be believed, easily the largest flying vessel you've seen around Columbia and, frankly, the personal warship of Comstock along with the flagship of Columbia's airforce.
According to the souls you asked about it, anyway.
And yes, you are also very much darkening the clouds all around, to give things the appropriate atmosphere for the occasion.
You can hear him preach over the thing's loudspeakers as you approach, his voice full of vigor (heh) and zeal. "... The Seed Of The Prophet Shall Sit The Throne And Drown In Flame The Mountains Of Man! The Sodom Below Shall Be Prepared For The Coming Of The Lord!"
Loud prophecy man is loud, news at eleven. Then again, you are coming precisely to shut him up.
Now then, time to have a prophet for lunch. Properly landing on the giant zeppelin takes a bit of maneuvering at the speed it is currently moving at, the air current pushed around through the movement of something this enormous not to be underestimated, but you can manage once you get fed up and brute force things with simply transforming back and jump off the air to get at it.
Once you're on the stupid aircraft, or rather on its side as it were, using your powers to stick from it horizontally, it is child's play to get somewhere you can easily summon a particular pair of minions- one is Hack, the hyper little munchkin already up and ready for this, and the other one is Ivsey.
That one Rust Devil raider soul. The one that came with the power to merge with machinery. She's honestly better suited for most of this job, not needing aura to possess whatever you point her at, but she does fall behind by far when it comes to manipulating digital controls and anything not immediately tangible.
Also, the modifications she makes to stuff don't really work after she's recalled, in contrast to Hack's, just as a quick note. It does seem relevant.
Still, there you are. "Both of you, on this overgrown zeppelin," you order. "Shut everything down and get me an open path toward Comstock."
It's actually pretty wonderful to be able to instantaneously mentally connect to any of the souls inside of you; it makes giving out orders extremely simple and easy, the actual speech is mostly just for show by this point... And because Hack appreciates the showmanship, if nothing else.
"Roger roger!" "Got it." Both of your underlings get on it, dispersing into cosmic mist and rust-colored sludge respectively as they both fuse with the Hand of The Prophet. And lo and behold, within moments changes are seen... or rather heard.
The first thing to be affected are the loudspeakers, the voice blasting over it gaining a twisted, distorted quality to it. "... And The Faithful Shall Drown Under The Flood Of Blood, To Be Washed Away In The Coming Of The Lord And All Their Flesh Shall Be Rent From Their Bones As They Suffer In Agony! The Lord's Angels Shall Descend And Cleanse All Sin From Them In Suffering Eternal!"
If the people around are confused by the sudden change in theme of the preaching (not that you expect they are, braindead zealots the lot of them), the physical changes following soon after are a more obvious sign of what is happening. The entire construction turns a dark red, some vaguely blood-like slime oozing out of the corners and dropping down to disappear into thin air, spikes and skulls manifesting themselves all over.
Skulls also show up in the cloud of fog now trailing behind your new vessel, short-lived as it may or may not be, and the material of the zeppelin's main body twists and bends unnaturally, a wrenching sound heralding the creation of a portal through which you can step inside.
"Thank you," you politely say as you do, listening to the screams coming from deeper inside and the whispering voices now commanding the majority of the Hand Of The Prophet. Looks like Hack is already having fun with the new victims now supplied to her, Ivsey not far behind.
A lovely little walk up a few stairs made of crew members now locked into place is all it takes you to get to the bridge, their confused and fearful calls just adding to the cacophony ringing through the halls.
When you reach the central control room, however, it would seem Comstock isn't actually there... And a few blinking arrows made of the controls points you into the right direction.
Off to wherever he crawled to once the airship was taken over. A place that, as it turns out, looks a lot like an artificial garden complete with waterfall and stained glass windows arranged around a central basin of water.
"There he is, the devil himself revealing his face in his pursuit of the obstruction of the Lord's plan!"
... And somehow, you were expecting that one already from a man of God. "What, suddenly I'm the devil himself? I have to admit, that's a new one even for me."
"I see through your lies and witness your depravity, for who else would resist the Will of the Lord such as you?!" The white-haired and bearded man retorts, his voice modulating powerfully. "The Holy Hand Of Prophecy, Beaten Aside? No Mere Mortal Adversary Are Thee, That-"
You've kind of already stopped listening by this point, you'll admit.
"See," you interrupt Comstock with a sigh and a soft shake of your head, "this is what happens when you use technology beyond your understanding to gaze upon things equally beyond it without the appropriate shielding. It turns you into a fucking idiot."
With that, you're upon him, lifting Comstock up by the throat and opening your mouth. His hands lie upon yours, struggling against all odds like so many before him, but nothing he does can stop you from extending your claws and ripping out a good chunk of his neck, revealing the juicy arteries beneath pumping out precious lifeblood.
None of it sheds anywhere but where you want it to be, leaving the pure water basin clear even once you catch the old man from the air and widen the wound you made with your assortment of gruesome teeth, leaving behind a grisly wound in the wake of your feeding.
Fun fact, a holy man's blood tastes just like any other's, as you can now attest, though this one's soul does have a tangy aftertaste to the fruity, high-sugar flavor.
It's a little sour, you think. Might've just been the tumours, who knows.
Comstock is dead. A fact currently being broadcast by all of the speakers the Hand Of The Prophet does possess at full volume, just to make sure people really, really get the message. For one, you feel like you're making some real progress over here.
A fact the Lutece twins do seem to agree with. Both of them are showing up out of the blue right while you're taking a moment to digest Comstock's tumorous little soul and memories. "And that concludes our involvement," Robert says, an absent look on his face.
"A long time coming, for as much as time exists," Rosalind Lutece agrees.
"Too bad how things had to end, but Comstock never did take well to half measures."
"Or measures that were halved."
"Still it does feel less satisfying than I'd always hoped," he ponders.
"Oh, what is done is done. No use lamenting about it," she cheers him up.
"Yeah, that's the most pressing issues I was called here for taken care of," you nod along, bringing the conversation back into focus. "Of course, if you wouldn't mind, I would like to go take a look at any and all technology in use around Columbia, much like I did in Rapture- I'd hate to leave any valuable knowledge behind when the time comes."
"Take however long you need," Rosalind invites you.
"One Columbia more or less make little difference, I suppose," Robert grouches a little, fully aware of that fact that for all that they have 'fixed' the damage they personally caused through their own actions, there's a whole multiverse of suffering out there.
And, of course, you are here. You are most certainly going to have your way with Columbia before you go, one way or another. The twins are smart enough to figure that much out easily enough.
"Good, good. Now to the next step..."
The crew of the Hand Of The Prophet proves to be an able group of people... In the sense that they're perfectly able to serve as your main dish after the appetizer that was Comstock, tasting refreshing and somewhat comparable to... A fruit cake, you'd say.
A light, delicious meal that just makes you want to eat more, compared to the heartier and more 'savory' souls you usually stuff yourself with, the assholes, psychopaths, just plain criminals and the like you feed on most days. You should eat people that think they're doing the right thing more often, it's a nice change of pace, you'd say.
It does also help you have the insides of the giant zeppelin literally help you do the eating; Hack and Ivsey seem to have combined into a single malevolent entity and having fun creating little mazes full of horrible traps and pitfalls leading straight to the sky the aircraft is flying through at the moment, forcing the soldiers and operators aboard to run through them if they don't want to be grilled alive by several flamethrowers pushing them forward driven by Ivsey's power.
The ones that earn it get to arrive at the one safe place within the Hand Of The Prophet... Which is where you are waiting, of course.
None do make it out alive, in the end. There's just not much a human being can do against a creature several times stronger than them and capable of telekinetically pulling them into prime chomping position.
Man, it's good to be you sometimes.
With things on the Hand Of the Prophet itself taken care of, next on your order of business is showing off the spoils of war- really it's just Comstock's corpse and his giant airship, not that much in themselves- to other people.
In particular, Slate is currently leading a downright valiant charge right toward the gathered airfleet you kind of intercepted from coming after the two lovebirds instead of sticking to the targets you talked out with him, his people just taking out one gunship and other assorted flying craft after another in spite of the returning fire quickly turned their way, soldiers boarding and counter-boarding in a chaotic dance driven by plenty of skyhooks and aggression on both sides.
With a small sigh, you order your pair of summoned minions to change course and bring you closer. Dragging Comstock's only mildly mangled body out is the work of a few moments, with doors physically shifting to let you go wherever you want to, and so you soon stand on one of the open decks kind of stacked vertically holding the tattered meatbag up.
Slate, wielding the ionized matter dispensation rifle you gave him and methodically shooting down aircraft left and right, doesn't have trouble sighting you once your visibly shifting ride comes closer to the action, the improvised flag you're idly making out of the remains of the crew hopefully helping at least a little bit.
Docking procedures are shortened by your suddenly a lot more optimized vehicle, and Slate joins you while a couple of his people take a look around. "Damn, and here I was hoping I'd get a shot at the old tin man myself."
"There's still an entire army out there, no lack of targets if you want any," you wave him off. "Speaking of, what are you and your people doing next? Any thoughts yet?"
"I hadn't thought any of us would even survive this, let alone actually win," the grizzled old soldier grumps at you. "No point in planning ahead when you're planning to die anyway."
"In that case- your soldiers, their families, any loved ones and stuff? Just pack 'em up and leave the city," you tell him with a shrug. "Go find a nice place on the surface and go from there. Maybe catch up with DeWitt and his girl, while you're at it."
"... Heh," Slate makes and grins. "Down where nobody thinks any of our battles as glorious, eh? Screw it, may as well get me lads and laddies out of here and let them life their lives, I suppose."
"Just don't take too long, you never know when a flying city goes through some bad weather and just stops existing one day," you say blithely, gesturing for the clouds gathering all around- and slowly turning just a tad bit red, more so with every heartbeat you do not feel passing by. "You know, just common sense."
"... Yes, I think I should," Slate says fingering his mustache. "Not many of the smaller ships can make the way down to lower altitudes, but securing a few of the bigger ones should be enough. If you'll excuse me, I have a few announcements to make to my men."
You let him leave with nary a nod. You have a lot of work to do, but now Slate will have to send people all over the city, against the opposition already entrenched all over it intrinsically- both keeping his faction busy and paralyzing Comstock loyalists for a bit longer, at least.
... Truly, it is a kind of art to see the aerial combat going on all the while. The Hand Of The Prophet, now held securely in yours, is thoroughly fisting anything in range, using its size and speed to deploy several deadly pieces of artillery quickly improvised from the zeppelin's internals.
And it has a lot of that artillery. A couple of the oversized guns seem to be shooting reprogrammed and retrofitted Mechanized Patriots, as they're called according to Hack. Short-range jets attached to the heavily armed and armored humanoid robots let them much easier home in on and crash into their targets, where they proceed to tear into the soldiers trying to defend their homes and country or whatever is the local equivalent at the time.
Not to mention the explosive missiles, the penetrating ones and whatever else your ship can dream up while possessed by your enslaved soul and semblance summon.
They really should know better than trying to oppose you. Or being in the general area while you let those two out to play; sadly enough, you don't share DeWitt's disposition for getting yourself killed, and though you certainly do fight (or 'fight', as the case may be) others often enough, none of your little minions really get enough time in the spotlight for themselves most times.
Though Yoshi has suddenly started cursing when your thoughts involved letting Nolac get more action in general, for some reason. He really should relax a little one of these days; has he still not actually fucked any of the women in his life?
That one always shuts him up good. Anyway, trivial concerns like your analyst soul's love life aside, you have a couple of issues still left to take care of.
For one, you feel a small spark of... Inspiration, for lack of a better word, at your first sight of this kind of large-scale battle across the sky, for once; this calls for being immortalized in some way, if you do say so yourself.
You need your tools. You need some paint, and more importantly, you need to do this right away, it absolutely can't wait. You do feel a little silly about this, but nevertheless you shall do some art, and you shall do it now!
"A canvas, or something similar at least," you mutter to yourself, taking a look around the open deck... until your eyes fall onto the pile of bodies you have lying around from your little feeding frenzy earlier, then dart toward the explosions and destruction decorating the evening sky. "Ooor not. An alternative approach."
You act quickly and precisely, using the implacable strength of your claws to rend flesh from bone and whittle bone to what you want it to be, using your magic to rearrange the delicate matter and wrap sinews and skin around it as required. The surroundings aren't spared, either, being scavenged for supplies that you quickly bend and break and sculpt into shape much like you did the bodies.
A pair of paint fairies complete the ensemble, using their own little brushes and the paint they create to help you bring this little sculpture to life; an arrangement of flying ships and zeppelins and similar embroiled in stark conflict, ribs of thin bone giving them form and serving as the fundamental building blocks, rough clouds of painted biomatter hardened to hold the whole construction aloft.
You can't even tell you used human body parts for this once you're done, really. This, this is how it's done, and Jack Slash can suck it from where he's sitting around in Sarah's inner world right now. The cheap shock value wears off quickly and doesn't really do much of anything after the first look; the detailed recreation including genuine uniform parts being used in the desperate soldiers tumbling with every impact in the still piece of art you have created have more thought and attention put into them than half of everything he used Riley to do put together!
... You probably should make sure to restrain your inner artist before you decide to just assassinate any and all critics of your work at some point, come to think of it. Just as a precaution.
For all that you release your 'artistic juices', however, you still need to get a move on at some point today, the slowly dissolving airfleet serving no hindrance on your return toward Sarah even as the messages about how the prophet is dead and all the believers will be damned to eternal suffering continue blaring forth from the Hand Of The Prophet.
Should probably turn those off, they're getting kind of annoying.
You rendezvous with Sarah with all due haste, of course, casually demolishing a couple of buildings getting in the way by interposing themselves between you and your destination, and happily greet your sister with a hug and a kiss, pulling her up against you and deeply kneading her buttcheeks as a greeting.
Judging by her content moan into your mouth, she likes it.
"I can't believe just how long it took to get everything done, but all serious business in Columbia is taken care of," you murmur to your Sarah, quickly scooping her up into a bridal carry as you return to Fink's office. "Finally."
"Yeah," she dreamily returns, stretching up to lather kisses onto your cheekbone. "Now we're finally free to have a little time to ourselves before we go back..."
"Yup, I'm planning to use the opportunity to cocoon for a bit, too, get that out of the way and return to Thule with more powers and ready to stuff myself again from the start."
"..." For some reason, Sarah is pouting at you. Aww, she needs a little more attention again, doesn't she? You really should do something nice for her. Then again, you should always do something nice for her, she's your little Sarah, after all.
Figuring out the details of your next stage of ascension, if you feel like putting it the fancy way, is fairly simple and easy; you have a steady drizzle of suspiciously red rain already falling from a short distance above the city, Columbia's placement among and above the clouds making it a bit awkward to use your normal methods, but with a bit of effort in pushing your own clouds a bit higher than normal you can make do all the same.
So you can simply go with the old standard of turning into clouds of bats and eating your way through the people, with functionally infinite bodies making the eating part rather easy, if a bit fiddly at times. The issue, then, was figuring out where to best feed off of the populace of Columbia, how to time and arrange things so as to avoid butting heads with any of the factions currently still at war around the city.
The Vox Populi seem to be picking up some steam, going by the records and what Sarah's puppet leader inserted at their head can tell her, methodically breaking through several parts of town and even turning against Fink MFG, the exact thing you all saw coming and were prepared for, hence the massive amount of automated firepower and the handymen currently making their life hell.
In short, there's some heavy fighting going on around them. Fink Security, too, is finally pulling their weight after Sarah gave them a few... 'reasons' to do so by arranging a few massacres involving their families and a few of the smaller groups among them, turning things into your security against your Vox Populi with the city's armed forces kind of awkwardly milling around the sidelines and trying to put down the Vox only to be targeted by both sides whenever they rear their heads.
Well, as you said, heated armed confrontations taking place everywhere. You'd kind of like to get them back to fighting the people meant t uphold the law, but the animosity between the groups is just too great, you suppose. Something for later.
Still, the fractured nature of Columbia- beyond the obvious issues between the different factions that have built themselves up a bit, most of the city is still united under the banner of the now thoroughly dead (and currently raging inside your inner world, it's hilarious) Comstock- with the various floating sections of it largely isolated from each other until linked up somehow means that most of the citizenry is more or less caught in one place unless they happen to have a couple of private airships lying around, a fact you know to be untrue of the vast majority of it.
Literally isolated, most fighting men elsewhere and no way out. Just how you like it.
Of course, that's not all you have to take care of; for one, you have to figure out where you shall retreat to once you spin your red cocoon, the closeness of which you can already feel coming on.
Charting out the best places for you to feed freely without drawing the attention of nuisances like the parts of the Columbian Peacekeepers using certain vigors- really just reflavored and weaker plasmids, of course, as you now know through Fink- such as the 'firemen' in particular.
Large amounts of indiscriminate destruction are fun to inflict on others, but you're very much intent on avoiding it directed at yourself when you're divided into a giant bat swarm. It wouldn't even really be deadly once the rain of blood starts going, just super unpleasant, and therefore you're putting in at least some effort on avoiding it.
However, it would seem Sarah is upset about something, or at least pouting at you intermittently. Clearly, this needs to be fixed, but before you can tease her about it (with increased levels of smug), she preempts you by getting up and wiping the piles of technical documents you were going to go through later lying on your desk and hopping onto it herself all in one smooth move.
Clearly vampiric strength and body coordination at play.
"Since you're going to ball up again, you're going to leave me all alone for a long time again, won't you?" She tearfully asks, shrugging off her top to reveal her round breasts and the pair of cute, hard nubs on them. "So I want you... I want to make a lot of memories before then."
Ah jeez, she's being all melodramatic again. Still, you do know how to deal with it when she gets like this, standing up and bending over her luscious body to let your hands roam all along it. "Silly Little Sarah, we just spent half a day doing this before we came, and it's just a few days," you playfully chide her, admiring just how curvy and beautiful she has become. Oh, what're you saying, she's becoming more beautiful every passing day!
"It's an eternity without you there!" She, of course, is invested now. "It's too long. Way too long. If I could, I'd just make you never do it and stay with me forever." Now she's kicking off her pants, her lacy panties (red today) following soon after.
"Aww, sorry sweetie, I'd like that too," you apologize. It sure would be nice to just take all your wives and go live in a quiet place to raise a big, happy family together, huh?
As expected of your sister. Her vision meets yours exactly.
"Meh, it's better if you're stronger," your sister grumps, luxuriating under your touch. "That way nobody can stop us from being in love as much as we want."
"Yup," you boop her nose. So cute! So beautiful! So Sarah!
"But I still want to be close to you, okay?" Pushing herself up, she kisses you deeply, grinding her body against yours- it wasn't like you weren't going to give her what she wants anyway. "So please, do me as hard as you can..."
You smile at her, using the moment to objectively consider how she looks. Your Sarah is extremely beautiful, of course; long silky blonde hair shining like gold when the light hits it just right, a well-featured face with eyes shining like jewels and lips that just make you want to kiss her all day, and don't even get you started on her cute little nose!
Her arms are long and slender, her fingernails well-cared for, and matching with her long legs, skin soft as no human woman's can be, and her stomach is slim with just enough meat to it to give her a perfectly balanced figure. Her chest, bulging out nicely, is of the absolutely perfect size, just a bit too big for you to hold them in your hands despite the size difference between the two of you, and trailing down toward her cute belly button and sweet pussy with your fingers is a delight for all your senses, particularly the way she shivers and sweetly moans along the way.
Her clit is a cute little pleasure button not losing out to her nose in any respect including its beauty, and poking and rubbing it, already hard and protruding just a little bit as it is, has her womanly folds wetten within moments.
You don't always keep this in mind, just because you're so used to thinking of Sarah as your little girl, but she is very much a woman. And she deserves to be treated as such.
Your long tongue trails out of your mouth, licking from her belly on down just the same path your hands took, finally ending up slathering her moist flower with attention.
"Gabe! Gabe! Big Gabeey!" She calls out when your tongue pushes into her, giving your sister a thorough taste.
It is indescribably good, naturally.
"This is good... But... More!" And there you go, the old vampire creed, or as you have decided to call it lately. More blood, more love, more life, more love, more! "I want more of you!"
You tear off your pants, your diamond-hard prick jutting into the air above your Sarah's crotch. She is transfixed immediately, her cheeks reddening and cute feet pulling at your back. You wipe an errant strand of hair from her face, looking at her lovingly as you lean forward to slowly push into her, her entrance accepting you easily and eagerly, almost pulling you in.
As always, sex with Sarah just feels too great.
Her pussy swallows you up no matter how far you push into her, pulsing around your rod as though trying to milk it of the seed you are going to pump into her soon enough. All the slaughter and the fighting and the miscellaneous stuff have built up your libido, or rather your libido is the same as always and you don't bother suppressing it, kissing Sarah and massaging her chest in turn.
She's just so beautiful. So precious. "You're my precious, you know?" You ask her, thrusting deeply into her core. "My most precious Little Sarah."
"Uuh! You're... wonderful... mine...!" Oh, Sarah still has trouble articulating in these kinds of situations. So cute. You give her nose a kiss this time.
The two of you make love for a long while, Sarah writhing on the desk and yourself labouring over her, exchanging heated gazes and words over and over again. She doesn't take long to come, nails biting into your aura on your back, and no part of her body you can reach remains untouched.
You just can't get enough of each other. 'More' indeed.
When you finally do follow suit and come yourself, filling Sarah's belly with your seed, you can't help yourself but stroke her stomach, where you can't see or feel anything yet but know unholy unlife to be blossoming.
"That was nice..." Sarah dreamily says, smiling up at you. "Want to go another round?"
"Always." And it's true, too. You always have another load in you for your Sarah.
Elsewhere and elsewhen, Rosalind Lutece eyed her brother.
"I am not sure I am comfortable with this look."
"I am sure I am getting what I want," she replied.
"They are surely a bad influence."
"They are an influence. Subjective morality does you no favours."
With that, she grabbed Robert by his necktie, dragging him off to find a bed among the infinite possibilities open to them. She, for one, was a classy lady- she would never strip first.
When the rainclouds broke, sending their massive loads of red toward the city of Columbia, all that had read the bible were sure that now the Day of Judgement had come, when the unbelievers and the heretics would be left to the eternal tortures of hell even as the faithful were to be welcomed at the pearly gates of Heaven... Except, it seemed, none of them were invited.
Had they misinterpreted the teachings? Had their failure to prepare the Coming of the Lord quickly enough been the reason they were drowning under a torrent of blood? Or maybe the issue was that, to meet their maker, they had need to leave behind their worldly bodies.
Columbia had the advantage of being in rich supply of easily available ledges; dozens, hundreds of people threw themselves off with a prayer on their lips, convinced they were going to paradise. Entire families committed suicide together in one go.
One part of town, interestingly, was enveloped by a different dark cloud, one not red and covered in black veins of sorts; instead, screeching hellbats were coming after all inside of them, dark bodies serving to block out the sun just as surely as rains of blood.
Horrific little beasts forming out of the same frothing liquid washing over the city, they wasted no time in devouring hundreds of people where they stood, men, women and children reduced to life- and bloodless corpses crumpling where they stood.
The swarm was spreading over the affected areas like mold growing in fast motion, ultimately leaving as quickly as it came as though dissolving back into the red liquid pressing down on the floating city- except in truth, all the bats that had bitten and drained the people they could find had converged back into a single man.
"Well, this place doesn't look too bad," you say as you look around the old, mostly abandoned secret laboratory and adjacent areas. "It's dry, quiet and right under Fink's headquarters for ease of access once I'm done."
"Mhm..." Sarah is still pouting, but you just kiss the top of her head and rub her back a little.
"I'll be leaving you behind for a while, but that just means you can have a little fun without me," you cheer her up. "Now make sure you'll be taking care of yourself while I'm gone, okay? I'd love to see you with a smile when I wake up again."
Your lovely sister huffs, crossing her arms and looking away. "... I'll take care of things out here, you just have a nice rest."
"Love you too, sweetie." And with that, you walk off into the center of the room you've chosen for this occasion, opening your mouth and releasing the flood of thick red you've been keeping inside until now, vomiting it up with a vague sense of relief at getting it out.
Within only a few moments, strings of your cocoon of suffering wind around you, wrapping you up and holding you tightly in place, your consciousness dimming.
When you wake up... You wonder how much more you will be.