Accord watched, keeping all emotion off his face, as the cameras he had installed showed him the progression of events from the safety of his office. His Ambassadors, his representatives to the rest of the world and the tools with which to realize his ambitions, were moving into the area identified as the temporary lair of the Travelers.
It was an unsightly warehouse, no doubt chosen for the ability to house the problem case among their number- not counting the one he removed already the last time the group requested his hospitality.
The Travelers were, he thought back, an unpleasant surprise all in all; they simply did not meet his requirements for recruitment, though few met his standards, admittedly, while their conduct was altogether far too unprofessional and unordered for him to tolerate in person. Which was why they had been warned, after Coil's unfortunate end prevented him mediating their transfer to Brockton Bay, to get out of Boston and never return.
An exceedingly lenient measure of his displeasure and, it would seem, insufficient in the long run. Which brought him toward the present, watching the impending raid under his direction. Accord repressed the urge to buy out and remodel the neighbourhood using several perfectly coordinated wrecking balls just to ensure none of the uneven buildings he could never wipe out of his memory now would be rebuilt correctly.
He balled his fists, but did not outwardly react otherwise. Control over himself was required just as much as control over all else.
Instead of dwelling on the subject, he began to recount the members of the Travelers and the countermeasures made against their powers. Citrine would be a major factor in neutralizing Noelle once she was attuned to the enormous Brute's power, his Ambassador having been unable to reverse the mutated parahuman's development but presumably perfectly capable of causing it to go out of control within several seconds, effectively killing her.
Othello would be ensuring none escaped while Lizard Skin was responsible for tracking down and eliminating Ballistic. Similarly, each of the Travelers was going to be attacked by an Ambassador capable of countering their powers, several of Accord's subordinates surrounding the area and ready to interfere if required.
Accord hated the very fact this was necessary. He should have eliminated them to the last when they first displayed an inability to act according to even their own internal ranks, interfering with each other, insulting him by being chaotic. Say about the Lord Street Crypts and their casual countenance what one would, but at the very least the chaos they caused was controlled and inevitably lead to a net increase in order.
Accord looked at his desk, knowing the plans he had created over the years were tucked inside. Disease, population, government, energy, and climate. He spent an hour and a half every morning ensuring that everything was up to date with recent changes to the economy and international politics, made much more necessary through the effective removal of cancer and some forms of dementia in all of North- and South America, Europe and Australia.
Each of them was perfect, capable of being put into practice this very moment, if only the influental members of a government, any government, were to actually read them. Accord had tried, sending copies of one plan or another to most across the globe; his plans were foolproof and simple, accounting for every major country and ruler even in their infancies, in terms of the approaches necessary to get them on board given their natures and the political climates involved. Simple language and concrete measures of the time and money needed for each step.
If only he had the power to convince small-minded bureaucrats and two-bit dictators to actually care about making the world a better place. Nobody he'd contacted had taken to his ideas, and government after government had failed to thoroughly read the documents he sent them. Nobody raised the subject of his work to the United Nations or any major political body. They were too interested in maintaining the status quo.
Nevertheless, Accord knew why he was doing everything he was doing. His plans were no closer to completion in any observable manner, but he had contacts and money, both of which would be necessary. He would simply need to go the long way to make the world a better place. Which brought him back around to removing the destabilizing factor of the Travelers in turn.
Three main plans, dozens of adaptable countermeasures and iron-clad knowledge of the enemy. Hundreds of approaches and mid-battle recalibrations to react to whatever the Travelers might do. Dozens of salaries paid out for the duration of the battle.
And for all that Accord knew precisely what he was doing, so did a being that was not alive nor capable of real thought in orbit around Earth Bet. And the Simurgh was not playing around anymore.
You watch through the eyes of the unliving shadows you sent to keep track of the Travelers as events run their course without your direct intervention, seeing as you're fairly sure what is about to happen one way or the other.
Precognition just has a way of taking the surprise out of things... to an extent, as you soon learn.
Things start out pretty much as you'd expect. Accord's guys show up and begin wrecking everything, seeking out and fighting the Travelers individually to try and keep each confrontation isolated, though that inevitably fails and it all becomes one massive brawl instead. You have only two pairs of eyes in place, so you choose to pay attention to where most of the action is going down and the surroundings of the warehouse this Noelle girl is holing up inside of.
Trickster is doing his usual attempt at posturing around to get the Ambassadors to back down, but they don't exactly negotiate unless Accord tells them to, as you understand it, and going by the wound that appears across the leader of the Travelers' neck, he most certainly didn't.
Also, that's a neat power. Conferring with Sarah really quickly, you come to the conclusion that this is likely the work of Othello, one of the capes sent by Accord currently standing up on a nearby roof outside of Trickster's line of sight, having appeared suddenly.
His power is a tad bit complicated, but to keep it simple he has an ethereal doppelganger inside some mirror world that his power seems to be based off of, letting him exchange places with it and effectively teleport as well as bring it into the real world to interact with things in a limited manner.
Such as through a weapon it is wielding, invisible and intangible outside of being used to hurt things. This guy's a very decent Stranger, it has to be said.
Meanwhile, however, Trickster has managed to survive by rapidly teleporting around himself, apparently randomly replacing combatants all over the place and screwing up whatever scheme the Ambassadors were following. The Travelers are in full fight or flight mode now, apparently having chosen to fight for their lives going by the brutal takedowns attempted by their opponents.
Ballistic, a cape that can accelerate objects he touches. To bullet speeds, that is. Genesis, some kind of Master that can create separate bodies she can control while immobile herself, but only one at a time. Sundancer, who can create balls of plasma she controls, essentially literal miniature suns with all the destructive potential this implies.
The rather chaotic fight is spurred on by the Travelers doing everything they can to keep one of the Ambassadors, whom you've identified as Citrine, a Trump that has some sort of localized semi-omnipotence (or at least that's what Sarah calls it) as well as your contact with Accord's organization, from getting inside their lair.
Until Ballistic goes and throws a piece of metal around only to find that Trickster 'coincidentally' teleported Sundancer into its way just moments prior. The girl freaks out, uses her power to melt the stuff into slag with a sizeable use of her power and all of a sudden, one of the warehouse walls right next to her melts, the stone and concrete not rated for the temperatures involved.
Inside, everyone around can now see the one member of the Travelers nobody really wanted to see, illuminated by the light emitting from Sundancer's power.
"What's going on? Who are these people?" She could be mistaken for a normal person if one were to hear her voice only. However, the scraping of something wet against something hard puts paid to that notion even beyond the moving shapes already visible. "They smell weird."
"You are." Citrine wastes no time in pouring oil on the fire.
"It's alright Noelle, just stay where you are until we're done and we can get out of here," Trickster attempts to calm her, only for the monstrous cape shake and strain against where she seems to be... standing? Sitting?
Either way she pushes against the wall, rippling flesh bursting through everything in its way. "No. They'll be on to us now. We're doing this the hard way!"
Within moments the considerable bulk of Noelle is out, trampling over Citrine and another Ambassador that stood on the other side of the street while this is going on. Immediately, the distended, twisted chimeric body she has grown by this point begins to spit out half-formed bodies, most of which are either dead or only wiggling in place.
"Let's finish this fast! I can't control myself much longer!"
The situation had rapidly spiraled out of control, not in a way Accord had planned for. This was borderline intolerable in itself, but this was not the time to focus on the many imperfections his power made sure to point out and plan for; instead, he needed to take action to moderate the damage and resolve the situation with any means necessary.
Which was a perfect topic for his power to be used upon. The more difficult a problem was, the easier the solutions came to him and Noelle Meinhardt was proving to be a vastly difficult problem indeed. It seemed she was a far more considerable combatant than he would have expected in addition to her first strike taking out both Citrine and the Ambassador meant to be immobilizing her temporarily for her power to work.
Which sharply limited the parahumans in his employ capable of decisive action against her.
Meanwhile, the open fighting on the streets had remained undiscovered by the authorities. The PRT was already in action, meaning a Protectorate response was only a matter of time even as Accord sent orders for all parahumans in the area to retreat and cordon off the site of Miss Meinhardt's emergence.
Already several clones of his Ambassadors were being produced, even as Othello assassinated them at as rapid a pace as he could manage. The most notable twisted replication of Citrine, one bearing two heads and for arms, was currently slinging pus-green blasts of a modified power in all directions, causing random effects most of which seemed rather unpleasant as it was.
Most distressingly they were capable of hindering Othello's power in action, reducing the effective use to be made of it to removing any particularly viable clones before they could become active. Unfortunately this was not a permanent solution, more enemies being born by the minute even as his hand did not allow any obvious counters.
Accord's power whirred through several methods through which to turn the fight around. A giant pitfall to trap the surprisingly swift mutated parahuman, an improvised battering ram made of the surrounding buildings, using Othello's power to...
Othello was one of the few parahumans in his employ that could act freely in the surroundings of Miss Meinhardt without risking sharing the fate of the first two Ambassadors to fall. Perhaps he could investigate closer.
"Othello," Accord spoke into the microphone, "attempt to extract Citrine and Doldrums."
Meanwhile, of course, the others needed to be ensuring none of the Travelers got away, at least not alive, and to evacuate the area. Which was also why Accord then proceeded to call a certain number.
"PRT Department 24, Director Armstrong speaking."
"Hello Director Armstrong, this is Accord speaking."
"How did you get this number?"
"That is of no importance at the moment," he said, keeping an eye on the critical situation at hand. It seemed the Travelers were having a discussion in the middle of a fight, as unsound as the decision to do so was. "You may be aware a fight between parahumans is currently taking place in the west of Boston, currently moving towards Downtown. This fight involves an obviously mutated cape with the power to regenerate and create clones of any being it touches, presumably aiming to swallow several parahumans at the moment. Therefore-"
"Is it a case 53?" Accord wrangled the urge to murder the man for interrupting him. "If not, we must evacuate the area and- Bastion is on the way already."
"Then call him back." He saw the wretched clones run amok, one copy of Doldrums running toward the Ambassadors already in position to prevent escape attempts. It had a swollen head looking as though it was filled with water, face distorted and bulging, but nevertheless it ignored the heavy fire it was under from one of his Ambassadors, arresting the powers being used against it. "Having him be absorbed would be disastrous."
Unfortunately for Accord, Bastion did not respond to calls to retreat. Instead, the leader of the Boston Protectorate bumbled right into the fight, tempting him to have the man executed or left inside Miss Meinhardt to no small extent. However, with Othello's aid, the Shaker was soon released again, together with Ballistic who had apparently protested the group's current actions. Similarly, Sundancer had already surrendered, expressing a desire to change sides now that things had developed to this point.
Unfortunately, the situation was complicated by Trickster continually feeding more parahumans into Miss Meinhardt even as they continued to move towards the South. The Boston PRT had take his suggestions and, after a brief moment of discussion, sent the Case 53 Ward Weld into the fray, the boy's metallic nature proving to grant him invulnerability against the paralytic and replicating nature of Miss Meinhardt's power.
It did not, however, grant invulnerability against brute force, leaving him to be trampled and visibly dented. Another unpleasant sight in a series of such.
As things kept escalating, so too did the attention they received, up to and including the PRT Chief Director Costa-Brown ordering immediate action be taken by only the most powerful heroes suited to the situation at hand. This was both relieving- because less obviously incapable parahumans would be sent- and problematic, insofar as it took the Triumvirate over fifteen minutes to respond in force.
Accord's power easily estimated the property damage from the continued fighting to be over ten million dollars by this point, sharply rising as more and more twisted clones were produced. Where was Eidolon with a fitting power when one needed him?
Oh. Apparently, in Brockton Bay. Where an Endbringer attack was just announced to be incoming.
There they are, the sirens calling you to action. The fight over in Boston seems to be going ahead without too much trouble, even if you are mildly wary about the way Noelle and Trickster are steadily moving towards the south.
Doesn't really matter now, however. Time to go and deal with this, you suppose.
The message goes out within moments, letting all capes that want to look up the place everyone is supposed to gather at. In this particular case, it's a building precariously close to the coast, in your opinion, that is, within city limits.
Still you guess you should get to it, putting what few preparations you have yet to get to in order. You have your snazzy suit on, Last Embrace is right on your arms and your potions are ready.
More importantly, so are the capes that will be coming with you. You have everyone gathered quite quickly; Sarah, Kate, Sherrel, Okita, Jeremy, Emily, Rachel, Alec, Aisha, Brian, your priestess (who will be at the base to trigger the ritual for you), Tammi, Alice, Taylor, Frank (Scrapper), the Cluster Six and Kayden.
Twenty-two capes all in all that will be doing this, not counting yourself. Cherie is present, but mostly as a cheerleader and will be teleported off to Boston along with everyone else that won't be participating and the Valkyries, as they're sometimes called, are milling around in the background making sure everyone is supplied with everything they need.
This is actually quite a lot. You have enough capes here to make up a whole city's cape scene by yourself.
"Okay everyone, there's not much to be said at this point you can't think of yourselves, so let's get right down to it," you announce without much ado. "Let's all get into the truck and drive right off. Make sure everyone has at least one of the Flash Potions and any other they may need, we put a collection inside there so feel free to help yourself."
Nobody wastes any time now, regardless of the steady tension in the air your entire group is keeping up. This is an Endbringer fight, after all.
Along with everyone else, there's also a group of twenty of your Mr. X undead trundling along, because obviously you need a few of them just in case you need heavy loads lifted or something of the sort. You're just making it a point to bring a source of any manual labor that needs to be performed, really, like any sensible person would.
They're also smart enough not to get in the way too much, or whatever equivalent word you'd use for things that are technically mindless. Not unlike the soul you're using- the Buffer Hero, as you very much still call him, is safe and secure inside your body, unable to get himself killed as he undoubtedly would on his own.
Up front in the driver's cabin, spacially extended to encompass seats enough for everyone, you share one last nod with Sherrel.
And like that, the Crypts are off to fight. Brockton Bay is your fucking city and you won't let anyone else smash it, Endbringer or not.
The rain was conspicuously absent as the Snitch took position in the sky, despite the warning going out about Leviathan in particular coming for Brockton Bay. The flying camera drone was Uber and Leet's only connection to the outside world outside of the internet these days after they'd used the Reality Hacker to barricade themselves between dimensions, but this was definitely going to be worth it.
The greatest fucking show in the world, and they'd be the first and only to bring it to the internet. This was gonna be great, assuming the Snitch didn't get broken somehow.
Leet would be crying over it for weeks if it did, unlikely as it was.
So there the tinkertech device hung in the air, panning out a good few shots of the surroundings to try and see any capes coming to the PRT's meeting spot- any challengers were welcome, after all- only to see a sight out of some tinker's wet dreams.
A massive truck, just barely fitting into a single lane, loaded from top to bottom in giant guns and devices of an obviously destructive nature, everything down to the twelve pairs of tires moving it weaponized. Driving all the way to the actual building, the vehicle halted... unloading dozens of capes coming out of the unfolding double doors of the driver's cabin.
They were led by none other than Cain, the well-built man in his suit and creepy shadow mask giving everyone a nod as they walked right past the shellshocked PRT guards at the doors to the place. Uber and Leet looked at each other; this was going to be an even more amazing show than anyone would have expected.
Even if a lot of those 'capes' wore casual clothes and had these standardized tinker rifles on them.
Armsmaster focused on breathing evenly, getting ready. His preparations had been a bit rushed, but he was, ironically, more prepared than he suspected he might otherwise be thanks to his entirely theoretical anti-Cain technology.
He was unsure whether it would do the trick in any case, but any weapon that might work against an Endbringer was better than none. The nanothorn halberd might just be enough to help turn the tides today.
Nearby, he saw Strider teleporting another group in, more capes coming to join the defense. The parahuman in question looked around, quickly finding the corner of the room taken over by the Triumvirate- Eidolon, Alexandria and Legend were all in attendance, their quiet reassurance serving to calm the people steadily accumulating.
It was a pretty good turnout, for one of these. Normal Endbringer attacks were a thing of chaos and improvisation- seconds' notice instead of minutes more often than not, staggered reinforcements arriving to the fight in progress and little to no coordination between defenders.
The Endbringer tracking software had been finished just in time to let him and Dragon know about Leviathan's irregular movements down in the ocean, leading to both of them to immediately call their superiors. Dragon was already moving in one of her armors, the Cawthorne prototype chosen due to its speed above all else, while Armsmaster...
He did not have any tinkertech wonders to offer, sadly. His power was simply not suited for bigger projects, a fact he could admit to himself without wincing these days. Instead, he had put the finishing touches on his halberd and armor, uploaded the half-finished combat routine he'd hope wouldn't get him killed and all the while informed Director Piggot as well as the Chief Director of what was happening.
Strider, walking over to the Triumvirate, drew Colin out of his thoughts. "The thing in Boston is getting worse last I heard, should I do anything about it?"
Alexandria gave Legend a look, to which the most personable of the three nodded. "We can't spare any resources for that right now, we need everyone on board for this one. Once Leviathan is dealt with, we can help with that, but as it stands the damage is going to be greater here."
"Got it. I'll be off to New York next, it's just really weird to talk about Leviathan when the sky is this clear."
"The clouds are already gathering, it won't be long," the older cape promised with a bitter smile. "Now get going, the more defenders we have the more we can hope for."
Strider nodded, moving on. Meanwhile Colin- Armsmaster, he found himself awfully slow to switch personas in his mind- turned towards the door, hearing a bit of a commotion.
The next moment, Cain was throwing it open, marching into the room at the head of a congregation of capes easily outnumbering the defenders already gathered. "Anyone say there's a fight?"
Armsmaster resisted the urge to facepalm. It was a monumental effort.
The ENE Wards were handing out the bracelets meant to let the defenders coordinate easier, everyone gathering with them accepting the devices without complaint. It was not long, however, until Legend took a step forward, clearing his throat.
As always, Armsmaster couldn't help but admire the man's voice. If there was any one hero that had made giving speeches into an art form, he was it. "We owe thanks to Dragon and Armsmaster for their early alert," he began, his gaze panning around his audience. We've had time to gather, and that means we have just a few more minutes to prepare and brief for Leviathan's arrival, instead of jumping straight into the fray as we arrive. With this advantage, some luck, teamwork and hard effort from everyone, I hold out hope that this could be one of the good days."
He almost made it sound like there were good days when it came to Endbringers.
"But you should know your chances going in. Given the statistics from our previous encounters with this beast, a 'good day' still means that one in four of the people in this room will probably be dead before this day is done."
Ah, there it was. A quiet murmur went through the gathered parahumans, villains and heroes alike taken aback at what they were hearing.
"I'm telling you your chances now because you deserve to know, and we so rarely get the chance to inform those individuals brave enough to step up and fight these monsters. The primary message I want to convey, even more than briefing you on the particulars of his abilities, organizing formations and battle plans, is that I do not want you to underestimate Leviathan. I have seen too many good heroes," he paused for a fraction of a second. "And villains, too, die because they let their guard down."
Armsmaster watched on as Legend continued, eyeing the gathering of capes Cain had brought with him. He recognized Tattletale, Grue and Regent from the Undersiders, Thunderstruck, who had made a name for himself by appearing in Crypt territory with some regularity, several young Asian women (possibly recruited in the wake of the ABB's downfall), one obvious tinker coming in in heavy, if rustic, power armor and two capes he identified as Purity and Rune from the E88.
It did explain their conspicuous absences when the gang began to cause widespread violence. Cain had recruited them regardless of any prior affiliations, though this did fit into the rudimentary psychological profile made for the man.
He himself was standing off to one side of the room, doodling something onto a napkin. Armsmaster chose to ignore that tidbit.
The speech went on, warning the assembled parahumans against underestimating Leviathan once again and going into the details of what to watch for; both the Endbringer's speed and his hydrokinesis were a significant threat, as was the ability to use hydrokinesis on macro scales to destroy entire locations.
The distinction between hard and soft targets, the differing strategies, what they could afford to do in the case of the former and why they couldn't afford to do so now. Brockton Bay would be turned into one gigantic meat blender if Leviathan succeeded in weaponizing the aquifer under the city, a fact everyone needed to know ahead of time.
If they did not drive off Leviathan quickly enough, they, along with any civilians that had not been evacuated by that point, were as good as dead.
(For most of the speech, refer to https/parahumans./2012/03/06/extermination-8-2/)
Then, just as Legend was directing everyone to split up into groups to then be sent out under orders of the trained leaders appointed to those positions, Armsmaster taking a moment to explain to everyone how the armbands worked, Cain began moving, the napkin he'd been writing something on earlier handed to Legend. "I don't know if anyone's noticed, but there's kind of a tidal wave incoming."
The room went quiet. In this sudden silence, Armsmaster could hear the roaring of water, so he was inclined to believe the man.
And here he'd hoped the absence of rain would be a sign he was wrong and they could all go home without having to fight. So much for that.
The silence held for a moment longer, then the shouting started- anyone with forcefields, telekinesis or similar powers was moving in to hold back the wave and let everyone get out, the backup defense group doing its job.
"Strider!" Legend yelled with authority in his voice. "Get us out of here!"
Armsmaster eyed the wall and considered if breaking it down to open up an escape route might save more of the room's occupants than it would doom, only to halt when he saw Cain was not done yet.
From under his black, persistently lightless mask (most likely power-generated, somehow), the villain ejected a steady stream of a silvery, mist-like substance (his analytics suite could not determine what it was exactly). The substance flowed irregularly at a certain distance from its origin, seemingly condensing.
It rapidly turned into metal, forming a tinkertech construct sporting a very obvious theme with several clocks along in, including a head made of one. Beside the obvious weaponry and the apparent fact it was a projection of Cain, flaking material still assembling parts of it, it immediately began exhibiting signs of sapience, though how much of that was Cain and how much was genuine remained uncertain.
"Beep tick tick tick tick ZONNGG."
"Yes, yes, we all know you came just in time," the rather notorious gang leader sighed, apparently translating. "Now could you just get that enormous wave off of us?"
The ocean-facing side of the room was already shaking, the wall of water visible even as nobody wanted to acknowledge it. Just what was Strider doing?
The next moment, however, everyone could hear another sound than the rumbling approach of the ocean; a hissing one, like high-pressure steam being released from a valve. Outside, the tidal wave halted, almost being shaken to a stop, then receded back the way it came.
Armsmaster pulled up the video recording inside his visor. Exactly the way it came, ignoring physics as it reversed all movement it had made before. Time manipulation on this scale?
The robot creaked. "Tick tock tick tock tick tock riiinnnngggg." It sounded almost precisely like an alarm clock.
"Got it. Okay everyone," and wasn't it alarming that Cain seemed to be using the same attitude he showed when he went on stream, "there's only so many times this little guy here can do this, so get ready to fend off the waves sooner rather than later."
The projection produced another, shriller, sound, like metal rubbing on metal. "Ziinngg, ziinngg."
Armsmaster wished it was otherwise, but try as he might, he couldn't seem to analyze even the faintest thing about how it worked. For all that it seemed to be robotic in nature, it was obviously created through Cain's powers, the wide-ranging mess that they were, so he had better things to do.
Such as looking out over the bay, the last rays of the setting sun illuminating the stirring waters.
Out there, he could see it- top-heavy, with its characteristic gait as it advanced regardless of the first wave's failure, water dripping from it like a waterfall. "Leviathan," he whispered.
"It was about time, really," Cain casually shrugged, his projection wheeling after him on its robotic legs. "We went and gathered this whole greeting committee, least it could do was show up on time."
Then he hung his head from his shoulders, shaking it. "Now I'm doing it too. Are you sure your time puns aren't infectious somehow?"
"Hisss tick tick crack-CLONG."
Behind them, Clockblocker's voice was the first thing heard from the gathered parahumans ever since the casual display of power. "That is such bullshit."
Cain tilted his head. "I am bullshit."
Leviathan walked in its awkward way, forearms and calves too long and slender for its form with its weight centered around its top. Its arms were almost like pendulums, sliding through the water it was giving off and letting it keep balanced much like its long tail, swishing to the side with every step it took.
Nevertheless, none dared underestimate it, corded muscle clear against thick skin and alien, unfeeling and uneven gaze clear to all that beheld it. It had three shining blue eyes on the left side of its face, almost like a ball of misformed dough stuck onto its reverse-tear shape body, while the right side held only one.
Cain sighed, watching the approaching tidal wave once again raised against the city. "Some just never learn, do they?"
He snapped his fingers and this time, Armsmaster was certain that it was some form of tinkertech that responded- on the buildings nearby Leviathan, mechanical contraptions unfolded, their purpose clear when a half a dozen bright beams began to dig into Leviathan from all sides.
The Endbringer's response was to propel itself along the street it was on, creating a path of water for it to flow along. Meanwhile, yet another wave was turned back through time reversal, Cain's projection letting out the sound of a steam engine again.
"Tick tick boom," it made, something inside it capable of producing a great amount of sounds, Armsmaster realized.
"Tch, just let them through from now on, then," Cain said in response. "Everyone get ready, the real fight's about to start. Make sure to actually break those waves before they reach us. You know what to do."
The way he looked at the delegation of Crypt capes attending the fight made it seem a lot like there was more to what he was saying, but the next moment everything exploded into a flurry of action, parahumans moving around and organizing at rapid speed.
The displays of absurd power would not stop them for long. Neither, sadly, did they impede Leviathan; several holes were torn into its hide where the lasers had hit and were hitting it, but it was already using its power to burst nearby pipes and destroy hydrants, letting it access water from nearby, simultaneously causing yet another, larger, wave.
Armsmaster couldn't help himself, readying his halberd as he asked the question burning on his mind. "How did you know where it would land and prepare those in time?"
Cain glanced at him, the motion deliberately made visible through his body language. "I didn't. I just put them all over the city weeks or days in advance."
... Well that explained that, at least.
On the other hand, Leviathan was busy destroying the contraptions automatically opening fire on it, finally finding success with its third wave crashing over the city and breaking windows all over parts of it. Now finally supplied with its element, it deliberately targeted the turrets bearing down on it, nevertheless giving the defenders valuable time to get into position.
"The city is going to stink of seawater for weeks," Cain lamented for the most banal of reasons.
"It will probably be cleaned by rainwater eventually."
"Point. It'll still be humid as hell, though."
Behind them, everyone, including the Triumvirate, was either trying to move out or organizing into their respective groups. However, the subordinates of the man Armsmaster had found himself conversing with were doing their own thing, apparently.
"I'll be off to try and hold back any more waves," Tattletale said, throwing everything about her being a Thinker out of the window. Then again, it seemed obvious she had gained more powers, somehow, ever since she murdered Jack Slash on live TV.
Thunderstruck merely nodded, joining the group meant to confront Leviathan up front, whereas Purity joined the Blasters, obviously enough.
Some, however, were doing otherwise. One of the young Asian women, easily discernible as such due to the simple, half-face mask she wore, was approaching Alexandria, for example. "Excuse me? Could you hold my hand for a moment?"
"Why?" The no-nonsense woman asked.
"I'm a power-copier, but I can only copy one power at once and it is weakened. It would still be nice to have a weaker Alexandria out there, no?"
Alexandria held out a hand. "Will this do?"
The smiling woman (she was more of a girl, but Armsmaster tried not to think about it, for several reasons) nodded. "Not quite as fast as skin contact, but I can make do."
Cain, however, was concentrating on another woman, wearing more casual clothes than anything else and bearing a yellow tinkertech rifle. "Can you get a shot from here?"
"Duh, the fucker isn't moving fast right now," the cape smirked derisively, her weapon shifting an transforming to take the shape of a sniper rifle. Clearly custom-made tinkertech; whatever tinker was supplying the Crypts had to have been focused around firearms somehow. "Only question is how many buildings I'm shooting through."
"You know what, everything in the area will be collateral damage soon anyways, so fire at will."
The cape's grin stretched from ear to ear as the rifle buzzed with internal activity. "That's what I wanna hear!"
Then the weapon fired. It fired a bright beam, not unlike that of the autonomous devices Leviathan was discovering and destroying one after the other, but in a vastly increased magnitude thereof, the steady stream spreading out to a diameter of around 1.5 meters and punching through everything in its way, finally hitting Leviathan's side.
It bored into it for several moments, the collective enemy of humankind flashing elsewhere as soon as it could. The sensors on Armsmaster's armor picked up on a greatly increased amount of charged particles in the air in his immediate surroundings.
"Ions?" He guessed.
"Compressed ionized matter, to be precise," Cain nodded. "I'd love to stay and chat a little, but it looks like I'm up."
Leviathan was striding towards their location after the last attack it suffered, ignoring the scattered turrets by randomly speeding up or slowing down on the way. Technically, this was a breach of protocol, as all parahumans present were supposed to be coordinating and working together to immobilize and damage Leviathan, but the sizable wound it now bore was a testament to this strike's full power.
However, how was Cain going to-
The man next to Armsmaster pulsed, flesh visibly rippling under his suit, as he stretched his arms and legs out, growing in size to the sound of twisting and breaking bones. His back bulged with added mass until four slender, hooked wings burst out of his clothes, oddly not damaging the material at all, the same happening with a wild, bone-like mass pushing itself out of his skull.
Plates of bone and spikes grew out of him, overlapping with and hiding his clothing, face of shadows replaced with a largely faceless plate only showing two eyes glowing eerily. Hands the size of a man's head sprouted hooked claws as a similar light began to shine through them, spreading like veins over both limbs and torso, concentrated on the chest of the thing Cain was turning into.
His feet and legs glowed red, as though heated metal, all the while two long, slender tails now protruded from the back of its waist. The ensemble was, finally, topped off by the crown of horns that had finished setting in glowing of their own, as though to signal the arrival of... something.
Next to Armsmaster now stood a thing a religious man would have called a demon of some kind. Somehow, he couldn't help but immediately think of the comparison and agree.
Silently, as silent as Leviathan itself, Cain tore into motion, bursting through the windows and the wall as a whole as he charged right towards his opponent, the battle between titans beginning without a moment of delay.
Kate clicked her tongue as she shifted back to assault mode, eyeing the Blasters. Was she really going to hang with those losers?
... Yes, probably. Just so she could get in on the action when her boyfriend had the big fucker in a suplex or something.
"C'mon, what's taking so long?" She asked Legend, taking pleasure in being a karen at the man.
"We're waiting for the other groups," the big dick cape replied without breaking stride. "It should be only a moment, unless you'd like to position yourself ahead?"
"You read my fucking mind, sure you ain't no Thinker?"
Uber and Leet were flipping out at the footage they were receiving. "Are you getting this or was that last KFC bucket bad already and I'm hallucinating?"
"No," Leet slowly replied, eyes struggling to take in the glorious monster fight action unfolding on the screen and voice just a little shaky, "no I think you're seeing this right."
They both saw as the mutated version of Cain, and phew the guy deserved one hell of a Changer rating for this, sped across the ground, all eight limbs (ten if they counted the tails) in motion.
He crashed into the Endbringer, both of them going to the ground and rotating around each other for a moment, the cape (?) clawing and tearing at the Endbringer's skin to leave long, but shallow gouges along it.
Then Leviathan pushed out its water double, slipping away from Cain's grip and swinging around back on onto its feet, its tail lashing through the air with its own watery echo to slash against the man turned monster. Cain blocked, one arm deflecting the dual strike and trying to grab his opponent's tail, but Leviathan was faster, slipping around and pushing against the cape now easily in his own size category.
The two began to wrestle (!), so Leet called up their video editing software- just the normal stuff, nothing he ever tinkered up because the Snitch was great at catching all the best footage all by itself, and looked at Uber. "Think we can add a few good soundtracks?"
His partner cracked his knuckles. "I can now."
Taylor looked on as the girl she knew as Sarah threw her hair back, the golden locks growing loner and more voluminous, taking on a deeper color as her transformation progressed. Her skin grew dark and almost blue, facial features becoming more and more... standardized, almost exaggerated.
Then her upper body detached from her lower one, a black hole now occupying the space, while her clothes warped and became simple cloth wound around her to compliment the hardened, yet flexible stuff growing out of her.
Then she went on to create and send out these little figures, turning them into threads that became a net that somehow held back parts of the next wave as it came to crash against the coast. A lot of it still came through, but very little made it directly to where all the capes were gathering.
Taylor shook her head. This wasn't the time. Right now she had to keep her head in the game, as much as she was sure everyone not in the Crypts was talking about her behind her back, their piercing stares on her at all times.
Instead she turned towards Kate, the woman helping lead the Blasters and miscellaneous raged combatants. "Are you really sure this is going to work?"
"It should, and if not you've tried at least. What's the worst that could happen?"
At the heart of the battle, Cain was battling Leviathan in a biblical showdown, blows exchanged and met head on as much as they were deflected and bat aside. Taylor took a deep breath.
She needed to wait for the signal, this might be her only shot to really matter in this fight. Up above Purity was flying, the ex-Empire cape sending out measured shots at Leviathan whenever the creature stopped moving for a moment.
As much as both combatants looked monstrous and inhuman, the way they fought couldn't be any different. Cain was measured and wild, the contradiction making more sense as she watched; he was tearing into the Endbringer savagely, using raw force to leave wounds all over it and even goring it on his horns on occasion, only to strike and weave into and out of Leviathan's range the moment he sensed a possible disadvantage.
He was like a wild animal crossed with a professional fighter, viciously attacking any weak points there might be. Already one of Leviathan's eyes, the only one on the right side of its face, had been ruined by successive strikes with both fists and claws, parts of its back a series of rends opened by wildly applied force.
By contrast, Leviathan was moving strangely, almost alien, bending its body every which way and returning every bit of brute force dealt to it twofold. Where Cain was methodical, it was uncaring of anything but the offensive, repeatedly trying to circle him and using its water echo to strike from several angles at once.
For all that Cain was dealing out massive damage, he too was being thrown around, hacked at by both tail and claws and subjected to a barrage of formed hydrokinetic attacks. One of his horns had been broken off already, glowing dully where it lay in the water, his tank-like armor scarred by his foe's strikes and broken off in places as well.
Neither combatant had been hit decisively, however, which in itself was a testament to Cain's strength, holding off an Endbringer by himself. Then Taylor received the message she'd been waiting for, calling upon her swarm as quickly as she could.
The bugs crawled out of nooks and crannies, every insect she could gather on the way to this place having been stashed in places they wouldn't drown too easily. Similarly, she had already prepared everything she would need for this particular trick, so all that remained was to spread out the flying roaches tied together with thin lines of spider silk.
They were some of the tougher bugs she had, after all. Bred specifically to be resistant to pretty much anything, these were some of the faster specimen she had, combined with other random flying bugs.
Then Taylor called upon the soul of William Manton, making him submit to her own mind.
She summoned the Siberian. Nearby capes flinched back, Legend himself changing focus.
Cain raised a hand, using, Taylor knew, his new strange power (referred to as an 'esper' power) in combination with the best telekinesis plasmid the Crypts had in store. His hand was shaking, Leviathan struggling and water gathering... But for a brief moment, the Endbringer was immobilized, floating in the air and made lighter to be able to be lifted.
Taylor used the Siberian's hands to grasp the grand net she had woven, tightening the almost invisibly thin strands around the enemy they were fighting. At the same time, she used the Siberian's power to make it invunerable.
It held. All of a sudden, Leviathan could not move any further, its own strength digging into the indestructible thread into its flesh.
From nearby, the cape she only knew as 'Okita' jumped from a tilted building, hit hard by the waves. She swung her sword with all her might right at where the Endbringer was hurt the most, a particularly hard hit and several pieces of thread keeping a chunk of its arm's insides exposed.
With a thunderous crash, the large, dark blade carved through tough meat, stopping only near the bone. Half of Leviathan's left hand was amputated, but it seemed that was all they could get for now.
Because next there was an explosion of water and it was all Taylor could do to get away before she was caught and crushed by it even over by where she was standing.
You forcefully keep yourself upright, dragging your claws into the asphalt to arrest your momentum. Having an Endbringer explode in your face isn't exactly the most pleasant of experiences, you have to admit.
However, as Leviathan seems to be getting a little more serious, so are you... With a chunk of its flesh in your hand where you quickly tried to help Okita open a larger wound. Speaking of, you did shield her with your body, just to make sure she doesn't get hit too hard to continue fighting right now.
You throw the piece of Leviathan into your mouth, opening the crack in your face leading to a little nightmare made of teeth before you can think about it. Force of habit and all, you see?
That doesn't change how you proceed to chew, jaws the strength of several hydraulic presses working hard to let you swallow the piece of weirdly durable flesh. As you do, you realize something important.
This stuff is actually pretty tasty. Not in the same way a good (or rather, evil) soul is, but you do quite like the sheer density of it.
In the sudden gap created by the explosion, Cain and Leviathan taking some distance from each other as the latter began to untangle itself from the net tying it up, the rest of the combatants finally made their move now that they weren't liable to hit Cain instead of the real target. Alexandria was leading the charge, knowing it was on her to keep the Endbringer pinned down long enough for the other groups to rain down everything they had.
Long experience told her Leviathan, much like its 'siblings', was greatly resistant to blunt force... Though that did not excuse her for not putting in the effort. It did help that Cain had demonstrated a far greater willingness to show his hand and claw it up in person, however.
She was definitely going to annoy David with theories about Cain being the devil and Earth Bet consequently being hell later, she could improvise some narrative on top before the meeting.
Alexandria rammed herself right across Leviathan's flank, lifting it up and, once she had a good grip on it, slammed it right down again, keeping it still for a brief moment. This moment was used, as she could hear being coordinated through her armband, to let the Blasters have at it- powers rained down on their enemy in a cacophony of light and sound.
Not all of them were powerful enough to matter, but the ones that were helped tremendously. Legend in particular was providing overwatch, firing his usual lasers with great speed and precision, targeting any already wounded areas.
"Wave!" The alert coming from the armbands came at the same time as Leviathan threw her off, moving quickly to remove itself from their line of fire. Looking up, Alexandria could see the brightly-colored net of light holding a massive seawall in place, Eidolon coming in to assist and take off some of the pressure around the sides, but already a simply much larger body of water was rolling in.
They wouldn't be in time, so Alexandria flew up as quickly as she could. Cain was running after Leviathan underneath, the cape that had assisted him by way of landing a single, hard strike earlier held with his segmented tails, but the Endbringer was summoning several copies of itself made of water to buy a moment's time.
Then the wave hit and it was all she could do to avoid it.
The water is hitting you pretty hard, but you don't let it stop you- you have to literally dig your feet into the ground to stay in place thanks to the force it is ripping at everything in the area, but you keep on moving, unbothered by the lack of air.
Then Leviathan dashes past you, literally dabbing as it moves at speeds you can't keep up with and casually breaking your aura (you raised it again as a precaution) and just darting off into the distance along the submerged street.
Someone's just earned themselves the special treatment. You pull Okita closer, the black-haired vampire clinging to your tails with one hand and waving her sword around with the other.
What are you doing?
Trying to kill the water.
... You'll just leave her be for the moment.
The wave hitting the area naturally hit the defenders gathered nearby, no few of them seized by and torn with the water. The battle's first casualties were had, several dying even as the survivors got back on their feet and attempted to find Leviathan again, the Endbringer having disappeared in the confusion.
Many were wounded, too, except the search and rescue parts of this fight were... unusually well coordinated.
To say the least.
"Y'know, I kinda disliked it at first, but this gig is pretty sweet after all," one of the female gangsters said to one of her colleagues, both of them riding on giant dog lizard monsters that were rapidly running along, removing rubble where they sensed survivors buried under a building that'd collapsed during the wave.
"Duh, the rifles are good, but not that good. We got the turrets to do the same job without us being meat shields."
Just then, a cape was dug out of the rubble, wet and coughing and with a broken pair of legs. Neither of them bothered even looking at his costume. Instead, the first of the Crypsters jumped down to the ground, propping him up and hitting his back while the other one jabbed a pair of needles into his legs, pushing the simple injection mechanism.
A bit of physical assistance to set them right and the broken bones were good as new. Hacking and coughing, the cape breathed heavily. "Haa, hgk, haa... Thanks..."
"No biggie, you see where anyone else went?"
One of the big monster dogs chuffed, throwing itself into the rubble like a dog digging a hole in soft ground. They could already see an arm of another buried person, maybe even still alive.
"There we go, I guess." They promptly injected another stimpack into it, just in case, while they waited for whoever it was to be dug free.
All over the city, the Doggie Mafia took notice of the attack, having been on alert ever since the panic of the evacuating people making their ways to the shelters had been noted. Now, knowing there was a big wet thing, they howled in unison, exchanging information over wide areas and darting into and out of security doggie holes the Bitch had prepared for them against the flooding.
Many were already empowered by the Bitch, more growing to the size of their true dog selves by the moment. They had to find the intruder and kill it!
If one were capable of understanding and translating complex concepts in wild barking and howling, the unified sounds echoing all throughout Brockton Bay would be quite informative, even.
"Not here! Not here!"
"Find it! Bite it!"
"For the Bitch! For the Doge!"
"Doge! Doge! Doge!"
The armband were announcing a steady stream of names, downed and deceased capes called out. However, much more importantly at the moment was the lack of any priority calls on Leviathan's location, so there was little the capes around could actually do.
Which, if anything, annoyed Kate. If this was how Endbringer fights usually went, it was no fucking surprise entire cities were destroyed all the time; no point even being there if you couldn't even fire on the big fucker.
Or, well, they probably could. Kate did have a remote controlled shot that could search out a target by itself, it was just that it would ignore anything in the way. Gabriel would be insufferable if she did more damage than Leviathan.
Though, looking at the ruined buildings surrounding them on all sides where she hadn't show down the water...
"This is Dragon, I have eyes on Leviathan in G-4." Looking at the armband thingy, Kate saw a map displayed letting her know where the fuck that even was.
Then she saw a fucking fighter jet blast by in the sky, or at least that was the best approximation she could get; it was actually a giant dragon suit, quadruped and kinda reptile-like in design and all, with a giant jetpack on its back. It crashlanded right over where Leviathan was supposed to be.
She looked over at Jerry, the better-known cape not far from where she'd kept a part of the area safe from the tidal wave. "Is it just me or should be invest in more jetpacks?"
"... We could just use the teleporter if we really wanted," the Mover/Brute replied, stepping in place. "For now just try to keep up, okay?"
And off he went. Kate sighed. "So much for Crypt solidarity," she said wistfully, watching him become a blur racing through soggy streets filled with the water's backflow- trash and algae both taken along when the ocean water first came in, then receded. Lots of glass shards from broken windows, too.
"Uh, ma'am?" One of the capes nearby asked, having taken shelter behind her with the others she'd saved the asses of. She had, like, a battle axe and wore red. "That was Thunderstruck, right? What was that about?"
"Oh, just bitchin' about how not everyone gets a damn Mover rating," Kate grumbled, shifting her gun into assault mode and pointing it downward. "See ya suckers where the fight is."
With that she flew up high into the sky, keeping the trigger depressed and overriding physics with her powers to fire off pure force to basically shove herself.
Guns were really the ultimate tool.
Sarah concentrated, smoothly shifting into and out of the various tasks she was performing. The net she was weaving against the ocean needed to be enlarged and though she had a theoretical upper limit on how far she could push it, she was far from reaching it yet.
Time for her next trick, in fact. Switching things around on the forcefields between the lines she'd made out of the small projections she used the souls she'd eaten to control (they should be thankful they even got to be useful, figuring out this trick had taken a lot of effort she could've spent on wooing her Gabriel), she turned the spaces between the threads she'd spun out of their heads into portals.
Portals that randomly lead into each other, all facing the sea. The harder Leviathan pushed, the harder it would push against itself now.
That taken care of, she paused for a moment, leaving it to Eidolon to shore up the defenses- he had to be good for something. Instead, she spent a moment analyzing all the thoughts and sights other vampires had gathered on Leviathan.
Leviathan, nonstandard cardiac, nervous systems: Irregular biology. No standard organs or weak points. No brain, heart or center of operations for rest of his body. Conclusion: Irregular biology, no vulnerable organs: Body divided into layers, extending down to hyperdurable core body, each layer down is slightly more than twice as durable as previous.
Wait a moment, that would require literal galaxies of mass if it was based on actual physic with the number of layers they were thinking about there. Was her power on the fritz?
Conclusion: Exterior skin is hard as aluminum alloy, but flexible, lets him move. 3% deeper in toward core of arms, legs, claws, tail, or .5% in toward core of head, trunk, neck, tissues are hard as steel. 6% in toward core of extremities or 1% toward core of main body/head, tissues strong as tungsten. 9% toward core of extremities, 1.5% toward core of main body, head, tissues strong as boron. 12%-
Yes, yes, whatever that stuff was it was really tough and got tougher deeper in, they already knew this.
Durable layers to body, no conventional organs, irregular biology: Tissues mend from the inside out, layers expanding to fill wounds and integrating into surrounding structures. Conclusion: Not human.
Neither was Sarah, try again. She needed something Gabriel could actually use to assert his dominance over Leviathan.
No vulnerable organs, hyperdurable tissues: simple organs exist at core of torso, where there is highest amount of surrounding tissues. Conclusion: Optimal thickness of layer and narrowness of body part at upper arms, just before shoulder joint, and upper thighs, just below hip joint.
Now they were talking. Or Thinking. Everyone, Leviathan is vulnerable along its limbs, right under the shoulders and hips, Sarah thought into the network, pressing the two buttons on the armband she was still wearing to repeat the message for everyone else to hear.
Then there came a wave riding on another wave, high up enough to go over her barricade. Sarah's eyes narrowed.
"What is this, whack-a-wave? Do we have to get a hammer and just smash them down every time they pop up?"
Eidolon, near enough to hear her, snorted. She was sure of it. "I'll take care of this," he said under his cape, stretching out a hand. "You just send out more of... whatever those are."
Oh, if only he knew. Every time she pulled a thread out of a head, a soul was literally experiencing it with great amounts of pain, their minds stretched out to serve as building blocks.
If only Sarah had the time to really get fancy with these...
Sherrel pushed her truck to the limit, her baby tearing right through that building in the way. It was just some random office palooza, no big loss.
More importantly, like hell was she letting that Dragon hussy cuntblock her now! She finally got something to test the Doomtruck out on, stupid mecha suit or no!
Speaking of which, there she was already, sighting the Dragon suit wrangling the big boy (not as big as Sherrel's boy, though). The bitch even went and gave it some kinda plasma fire breath, pouring the stuff out over the face she was making out with!
Two could play that game, Sherrel didn't go and install the plasma throwers for nothing. First, though, she went and activated the laser mortars! "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers!"
Dragon had to let go when bright streaks of red came curving up above the surrounding buildings, hammering into Leviathan with actual force (somehow) and leaving scorch marks on its back, time and again impacting because of Sherrel had done one thing, it was making sure this shit would work right.
Then Leviathan got the idea of calling in another wave, but she just turned the truck around and activated the jump packs to push through it, drifting upwards until she could ride the wave like a particularly demented surfer.
"I said 'Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers'!"
That's when she activated the transfromer mode to switch things up.
The sight the people inside the shelter got when it came time to meet their maker, as no few of them thought when the roof was torn off by a clawed hand, was grand at least; a Dragon mech came to the rescue at the last moment, engaging the Endbringer in battle and drawing it away from them. The heat emanating from the fire breath the tinker machine unleashed washed over them, keeping them warm, even, despite the drizzle of rain beginning to fall onto them.
Then a steady stream of projectiles was fired from elsewhere, hitting the Monster with pinpoint accuracy. The fight then proceeded to shift elsewhere, as signified by an enormous tidal wave rising beyond the horizon, but before the people now exposed to the elements could panic, Skitter came jumping inside, dark costume gleaming in the light of a few street lanterns.
Then they panicked.
It did not help how bugs came inside, settling on walls and people's shoulders, but at the very least mortal terror when faced with the inhuman cape kept everyone from trampling each other in their fright. And yet, rather than die all in one, whether to the mass of salty water heading their way or to Skitter's perverse lust for murder in a pseudo-cannibalistic fashion using her insects, a large pane of a soft, silky fabric was thrown all over the opening torn into the shelter.
Then the Siberian appeared and held onto several strands of silk, but at least nobody inside died...?
Gallant struggled, the water pushing him away and down to the ground; he had kind of been hoping the building they were on would hold, but it seemed he was wrong, after all.
Which was quite a shame, considering he was having a little trouble breathing. And not letting precious air escape his mouth as a chunk of concrete his his belly head-on, making him whirl through the water and completely lose sight of which way was up.
Did he mention already that perhaps volunteering for this probably wasn't a good idea? It wasn't like Gallant had thought his emotion blasts would make a difference, really, and Leviathan didn't show up in his emotion sensor, but his plan had mostly been to try it once and go join search and rescue afterwards anyway.
Then things happened and he still hadn't gotten his shot while Leviathan was across half the city, drowning the capes moving in on him in one fell swoop.
Least he'd gone like he'd lived: pointlessly trying to look good for others. Heh. But no, seriously, if he'd known this was how he'd end, Gallant... Dean would have at least tried to get together with Vicky again just the once. Or maybe he'd have tried to keep her on hand to pull him out of trouble this time around.
Was he getting delirious? He thought oxygen deprivation did that kind of thing to people.
All of a sudden, he was moving in a different direction, something else than the water pushing him around. Dean clung to it, trying to find out what was going on, there was water everywhere and he couldn't hold his breath anymore, it was going inside of his nose and mouth and-
And he broke though the surface, hacking and coughing under his power armor's helmet; not making it waterproof was one of the worst ideas he ever had. He looked around- he was hanging on to a dumpster with a glowing pattern on it, floating through the air.
"Hey, you alive on there?" Gallant had never been happier to see a nazi cape, or ex-nazi cape as it may be. "'cause if so, I'd like some help finding more people down there."
He threw up a last bit of salty water before answering. "Sure, and thanks, Rune."
"It's Charmcaster now, actually," the girl said, to which he just nodded. She just saved him from drowning, he'd accept just about anything she told him.
"Alright, Charmcaster. I can see someone over there, could you-"
An array of concrete chunks, park benches and miscellaneous, big objects floated off, dipping into the mess underneath them to fish out survivors that'd made it past the initial wave, but were now stuck and about to drown.
"You know, I'd never have thought I'd go dumpster diving in this context, but I'm kind of glad now."
"Keep it in your pants, I have to concentrate."
Gallant made a zipping motion over his helmet. First thing he'd do, assuming they both survived this night, would be to go to Kid Win and ask him about installing an oxygen tank somehow, tinkertech be damned.
You fly through the air, rapidly beating wings eating the distance. You've tasted blood- or whatever equivalent Endbringers have, Leviathan sure doesn't actually bleed despite what it looks like- and you most definitely want more now.
A few moments later, you're getting close, flashes visible through the increasingly diminishing visibility as Leviathan begins to overturn your control over the weather. You've done everything you can to delay this, heavy winds, removing as much humidity from the sky as possible, but you can only work so fast, whereas Leviathan is basically just pulling figuratively endless amounts of clouds and rain in from all over the ocean, possibly further.
Doesn't matter. You pick up a car as you go, telekinetically holding it in front of you for later, and speed up as far as you can before just flash stepping ahead; once you actually sight the battle as it is, you get right into it anyway, of course, slamming the thing at Leviathan from afar just to overtake it in a flash step past the fucker, claws outstreched in an effort to amputate one of its arms.
Right now, Sherrel is operating the Doomtruck in its transformed, spider-like mode, methodically blasting every gun and launcher of various kinds of unpleasantness installed on it at the for beneath her while she dances around its attacks, Dragon's mech, having arrived just moments earlier, half-destroyed to the side and sputtering some form of plasma around.
Your attack catches Leviathan off guard, apparently, the thing reacting to a chunk of its flesh going missing by splitting off two additional water clones from the saltwater nearby; your answer, then, is to ignore them to throw yourself at it, mouth opened widely to try and eat its head whole, your claws occupied with holding the Endbringer down the best they can.
You don't get to pierce anywhere as deeply as you'd like, but by the time you have to throw yourself to the side to avoid the retaliatory strike, you're tearing off a good part of its face, chewing and crunching through the material loudly. Meanwhile, Okita, still held in your tails, is apparently relishing the chance to be swung around while swinging around her weapon, scattering the water clones in all directions with the flat of her blade.
See, killing water.
...
Thankfully, you're saved from having to answer by the Timekeeper bursting into action, wheeling in and skewering Leviathan's upper arm with his blade; a few shrieking emanations of time later, and he's doing so dozens of times in the span of a second. Leviathan's tail whips around to slash him in two, water echo and all, but he just reverses the damage he's taking.
"Tick tick tick tick," he lets you know that he has about a third of his time left after using a bunch of it to undo the deaths of several people earlier.
Well, can't argue with the notion of keeping your guys in the fight a little longer, at least.
Flechette was moving through the city as quickly as she could using her crossbow and the rope arrow she had for that very purpose, pulling herself from rooftop to rooftop.
She wasn't exactly an expert on how Endbringer attacks usually went, but she for one thought things were surprisingly fine this time around. Sure, they'd taken casualties, but... Not as many as she'd imagined. Certainly not one in four, at least.
Anyway, she hadn't yet found anything her power wouldn't let her pierce once she used it on something and her aim was always good, so she could probably do some damage, at least. The message earlier told of the Endbringer's weak points, so she knew where to shoot, at the very least.
And just as she (together with a lot of the other ranged combatants, some of which were riding along with the Movers around) got into position to see what was even going on, the giant robot coming from somewhere cluing her in ahead of time, even, a woman came shooting out of it riding a flat robot and laughing eerily.
Alice grinned, anticipating the point she could finally throw everything she had at an Endbringer. She hadn't forgotten what the Big G told her back when they first met and she'd been prepping for this moment for months.
As soon as Cain had the target on lockdown again, this time a little more stable than earlier, she got moving, sending Sherrel the signal and receiving the OK. Blasting out there sitting on her flying artillery piece (Gabriel had been so right in calling it that), Alice took a brief moment to consider Leviathan.
It was a sorry sight, by this point. Scarred with long gouges and rents all over from the big fight, face smashed repeatedly, bathed in plasma and burnt, bitten off and now being burnt once again as Cain breathed his own fire on it, several hard hits and slashes from bladed weapons and so on- They'd really laid into the thing. Not that didn't pay 'em back, of course; Cain was very noticeably not left pristine, but he was fighting just fine with a bunch of gaps and holes in his body.
But now she was there, of course! Alice giggled in anticipation as she finished the targeting routine built into this thing for maximum effect, mentally telling everyone she was about to fire. Cain kept on wrestling with the target until the last second, of course, but then-
One big explosion happened, a dozen of her bombs shot out and working jut like they should. Leviathan's left side was overgrown with crystals she knew were growing and burrowing into it, its right side rapidly turning into glass and at its feet was a-
With a loud creaking sound, Leviathan tore itself out of the effects, the pale blue crystals shaken off and falling onto the street. The glass was sharing the same fate, revealing wounded, but still moving flesh underneath; the fucker was still going, it'd just lost a bunch of its body.
As for the time disruption field, Leviathan just pushed itself away with a gout of water, leaving behind chunks of its feet instead of being caught as it hardened, pulling at Cain to get him inside there instead. Who in turn refused, holding onto the Endbringer and resuming their fight only to be surprised when it suddenly started moving just that much faster, the two climbing and clawing at each other.
It somehow looked erotic, Alice thought.
Then Cain bit into Leviathan's shoulder, pulling and tearing, while a sharp slash of a tail announced what else was going on- in the end, he lost an arm, while Leviathan only lost most of one, the latter viciously tearing the limb off of his opponent.
Which sucked. It was supposed to be the other way around.
Cain, still with a mouth full of hard meat, didn't show any sign of pain, instead opting to size up his opponent again... And then the next warning beeping tone came from Alice's armband. Another fucking wave, of course.
She looked over at the one chick with the crossbow. "Hey, if you're gonna shoot, do it now."
"You know, that looks kinda kinky."
"That's not where I was aiming!"
"Suuure."
Amy sat down, having just put a man back together after even those syringes she'd seen the Crypts use didn't help. They were good enough to keep people alive and mostly in the fight, but some wounds just wouldn't fix themselves when the stuff inside them was applied.
She also was totally expecting someone to make a stink about using untested tinkertech to heal people, but that wasn't her problem, at least.
Also, untangling that cape's intestines and putting them back together properly wasn't that bad, surprisingly. Volunteering at the hospital was a pretty good preparation for an Endbringer attack, as it turned out. Though there really weren't all that many patients coming in to be worked over, to the point everyone nearby regularly just didn't have anything to do.
She wondered whether anyone would mind if she went over to play a few hands at that game of poker the paramedics that'd volunteered for this were playing. The wounded were being brought in and treated, well, really efficiently- most were just taken by the women in Crypt colors and thrown into the back of a van they'd brought, emerging hale and hearty seconds later. The only cases she (or anyone else) really needed to look at were the ones that were suffering from unusual wounds or were too hurt to be moved easily.
That was, until Amy's sister flew in, carrying a wounded cape straight off the battlefield. "Amy, you gotta see this, it's like a big monster battle out there," Vicky told her, casually depositing the casualty nearby where he was taken care of quickly. "Cain went all giant devil monster man and he's trashing Leviathan and then mechs came in to take part and I threw a dumpster at its head and it's just awesome."
"They're actually transmitting footage live on the internet," one of the people nearby said, holding up a smartphone to show them the running battle from above. "Cain lost an arm earlier but he just took it and started using it as a weapon."
"No way, he lost an arm?!" Vicky exclaimed. "That's it, Leviathan's cheating!"
"Those things on his arms are weapons, too, they got these drill things coming out of them. Drilled through the shoulder and he's trying to dismember the thing now."
Amy sighed, taking a look. "... Is that a crossbow bolt sticking out of Leviathan's butt?"
"I'M TELLING YOU IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!"
Then the next tidal wave came in, one of the capes on standby near the medical shelter keeping it from damaging the building they'd appropriated.
That was how Amy got to see in person that, indeed, Leviathan had a crossbow bolt sticking out of the base of one of its legs. It was also, it seemed, ninja vanishing around and targeting the medics.
Amy would complain, but taking out the healers was a sound strategy and Leviathan didn't look that well. That didn't stop her, however, from instinctively reacting to the presence of Leviathan outside the building.
"Healing Hand No Jutsu: Get The Fuck Outta Here!" A quick push and all of a sudden, Amy was sending half the wall flying off to slam into Leviathan. And half the room. Also, Vicky.
"... Shit, I have to train that one."
Victoria Dallon did not, in fact, mind the sudden change in circumstances at all. Cocking her fist back, she used her power to keep in position as she grinned widely at Leviathan.
"Greet the ocean floor from me, fucker!" She didn't usually cuss in public, bad optics and all, but this time around it was totally okay.
Then she hit the big ugly, sending it reeling for long enough for an irate devil monster Gabriel to show up out of nowhere, diving in from above and swinging both his dismembered arm and a second arm made of blood at Leviathan. The second one didn't do much, probably something about hydrokinesis, but it was metal as fuck.
They were in position. She needed to use it soon.
They needed to time it just right. A surprise only worked once.
They should use it quickly. A limited window of opportunity.
They had to act quickly.
They had to use the next opportunity. The fight couldn't keep going much longer.
They should do it now.
When the young woman that'd asked to copy Alexandria's power earlier began to move, it first appeared she'd be cooperating with the Triumvirate hero, harrying and distracting the enemy in an effort to immobilize it.
Alexandria herself was certainly going to try- they'd been making headway, so much more than usual, the damage Leviathan was receiving unprecedented. At this rate, if they could just do a little more, go a little further, they might-!
She wasn't going to hope. That was just begging to be disappointed. But the possibility had to be considered.
Cain was still busy at work, ignoring the loss of his arm- Each time he struck Leviathan, the surface of his claws heated up, feeling hot enough even at the distances Alexandria was at she could easily feel it; in direct contact, he would be able to melt through solid steel at a minimum. It just wasn't immediately obvious from afar.
Now, though, water, steadily growing more prevalent in the area, began to steam any time it came too close to the shifted form. Cain had had a Changer rating before now, but it would need to be updated heavily.
Still, the basic strategy remained the same. They would immobilize Leviathan the best they could, then-
All of a sudden, a car appeared above the Endbringer, Cain drawing back and grabbing for Alexandria. She went along with it, not knowing what was going on and unwilling to risk sticking close when the other Brute wasn't, and the as of yet unnamed parahuman with a part of her powers proceeded to kick the object down before immediately flying away.
The car contorted, its material pulling into itself, then it exploded in a ball of light and fire that had her compare it to some of Eidolon's more destructive powers.
Leviathan remained, standing in the newly created crater around it. For lack of a better word, it looked like shit and Alexandria couldn't think of a better thing to see on it.
It has been a hard battle. You have given it all you've got, including calling in your friends and subordinates to show up and whack Leviathan all over its face, most of which is kind of missing after what you did to it.
Not that it seems to be bothering the thing. It's still fighting just fine, at the very least, though it has been just a little disoriented since halfway through the battle. Still, you did bite everything that remained of its face off halfway through, so now the head is more just a disfigured lump of meat than anything else.
You size each other up a little, both locked into a moment of stillness by each other's presence. Then you snap the fingers of your remaining hand, letting your pet priestess know the moment has come.
The explosion outshines the one that came before it. Scratch that, this is less an explosion and more a mass of energy surging up from beneath Leviathan, shining in a bright white wave and scouring everything in its path. Leviathan is lifted up in the air by the force of it, intensifying brightness making it impossible to see what, exactly, is going on.
The sound is like... like a sound system being tested, you'd say. A single, simple note, growing louder and louder as the attack proceeds.
It's almost pleasant as the vibration washes over the entire city block you happen to be in at the moment. It was totally worth it to set this thing up even if you'll need to wait a week to use it again.
The light fades and Leviathan comes into sight again. It has visibly slimmed down, lost a good chunk of the outer parts- but as you've already experienced firsthand, all that this really did was destroy the weaker outside of this Endbringer.
It just grows tougher deeper in, to the point you haven't yet found a way to get through. Not even Last Embrace's adamantium-tipped drills have managed.
Won't stop you from trying, though. Not waiting for Leviathan to fall by itself, you crouched to the ground, dropping your arm for a moment and tensing up. There are people nearby saying something, but you don't pay any attention.
You want that damn arm. A limb for a limb and all that.
Grabbing the offending appendage in question, you push your feet against Leviathan's side, your opponent immediately beginning to struggle. However, this time, you have a plan. With one tail, you whirl around Okita, who is actually quite content being your tail weapon, using her to parry Leviathan's retaliatory strike up in the air while your other tail is batting aside the Endbringer's own, losing a bit of its tip to the sharp water echo.
All around you, Leviathan is summoning dozens of water clones for a big 'fuck you', but it's already caught in your trap... Because just then, the Timekeeper, left up your sleeves just for this moment, appears, rewinding time for itself until it is back in this location.
Sending the guardian around the city while you fought without it, too, was totally worth it.
There's not much time left, but what your minion has in store it uses very effectively; for just a fraction of a second, Leviathan is stopped in time, completely unable to move beyond the motion necessary to stay in place relative to the planet.
All of it except the arm.
The steam engine sound of time-fuel being used up notwithstanding, you pull and pull and pull, using Okita and having her help you saw a little; you don't need to do much, just get the hardened tissue of this thing off of the currently time-stopped parts.
It takes a lot of effort, yourself biting in there while Okita is drawing her sword back and use of your whole body (sans your own currently missing arm), but finally, you manage to wrench the limb free using the knowledge of Leviathan's weak points.
As in, you kind of torpedo yourself off of the stopped Endbringer due to the forces involved in yourself doing anything with all your strength these days, not to mention in this body, but finally you have your prize. Just bare moments, too, before Leviathan unfreezes, landing on the ground using both feet.
Finally, here you are; upgraded from using your own disembodied arm to using that of Leviathan as a weapon, with everyone finally joining you. Kate is there, an unlit cigarette in her mouth and her rifle pointed at the enemy, Sarah is floating down to join you now that you're getting serious and even Okita activating her semblance, a foreboding blade of black and red streaks now serving as your 'stinger'.
Similarly, all the capes and your underlings in the area are gathering, including two copies of your Mister X coming up to play the part of the big, burly bodyguards that'll hold your victim down while you beat the living daylights out of it. Come to think of it, though, what have these guys been doing all this while?
"Mister X... Gonna give it to ya."
"Yes, that's nice and all, but could you make sure it absolutely doesn't move? Digging people out of ruins is hard even with walking construction vehicles doing the heavy lifting."
The undead looks at Clockblocker, holding the chunk of a wall it is lifting for the Ward perfectly still so he can freeze it in time.
"The socio-economical implications of parahuman warlords in Africa are troubling," the deep voice of the Mister X rumbles.
"Yeah, I hear you. Okay, so the survivors are trapped down there, could you-"
A mass of dogs Rachel has used her power on descends onto the hole now freed up, setting to digging out the survivors.
"Never gonna look at puppers the same again after this," Clockblocker mumbles. Well, in his defense, his costume is kind of covered in giant dog slobber as opposed to water, for once.
Which explains that, you suppose. Most of them have been around doing background work like that, as you can see when you take a split second to look through their eyes.
Anyway, here you are. Leviathan on one side, literally half the Crypts (or at least half of the actually important people) on the other.
It is time for the one last, final ba- And he's running away.
... He's running away!
"Hey, get back here you oversized fish! I ain't shot you enough yet!" Kate's yell sums up your general feelings on the matter very well.
You run after Leviathan, using Okita to send out destructive slashes of black and spitting globs of fire in an effort to stop the thing, but no amount of running lets you catch up. Leviathan even proves some supreme legwork in dodging long-distance fire from the Doomtruck, now back in its truck mode, and the bombs Alice loads into anything in reach to be lobbed at it.
Including her making Miss Militia help by manifesting an actual artillery piece.
It's all for naught. Before your very eyes, the Endbringer disappears into the ocean, several lances of hardened water forming you casually avoid while aggressively pointing the arm you tore off at where it ran off to.
You shall demonstratively take a few bites straight out of the drumstick you managed to obtain just to show it who's boss.
... Okita, what are you doing?
"Killing the sea," she explains, balancing on your tail as she swings her sword left and right.
... Have fun, I guess.
"Yup."
The internet, as it was wont to do, ate the footage up like a gluttonous, fat man might a bar of chocolate; with great gusto. Everything that the viewers could see was dissected and discussed online on various forums, versus threads were created and well-visited and even memes made already.
The infamous 'Leviathan Butt Shot' incident needs no further elaboration, of course.
Of course the sensationally few casualties taken among both Brockton Bay's defenders and the civilians sheltering in place were quickly connected to the participation of the Lord Street Crypts, the sizable number of capes and support personnel pledged to the gang's home base's defense leaving an impression few would forget soon.
In a similar vein, the unusual number of parahumans working under the banner of a single organization caused some to consider the Crypts further, questioning how they were organized and where they even found so many capes. However, most quickly decided that it must have been due to the influence of Cain, the incredibly powerful cape capable of keeping everyone else in line.
As well as an Endbringer. Comparing his performance to that of Lung, one of the other gang leaders he defeated in the past and that coincidentally also fought Leviathan by himself, it quickly became clear that Cain was much stronger than the dragon man, to the point some considered him equal to an Endbringer in battle.
Incidentally, a consensus was quickly reached that the Crypts obviously only recruited the most powerful capes they could find, compared to other organizations such as the Protectorate, meaning that comparing their numbers directly didn't make sense. Despite some rabid fanboys claiming otherwise, it was clear the national coalition of hero teams was overall stronger, even if no given city's Protectorate could hold a candle to the Crypts by itself.
The Snitch, the recording drone used by Uber and Leet to record these happenings, was not to be underestimated in what it could be used for, of course; not only did it take footage of everything around it as required, it was also capable of using directed microphones, sound editing and limited infrared sensors to allow it to play back entire conversations as though spoken directly into a microphone.
This was how and why a surge of slashfics shipping Cain and Armsmaster came to be, though thankfully with only minimal mpreg content to be found.
The question of whether or not Cain was literally Satan was asked, of course, but with little indication of things one way or another all that came of it was that some individuals decided to make a fake religion and share it on the internet, eventually giving way to Cainism, as it came to be called down the line.
It enjoyed an unusual amount of interested casual believers once rumours came up of luck being brought to those that prayed regularly, but that is all far into the future.
As it was, the stellar performance of Cain and many of the capes present had prevented Brockton Bay from taking catastrophic damage, at the very least, and various jokes were made about the former being the natural predator of the Endbringers after the way he tried to literally eat Leviathan.
Actually, this received a lot of mention. Not many people would just put Endbringer flesh into their mouth, not to mention try to eat them alive, unless their power functioned in such a way biting them was a good idea. And as Cain proceeded to chew and gnaw on Leviathan's dismembered arm made clear, he actually just wanted to eat.
"It was an accident, seriously. I didn't aim for the ass!"
- Quote attributed to Flechette
"Victoria Dallon, we are going to have a talk about this later." Vicky shriveled up, the fun of the lethally dangerous fight she was in only minutes earlier fleeing from her brain.
"But mooom," she protested, she couldn't let this stand as it was, she had to-
"No 'buts', 'ands' or 'ifs', young lady. You can tell your side of the story when we're home."
Vicky groaned, sitting down at one of the tables nearby. The field hospital was still busy now that Leviathan had left, any wounded that weren't critical so far or that could only be found and rescued now being brought in rapidly.
"Whatever, having Amy help explain is probably better anyway," she mumbled.
"I am assuming you got her into this in the first place. Both of you have new powers and there is only one known Trump of this kind in Brockton Bay, you couldn't have gotten in contact with someone out of town in the past few hours because I was with you the whole time and we both know what possibilities that leaves open."
"... Her forcefield is black, but mine's white so I'm innocent?"
"I do not care, you're still about to be grounded for a year straight."
"That's not fair and you know it, mom!"
"Too bad for you, I am still going to ground you. Your sister, too, depending on how much of this was your idea." Vicky gasped at how blatantly her mom was playing favorites. "I do hope she'll be done soon. There weren't too many wounded this time, at least."
"Yeah, did you see how Cain whooped Levi's ass?"
Now her mom was just glaring at her. Crap, abort, abort, change topic! "Uh, I think they needed her help with something about those tinkertech healing things the Crypts have been using all this time."
"Untested tinkertech injected straight into people," her mom said shaking her head. "If it wasn't for Cain, they'd be in big trouble now."
Amy glared at the woman. The woman smirked back, gun pointed at her.
"Look, I don't want to be difficult about this either, but they asked me to verify this shit."
"Too bad, the bossman said nobody gets any of these," the Crypt member drawled. "Just tell 'em ain't nobody care and how they work."
"Fine, I will," the teenage superheroine shrugged defiantly. "See how the Protectorate likes it."
"Watch me quiver in me boots. We got Cain, ain't nobody wanna fuck with 'im."
It was annoying how right she was. Ah well, not Amy's problem anymore.
... Now how would she avoid going down and joining her sister and mother's painfully awkward conversation? At least telepathy let her know in advance.
"Report," Alexandria demanded inside the impromptu conference room set up inside the PRT ENE Headquarters.
She and Eidolon were already notified about the broadcast nobody had been able to stop in time as well as the efforts made by the PR department to limit the damage. Unfortunately, this was not the only issue they had at the moment, she'd be uncharacteristically happy with how things went during an Endbringer attack otherwise.
"The cape has been classified as an S-Class threat and named Echidna," Bastion explained without much fuss. "She can find and absorb parahumans to create twisted evil clones of them under her control."
"How much damage?" This made her wish the entire Triumvirate had been on hand, but as it stood the list of priorities was as it was.
"Several hundred dead, including several capes, property damage in the millions," the premier Blaster of the Protectorate said. "It would have been worse if not for Accord. He is helping to coordinate every participant of this fight. The greatest issue is that Echidna is implicitly taking hostages by absorbing living people and her minions aren't helping."
In the distance on the other end of the headset connection, they could hear a loud crash followed by a shouting voice in the distance. "I'm going to kill you, Krouse, you hear me?"
"I'll call you back later, but we can't afford to let Echidna slip away now."
Alexandria looked at Eidolon. He returned the look, two individuals glancing past the masks they both wore. "This is probably not the time for random theories, then," he said.
"It isn't," she nodded. "To Boston first. Could this have been the goal?"
"Impossible to say. Either way we have a job to do."
You chomp on the arm you stole like a chicken wing, your enhanced size and strength, not to mention teeth and jaws, letting you gnaw on it just like that, including having a tough bone in the middle.
Of course you'd just crunch straight through any actual chicken bones any day now, but the thought stands.
You do go back to actually collect your old arm; you did create a replacement out of blood you're controlling and all, but you would be quite remiss to forget picking it up, too. Maybe you can even put it back on in a bit, that'd save you the trouble of regrowing it wholesale.
Sarah, having disarmed the enormous seawall threatening to push into Brockton Bay, rejoins you as well, undoing her transformation to fall right onto you, landing and promptly sitting on your shoulder. Kate grins up at you, but you've already got two people riding on you, counting Okita, so you just shake your head.
Speaking of, is Okita still using her semblance to pretend to be a giant stinger? ... Yes, she is. You'll have to be careful you don't bump her giant energy sword into anything.
How is the city looking on collateral damage?
"Salty," a grinning Kate exclaims spontaneously though Sarah just rolls her eyes.
"The Boardwalk-" "Cryptwalk." "... Cryptwalk is pretty much trashed, too much water came in too hard," your sister explains over Okita's correction. "Everything near the coast got hit more or less severely and most of the city will need repairs to maintain phone lines and electricity, but with any luck the water supply wasn't contaminated too badly at least. A large majority of the buildings is still standing, anyway."
So in other words the population wasn't kicked back to the middle ages, just to a second- or third-world-country, you think aloud.
"Temporarily, but yeah. Guess it'll be a pain to get around until some of the streets have been cleared of debris and flooding, I saw a few clogged streets from above. Logistics and food will ne an issue for a while too. Also, you gonna turn back anytime soon?"
Well, that's a good question, isn't it. The battle itself took a good bit and it's around, what, half an hour to a full one you have left in this form at this rate.
Now normally you wouldn't mind just turning back, but there is a slight bit of a kerfluffle going on in Boston- by which you mean massive death tolls and explosions every which way last you checked.
Mhm, decisions, decisions...
One interesting aspect of your healing potions is that, while they do need to be used whole to have the desired effect, it doesn't matter that much how you use them; you can drink them or apply them topically, literally pour them onto a wound in question, and they'll work just the same.
An interesting discovery made by experimenting inside your soul palace. Once again your inner world is proving invaluable, beyond, well, all that other good shit you get from it.
So you collect your arm, using your hemokinesis to affix it to where it originally belonged to, then get right to healing the whole thing back together. How do you do this, one may ask?
... Well, you and your little helpers did ensure you'd have a decent amount of healing potions on hand, so you just throw back a couple, then have the Crypts that are here for the whole show empty a few bottles on the break. It takes a bit and the connection is a tad bit tenuous, but you easily manage to regrow everything you need to keep your arm in place.
That is, bones and sinews with a bit of muscle over it. The arm feels a little weaker than normal, but you're fairly sure you'll be fine in short order. A few more potions would likely do the trick, but you don't want to waste any more time than absolutely necessary.
Of course not everyone is fine with leaving you to your own devices, as Dauntless soon exemplifies, your old pal clearing his throat as he approaches. "Hello, Cain."
You hold up a hand to ask him to stop for a moment. Anyone else find it hilarious I'm pretending I can't actually speak like this?
Wait, you can? Kate asks.
I got voice powers for days, I can just use them to talk if I really want to. Outwardly, you rotate your newly reattached arm in its socket, making sure it fits and doesn't have any snags, before giving him a nod.
"I just wanted to let you know official guideline is for the PRT to take custody of Endbringer body parts, so... Probably best if nobody sees you hiding any away," Dauntless coughs into his hand politely.
Your response is to hand the half-eaten arm to Kate, who gives off her usual shit-eating grin as she slings it over her shoulder and walks off.
"Yeah, that's about what I expected," the hero sighs. "Anyway, what're you planning to do now? You, uh, aren't going to transform back?"
You point off into the distance with one of your thumbs, Sarah and Okita still on you.
"You're planning to do something else tonight?" The man in the weird ancient Greek costume puzzles out aloud.
"Kinda, there's a situation in Boston we're dealing with real quick," your sister announces. Well, guess you'll be taking passengers along.
Without another word, you take to the air, Okita's oversized semblance trailing behind you as you flap your wings.
Next stop, Boston, where you have one last meal to take care of tonight.
Ahh, Boston. The racist San Francisco, as you once heard a historian call it. One of the largest port cities on the east coast right behind New York and kind of a big deal after New York got shit on by Behemoth so shipping had to be diverted for a good while, incidentally one occasion where Brockton Bay actually enjoyed some economic upturn for a change.
Until the whole boat graveyard thing happened, but you don't talk about that. Until you get to fixing it, anyway.
What the city usually doesn't stand for, though, is the enormous smoking trail of destruction torn through it as if a giant had decided to drag a foot right through the middle of the city.
From the looks of it, it seems the fight that you left Accord to start has been moving through several city blocks, currently in the middle of what would usually be a business district. That said, at least part of the battlefield already done with was going straight through a residential district, too, so you'd estimate a good few civilian casualties.
Unless those ruined buildings are giving you a wrong impression of the level of force involved here, anyway.
All of this matters because, while the fight against Leviathan (who was surprisingly only extremely dangerous instead of murdering you outright) is over, you're still accompanied by the entirety of the Triumvirate, the three having decided to fly with you. Kumi, your ever-helpful shapechanging power copier, has let you know they actually could move much faster by just saying a sentence to signal a certain Mover, but well, looks like they're trying to maintain plausible deniability at least.
Nobody ever expects the person outright asking you to copy your powers to also be copying your memories. Not all of them, of course but more than enough to impersonate you reliably- which includes a lot of details on this whole Cauldron deal in this case.
You were aware of their little conspiracy group of course, but it's always good to know as much as possible for your eventual takeover. Because, well, them being some global secret conspiracy group saves you a lot of time whenever you get to taking over the world.
And rename them just to be sure. Cauldron is a terrible name.
Anyway, the flight is fairly swift on account of the speed of everyone involved, though everyone is staying a little slower on account of Eidolon. Looks like he can't just randomly choose whatever powers he wants, otherwise he wouldn't be the slowest out of you four- though in terms of sheer speed you know Alexandria and Legend both would outpace yourself, too.
Then again, you're playing in the big leagues now. Can't just casually outclass everyone until and unless you find a way to do so.
Also, Okita has apparently decided she lives on your tails now. You don't really mind that much, so she may as well have her fun for as long as it lasts.
Of course there's little to no conversation to be had, the same speed you're moving at and the winds at these heights making that quite difficult. Still, once you slow down and survey the ground as a group upon arriving in Boston airspace, that changes a little.
It is Legend who speaks up first. "I saw the Siberian," is all he says.
... Well, you're pretending to be mute right now, so you let Sarah speak, your sister securely kept in the crook of your arms.
"So what?"
"Skitter's power is obviously a different one, so it makes me think," he continues unbothered with her attitude. "Something like this would also explain how the Crypts have so many capes."
"Yeah well, one, keep it to yourself, two, it's actually pretty complicated," Sarah in her guise as Tattletale huffs. "Lots of conditions to make it work and there's limits, so you don't need to worry too much."
"Too much, huh? Got it."
You'll just trust she knows what she's doing.
"Cut the chatter, we need to intervene now." Alexandria is as welcome a change of pace as she is probably the number one girlcrush of teens and under in the entire nation. That is, very. "Can anyone see the target?"
As a matter of fact, you can. It's a bit far, bur your extremely well-developed sense for blood is alerting you to the large mass of more-or-less living tissue moving around on the ground. It's looking a tad bit weird and isn't really circulating much, but you'll chalk that one up to power bullshit.
A person turning into a big weird mutant that shouldn't be biologically viable is far from the weirdest crap you've seen or heard about, after all.
You point the area out, noting the surprising speed at which Noelle is currently moving. Or is it Echidna now, after all?
"Echidna can clone any being that comes into contact with her, so avoid coming close," Alexandria says out aloud for your benefit, summarizing the quick briefing the Triumvirate is currently receiving. "Trickster is with her, teleporting anyone he can see into position to be absorbed for continuous clone production."
"Which is obviously a bad idea," Sarah snarks. "Nobody here wants any evil clones running around, huh? Wonder why."
"They all have variants of the original's powers, so it would be for the best not to chance anything." The Triumvirate hero clad in black finishes in a dry and absolutely bland tone.
You, meanwhile, have been keeping an eye out. Now if you were some asshat that can teleport both others and yourself and you just pissed off pretty much the entirety of America, where would you be?
Luckily, a moment of careful observation is enough for you to find whom you believe to be Trickster; it's not super easy to tell at these distances and the very nature of the exercise means you have to be careful about hitting the right guy, but a flash of a top hat has you stretch out a hand and focus, hoping your telekinesis plasmid is up for a little challenge in regards to reach.
Down on the ground, the fight was in full swing, Echidna determined to break through the running battle delivered by several capes determined to stop her from escaping the city- least of all with anyone inside her for her to clone.
One moment, Francis Krouse, Trickster, is swapping himself with Bastion, again, sending the leader of the Boston Protectorate right next to Noelle, the next moment he can't teleport anymore, his eyes exploding out of their sockets as he screams in sudden pain.
"Francis? Francis!"
However, all attempts to stop the inevitable are for naught; blinded and effectively depowered, Trickster is yanked up into the sky like a ragdoll in a bad physics engine.
You got the right guy, after all. That would've been really awkward if you'd accidentally hit someone else with your preliminary eyeburster, as you like to think of that particular maneuver using your hemokinesis.
Trickster is lifted into the air rapidly, flying up hard and fast enough the pressure differential and lowering levels of oxygen knock him right out. However, as you don't think anyone particularly wants to keep him alive, you don't let it bother you, waiting the long moment he needs to arrive before you to snatch him out of the air.
Side note, it'd actually be kind of uncomfortable to hover in place like this if it wasn't for your ability to use telekinesis on yourself and negate your own weight. You could use your wings exclusively, but the angles would be pretty awkward and inconvenient, anatomically speaking.
Once you have your claws on him, you just throw the unconscious Trickster into your mouth, chewing and eating him in two bites.
"He did count as having a pre-approved kill order, right?" Sarah asks into the silence among the Triumvirate around you.
"... I do wish you wouldn't be quite so casual about it," Legend complains. Right, he was the one guy actually supposed to care about your various crimes and the rampant cannibalism in a more than academic sense, wasn't he?
You just shrug outwardly. What's done is done.
Francis Krouse was just a normal guy stuck in an abnormal situation. One moment they, him and the gaming team he was part of, were sitting together, the next moment they found themselves in a parallel dimension thrown into a world they had no idea about.
He took charge because it was the obvious thing to do, leading their team (the Travelers, as they later decided) first out of the city they were in, avoiding everyone else on the way, and later on around the USA on their search for a way back home.
He'd also found the vials they each took, giving them superpowers and a way to actually matter.
Their goals changed when Noelle started showing signs of changing so they needed to find a way to heal her first. Good thing too, because aside from this mysterious secret organization they only knew about due to the documentation inside the briefcase Francis had found on a corpse, they had no idea how to get back.
Not to mention Francis would do anything to save Noelle. Anything. He'd do anything. There was nothing he wouldn't do.
Anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything anything
"That is part of the problem solved, then," Alexandria says as though she didn't just see you pop a guy like candy. Then again, as one of the country's premier heroes, she's probably used to being faced with horrible monsters like yourself, so it' not like you should expect anything more.
"Still leaves Echidna herself," Eidolon remarks with a distant echo to his voice; he doesn't often talk to people in costume, does he?
She might be able to clone your dead body, Sarah warns you telepathically. Probably better not to get close unless you can dispose of the bodies before anyone can see them.
That sure is a bummer, huh? Time to get creative and tricky about this... Or maybe not.
Luckily enough, you have what you believe to be a decent toolset of this situation, so you give the others a thumbs up and accelerate right towards the ground. At the last moment, just fractions of a second before you'd impact not far from the main site of the battle, you negate your weight, fucking over gravity and landing relatively quietly.
Noelle slash Echidna turns towards you, the top hat you deliberately didn't eat with the rest hanging in the crack of your face, not completely closed for once just to make the point. Spitting it out, you raise your arms in a shrug, doing your best to get 'what you gonna do, huh' across with body language alone.
Echidna screams, charging right at you. If you had the facial muscles to do so right now, you'd be grinning, but as it is you settle for revealing the rows upon rows of teeth inside your mouth as you return your own scream... Except you've already overlaid Animos.
Animos, that one Teeth cape. Could turn into this large, dog-like monster whose scream could negate powers in a roughly conical area in front of it... And after his death, it turns out he doesn't even need to turn into his alternate form to do so.
So neither do you.
Several things happen at once. Echidna's many mouths, all around her misshapen body, stop spewing out copies of this one cape all at once, her body rapidly losing the ability to mutate and copy organisms it touches. Those clones that already exist, visibly mutated themselves and disoriented as they come, experience the same phenomenon as Trickster did earlier, their eyes exploding all over, any open blood in the area turning into sharp and pointy shapes that proceed to murder them all over.
Both you and Noelle become heavier as you use your esper power to double the effect of gravity on both her and you, all movement just that much slower, weight being amplified to the point most normal human beings would be struggling to even stand or breathe. And lastly...
You and Echidna clash, your claws driving deeply into her as you have Sarah climb onto your back, bringing Okita around on your tails to have her stab and cut off parts of your foe's body. In turn, the tentacles on her wrap around your arms and shoulders, any mouths and errant limbs in reach trying to bite and strike at you as her now increased weight crashes into you, all the while you keep up the scream, a discordant note almost vibrating in the air.
Which it does, because that's what sound is.
Meeting Echidna's massive frame head-on, you push right against it, both your arms straining against her mass as you seek to get a good grip on something inside her that won't just tear off too easily.
The girl on top of the giant mass of flesh you find yourself contending against is still screaming, incoherent as far as you can tell. More importantly, it seems there's more than just one cape currently inside the similarly incoherent construction of her body, held in some kind of faux-stomach to be used for her power.
You also tried not to accidentally rupture the people inside. You think you're getting a proper read on their positions as you keep looking, Echidna's weird insides needing a bit for you to decipher the circulation of blood within.
The sheer force with which she is trying to trample you outright is driving you back, your feet tearing long gouges into the asphalt below you, but in turn you've gotten your fingers deep inside of her, forcing your way through muscles and bone arranged pretty much completely randomly.
Then you trigger Last Embrace, the drills spearing out and giving you the hold and leverage you need. You push with your legs first, sending a jolt through your whole body to redirect the force you're subjected under, sending Echidna off the ground with yourself as a pivot.
Sure, your feet are also breaking through the ground and into some piping under you, but Echidna is left wiggling in surprise lifted up in the air, slowly tipping over forwards.
She hangs up above you for a moment, your aura still protecting you from the tentacles and the odd maw trying to gnaw at you... and then you bend backwards, once again reinforcing the gravity involved here to enhance even Echidna's own weight and slam her down with as much power as you can muster.
Now she is buried in the sewers, her underside pointing up in the air, ripples going through her body as the impact is pushed through it. It's hard enough, even, that she starts seizing up, her many mouths opening to vomit out one last set of unfinished clones... And any actual capes inside of her, too, as you can see from the costumes they're wearing.
You pull yourself up on the street again, one foot after the other ripped out of the ground and set on relatively untouched ground again. This was easier than expected, actually, though you have to keep up that scream just to make sure Echidna doesn't get up to anything.
As the capes now strewn around the area are awakening from some kind of power-induced unconsciousness (most of them don't seem particularly conscious, anyway, and they're shaken even as they wake up) and the surrounding capes begin to go in to sanitize (read: Eliminate) any of the clones that look like they might be viable as they help them up and get them away, you yourself are primarily concerned with the big issue here.
That is, eating Echidna. If you can get her soul, it'll actually be insanely powerful, you reckon. Only issue is you can't simultaneously scream and chomp on her, so the logistics of things are the only real issue right now.
Luckily, you have a reliable way to reduce the amount of blood you'll need to actually drink to finish her off.
Swinging your tails around, you have Okita in turn begin to stab and cut away at Echidna, reducing the amount of mass (and blood) you need to concern yourself with. By which you mean she begins by nearly cutting the mutated cape in half before she can recover and force her way out of the hole you rammed her into.
Yeah, this does make things easier.
The rest of the fight is reduced to a messy tornado of teeth and sword swings, Sarah telepathically cheering you on while you bury your fangs, the dozens and hundreds of them that are packed densely inside your mouth, inside any part of Echidna you can find.
As you gorge yourself, you soon come upon a particularly hard fleshy core somewhere inside her abdomen, biting into it and drinking a truly enormous amount of blood springing forth as though from nowhere. It must've been a core of some kind, you posit, thinking about it even as you throw your head back and forth like an animal to kill Echidna already.
And then, just like that, it's done. The problem is solved and you are, once again, the big damn hero. Because who else would it be?
Okay, admittedly the Triumvirate hasn't exactly just been sitting around doing nothing, Legend's been cauterizing pieces of flesh from Echidna with pinpoint accuracy lasers while Alexandria and Eidolon went and put themselves on clone disposal duty, wiping out any naked people in the area.
Which, hey, is a decent indicator in addition to all the obvious mutations. A tad bit rude to people like yourself, who oftentimes end up completely naked through no fault of their own, but you can see the logic.
Anyway, you just take a moment to finish chewing before you move on from here. The racket of the fight has finally died down, at least.
Once you're done chewing, with Echidna's soul safely deposited inside your belly, you casually (very much intended in how casual, in fact) step onto the largest piles of flesh in sight, demonstratively making sure they're actually staying dead. Your tails are waving behind you, Okita making it a point to follow the motion with her sword (which is still wreathed in her semblance) and Sarah going along to pose on your shoulder on top.
Also, looking back, you for the first time notice something. What's that you're holding, Okita?
Mm, found it over there, she thinks back, pointing in the direction of Brockton Bay... You think. Looked funny, but it's not that cute.
Within the vampire girl's grasp you can, just barely, make out a visual disturbance of some kind, the object she's holding onto with one finger apparently moving by itself. As you scrutinize it, you can slowly and roughly make out what it's supposed to be- some kind of drone large enough to contain some technology, at the very least, though lots of its surface is made up of glass.
"Oh." Then it suddenly jerks, Okita looking at it with her head tilting as it flies off.
So much for that, you suppose. This could be the work of an enemy of some kind of course, so-
It's from Leet, Sarah lets you know, naturally sharing everything you think and feel. The tinkertech drone they use to record everything they do and put it on the internet live.
... Why would that be near you and since when?
Oh, I've been waiting to tell you, it's basically recorded the entire night we've had so far, Sarah grins at you without speaking aloud. The internet's got everything we've done, largely focused on you.
There's memes already, aren't there?
Heaps and heaps of memes.
It remained in orbit around the planet. It collated data gained through direct interaction between the anomaly and the hydrokinetic colony, comparing and archiving it.
A new designation was required. Its capability of perceiving the anomaly's origin had been reduced to an only minimal area, so it now confirmed the changes observed.
The prime anomaly had continued to change, further delineating itself from the host species. It had created new anomalies in similar shapes to itself.
Secondary anomalies were designated.
Unconfirmed information was collated. Unknown capabilities demonstrated. Possibility: Primary anomaly was biologically viable. Possibility: Primary anomaly would continue to reproduce. Possibility: Primary anomaly was influencing its surroundings.
It continued to move in orbit around the planet. Its primary source of information were the hydrokinetic colony and the data collection device created through a host. Collected data was still of unconfirmed validity.
Process of capabilities shown unknown. Accessing database... Comparison completed. No comparable capabilities demonstrated by any known host species encountered.
Attempting to match categories... No known host species can be categorized as 'similar'. No countermeasures available.
It continued to move in orbit around the planet. It began adjusting confrontation protocols for colony use. No known countermeasures. Calculating countermeasures for known capabilities... Error. Capabilities not analyzed.
Calculating countermeasures. Adjusting engagement parameters.
It continued to move in orbit.
"You have to realize exactly how this is perceived by the public, as well the impression it made in this situation. You are one of the few heroes that made a lasting one on the average layperson, to say the least, thanks to this... video."
Flechette was nearly in tears, having been told this exact same thing one way or another for hours by this point. "It was an accident..."
"Deliberate or not, it's publicity now. You have to work with what you got, as the saying goes."
She glared at the PR man that'd gotten into contact with her. "What exactly do you expect me to do here, then? My reputation is..."
"There's dozens of 'Assblaster' memes on the internet, yes." She slumped down, the only thing keeping her from running out and hiding in her room being years of PR training and self-control. "Now taking this opportunity to rebrand would of course be overblown, but make no mistake, this is an opportunity."
Her mouth fell open, her brain wrangling with the implication of what the man on the other end of the screen said.
"Now that you do have this reputation, you may as well lean into it, just a little. Have you considered-"
She facepalmed, wondering when this hell would finally end.
Getting everything settled back home takes a good bit of time, in fact you've long since run out of duration for your 'demonic' form by the time you can get the Crypts, all of whom are now safely relocated to your usual headquarters, settled with enough alcohol to fuel the little party they organized on the fly.
Kate is not helping, by the way. She is actively making things worse.
On the less jovial front, more complete and official estimations of the damage will have to wait for tomorrow, but the bunker itself, it has to be said, made it through everything largely undamaged. Sure, there's some flooding in one area some of the pipes burst, Leviathan had to have come too close at one point or another, and outside the 'officially unfinished' shelter there's quite a lot of more water damage, but these places were designed to withstand Endbringer attacks for a few brief moments, at the very least.
Most of the city stinks of saltwater, but you figure a light rain over the next few days should help wash that away once you get to it. You'll leave the damage to the professionals otherwise.
Incidentally, the Raveyard is mostly fine, you made sure to find that one out as soon as you could. A bit of flooding, as the preliminary records said, but otherwise all it needs is some minor renovation, particularly the secret underground black market area.
All in all, it could've been worse.
Alright, time to go over your checklist of things to do immediately after this whole series of events. You've already asked Henley, who isn't one for extended periods of partying and drinking anyways and excused himself after a couple beers up in the Raveyard's VIP lounge, to look into getting in touch with Citrine, as you may or may not need to work a little closer with Accord at the rate things are going.
With that taken care of (as well as accounting for all your thralls, most of which were actually already moved back to Brockton Bay by the time you actually arrived in Boston, just in case the fighting over there spilled over somehow), you get a quick checkup on the manufactories currently assembling the simple water filters you programmed into them as a basic blueprint once upon a time.
Earth Fallout feels so long ago now all of a sudden and yet you haven't even been undead for a year now. Time really flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?
Anyway, it'll be fine for a while, but it looks like the city's water treatment plants may or may not have suffered some amount of damage, so having a way to actually obtain enough potable water for the city's population locally can't be a waste.
Worst case things aren't actually that bad and you can just send these off to some third world country where the people may need them. Slap your logo on and leave it be, the material costs are literally not worth the time you would need to do anything beyond that.
Anyway, things are going reasonably well at the moment, nobody expects you to put in any public appearances after everything you did tonight already and your PR is looking more than just 'perfectly fine'.
For you, anyway. The whole cannibalism thing still has some people hung up on it, but it's not like you really give all that much of a fuck in the end, either.
All of this means you can just sit back and relax a little in the Raveyard, the VIP area filled with the gang's higher-ups and even the girls with a sizable party going on downstairs.
The idea of bringing out a massive amount of robots to immediately fix the city was brought up and floated around earlier, but general consensus seems to be that pulling the whole mass-produced roboter thing out wouldn't really be worth it right now.
First see about how property values develop in the Bay and make any purchases you want, then you can look into that. Sarah said as much and you shall trust her on it.
That leaves only you and this moment of brevity as you take on your female form for a bit, singing an old classic that fits the situation. Nobody gets to disagree with you on this.
https//watch?v=CIYHqTOzhpg _channel=AlyonaYarushina
Endbringers are kind of the ultimate despair slamming into your face. The fact you just kind of bitchslapped and partially ate one should serve to let everyone know that the Crypts are, indeed, the champions.
Even if you do feel oddly full right now. Maybe your digestion does need a little longer to actually deal with all that hyperdense material?
... Well, it'll probably be fine. You've never had any trouble 'digesting' just about anything you've tried eating, so you'll just give it a little time.
Back on topic, the party. You decided to make today an impromptu celebration, so you invited everyone in the Crypts that wanted to come to the club, with the general populace allowed to celebrate on the main floor with free beer and a bunch of low-ranking Crypsters handing out drugs on the cheap.
It has occurred to you that dragging blood donors off the dance floor would be incredibly easy for you if you really wanted to and half of them wouldn't even notice the prick of a needle... But you don't really see the point, of course, given you have a large enough population of homeless and debtors to abduct and disappear on the down-low.
In the meantime, using the side-rooms as little miniature sex dungeons is probably for the best.
Now Kayden had to take care of her kids, Okita is not really someone that 'gets' how partying is supposed to work, Henley, as you already noted, excused himself earlier and both Brian and Rachel didn't come, but other than them, pretty much everyone that you'd expect to attend is there. You can't really get drunk or anything, so consequently you'll need to find some other way to bear the loud, bass-y music so common in night clubs such as this.
The VIP floor is well-populated today, with everyone actually running around, so you take a moment to really take it in. There's so many people all doing so many things, deciding where to go first is the hardest part.
For now, you give Sarah a quick nod as you move past, your sister giving you a happy smile while dragging Cherie, that one daughter of Heartbreaker you found, off towards one of the rooms set aside throughout the upper floor just as they are downstairs.
Most of the Crypts around are having a good time all on their own, making merry and drinking the varied kinds of alcoholic drinks available to them. As you make your round through the various 'rooms' created through clever use of furniture and the setup of this floor, though, you soon come upon someone that is pretty much just standing there, staring into nothing.
Turns out Taylor isn't exactly a party animal, to little surprise.
You take a seat on the soft red couch she's sitting on, leaning back and smiling when she looks at you. "Not your usual kind of scene?" You ask, gesturing for your surroundings.
"No, not really," she replies softly. "I guess Emma would have been to parties, but..."
"Say no more. You were the professional loner and she didn't exactly invite you." Mentally, you quickly ask Sarah for a rundown of exactly why this girl had beef with three others etcetera, you might actually need to know this.
"Yeah. It's just- I don't really know what I'm supposed to do here."
"Well, I'm not exactly an expert on this either, but the general idea is to have fun." Taylor quirks her head and your experience with girls with nonstandard body language tells you to ask about that. "What?"
"I would've thought you'd go to clubs like this all the time," Taylor notes neutrally. "You went and made your own."
"Ah, high school involved a lot of things, some weirder than others," you deflect mildly. "I partied my fair share, I suppose, but I should really tell you about that time I was abducted, twice, and made my way all across the west coast for half a month."
"..." She just stares at you.
"But don't let me be a bucket of cold water, there's lots of things we can do to enjoy ourselves." Bouncing up, you hold out a hand for Taylor.
She looks at it, looks at you... And takes it, letting you pull her up and onto her feet.
She followed Gabriel, as she'd often found herself doing lately. Sometimes Taylor wondered whether it was alright for an objectively horrible villain to be so... personable. Likable. But that was just how he was, on reflection; Gabriel wasn't either a nice person or a villain, he was both, the dichotomy just a part of who he was.
It didn't help that even when he did things she found objectionable, he was always so... logical about it. Like it made sense to terrorize people and abduct his enemies to be turned into cattle. From his perspective, it probably did, but why did he have to explain things whenever she asked to let her see how and why he did what he did?
Taylor closed her eyes, images of the terrified people inside the shelter flashing through her mind. She really was a villain, wasn't she? Unequivocally so.
One of them had had a heart attack, she was pretty sure, and she had no idea what to do until someone stepped forth and administered first aid.
She shook her head. No point thinking about it. She'd accepted that this was how things would go when she'd first joined the Crypts and again when she abducted her bullies.
She still had to come for Emma, even if... Even if it felt wrong somehow. As if doing what she had declared she'd do would besmirch those childhood memories even more and they were one of the few things that she still had to remind her of better times when she thought about it.
Reading those psychology self-help books probably wasn't worth it anyway. Also, Madison still wasn't breaking down from lack of human interaction.
She had come to the club, as the Raveyard was commonly referred to by the Crypts, mostly because she'd supposed it was the... natural, the obvious thing to do. They'd defeated Leviathan! Saved the city! They were the popular people and they got to have a party and... party.
Taylor hadn't wanted to just go back home after everything. She wanted to be a part of the group, because she genuinely felt she was and not coming would have felt like she was rejecting that.
All of this lead up to her following Gabriel as he lead her to one of the many partially hidden doors she'd noticed earlier. The Raveyard, beyond being a popular night club, had been carefully remodelled from roof to basement and Taylor was still mapping some of it out with her bugs.
No roaches, or anything easily visible. Just flies and smaller bugs like them.
"Come right inside," the leader of the Crypts beckoned, opening the door for her. Taylor obliged, heading in to find that the room was about as dark and as wide as she already knew through scouting it earlier.
What she didn't already know was that it contained a small raised stage, a seating area positioned to give a good view of it and a small assortment of sex toys arrayed on a table next to it.
Taylor gulped.
"This place is normally meant for private shows, but I'm sure we could find something to do anyway," Gabriel growled, a hand landing on her shoulder as the door fell shut and was locked. "If you'd like that."
"I don't know how to dance." The first words that came to her mind and they were completely stupid. Though she did have a few flies on the 'dancers' (strippers) everywhere in the club letting her appreciate the ways they moved... She doubted she had the body control to imitate them.
"Who said anything about you dancing?" She looked at Gabriel and noticed that he wasn't male anymore, having changed genders while she wasn't looking. The busty, curvy ravenette standing before her smiled at Taylor and it was all she could do not to swoon then and there. Gabriel, on the other hand, slowly stripped off her outer suit jacket.
"I can be your dancer tonight if. You. Want."
She lifted Taylor's chin up, deep dark eyes gazing into her own.
"I can even teach you a thing or two about this, while we're at it. Would you like that?"
Taylor's throat was dry. Why was it that Gabriel just became even more... amazing, sexy, tempting, everything, when he turned into a she?
"Yes please."
"That's a good girl." Full, luscious lips brushed against Taylor's, the kiss barely there and yet setting her senses on fire.
Maybe she was beginning to understand what she was lacking when she came to visit Sophia and Madison. Sure, she did some sexual stuff with and to them, but this was just... raw sexuality, the way Gabriel moved and acted. She (he?) was like that normally, too, Taylor was just noticing it so much more now.
Striding (not walking, striding), Gabriel went up the stage, losing a piece of clothing what felt like every step of the way. Somehow, she could even make taking off a suit look amazing.
Slinging one leg around the pole in the middle, she turned to face Taylor, slowly sliding around it and opening her pants, letting them slide down her hips just a little every time she moved.
"Go take a seat and observe," Gabriel smiled at Taylor, "maybe I'll test you on this later..."
She did. She did, but she never stopped watching as Gabriel flipped upside down, working the pole like a professional acrobat and showed off every inch of her body without even stripping naked.
Gabriel was giving Taylor a show. A stripper's show. One by one, pieces of clothing went flying, the villain absolutely unconcerned about how much skin she was showing to her.
Taylor was feeling weird. Was this how it felt like to buy out a high-class prostitute? By the time Gabriel's breasts were on full display, moving and swaying hypnotically as she danced around the pole, her mind was already mostly blank, occupied with just watching and memorizing everything she saw.
Then Gabriel stalked off the stage, breaking the script Taylor had assumed to be in place and shimmying out of her pants, finally letting her behold the gang leader's form in all its glory. Those legs alone were the stuff nations would war and die over without regrets, full and shapely with feet formed to an inherent standard of perfection and calves and thighs at just the right amount of muscle.
Then she straddled Taylor's lap, confronting her with the sight of the glorious twin globes of her chest. She wasn't even envious about her size. "Let's go all the way, should we, Taylor?" Gabriel whispered, her size not seeming awkward at all as she loomed over her.
"Yes." Every time. Every time she was in the same room as Gabriel, this happened. She froze up, made her bugs work off all that nervous energy she was feeling and her voice became completely monoton-
Gabriel kissed her again, soft lips meeting soft lips and explaining to Taylor why she was into girls as well as boys in-depth. She melted into the woman's arms, her everything going soft.
"Oh? Maybe you'd prefer this form, come to think of it." With a wink, Gabriel began shifting, slowly letting her hair grow shorter as her body rearranged itself, losing none of its muscle definition but losing the small deposits of fat that made it look softer. Just like that, there was a man sitting over Taylor, Gabriel's male form smirking as his half-hard penis pointed at Taylor's belly and his abs finished coming to the foreground.
They were some very tasty abs.
"I like both." She couldn't help it. Gabriel was too sexy in both editions.
"I see. I'm happy to hear that." And she would focus on his voice, too, if it wasn't for the strong hands already tugging on her shirt. "Now let's measure exactly how much you like both."
To date, Taylor had never stripped her clothes off faster than at this moment.
Gabriel kept changing genders, teasing and tantalizing. At times, he or she would make out with Taylor, warm hands gliding over skin and teasing her incessantly, at others he would sink to the floor, lapping at her privates and making her juices flow like not even spanking Sophia's ass could.
Especially when... they, when they looked up as they worked her over. That look, self-assured and in control even when kneeling between Taylor's legs, did something to her.
Finally, when she couldn't bear it any longer, she eventually found their positions reversed, herself sitting on Gabriel's lap as she (currently) opened a drawer in the wall behind where Taylor had been sitting.
"Seriously, grapes? What is it with these things popping up all around me lately?"
"What-"
"Oh, don't mind me, it's just a cosmic joke at my expense," Gabriel waved her off. "More importantly, guess who's about to be hand-fed grapes?"
"Me?" She hoped it was her.
"You."
Yes.
Taylor jolted when she felt the fingers brush down below her navel, sliding between her legs and settling in to play with her pussy. Gabriel's other hand skillfully took up one of the grapes stored in place for some reason, shifting so that Taylor's back was pressed flush against her front.
She poked the fruit between Taylor's lips, pushing it inside along with one finger. Confused, she licked along it, making Gabriel chuckle.
"Look at that, I think you may have a thing for long, fleshy objects inside your mouth."
Taylor blushed. No matter how much she made her bugs swarm in embarrassment, she couldn't stop it.
"Why are you doing this?" She asked instead, already dreading the next grape. "Why are you-"
"As I may or may not have mentioned already, I do things because I want to," Gabriel whispered, changing shape again under her. "And right now, all I want is to play with and spoil a cute girl I happen to know. That's all there is to it."
"..." Taylor didn't say anything as she let the next grape be delivered into her mouth, the juicy fruit joining the first one before she finally bit into them both, moving them between her teeth. On the next pass, her tongue tasting the grapes all over, she spread her legs a little.
On the next, Gabriel's rock-hard cock was resting against her entrance. The one after that, she was feeling his p- his cock rubbing against it.
When he entered her, his size and girth spreading her wide, it was all Taylor could do not to choke on the next grape. This... This might be what heaven felt like.
Taylor is kind of unconscious by the time you're done with her, her lower abdomen a little swollen with the seed you pumped into her. That said, you are, as always, prepared- a quick pull on a handle and the couch extends.
It's one of those fancy extendo-couches. A good model, too, because you had the money to burn and you really wanted to put just about everything cool you could think of into this club.
Yes, so what if you always thought these things are cool, everyone has a thing or two like that. Just look at Okita.
... Aaanyway, you draw out the couch and let her sleep on it, long legs splayed out a little. Good thing this thing is specifically made to be easy to clean.
You'd say Taylor has filled her fun quota for this party, so she can sleep a little. A few signs appended to the door to make sure everyone knows it's in use and setting it to open only from the inside later and you're right back to the rest of the party.
You blink. You tilt your head. "I do not remember there being a hole here."
"Uh, heya, boss?" One of the girls greets you, hiding her ion matter gun behind her back. Badly. "Nice party, ain't it?"
You resist the urge to facepalm. Barely. "Just tell me who did it this time. It's not that bad."
"'Bout that, uh, you know how Kate used to be after she got, like, really drunk?"
"..." You do not like where this is going. "She's a vampire. She literally can't get drunk. The alcohol does not affect her brain in any way."
No way. No fucking way.
"Yup, she just decided she got drunk anyway."
"How many holes?"
"Not that many? Just, half a dozen, roundabout?" The ground shakes a little. "... One more now?"
"... I swear if I need to have this building condemned, there will be words."
Document PRT C-1
Parahuman Name: Cain, See Document Analysis Of Biblical References 11-b for details
Civilian Identity: Unknown
Classification:
Mover 6
Shaker 6
Brute 8
Breaker 6
Master 8
Tinker 6
Blaster 6
Thinker 6
Striker 8
Changer/Mover/Brute/Striker 10
Trump 0/1/3/5/6/10
Stranger 7
Disposition: Villain
Location: Brockton Bay (PRT ENE)
General Information: Cain is a dangerous villain active inside Brockton Bay, leading the gang known as the Lord Street Crypts (See Document PRTENE 23-j, PRTENE 25-a-25-t), taking concerted action against all other criminal elements. Participated in E-L 5/6/2011 Brockton Bay (See Document PRT E-2). Displays an understanding of general parahuman culture despite easily resorting to lethal force. Previous confrontations with Protectorate heroes have been resolved peacefully.
Personality: Casual and cooperative in regards to heroic parahumans, but immediately escalates to lethal measures when fighting. Fatalities are intended in enemies, but will likely step in to protect bystanders. Psychological analysis (See Document PRT C-6) indicates sociopathy and possible past sexual abuse. Inherently lethal powers lend themselves to easy escalation of conflicts (See Document PRT ENE C-4-f). Avoids directly confronting heroic parahumans, but may attack with full force when provoked. Reasoning is possible, but unlikely to succeed.
Leads gang named the Lord Street Crypts (LSC) (See Document PRTENE 23-j). Significant amounts of parahumans and logistical resources are suspected to be available.
Powers:
All ratings at minimum 6. All aspects of Cain's powers require additional countermeasures and parahuman assistance. Traditional actions are guaranteed to fail. Operatives should postpone engagement indefinitely.
Mover 6:
Significant Mover capabilities suspected.
Enhanced speed and movement capabilities confirmed from footage collected around Brockton Bay (See Document PRTENE C-3). Unconfirmed, but likely flight capabilities (See Document PRTENE C-3-f). Unconfirmed teleportation capabilities (See Document PRTENE C-3-f).
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Shaker 6:
Unconfirmed temperature lowering aura or power side effect, observed by both witnesses of the 'Cafe Robbery' (See Document PRTENE C-2-a) and the 'Merchant Warehouse Massacre' (See Document PRTENE C-5-a). (Also See Documents PRTENE C-5-c, C-5-b, C-5-c)
Unconfirmed wide-area telekinesis and similar powers (See Document PRT C-9)
Vocal powers confirmed, but specifics remain unknown.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Brute 8:
Forensic evidence collected at both the 'Cafe Robbery' (See Document PRTENE C-2-a) and the 'Merchant Warehouse Massacre' (See Document PRTENE C-5-a) indicates that small arms fire is insufficient to damage Cain, the retrieved bullets showing no sign of damage or even impact (See Document PRTENE C-1-c)
Eyewitness statements (See Document PRTENE C-5-b) state that Cain is hardy enough to weather blows of significant physical strength, as exemplified by the hitherto unknown parahuman formerly known as Mush (See Document PRTENE Mush 1-a-Postmortem)
Furthermore, Cain is capable of withstanding various measures of extreme punishment (See Document PRT C-1-b). Separate power profile in Changer form.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Breaker 6:
Increased durability on similar scale to E-B, E-L, E-S confirmed (See Document PRT C-1-3).
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Master 8:
Ability to create projection capable of manipulating time on a large scale (See Documents PRT C-1-2. PRTENE C-8-d) and cause damage to E-L (See Document PRT E-L-6-k)
Human mastering capabilities unconfirmed, but suspected on grounds of widespread LSC membership (See Document PRTENE 23-j).
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Tinker 6:
Tinkertech devices confirmed to be in widespread use in the LSC. Various devices with no unifying theme nor discernible methodology.
No confirmation on source or sources, but Cain is considered as a possible source.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Blaster 6:
Demonstrated telekinesis possibly used as a ranged combat tool.
Several ranged powers suspected, but not confirmed.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Thinker 6:
Vastly enhanced senses confirmed (See Document PRTENE E-L-1-b)
Possible extrasensory powers suspected, but unconfirmed.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Striker 8:
Confirmed preferred way of killing through bite (See Document PRTENE C-5-b) to lethally drain blood with an unusual tooth profile (See Document PRTENE C-8-i).
Forensic evidence indicates all blood of the victim is drained at exaggerated speed regardless of location (See Documents PRTENE C-1-c, C-2-b, C-2-c, C-5-b and C-5-c).
Unconfirmed, but likely claw extensions based on forensic evidence.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Changer/Mover/Brute/Striker 10:
Can take on an alternate form capable of individually matching E-L (See Document PRT E-L-6-d). Large, 'demon-like' appearance; horned, clawed, cloven feet (See Document PRT C-7-a).
Emits heat to damage opponents. Physically near unmatchable. Significant speed and flight capabilities. Retains use of all other known powers. Limitations unknown.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Trump 0/1/3/5/6/10:
0: Power nullification confirmed during 'Echidna Incident' (See Document PRT24 38-c)
1: Unusually flexible power set; unconfirmed, but possibly categorizable as Trump One
3: Unconfirmed, but highly likely power to obtain powers through draining parahumans to death (refer to Striker); Alternatively, opposing parahumans grants powers meant to counter them; Permanently gains powers through some mechanism
Confirmation required, See Document PRT C-11)
5: Can scramble slash disable powers (refer to Trump 0 and Stranger)
6: Suspected Trump power usage on large amounts of allied parahumans
10: Can grant powers to parahumans or non-powered agents. Known connection between Skitter (See Document PRTENE C-14-a) and the Siberian killed by her some time prior (See Document PRT C-7-b). Confirmed power granting on a large scale.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Stranger 7:
Immunity or falsification of all predictive Thinker powers. Effect spreads with the influence of actions, leading to almost global blackout in regards to parts of the American east coast.
Social and physical capability for disguise estimated as high. Changer powers may allow physical transformation.
Further unconfirmed powers possible.
Notes: Is Cain. Only getting worse.
Recommended Strategies: Avoid confrontation at all costs. Pre-approved Kill Order and Brockton Bay reclassification as HoSaV and subsequent quarantine available, but discouraged. If pressed, disengage and request reinforcements from national PRT.
-Nobody but him left in town. Try not to poke the sleeping shitstorm. (Director PRTENE Piggot)
-If I have to correct this document one more time, it is hardlocked. Take your speculations elsewhere. (PRT Chief Director Costa-Brown)
-Opened PRT C-11 for suggestions and speculations on powers. (PRTRD)
Alexandria was standing to one side of the room, contently waiting for everyone to arrive. David, or rather Eidolon right now, had been the last along with Contessa, having blown off his (technical) duties as a Protectorate hero as he often did after days or nights like this to instead buy a full three Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets for both himself and the perhaps most powerful precognitive to have ever existed aside from the Simurgh.
It turned out Contessa was incredibly idle while the waves of Cain's actions were settling, as opposed to re-pathing the entirety of her predictions. Eidolon had been looking for some excuse to pretend he was on top secret Triumvirate business, too, so a quick excursion later they'd both been laden down with fried goods that were possibly some of the most unhealthy things he ever ate.
They'd only gotten through one each so far, so both of them were carrying the rest with them.
"Alright, let's get through this then," he groaned, sitting down once his comfort food was deposited on the table. "What crackpot theories are we listening to today? Or tonight?"
"It's 5:56am in Bet time," Numberman helpfully reported.
"And we may take a few hours at this rate, so let's step right to it," Alexandria said, far more chipper than he usually saw her. "First off, Cain. We can all agree that he is capable of gaining powers through some mechanism or mechanisms, yes?"
"That much seems a given with the sheer breadth and depth of powers demonstrated by him, yes," Doctor Mother agreed.
"Therefore, I believe we can limit the possibilities to be considered as to this mechanism to several concepts right now based on speculations taken from the PRT ENE department and further national PRT research divisions," she continued, taking out a small device with a button on it.
Pressing it turned on the screen behind her, showing a diagram with notated bullet point lists and a picture of Cain's Changer form biting into Leviathan. When had she even had the time to make a presentation like this?
"First off, Cain gains powers through using his characteristic power to instantly drain the blood out of his victims through a bite," Alexandria began, taking out a laser pointer to boot. David privately felt the need to voice his disbelief at what this had come to, but restrained himself. "Not necessarily the power of the person or persons he used it on, but related ones, which would explain why he had a Changer power related to high heat."
"Lung," Eidolon nodded. He remembered the Asian cape's appearance against Leviathan.
"The next possibility is that his power is, fundamentally, the power to gain powers meant to defeat whatever enemy he is facing, which would explain how he was strong enough to go up against Leviathan immediately as soon as the Endbringer came close to the city."
"This one's even more vague than the first one," David complained between bites of fried chicken.
"Lastly, he could be omnipotent or alternatively literal Satan. Personally, I-"
"And here I thought we were actually halfway serious for once."
"Excuse me, am I holding a presentation or are you?" Alexandria asked with a raised eyebrow.
Eidolon raised his hands, wordlessly conceding defeat. He didn't have the capacity to argue and eat at the same time.
"We can thus conclude Cain is both a religious figure, a being that naturally predates on the entities as we know them and possibly an entity himself."
"..." He was just not going to react. Just... keep on eating. And also counter Contessa stealing from his buckets by opening a small-scale portal towards one of hers inside his own.
Skitter: Master 9, Thinker 2, Stranger 3
Notes: Extremely lethal, caution advised. Highest confirmed headcount among LSC. Power allows for wide-reaching danger, but can be countered through specialized measures.
Capable of summoning the Siberian as projection. High priority in any engagement. Considered psychotic.
Thunderstruck: Mover 8, Brute 8
Notes: Active LSC cape. Avoids official scrutiny. Engaged Leviathan unscathed.
Scattershot (Provisional Name): Blaster 9, Thinker 3
Notes: Uses guns to devastating effect, power revolves around them. Compatible with tinkertech guns. Capable of destroying several buildings in one shot.
Agitator (Provisional Name): Striker 8, Brute 6
Notes: Uses a giant sword with exaggerated effect; physically extremely strong. Capable of wounding Leviathan. Exact mechanics unknown.
Bombardement (Provisional Name): Tinker 8
Notes: Tinker focused around bombs with exotic effects. Identified as killing Crawler, heavily damaged Leviathan.
Tattletale: Thinker 8
Notes: Previously member of the Undersiders. Possibly shares powerset with Cain. More investigation required.
General Notes: All LSC parahumans are to be considered at a minimum 2 threat ratings in all categories. Widespread use of tinkertech devices. Possible power granting Trump makes this list unreliable.
After the extended amounts of 'punishment' you end up handing out, you soon find yourself returning back underground, a quick tour of the secret black market facilities under the club proving a little flooding won't stop the couple of people you hired as vendors down there from selling Crypts mugs and t-shirts.
Along with drugs, guns and sex toys (including that dildo modeled after yourself), of course. You still have no idea what your girls found so fun about taking molds of your dick to commercialize it, but whatever.
Another secret, secret area later you're taking a quick teleporter instead of the alternative tunnel route back to your base you had added down below the rest- doesn't hurt to have analog ways to move around unseen just in case your teleporter's radio signals are blocked somehow, after all.
Next off, having a talk with Cupcake's people slash minders. Specifically, you're picking out two of the former drug cookers lucky enough to be judged more or less trustworthy by your intelligence division (read: Sarah) and thralling them to increase the amount of people on the ready to produce more potions.
To be precise, the whole process went approximately like this:
"Hey, you two wanna get a promotion and make magic drugs?"
"Hell the fuck yeah, been waiting for this."
"Sure, why not."
"Cool, just get something to do and drink my blood, this is gonna take a bit."
Always nice when the underlings are open to undergoing the required procedures to move up in life.
"Alright, I'm guessing it's late enough into the day they've assessed the damage by now?"
You sit down inside the comfortable workplace that Coil's old office has been turned into by this point, taking special care not to disturb the scenery and cause yet another redecoration movement.
Sarah really likes messing up everything left behind by Coil far too much.
Speaking both, both her and Kate are there with you, with lots of telepathic back and forth between your sister and Henley for a moment. It really is nice when you don't have to actually look up any of this shit yourself.
"Lots of water damage all throughout the city and most buildings towards the east have broken windows at minimum," your dearest little Thinker says. "More problematic for now is the debris scattered everywhere the water hit at some point and the fresh water and electricity half the city isn't getting right now."
"... Yeah, that's a problem. We can't let standards here fall below Earth Fallout's situation." Your pride refuses to let that happen.
"Good news is, there's enough food and supplies most people won't be starving on the streets for the time being, at least. Bad news, with most buildings damaged to some extent and most cars not being rated for the state of the streets, many will need to shelter somewhere for a while."
Kate shrugs. "Entire city's worth of wet blankets, basically."
"And at this rate, there's a legit danger someone will get sick and disease becomes a major factor again," you sigh in annoyance. "Okay, first step, clean drinking water. I've already had the manufactories produce a few of the industrial water filters we used on Earth Fallout, so let's make sure nobody gets sick from drinking piss, at least."
"I feel like I should play devil's advocate here," your girlfriend and second-in-command (not counting your sister) says. "Why bother with all of that shit? I'm sure federal aid will be taking care of the sheep soon enough."
"Because they're our fucking sheep and letting the livestock die in droves isn't how you manage a farm," you grouse, mildly annoyed at having to go to these lengths. "Seriously, don't forget how it was to be human. They get sick and die at the slightest provocation, get themselves killed and kill each other all over the place, but they're also the best food source we have."
"Gabriel Livsey, the shepherd of humanity," Sarah enunciates mockingly. Not at you, though. "Okay, there's the water filters. What about the rest?"
Plans are made and Kate's girls (mostly hungover) prepping for their new mission, this time working together a little closer with whatever low-ranking Crypsters (you do like the appellation, you have to admit) you can organize on short notice.
Thank fuck the phone towers are still standing, by the way. Organizing anything without telepathy would be a fucking nightmare otherwise.
Relief troops will be rolling out within the hour. The water filters will need to be guarded, of course, but they will do their job just fine otherwise. This will be the job of the girls, with the mooks they can find, both beforehand and around the places they will be positioned, helping to distribute water and any food they manage to scrounge up.
You yourself aren't particularly pressed for anything, of course, and if you need intact civilization and infrastructure to obtain anything you can always just teleport to Boston, maybe hit up Accord's people, but supplying actual food to the entire city would be kind of a pain and show at least some of your hand, so water only for now.
It'll probably be fine.
Together with those water purifiers setting up near the coast and any shelters that need some quick aid and oversight you're also sending out medical supplies, the good ones including stimpacks and the odd potion, with their own protection. They don't need much if any medical training to be useful, only secrecy because you maintain that on grounds of general suspicion, but this should hopefully help keep the population alive long enough for normality to be reinstated.
Also along for the ride are several of the autodocs, guarded by more gangster women with disintegration weapons and the hulking figures of at least one Mister X. Speaking of which, you're sending out all of them you personally have control over still to help clean up, mostly just removing debris and restoring functionality to the streets where they can.
A couple of medical shelters near the ones already being created, officially or unofficially, clean drinking water and some unliving construction machines. It's not amazingly much, but still more than just about anyone else is doing right now. You're also allowing a few of the currently unused buildings under your control to be used as shelters here and there once the idea made its way up the chain, originating from some of the lower-tier members that are actually out on the streets.
The sentiment is there, too. The Crypts have been helping the homeless out for a while now and right now many people in the Bay are technically homeless.
It'll take a while, but the main streets should be cleared up within the next day or two, so hopefully moving people and supplies around the city will be a little more doable by that point.
Also, you heard something about Ethan getting big on helping out?
"It's really not complicated, but baking something nutritious on a large scale would need a... few... bigger ovens. Please?"
"I don't know Ethan, space is getting a little sparse down here," you tell him.
"It can be aboveground, just a temporary facility." The man is genuinely giving you puppy dog eyes.
"Alright, knock yourself out, but you have to clean it up yourself." If he insists on taking the initiative here, you don't mind knocking loose a little budget.
"Oh, I can't wait to try out a few of these recipes for ration bars... Not what I usually like to make, but needs must. Did you know that there's a sale on foodstuff up in Boston right now?"
... Eh, he'll probably rope a few people into helping him organize this. Whatever.
A single heave and the tree that'd fallen somewhere uphill and swept down the streets was lifted, shifted by around ninety degrees and laid across the sidewalk. The large, obviously superhuman man continued plodding on through the ankle-height water standing stagnant in the open, sun shining down on the scene.
The second, overall smaller man (though he wasn't what one would call short in any case, the towering guy next to him was just that enormous) nodded, looking something up on a clipboard he was carrying. He, for one, was also wearing rubber shoes, lest he get wet all over. "Okay, that takes care of the big issues on this street. Would you mind taking a look at the drains with me?"
The oddly graceful titan's voice was deep and rumbling. "That is for the best, lest we experience any unpleasant surprises."
"Yeah, gotta figure out where the problem with the drains is. Probably down in the sewers, but if it can be solved by just unclogging everything here on the surface, we'd be saving a lot of effort."
The two walked alongside each other in amicable silence for a few moments before the conversation continued, the feet splashing dirty water with every step.
"So I hear the place around that night club has become an unofficial shelter area with the Crypts handing out blankets and using empty warehouses they cleaned out for housing. That's some pretty good stuff they're doing."
"Crypt Merch is available on the internet. High quality and affordable prices."
"Heh, guess I'll take your word for it," the man nodded. He was pretty sure the fellow he was working with was a bit weird or just slow in the head, heck, maybe it was even some cape thing, but he reckoned it was probably something to do with those blankets. Either way, he was glad to have this guy around- a dozen just like him had been hitting up the dockworkers, apparently they were being paid now to help reestablish basic services and clean up around the city.
It was good, honest work. Whoever was actually dishing out for this was a damn saint, even if it was probably federal funds just being applied wherever they could be.
Or something. He remembered when they were being paid to look the part of construction workers. But hey, that was... probably somewhat honest work, at least.
Didn't matter. As they went, they came upon a pile of crap that'd gotten stuck in the drains, so naturally they'd need to remove that just in case, but before they got to work he paused. "... Hey, you hear something?"
"I am listening to the sound of the world."
"Yeah, sounds like crying. Let's go check it out."
And like that, they found themselves a crying kid that'd locked himself up in the ruins of his home. He was, what, twelve? And hadn't eaten anything for a full day at least.
This probably counted as a public service thing, but what the hell, they got him out and promised to help him find his parents. Weirdly, the lumbering giant, though needed elsewhere, got the kid to calm down really quickly.
"Mister X... Gonna give it to ya."
Those were the words he left as he went on to move collapsed walls and whatever else was blocking the streets. A damn hero, no matter what anyone else said.
Mister X: Brute 6, Master 3
Notes: Member of LSC. Amiable and only appears for humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Brute for strength, size and (suspected) durability, Master for apparent self-duplication. Suspected drawback of reducing or distributing intelligence among rising amount of bodies, but remains cognizant according to reports.
There, you've rescheduled your date with Vicky and Amy (and demonstrated how bad an influence you are by making it clear you can just teleport them out of being grounded at your leisure) and made sure the other stuff to be done is on track for the moment, finally ushering in a semblance of normal functionality within the Crypts.
About high time, too. Like, you get it, Leviathan attacked, it was a whole thing, people are allowed to get blackout drunk and fuck around.
For a day, that is.
With everyone kept more or less busy with all the menial work you're generating for them, you can finally concentrate on the kinds of things you want to actually be directing; the big, world-shaking decisions, scientific advancements and secret deals that make this an evil organization instead of just some corporation.
And yes, you've decided that the Lord Street Crypts are no longer merely a villainous gang. The scope and direction of your operations is such that the word 'gang' doesn't really suffice to describe it, much like you wouldn't call the Elite or the Yangban a 'gang'.
And yes, it should be self-evident where you're planning to take things at this point. You've proven you can defend your holdings against pretty much anything that might try to attack them with Leviathan, now it's time to spread your influence and take over the world, starting with first the east coast, then the Elite, with the Protectorate being your only real opposition thanks to the presence of the Triumvirate.
And thanks to what you know about Cauldron, you may just be able to figure out a deal in that regard, too.
But that's all in the future. A thought for another time. Right now, you're more concerned with the immediate aftermath of Leviathan and what you can do with it, no need to get ahead of yourself.
Instead, you move your gaze around the room, taking it in. Leviathan's severed arm, or what you left of it after it ran, is suspended on a table, with everyone somehow involved with material sciences gathered around it. That means all your tinkers and tinkerers, yourself and Yoshi, along with that one soul of a former specialist in this area.
Yes, you know her name. She just hasn't earned the right for you to refer to her as such. Interestingly, she is one of the few souls reincarnated from Earth Academy (provisional name) you picked up by this point that hasn't been hanging onto Yoshi like a limpet.
Tissue samples have been taken of whatever parts you could using your claws and as much force as was necessary. Everyone, including Cupcake, got a piece of the stuff Leviathan is made of and was told to try and find some use for it, together with a copy of any documentation Sarah could find on past samples in the PRT's database.
Because yes, she can just hack into it. Her power really, really lends itself towards obtaining the passwords and credentials she needs.
As it turns out, after thorough investigation and several tests, this stuff is just way too insanely tough, as well as resistant to many power effects and even being subjected to ionized matter. The usual disintegration effect only works up to a particular layer, slowly growing slower and slower and finally becoming negligible in how much of it reacts chemically and is removed.
And here you were hoping you had a way to carve into this stuff.
"The transmutation bombs also stop working past a point," Alice finishes explaining how so many of her gadgets don't have the desired effect. "Only ones that worked on all samples are the time bombs and even their effect is kinda diminished. Neither space warpers nor teleportation really do much."
You can feel how affronted she is by the realization that so many of her options don't really work against Endbringers.
"Can't really tinker with this crap itself, or at least my power's coming up blank," Sherrel is the next to proclaim. "Could maybe try to use it as is, but I got nada on Levi-jets and shit."
Then Cupcake raises her hand. "It's not dangerous to ingest in small doses and I think it could be used in alchemy."
Everyone looks at her. "Please tell me you didn't test that on yourself, at least," you ask.
"It looked tasty. Kinda like play-doh."
... You can't even.
Then Isabel clears her throat. Right, she was around, too, wasn't she?
To be honest, the former Mechanist has been blending into the background so much you hardly even notice she's there more often than not, but it turns out she's actually been doing a lot of minor adjustments and optimization on your robots, along with steady modification of your manufactories to let them work better with various random materials.
She's also been enjoying the niceties of actual civilization. Everything from functioning plumbing to fast food and Ethan's sweets.
"The deeper layers are too dense and hard to be worked with, but the manufactories can actually shape the outer ones, somewhere between tungsten and boron in hardness. So if we had enough of it, we could build things out of it, though I'm not sure how the material costs would compare to just using the actual metals."
She looks around, blinking at the silence and withdrawing into herself a little. "What?"
You're too busy thinking already. Alchemy, if Cupcake's gut feeling is to be believed, and robots made out of Leviathan's flesh, huh?
This has potential. Before that, though, you look at Lea, the vampirized woman wearing her sci-fi bodysuit costume. "How about you, any thoughts?"
"Uh, no, not really," she shrugs. "I'm keeping my hands off this stuff as far as I can, no offense. What if Leviathan knows where it is or it can come to life or whatever? Endbringers apparently don't operate like any real living being, so I'm assuming some fuckery going on with them at minimum."
"Fuckery. I like that as a technical term for them," you concede. "As for myself, I've been looking into replicating this stuff, but much like everyone else, that only seems to work up to a certain layer depth of the arm. At some point the undead I'm using just don't get anything and even the deeper layers I can work with are weaker than they should be."
"Huh. And here I thought your method worked with everything. I mean, it does with the adamantite, doesn't it?" Alice confirms. "The stuff that literally negates your reality warping."
Yes, you let the people that work with this stuff know what they're working with and how you interact with it. That much is just common sense.
"Yeah, which is why I'm so confused Endbringer flesh doesn't work," you nod. "I'm guessing it's somehow related to how it can be so dense and tough without weighing enough the Endbringers aren't just walking black holes. Somehow. I don't suppose anyone has any idea how they're even physically possible?"
Nobody moves to say anything.
"Yeah, that's what I was guessing," you shrug. "I suppose I'll just go ahead and replicate a bunch of the tissue samples we took for us to use and take the rest of the arm as a glorified paperweight then."
"Really? How about hanging it up in the cafeteria?" Isabel asks.
"Or maybe the club?" Sherrel adds.
Kassy kicked the ground, looking at what was left of her room. The waves hadn't hit this part of town that badly, at least, but... Yeah, it was pretty trashed.
She sighed, patting down her bed. The covers had been washed over by seawater when the window broke, still soggy and wet with the cold weather they were having.
She'd been lucky, she guessed. Fortunate. Her family had been able to return as some of the first, if only to look at the ruins remaining of home and scavenge any personal effects that had survived the waves.
It was funny, she thought, a snorting, aborted chuckle rising in the back of her throat. One of the least destructive attacks in years, a clear victory for humanity. Brockton Bay may not even be condemned and left to rot, the damage judged as not too insurmountable to fix.
Yet here she was still, everything washed over and destroyed. It all felt... distant, disconnected. As if she wasn't really there, looking in through her own eyes but not really there.
She was familiar with the feeling.
Driven by morbid curiosity, she looked under her bed, where a locked box was still where it was supposed to be. The key was hidden inside the secret compartment of her dresser, so fiddling with the lock quickly had her confirm what she was already thinking.
Kassy laughed. It was all she could do. At least those mysterious magic dildos that'd given her powers were still there and in perfect condition.
Or, well, she thought that was what had happened that day. Her memories were pretty fuzzy and she thought she might have been raped at some point, but all she had to show for it were the dildos inside of her she woke up with and her powers.
She'd been hiding both ever since, but maybe this was a sign from above. Maybe.
"Kassy? Are you alright up there?" Her father asked, so she quickly slid the box back under the bed and wiped her hands on her legs.
"I'm fine, just... Y'know." He probably didn't, but he got the idea.
"It's okay, take your time," he said softly.
She looked around one last time, thinking about everything and nothing. She... She should do something already. Ever since that day, she'd been putting it off day after day, unwilling and too indecisive to even use her power, make anything out of it, but...
Now was as good a time as any. However she got them, whatever they could be used for, she could be a cape with her powers. She could at least make sure she and her family would get to live in a real house, or maybe get theirs fixed up with priority.
In Brockton Bay, there were only really two options these days. Either the Wards or the Crypts. And given the Crypts had done more than the PRT had ever done for anyone...
Also, they were criminals. That meant they probably paid better, right? Even if her powers were pretty useless, capes usually got preferential treatment.
Now she just had to find a way to find them. Without everyone nearby knowing she was a cape.
Now then, it's (finally) night and vampires other than you feel like coming out to play! You really should instate a rule about sunbathing regularly until the shine of the sun doesn't keep them down as much anymore, but you've always been a rather laissez faire leader in this regard and beginning to poke into their personal matters sounds like more trouble than it's worth.
Eh, who cares. Back to the matter at hand, there's a reason you need a couple hands, of course, else you'd hardly even be bothering with this whole train of thought.
During the fight against Leviathan, a lot of water was pushed into the city by the watery Endbringer and, though the amount of it was starkly reduced thanks to Sarah (and Eidolon cheering her on, you guess, she totally did the most work though), the little shit still got off a few waves large enough to throw the sunken ships making up the Boat graveyard around quite a bit.
Including on land, which is kind of a problem for you, given the area they predominantly landed in is full of buildings you already purchased. And no, you don't care you got off lightly and can now buy a large amount of property all throughout the city for cheap, you're still gonna be pissed about the buildings you have to have restored again.
But first you'll need to clean the broken ships out of your territory. Hence the other vampires being called in to help you out.
Now, standing here, looking at the skeletal hulk of a ship that has been withering along inside the bay for years, you can't help but reconsider the approach you've chosen. Then you recall you're motherfucking (literally) Cain and how small of an issue this really is.
You look back at everyone else, all your notable vampires arrayed behind you. Sarah, Kate, Sherrel, Nora, Okita, Lea, Jeremy and Emily, all in their respective costumes and ready for action.
Well, 'costumes'. Sherrel is wearing a simple, unadorned facemask and even skimpier clothing than usual, Kate is just in her casual clothes without bothering to mask herself and Okita keeps on taking her mask off randomly.
Still, these are the strongest capes you have access to aside from yourself and therefore the best suited to this task, logically.
"Okay everyone, we need to take a dozen or so ships of differing sizes apart and move them discreetly. Let's split up and-"
You're about to suggest everyone takes up a task best suited for their individual capabilities, but you're cut off by a monotone exclamation and subsequent crash. "Cutie~ Crusade~."
The ship is split in half when Okita slashes into it with her semblance, the force of the hit and its shockwave tearing it apart all the way through so you can see the sky on the other side.
You have no idea how the physics of that work out exactly. You aren't sure whether they're supposed to.
"It's a structure," the rogue immensely powerful vampire explains (?) unprompted.
"Guess that saves me the explaining?" You shrug vaguely. "Alright, then we'll just-"
"Holy shit, it's the Cutie Crusader!" You were aware there's a couple people around, but you'd kind of expected them to just, dunno, stay away when capes started swinging around powers. "Can I get your autograph?!"
You see a phone. You know all hopes of doing this quickly and slash or quietly are dashed to pieces.
"Mm." And Okita looks inordinately proud, too. At least someone is having fun, you suppose.
Steel is like clay under your claws, screaming and screeching as you forcefully tear through it, using your immense physical prowess and the uncanny sharpness of your digits to cut through the massive hull of the ship before you.
You've already sent everyone on to do their own things, so right now you're mainly just reducing the rough chunks Okita has cut up into smaller ones, preferably flat for ease of transportation, and handing them off to the duo of Mister Xs you have standing by who then stack them and bring them into the big fat truck you're using to hide the fact you're just having all of the material teleported out and into various storage facilities under your control.
'Mostly' because although you're currently doing the work of heavy machinery, at no slow pace if you may add, you're also singlehandedly warding off a bunch of curious onlookers by yourself, having directed them to come to you for questions so the others can work in peace.
And it's a good thing you did, too. Most are appropriately wary and respectful of a man currently casually tearing something much more durable than themselves apart with his bare hands, but then the worst of them came in and made everything even worse.
The Crypts.
Your own low-ranking people are (rightfully) assuming you wouldn't just kill or maim them without significant reason, so a bunch of them showed up and basically decided to 'help out' while asking their own questions and taking the opportunity to talk to you. Long story short, this whole situation became an enormous production and you're absolutely sure you'll be dealing with a Protectorate response coming by at some point.
Especially with all the phone cams pointed your way.
"Y'know, there's one thing I've always wondered before," one of your people asks as she heaves up a piece of steel with a team of four others. "Why don't capes ever, like, do stuff like this? Figures someone woulda cleaned out the Graveyard at some point by now."
"That's a good question with a complicated answer, but I can give you the cliff notes," you respond with a nod, taking a moment to tear out another chunk of steel out of the larger chunk you're currently working on and let the noise pass. "Simply put, there's a boatload of issues with actually doing so. Most capes just don't have the necessary power and even those that do still have to deal with the fact there's asbestos used in lots of old ships, so parts of the process involves lots of bad shit for everyone breathing too much."
"Oh."
"Yep, 'oh'. Add to that shipping has been down the drain even before the boats were sunk in the first place and there's just not much point for anyone to bother even if they have the time and money to waste."
"Guess it'll stay around, then," the woman shrugs, careful not to drop the metal she's holding onto.
"I wouldn't be too sure about that, but let's focus on getting these things cleared out first. If we actually cared about regulations, this whole cleanup thing wouldn't be allowed either, but that's why we're criminals," you shrug.
"Pretty sure there's a couple other reasons," one of the other guys nearby mumbles. He isn't wrong, so you let that stand.
Things proceed apace, you suppose, though it's not like you really have any idea of how fast or slow this should be going in the first place. As you keep going, several of the 'issues' that have kept you from just taking apart all the wrecked ships out in the bay pop up repeatedly, but as it turns out there's a reason you're specifically using vampires and undead to do this- asbestos was a common building material used in ships all the way into the mid-1980s and is highly dangerous to breathe in once broken, leftover fuel that nobody thought to siphon off and some of which mixed into water...
You never really thought about where the constant colorful, oily sheen on the ocean near the north of the city's coastline came from, but hey, it isn't any big surprise at least.
As you're making sure your human mooks and any onlookers don't get too close to where Okita is slicing up the biggest wreck nearby, none of them are getting horribly poisoned or cancered (is that a word?) by the proceedings.
Eventually, even the ENE Protectorate has to respond to your presence however, which is why you hear the sound of Armsmaster's approach, the loud, characteristic engine noise easily discernible to your senses. The minions hear it soon, too, giving you uncertain looks as to whether they should just keep going or scatter for the moment.
Naturally, you aren't gonna be stopped from getting this crap done sooner rather than later, so you simply signal everyone to keep going as they are.
And indeed, it isn't terribly long until Armsmaster himself approaches you, mounted on the Armsbike (probably trademarked the term, too) and throttling the sound down to almost nothing as he comes closer. You guess it was some kind of attempt to give you an opportunity to leave before he arrives or something.
It's not like you actually care.
The man himself takes his time to first park his vehicle, his blue power armor and sheathed halberd looking the same as usual. Once he's satisfied with everything else, he draws closer, face kept carefully neutral under his helmet that doesn't actually cover half of it.
Which is absolute lunacy, of course, but that's the PRT's PR for you. If any of your thralls or even random mooks ever get put into power armor (and you probably will get around to doing so at some point just for the sake of doing it), they sure as all hell will have their squishy and vulnerable spots protected.
Meaning full helmets. That actually cover their damn face. Yes, sure, someone outright killing Armsmaster by abusing that weak spot and shooting him in the head, for example with a gun, is sure to get fucked over by a bunch of heroes over it, but that's far from enough protection for your standards.
"Cain," he says, addressing you neutrally. You have no idea whether that's his cape persona or he's just naturally like that; neither would surprise you, to be honest.
"Armsmaster," you return with a nod.
"What you are doing is illegal."
Is that how you're gonna play this? "Oh, is it? I must be mistaken then, I thought these ships were legal salvage." Or at least a lawyer could and would argue as much.
"There's also the laws regarding disposal of toxic waste, but I can see how you might have forgotten to check them."
Oh, it really is.
"My bad, I suppose we'll just need to reconsider those."
"Naturally. As this is an honest mistake, I believe it will be fine to let you off with a warning. In the meantime, I will be back by eight in the morning; I hope these technically illegal activities will have ceased by then," the still incredibly monotone man says.
"I don't suppose you could have a few PRT Agents set up a perimeter until then, to keep the people clear? Here and around the other ships, I mean," you suggest helpfully. "Wouldn't want anyone to wander too closely and get themselves lung cancer or anything of the sort."
"I'll see what I can do." And with that, he promptly turns around and leaves.
That went well. You guess. The people that were nearby to have heard the exchange, mostly the Crypsters that are helping move relatively save salvage, are looking at you.
"What? You heard the man, get everything done by eight and it'll be fine."
Alright, for once, entering your inner world and everything that entails, you aren't looking to go and do your own thing; instead, you shall be actively engaging with the people inside.
Much as it galls you to even consider them people. There's just something about being a soul torn out of its body that makes you think of them otherwise and your experiences so far confirm the way you usually look at them.
With recent developments to keep in mind, of course, your first stop, courtesy of the Maid all too willing to teleport you around, is the factory complex the Dollmaker is living and working in. You're still a little confused why the manifestation of your desire to manipulate people would take on this particular form, but as long as it's useful, you don't see the need to ask any questions.
Unfortunately, however, the resident Guardian doesn't have any good news for you. "Yeh, me took a look but ah don' think dis En'bringah stuff is gonna be any good in 'ere. If'n anything, mah brother's gonna be de place ta look, but..."
"But he's your brother, I understand," you nod sagely. Everyone knows how and why the Pit Lord is just unpleasant to be around.
You'd been hoping you wouldn't need to go see him, but needs must and all that.
Another quick trip around later, you regret everything. You haven't seen the man in question yet, but you can hear his voice, echoing around the Pits a he seemingly talks to himself. "Yes, yeees, soon you will grow in all your crystalline beauty, my little pretties!"
A wet slurping sound is audible as he does... something. You don't even want to know whether it came from him or whatever he's doing.
"A little bit of time and a lot of... watering, and you'll see... Flexible and tough, living tissue of a sort... heheheh... Now where did I put the duckies?"
You slowly edge backwards, away from whatever is going on down here. Time for an emergency maid teleport.
Having beaten a tactical retreat, you decide you have learned enough and can leave the Pit Lord to his own devices; instead, you shall focus on something less mentally unsanitary than thinking about the whole... thing.
That is, sauntering up to Yoshi who is currently once again beset by both Indigo and Nolac, with Julianne (the one soul you shall allow the dignity of a name for the time being just for entertainment value) sitting off to the ide, watching bemusedly.
Seeing you, the guy (Nolac is in female form right now) sighs. "Let me guess, you want some other impossible thing to be made possible without bothering with the details?"
"Interesting way to describe well-applied delegation, but no, not quite," you reply as you take a seat in a nearby lab chair. "Though maybe it would be impossible, now that I think about it. I am here to talk to you about relationships, Yoshi."
"... Come again?" He blinks, perplexed.
"Yes, please do elaborate," Indigo requests, primly sitting down next to him herself. "Please excuse the wording, but your experiences do not strike me as particularly..."
"Normal?" Julianne tries.
"Sane? Safe? Consensual?" Nolac grins as she leans onto Yoshi's chair from behind.
"Please, I'm perfectly normal in this regard, at least," you scoff. "Anyway, normally I wouldn't interfere in things like this, but it has come to my attention that someone is romantically interested in you, Yoshi, for whatever reason."
"Nani?!"
"No, wait, that can't be," Yoshi protests once again, still seemingly incapable of accepting the facts. "Indigo-san used to be my colleague. My male colleague."
"But she isn't male now and she's lived as a woman for long enough she had more than enough time to rethink her preferences with a whole new load of hormones and a different body to boot," you patiently repeat. "It doesn't matter how things used to be, what matters is how they are now."
"And what about Nolac? They-"
"Nolac is a fuckup of a person that could and would consider having sex with you just to screw with your mind because she's interested in you," you wave the concerns off. "Look, don't get me wrong, but you totally could ask either or both of them out and they'd probably agree."
"..."
Yoshi, tied to his chair to ensure he can't escape your lecture on proper relationships, pulls a mixture between a pout and a glare. "And why would either of them ever be interested in me in the first place?!"
Ah jeez, is he really making you answer that question? "Well, you see, there's no accounting for taste, so maybe their taste in men is just-"
"Gabriel, sweetie? Please shut up for a moment." Normally you'd put any of your souls speaking to you like that into solitary sensory deprivation for a few months, but it seems Indigo is trying to get somewhere with this, laying both hands on the sides of Yoshi's head to make him look at her. "Yoshiaki-san, I understand you have several misgivings about the idea of being desirable due to your past experiences, but please bear with me, can you do that?"
Yoshi nods, unsure what's going on.
"When I look at you, what I see is a young man, regardless of the experiences and mental age you have accumulated, you're still acting like an awkward teenager, but one that is thoughtful, stubborn to a fault and always, always trying to help others, even if he has no idea how and fumbles it up more often than not. I see a man that is tired of trying to reach out and keeps on doing it anyway and it makes my heart ache to see you devalue yourself like that."
Indigo takes a deep breath, her name-appropriate hair shaking in the air. "In short, I think I may like you and I am being vague on purpose because emotions are a complicated topic. Do you understand me?"
"I-I think- Yes?" The subject of her affections tries, his head forcefully moved to nod. "But what about Nola-"
"I just wanna fuck with you," the gender-indeterminate amalgamation of a psychotic bastard styling himself a doctor and a psychotic serial murdering artist drawls. "And fuck you."
You make a gesture, a silent 'see?'.
"I... Okay, I get it already! Julianne, please stop smiling like that!" The one woman originating from Academy City in the room not trying to jump his pants just continues eating the small bucket of popcorn she managed to snag from one of the rooms containing food these days. "I'll take your feelings into consideration!"
"Good." Indigo releases his head, beginning to fiddle with his ties. "Also, I assume I do not need to elaborate on why being alone in a room with Nolac is a most foolish thing to do, yes?"
"I-"
"Yes?" Her face shoots around to stare him right in the eyes from up close.
"Okay, yes!"
"Hey! Being alone with me is a great idea!" Nolac licks her lips. "Someone has to know how to have fun."
Helpless, Yoshi twitches in place, but you just shrug, getting up to help him out of there. "Look, sometimes life gives you lemons. How to make lemonade out of that depends on the situation at hand. I can give you a few tips on how to manage several lovers, but-"
"Your entire relationship history is a sequence of horrible ideas and others forcing themselves on you until you learned to force yourself on others, you stay out of this!" Indigo seems unusually agitated for some reason.
"C'mon, what's the harm?" Nolac asks.
See, she's outvoted already.
"I refuse to let you corrupt Yoshiake-kun!"
And so the story goes. Though what exactly she meant by forcing things you still don't quite get- must be some misapprehension on how relationships work on her end, after all.
So much for the 'professional' psychologist.
The time for you to leave Earth Bet for another month is drawing near, or at least you can feel the metaphorical chain that lets you find your way around different dimensions finally finish rewinding so as to allow you another go.
You have your own thoughts about where to, of course, but finalizing your destination can wait for later. Instead, your thoughts already directed towards the various dimensions you've been to and whether or not to return to any given one of them, you decide to go and pay a visit to a certain someone that you haven't really talked to for a week or two from her perspective, but much longer from your own.
That is, Isabel, ex-superhero wannabe and current member of the general engineering team usually hanging out near the workshop part of the bunker- you've kind of expanded it through persistent space warping so much it's its own, full-fledged area by this point.
"Hey Isabel, what you working on?" You ask as you drop in, glancing over the actually hellishly complicated, opened up insides of a manufactory. The things kind of evolved naturally over time, but... perhaps putting a literal particle collider into them was too much of a good thing, after all.
"Oh, hey Gabriel." The vaguely Spanish-adjacent looking young woman awkwardly lays her tools down, leaving them next to her toolbox. What exactly she'd need a hammer and a blowtorch for you have no idea, but at least thralldom ensures she isn't permanently damaging herself somehow. "I was just... adjusting a couple things to see if they work better."
Yeah, she's always been better at messing with pre-existing technology. As are you, truth be told, you just have an easier time stealing it and integrating it into other technology than modifying and improving it incrementally like she does.
It's still a small miracle she even got that old RobCo factory she somehow found running again.
"Cool, what are you trying to make it do here?" Yes, you're just pretending you didn't basically leave her to her own devices for a good long while; she's a grown woman and also not a parahuman, which means she can be reasonably expected to take care of herself without kicking off a civil war somehow.
"I'm, uh, trying to see if I can get the particle collider to work as a multifunctional tool so it replace a few of the other components... Or at least incorporate them so free up some space and reduce material costs... I guess."
Yeah, she's still kind of a wallflower. Though she also has been doing well for herself outside of that, as far as you know.
Well, you know what you're here for, may as well get to it. "Good to know. You've been doing some good work in general, I've seen the upgraded blueprints."
"O-oh yeah, I meant to show them to you but I guess I just never got around to it," Isabel mumbles. Translation: She didn't know how to approach you so she just procrastinated ad infinitum until you talked to her about it.
"No need to worry, I approve of most of the changes you've proposed so far," you shrug. "Only part I'm a little worried about is the 'dildo machine attachment'."
"That wasn't me and nobody can prove otherwise," the former Mechanist stutters and blushes at top speed.
"Sure, sure." You think she's probably telling the truth, but you won't look into it one way or another- a literal fuck machine can't keep up with yourself anyway, regardless of how closely the dildos involved resemble your own member. "Changing topics, you've been on Earth Bet for a good while now. Comparing it with your home dimension, what do you think you would change first if you had the chance?"
"Oh, um, jeez, can I just make a list instead?" Isabel smiles haltingly. "There's just... too much I'd want to improve. Having actual computers is great, but so is having plumbing and fast food that doesn't make your skin glow for a week straight if you eat it."
"I'm guessing there's a story behind that," you note with a smile of your own.
"Oh, don't even get me started. Having reliable uncontaminated water in the first place is also great, you wouldn't guess how many people just have to give up living somewhere because their water source got radiated somehow. Yeah, water on tap is amazing. So are vaccines, come to think of it, anyone that can't just shrug off diseases like us now is kind of screwed out there."
"Huh, I didn't really think of that," you ponder. "Yeah, with Concord becoming a densely populated city, any disease that can't be shaken off with decent hygiene is going to be a bitch to deal with."
"Exactly! The mortality rate in the wasteland is enormous particularly because of things like that, and I didn't even know the word 'mortality' until I looked it up on the internet," she giggles. "Which is also on that list, of course."
"Yeah, any place without some form of internet is by definition backwards," you agree. Seriously, it's up there as one of the most amazing scientific advances ever made even if eighty percent of it is basically porn.
Perhaps especially because of it.
"So to sum it up, actual, decent food and water, internet, plumbing and healthcare," Isabel counts off. "It's... actually pretty pathetic how far humanity fell where I came from, isn't it?"
"Eh, kinda," you vaguely gesture in the air. "It couldn't really be helped, though. Once the bombs fell and everything not in a safe area was wiped out, what was left of the USA didn't really have much of a chance to recover, so the current state of affairs was really pretty much a given from that point on."
"I guess..." Aww, she's still kind of ashamed for growing up in a civilization that doesn't really deserve to be called such.
"Hey, look on the bright side, humanity still exists over there, at least!" Time to pack on some optimism to cheer her up, then. "With the sheer destruction caused by the nukes, I wouldn't have been surprised if there just wasn't any human life left."
Isabel smiles, clearly appreciating what you're doing- even if she's seen through you. "Come on, there was always the Vaults... Though I guess not many of them really lasted all that long."
Oh yes, the vaults. Created and controlled by Vault-Tec to, as you understand it, run various experiments on people; even with the company itself long since wiped out (turns out they didn't believe in the 'hoax' about possibly being nuked), some of them are still ongoing, with the very characteristic vault suits generally known around the Commonwealth, as Massachusetts is usually referred to.
Vault 111, where you arrived and found Nora all that time ago, is just one example with its experiments on its 'inhabitants' regarding the use of cryosleep to preserve humans over extended periods of time... Except the vault's systems shut down at some point after all the personnel inside it died because they didn't prepare enough food for longer than a month or two.
Suckers.
"Point, but that doesn't mean the achievement is worth any less. People actually buckled down and refused to die, then kept going for over two hundred years," you point out. "That's pretty amazing when you consider the environment they survived in for generations."
"Yeah, when you put it like that," Isabel softly agrees. "You know, I always felt so... small, all the way back when I was just a kid amazed with pre-war tech. There just used to be all these people and they had all these amazing things, and yet there we were, a handful of settlers digging through their trash in hopes of surviving another day. It always felt so... pathetic. Even before everyone else died and I found that old factory."
"There, there." You pat her back a little. "What'cha say we take a closer look at what you're doing and go from there?"
Isabel nods, stealthily rubbing the corner of her eyes- "Yeah. Yeah, I think I'd like that."
You and Isabel chat back and forth as you proceed to work, talking about this and that while you put the manufactory used as a testbed through its paces. The way she works is fundamentally different from your own approach to engineering, no doubt a product of the way she learned how to approach machinery; where you set up a target, theorize on how to achieve it and then define ways to do so in a practical manner, she starts out by testing various tried and true methods to improve something, notes what works and what doesn't and refines her work in iterations going from there.
No formal education on the subject and lots of by default faulty materials will do that, you suppose. It also explains why her own robots, back when she produced a fuckton of them as the Mechanist, were so... cobbled together and haphazard while still remaining functional- she just kept on recombining the parts she had access to until she managed to make them work.
It's an interesting dichotomy, to say the least.
Another topic you get to talking about, then, is the things a manufactory may be advanced to be able to do, Isabel completely on board with actually innovating and improving a given bit of machinery as opposed to just modifying it in minor ways. The first thing that comes to mind, for you, is the Thinker and the semi-biological cyborg bodies the AI created for itself back on Earth Rapture.
One thing leads to another and, well, it happens.
"I can't believe it. We just... take ADAM and print out living flesh," Isabel whispers, watching the more or less biologically viable, single arm you're creating as a test. "This is amazing... And frightening."
"Eh, it's technically incomplete," you shrug, uncaring. "Brains are too complicated to create and a bunch of organs are likely to come out wrong; this whole process is better suited for creating soft tissue capable of feeling touch, which was what it was originally used for in combination with robotics."
"Robots that can... feel like humans do? That feels dangerous in another sense."
"Oh, don't worry about it. Too much, anyway. Flesh is just like any other building material you can program at its most basic so long as you have the right hardware... And most of that I'm just copying from elsewhere, anyway."
Really, nothing could go wrong.
Anyway, a quick break for training purposes (how the turn tables, huh) later, you're checking up on a little side project you have a few of your minions running; that is, pirating and downloading all the music and movies they can as quickly as possible, all with the aid of Hack who is continually complaining she isn't allowed to cause more havoc while she's plugged into the net.
You refuse to let her crash the stock markets 'for the lulz', however, so all she can do while being supplied with aura is what's supposed to.
You imagine that's what galls her about her whole situation right now.
Not that it matters to you. You have other things to take care of, which is why you delegated this little side project to bring modern media with you wherever you go via a few hard drives all of this data will be stored on- things such as, say, checking in on Taylor and her pets before you concern yourself with the whole... the whole Boston thing, you'll call it for now.
Damage to the neighboring city wasn't anywhere near as catastrophic during that little double trouble event night, but it was still... noticeable at the time you went there. It may be a while yet before Boston returns to its former self and any changes over there naturally may cause changes in Brockton Bay, so if any local capes are looking into moving to your city, you'll naturally need to know ahead of time.
Not to mention your plans to potentially expand the Crypts' sphere of direct influence at some point. Assuming Accord doesn't object, of course; the man's organization was taking the role of a middle man between the Crypts and the massive amounts of guns produced inside your basement daily and the rest of the East Coast, shipping deliveries in all directions that have a demand for the supply you enable.
Last you heard, he's even doing some overseas trading, pumping Africa full of even more guns. But hey, if half a continent's worth of population is intent on butchering itself, at least it shall do so with quality products.
But right now, back to Taylor. Taylor and her two little pets.
Specifically, Madison- who is, it would seem, proving a greater challenge to Taylor than you'd have expected.
"So walk me through this again; you've tried everything from punishing her to starving her, but Madison just keeps on taking it as some sex thing?"You ask, trying to establish the facts.
"Yes," Taylor nods, her gaze all the while scrupulously avoiding your eyes. "Nothing I've tried with her has done anything but turn her on, so I can't apply any genuine punishment like I can with Sophia."
Well, that sure is kind of a pickle when looked at through this lens.
Madison writhed in her bonds, feeling the disturbance in the force. Something within her was screaming, shouting, demanding that she log onto her Questionable Capes account and take part in... something.
She could almost taste the maybe/maybe not homoerotic air between two or more prominent capes. Legend was a treasure for more reasons than one and if she could, she'd have typed up some kind of male hyper pregnancy on her phone already, just like she always did back in Winslow during breaks when she didn't need to pay attention to bullying Taylor.
Taylor, who was her new mistress now, filling the void that her absence from the internet had left. With more absence, but this one was purposeful.
She couldn't wait to be waterboarded again, or maybe she'd return to being spanked and denigrated for being such a filthy slut again.
Perhaps... perhaps she'd even finally get to be treated to bug sex, with millions of small, disgusting bodies rubbing and climbing all over her, mercilessly invading her body and...
"So yeah, it seems obvious you'll need to change your approach if you want to get anywhere with her," you tell Taylor, gesturing at the screen showing what's happening inside of Madison's 'room' right now, the short, petite girl wiggling in the tied-up position she's been left in, her mouth blocked by a ball of silk.
Taylor is very self-sufficient in this regard, you've noticed.
"I just..." She looks at nothing for a long moment, obviously thinking." What do you suggest I do instead, then?" That's a good girl. Just ask Gabriel for what to do.
"Since she's already this broken by herself, I'd say there's no real point in trying to break her any further," you explain your logic here. "I think you could just string her along with promises of 'rewards' you dole out regularly."
"... I don't like it," Taylor says, crossing her arms. "To just let her off like that."
"Mhm, would it help to punish her forever by keeping her as what amounts to your personal rapebait forever?" You suggest. Sometimes, all it took was rewording something to make it sound more appealing. "I can thrall her for you and she'll be young and beautiful pretty much forever- and once I get around to vamping you, you can take her over as soon as you get the power to. How's that sound?"
Taylor blinks, squirming in place for a moment before she settles down. Someone did like the idea you just brought up, after all. "I don't know..."
Jeez, she's really living up to the stereotype of the stubborn teenager, isn't she?
"I... I guess I wouldn't mind becoming a vampire? It's just that..."
Ah, that's what this is about. "Take your time, gather your thoughts. This is a topic that will, hopefully, be with you for eternity; you really should be giving it all the consideration it is due."
Taylor takes a deep breath. "If I become a vampire," she began haltingly, "then... What does that mean? Will I change how I..."
Luckily for her, you are somewhat of an expert on this topic. "Becoming a vampire has a few mental and physical side effects, yes," you smile. "That's kind of the whole point. But to summarize, you'll lose any inhibitions regarding biting into people to drink their blood, grow fangs you can extend and retract to do so. Drinking blood will become the only kind of sustenance you'll need and you may find yourself entirely unaffected by just about any environments that would be a problem to a human- whether a mild blizzard or walking barefoot through a desert."
"That all sounds too good to be true, with what I know about the powers vampires gain."
"Well yeah, the entire point is to become a nigh-immortal being entirely superior to humans," you wave her concerns off. "You may also find yourself adversely affected by sunlight, but this problem, too, can be overcome with time and increasing power. It is a pretty sweet deal, if I do say so myself."
"... I see." She nods, seemingly coming to a decision. Phew, and you didn't even need to digress into the mild case of sociopathy that comes with the package. "Madison. Let's... See if she can be useful, then."
Hooray, a conclusion has been reached! And you didn't even need to discuss this for hours on end, either.
Taylor really is easy to manipulate, isn't she? You're a tad bit worried about her future, but for now you shall use every advantage you can get, at least. "As expected from Skitter, I suppose," you tease her.
"Please don't remind me..." Dispirited, she lets her head hang down. "Is my image really so frightening I had to do everything I could to keep the people inside an Endbringer shelter from trampling each other?"
"Haha..." You just laugh a little awkwardly and pat her shoulder. She'll probably get over it.
That may take until she gets vamped, but lucky her you do have a few plans in this regard already...
The door opened, alerting Madison something was happening again. Was it feeding time? Taylor had made her eat a few cockroaches the last time instead of making a small army of bugs bring her some other kind of food by dragging the plates inside her room.
Maybe she would- Oh, there was a person. Two persons.
"Hello Madison," the man walking inside said, unhurried and in control. His voice made her tingle all over. "I thought I'd go ahead and introduce myself properly since you've been in Taylor's care until now. I am kind of her boss, you see."
Taylor, who was also there, went around Madison's bed, a few spiders falling off her and skittering towards the bound girl's face. She repressed the instinctive shudder as they tread over her bare flesh, but nakedness was one of the first things Madison had gotten used to after she'd been brought where she was.
The insects did something and before she knew it, Madison felt the gag she'd gotten so used to slide out of her mouth just like it'd done the previous times Taylor had taken it out. She coughed once to clear her voice, looking up at the man that had to be Cain unless she was really, really wrong.
"Ghk, nice to meet you?" She tried.
"He is here because I have come to a decision about you," Taylor said from behind Madison's prone form, rummaging through the usually locked drawers of the cupboard standing there.
Her heart began palpitating inside her chest. "I see?"
"Indeed," Cain drily commented. "You're getting rewarded, Madison, so I hope you'll be on your best behaviour going forward... But let's not waste any time, drink this."
She saw him do something with his hands, her field of vision too low to make out any details, but the thin, twisting stream of a dark red fluid moving through the air was obvious enough.
"Uhm..." She wasn't sure what to do; on the one hand, being fucked up by whatever Cain wanted to do to her was probably a bad idea. On the other hand, submitting to his cruel whims was-
"Don't worry, I get it, you're a very slow girl," he mocked, a hand pulling down her chin to open her still sore mouth. "Just try not to choke yourself to death on this."
Madison shuddered, an iron-y taste filling her mouth as whatever it was seeped past her lips. This guy could call her stupid all day and she'd love it.
Taylor, still behind her, laid a hand on Madison's butt, fingers digging into her cheek. "Punishing you doesn't achieve anything," she said, voice just as clinical as it'd been ever since she first abducted Madison. "So as everything is a reward for you... You will be rewarded. Until such a time you fail to perform adequately."
She could feel something soft, but hard at the same time brush against her thighs, moving upwards as her jailer spread her butt open.
Madison shuddered. "There. Just relax and let me show you what happens when you're good..."
You keep on going with your little play until Madison is properly thralled, the brunette girl eventually reduced to a drooling mess through Taylor's persistent application of the dildo shaped after yourself and your own suggestions on how to use it properly.
You do have some experience in this matter, after all. You're kind of an expert, even, or at least you'd say you have a decent amount of practice by now.
Now then, time to properly deal with the whole thing in Boston, you suppose. You have a meeting scheduled with Citrine, Accord's Ambassador to Brockton Bay and your prime connection to the man's organization- representing a lot more connections and wealth than most would realize at first. There's a reason you simply trade weapons through him, that being the simple expediency involved in leaving the details to his people.
The recent shakeup in Boston means that the nearby port city will be in some chaos for some time, so perhaps the right moment to expand your operations has come... though on the other hand, it's not like doing so would actually benefit you that much. Sure, it's a bigger, more prosperous city, but as soon as you've gotten the port and railway lines surveyed and fixed up, you can get pretty much everything you could want in terms of raw materials just as easily and cheaply in Brockton Bay as you could there and the Crypts as an organization do not particularly rely on the territory you have taken as a source of funds.
Most of your income comes from the aforementioned arms dealing and some good old stock market manipulation through Sarah and your accounting department, letting you essentially print money on demand if you really feel like it. Sure, technically Watchdog is supposed to watch out for that kind of thing, but with the effect vampires on many Thinker powers... Well, even if they figured out the gig, it's not like they could actually stop you at this point.
Getting a meeting with Accord would be pretty hard for most people, you feel. Not only is he a pretty well-known crimelord and rather likely to have anyone that tries to get into his place without invitation murdered on principle alone, his power's mental side effects cause him to take OCD to a whole new level, which is why he generally works through intermediaries to avoid having to personally interact with anything annoying him.
That quickly leads to him beating people to death, apparently. Thinker powers, everyone, look at just how amazing they are.
Anyway, you wear a suit and you have some decent level of body control, so you can probably get through a conversation with them man reasonably easily- worst case you can just threaten to turn into an animal and shed fur all over his furniture.
That should hopefully work in a pinch.
But in all seriousness, you school your expression into neutrality as you go through the door on the exact second the meeting was agreed to, making a point to walk perfectly straight towards Accord's desk once you get inside his office, a fairly wide, open room with no decorations or distractions in sight.
"Greetings, Accord," you intone, following the script Sarah gave you just in case. She is, naturally, following along what's happening, as are the others you've talked about this meeting with.
"Welcome, Cain," the short man sitting behind the desk replies. His mask, as you were already aware, is a piece of tinkertech capable of shifting with his expression while he wears a business suit not unlike your own, despite the various differences in your attire when you look closer. Not that it matters.
"Would you prefer to do some small talk or proceed straight toward disussing business?"
"The latter, if you would not mind."
Phew, he really talks like that. Yes, beyond things like body language, Accord genuinely can flip out over someone speaking incorrectly or casually- all conversation with him just works out better when everyone involved is using stilted sentence structuring and no abbreviated wording.
Gabe?
Yeah?
Don't ask him whether he prefers to deal in crates or in warehouses, please.
Oh, you're using Coil to make sure? You think, bemused. Don't worry then, I won't.
Out loud, you give Accord a polite smile, though you keep it minimal to avoid offending his sensibilities just in case. "Very well then. I trust Boston has been recovering well after the Echidna Incident?"
"It has, though not all proceedings are as smooth as they could be," the man behind the desk states. "But please, take a seat first."
Nodding, you do as you are bidden. This is now a complicated interpersonal dance to navigate Accord's issues and negotiate with him at the same time, so you have to actually pay attention to what he has to say.
"In that case, what about the remaining Travelers? I personally ended both Trickster and Echidna, but to my understanding there are three more members I did not concern myself with at the time."
"Yes, Ballistic, Sundancer and Genesis," the man nods, "as well as a fourth member primarily staying in the background. Genesis was wounded rather grievously in the battle you ended and both Ballistic and Sundancer joined the defense against Echidna. All of them are currently in the custody of the PRT, if you are interested."
"I may be," you admit easily. No need to beat around the bush here. "Would there be any problems on your side if I were to stage a jailbreak in order to recruit them?"
"Previous experiences have soured any possible working relationship between them and myself, so I would not mind." Accord looks almost happy to see them possibly being taken out of Boston entirely.
Sounds like what Sarah dug up about why exactly Accord had an issue with the Travelers in the first place is more or less accurate, then.
Anyway, with this you have confirmed that the guy won't mind you popping over to pull this operation Boston for this. Accord isn't exactly in complete control of the city the way you are in control of Brockton Bay, but you're going out of your way to be polite and ask for permission (though you may have done it without it anyway if he'd refused) here.
Hopefully he knows to appreciate the thought.
"That is good to hear," you say, knowing that just saying 'good' wouldn't be a complete sentence and probably tick him off at least a bit. "On another topic, I happen to be aware of your connections to a group calling themselves 'Cauldron' and wish to contact it myself. I am hoping you might be able to help me in this regard."
Because yes, you probably should open communications at some point- you pointedly avoided mentioning you know a lot more about this little secret than the Triumvirate (or two thirds of it, at least) would be happy with, but that was just common sense while in the presence of very, very powerful capes you didn't want to fight at the time.
That and you were still pretending to be mute in your monstrous form. Priorities.
Accord halts for a moment, clearly caught flatfooted by your casual mention of the cape illuminati, but recovers remarkably fast; you may not have noticed if you weren't capable of reading body language in as fine detail as your enhanced senses allow you to.
"That is... surprising, but I would be able to give you a number," the man acts out. Honestly, you have to give him props for keeping himself under control decently well.
You also haven't been breathing except to get enough air into your lungs to speak, so the award for most self-controlled motherfucker in the room goes to yourself once again.
"I am sensing a 'but' there," you prompt Accord. Also, a number, seriously? What are they, a janitorial service?
"But I would like to mention the good and profitable relations between the Lord Street Crypts and my own organization," he says without getting to the point. "As such the future continuation of the same would be appreciated. As I have noticed, a great amount of Brockton Bay's real estate has recently been acquired by a select few companies?"
Huh, are you playing that game?
"It has, yes, though I might mention the less official distribution of territory has been exclusively bent in the favor of the Crypts indeed," you carefully make clear. "I'm afraid the entire city has already been claimed."
"I see how any intruding force would be quite troublesome from an organizational standpoint then," Accord agrees without ever voicing his actual request, mask shifted to show the tiniest of smiles.
"If I may be so bold, however, there have been certain developments in regards to the old, abandoned railway lines once connecting Brockton Bay to the rest of the country. Why, reopening the Lord's Port would most certainly not attract massive amounts of shipping to the city, with Boston's much larger and better developed port so close nearby, but the ease of expanded transportation would be worth the investment from some perspectives, would you not agree?"
"Not openly monetarily, but it would add a cheaper alternative to transporting wares into and out of certain cities, I presume." The criminal tilts his head. "It may also attract investors and companies looking to expand. Brockton Bay's economy has been struggling for decades, so an open sign of improvement may be enough to shift its financial situation."
"Particularly with certain powerful parahumans living inside the city and demonstrably ensuring a certain amount of order if only through limiting fighting between parahumans," you point out.
"Very well, I shall take your advice into account," Accord concludes. "In the meantime, here is the information you requested. Simply follow the instructions provided."
He hands you a piece of paper with everything you wanted printed on it. Turns out he's been prepared for what you wanted all along- or maybe he always has Cauldron' contact information on hand to be handed out at all times in general.
Either way, you'll take it. "Thank you, Accord. It was a pleasure doing business with you."
"Likewise, Cain." The two of you exchange a nod and you get up, careful to remain perfectly coordinated.
That sure went well.
Your night is spent with a mix of pleasant reading as a way of training (turns out books are a powerful metaphor when applied correctly, to say the least) and some idle conversation on the side whenever you take a short break from the 'grueling' schedule you've set for yourself here and there with whoever doesn't have anything particularly pressing to do at the time.
That said, a few actually important discussions are also had, mostly through telepathy for the sheer convenience involved.
So to sum it up, if we go with my original plan, which is looking likely right now, the next extradimensional trip I'll be taking will be to Earth Fallout. Information on it is available at the usual places in case anyone is uncertain as to what to expect. Opinions?
Making things like this clear and letting everyone involved make up their own mind is important.
Sounds good, Sarah says, obviously not having any particular opinions.
Eh, whatever, Kate mentally shrugs.
Nora is paying attention with quiet intensity. It has been a while.
Taylor stays silent.
Good, because while I have my own thoughts on who to bring with me, I would like to note that Taylor has a spot on the list as far as I'm concerned, you let everyone connected to yourself know.
Eh? The girls thinks, caught off guard. Why- is it related to... vamping? Like how Spitfire was the last time?
Hit the nail on the head, you admit happily. I'm trying to bring everyone I'm turning to other dimensions for a start to give them additional time to grow into their new powers and circumstances on the other side. That is, unless you'd prefer not to?
... I am fine with that, she announces. I was just surprised. Is there any particular reason to bring me to Earth Fallout?
There's a whole host of mutated, giant bugs over there, so your power would be immensely useful on several levels. As you think this, you bring up a little 'thought package' on all the giant bugs you've seen in the dimension in question... And, of course, mirelurks. It works on crustaceans, doesn't it?
Once again, your tendency to just chat up your capes at every opportunity is coming in handy.
Yes, it does. I'm... not sure if it would work on things like this, but I can try.
Good. With that cleared up... You clear your metaphorical throat. Taylor will be occupying one of three non-vampire slots on the way there and one of the vampire slots on the way back, which means two more of each are left. First, Isabel, are you coming?
Eh, I-I... Yes, if you want me to, the 'reformed' supervillain thinks. She's been staying awfully quiet so far, which is why you're poking her now. I'm not sure how much of a help I would be, though.
You let me worry about that. More importantly, who among us vampires is going?
...
There's a moment of silence, quite possibly involving the girls talking it out between each other.
Finally, it's Sarah who takes the initiative. Yeah, Fallout is kind of a shitshow still, so I'll stay home this time around, she thinks. Sherrel still not interested, either?
Yup, I'm happy where I am, the big-boobed vehicle tinker agrees.
Eeh, I was gone the last time and I'm a newcomer, so I won't even ask, Emily offers her own input.
So we're all in agreement then? Nora confirms. Me and Kate, unless anyone else would like to compete?
Mm. Okita is just making mental sounds to remind everyone she is there, you feel.
That sounds reasonable. To be honest, I wasn't really expecting to be taken into consideration. Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy... Always just a bit too realistic, isn't he?
Fucking heck yeah, time for a vacation where I shoot everything again.
Yes, you kind of expected that reaction from Kate.
This sounds acceptable, you think at the rest of the hivemind- because let's face it, that's pretty much what your level of shared telepathy makes vampires and thralls, in a sense at least. Sure, you aren't always connected to everyone at once and can just cut yourself off from everyone else if you want... But you can just as easily rejoin the collective thought gestalt, for lack of a better word, you have created.
Not to mention there's no way you'd ever want to stay disconnected for any length of time. Your vampires, or at least the ones you've made personally, are family to you, after all; withdrawing from them like that just doesn't serve any possible purpose.
This does leave one slot open as we go in, however. How about... Taylor, would you like to bring Sophia along, to have her accompany you after you're turned? Not like you plan on really ever letting her go, either way. She's Taylor's slave forever now, just like Madison- and just like the third girl whenever Taylor gets around to collecting her.
Everyone needs a hobby and if Taylor wants to spend a substantial part of her eternal unlife dealing with them, more power to her. You won't stand in the way of that either way.
... I do not think this would be conducive to her development at this time. Huh, Taylor actually says what she's thinking. Progress. She needs a little longer to acclimatize to her cell and her role in life. I've been observing her resistance weakening over time.
Alright. She's your pet, so you decide where she goes.
And that's that.
Aside from the quick discussion on participants for your next trip, you're also taking care of various minor tasks to maintain your interpersonal network within the Crypts while you have the time- usually, you're simply stretched far too thin to really take as much time as you'd like to, sadly, so you have to capitalize on everything you have.
It's surprisingly stressful to set your own tasks and hours when, in the end, you still have to achieve the results you want to see. Goes to show that self-employment has its own issues, too. Even if you believe few would agree to you calling being the cape leading a high-profile gang of brutal villains the same as being self-employed.
Eh, who cares. Either way, back to doing the talky thing.
Specifically, you're going out of your way to check up on two capes in particular before the night is out, one of which isn't living on your base nor technically a part of the Crypts. She's also not a thrall and, presumably, has a normal sleeping cycle, which is why when you teleport yourself into her apartment, you find Parian, civilian name Sabah, sound asleep.
Until you poke her cheek with a finger, that is.
"Bwa-buh?!" Shooting up, Sabah, blinks awake roughly, her large, dark eyes seeking you out in the dim light of the street lights shining in through her bedroom window. "Ugh. I should've known you letting me go was too good to be true."
"Oh, don't worry, this is a courtesy call for the most part," you wave off her incredibly and obviously unwarranted concerns.
"... At four am?" She asks, eyebrow rising even as she draws her bedsheet closer to herself to cover her dark-skinned body clad in underwear.
"What can I say, I know the best times to choose for this kind of thing," you shrug.
"So how have you been ever since you visited the base? I imagine it must've been quite stressful for you at least for a couple days," you casually note as you take a seat next to Sabah's bed, lifting one leg up to rest on the other one.
"Not as stressful as waking up with you in my face," she murmurs, rubbing her face and eyes. "You know just showing up in my room is kind of an issue, right? You-"
"Let's not pretend I can't just do whatever I damn well want here in Brockton Bay," you wave her off. "Anyway, I'm just letting you know I'm leaving a new number you can call if you need anything as well as Okita's number if you want to hook up or something- she isn't exactly reliable about keeping her phone on, but it's worth a shot if you want to call her."
"... Thanks... I guess." Sabah lies down again, closing her eyes. Looks like she's given up trying to talk sense into you; not like she would've had much luck, given you're the sensible one here.
"Oh, before I forget it, are you fine with doing commission work for the Crypts at some point? With the whole clothing thing, I mean." You sit back yourself, stretching out your legs. "Just to have a semi-professional perspective of designs and viability as costumes whenever someone actually wants something more complicated than protective clothing or a bodysuit."
"Sure, whatever," the cape you came to see groans. "Can you just let me sleep now?"
Sweet dreams, Sabah. Parian has lots of work ahead of her... sometime.
Now then, Paige McAbee has been pretty much just sitting along for the ride, much, you imagine, as she's been for a good while now as her life first went to shit, remained in the 'shit' category for several months and finally was elevated to 'somewhat less shit' when you teleported her out of her birdcage transport and put her up in a side wing of your base on a whim, all without any sense of actual agency on her part.
In other words, she could be excused for being somewhat irate or perhaps hopeless at her situation and the implications thereof, but funnily enough when you go to pay her a visit, she is... remarkably relaxed.
"Come in, would you like some tea or coffee?" Beckoning you inside her little customizable apartment (using the robots and manufactories you just let anyone on base use), she takes a moment to enter her kitchen, the separate room sporting an open wall letting her access a small counter in the seating area she seems to use as a living room.
"If you're at it already anyway, tea, please, whatever you have on hand," you vaguely ask. You've never been a fan of coffee and not accepting anything would be kind of rude.
Before long, the two of you are seated and sipping at the still hot drinks, one of those things you never managed to do while still alive. Hot stuff in general needs time to cool down before you can put it inside your mouth, because duh, it's hot.
Warm things are fine. Just nothing that burns your mouth.
But anyway, nowadays you're somewhat more temperature-resistant, so you can bring yourself to pretending well enough. Even if you shall refuse to drink much of the green tea Paige has prepared until it's cooled down a little more.
Asking her about how she's been with all the excitement lately has her set down her own mug and sigh. "About as well as I can be, I think. I've kind of gotten used to just living underground permanently, though relocating to Boston while hiding my hair was a bit of an adventure."
"So you don't mind it too much?" You ask. "The powerlessness over your own fate you've kind of been delegated to ever since that kangaroo court happened?"
Paige snorts, hiding her unbidden grin with one hand. "That's one way to call it." She shakes her head, dispersing her facial expression into a more natural smile. "But yeah, I've just... kind of gotten used to that too, by now. You get kicked down often enough, you just learn to stay on the ground just in case, you know?"
Well, you can imagine. Kinda.
"Well, may as well look at the bright side, as I like to say," you note, gently blowing at your tea to cool it down a little. "You're still alive and you didn't get tortured too much, so things are kind of looking up, aren't they?"
Paige snorts, holding up a hand again. "They literally made me eat through a straw for months!"
"Exactly, they went and fed you, didn't they?"
"Not sure that slurry can be called food. If I ever see anything like it ever again, I'll gladly declare myself guilty just to escape that fate."
"And see, now you won't need to," you follow up with a nod. "You're making progress already."
"God you're terrible." Paige keeps on giggling, apparently not at all put off by your improvised humour.
"I'm much more than just terrible, I'll have you know. Why else would I break a horrible, horrible convict out of their transport to the closest place Earth Bet has to hell? Aside from parts of Africa, anyway."
"Still."
You end up sharing an amiable silence for a few moments, yourself slowly nipping on the sill hot, but not unbearably so tea. In the end, you end up being the one to break it when it turns out to still be a little too hot.
"So have you given any thought to what you'd like to do from here on out? The whole fighting to everyone's deaths thing is hopefully over for now, but I wouldn't be surprised if I end up having to go and fight, like, the Three Blasphemies next month, but if I can help you feel free to ask."
Because you've kind of invested some mild effort into her already, may as well see if you can't draw any use out of her going forward.
"I've already said I'm just trying to lie here and wait, didn't I?" A still bemused Paige reminds you. "If I could, I'd want to... I don't know, sing again, becoming a pop star was all I always wanted, but that's not looking terribly likely, is it?"
"What if I told you about some weird dimension where any form of art is highly valued, people with some animal features run around everywhere so your hair would be mild by comparison and some kind of superpowers are, while not common, well-known to exist?"
"I'd ask if you're being serious, because that sounds too good to be true." Oh no, look at that raised eyebrow.
"Well, there's also a technically semi-infinite number of omnicidial killing machines running around, but those are more a countryside problem than anything else," you admit. "The cities are perfectly safe. Usually."
"Okay, so are you just fucking with me or...?"
"Screw tinkertech, one of my powers is dimensional travel to the wildest fucking places. It's got a lot of limitations, but should I pencil you in for a one-way ticket at some point?" You ask.
"... You know what, screw it. Why not?" That's what you wanted to tear!
A quick poke with a claw later, you're bleeding just a little. "Well then better drink up, because I sure as hell am giving you a shot of the good stuff ahead of time."
Paige looks at the worm-like push of blood you're directing towards her hemokinetically. "Ew."
"Look, it's how I can get you a couple of powers on the cheap. Just drink the blood already, you can wash it down with the tea."
"If only I hadn't just decided to make a change..." She whispers, obediently opening her mouth.
As it turns out, quite a few of those people you gave aura to have already found their semblances or else only need a little push to find out what, exactly, they need to do to make it work. Which does make it easier for you to go through a list and fill it up with details as you go along.
And yes, everybody that doesn't already know their semblance has to come in for testing until you either figure it out or get a clue as to what a given semblance is about. Which is, uh, quite a bit of work, in retrospect, but hey, whatever. Better to know this stuff ahead of time just in case.
Kate: Big Boom: Can condense aura into explosive, ball-like projectiles that can be fired as ammunition or thrown
Sherrel: The Zone: Dramatically increases reflexes and concentration at a cost of aura
Nora: Cryostasis: Protects a target by creating temporary walls of ice
Lea: Pocket Portal: Can create small portals between two points in sight, freely choosing relative orientation
Jeremy: Friction Burn: Can amplify friction one-sidedly on touch, causing heat buildup or fire; can be used on the air at reduced efficiency
Cupcake: Pink Mist: Can create a pink mist that causes various changes in everyone that breathes it in or touches it, from causing hallucinations to empowering allies
Henley: Bean Counter: In exchange for aura, 'accounts' for things and negates their effects, primarily meant for attacks and similar immediate issues
Rachel: Stability: Can transfer force on to any surface she is standing on
Priestess: Offering: Can increase/decrease damage dealt in exchange for increasing/decreasing damage taken by the target correspondingly
Alec: Apathy: Can consume aura to decrease the willingness of a target to act or care about its surroundings
Aisha: Hyperfocus: Can cause targets to focus on an activity or subject to the point of excess in exchange for aura dependent on how much focus is added
Brian: Big Boy: Can create intimidating illusions based on the difference in power he perceives between himself and his target
Isabel: Lightbulb: Is overcome with wild ideas revolving around engineering and practical problem solving
Tammi: Telescribe: Can teleport anything or anyone marked by her aura to locations also marked by her aura. Can personally quick-teleport to marked locations and objects as well.
Alice: Perfection: Can designate tools or objects that will be kept indestructible at a cost of aura depending on the damage prevented
Dinah: Determination: Can consume aura to succeed in any given task, with costs varying by difficulty. Cannot be used for impossible tasks.
Taylor: Plague: Rapidly subjects objects touched to exaggerated decay and decomposition. Aura consumption varies by affected material, can be used through disparate body parts.
Circus: Troupe: Can create body doubles with various minor abilities revolving around clowns and circus acts
Frank Scrapper: Can empower 'scrap' materials; anything that was at some point left over and recycled becomes several times stronger temporarily at a cost of aura
Chariot: Vroom Vroom: Passively gains enhanced reflexes and reaction speed the faster he is moving
Kumi: Lost in the crowd: Traps the target in a hallucination of multiple faceless, unknown people that inspire unnatural hatred in the target. A random amount of blank people will be overlapping with nearby real people.
Phebe: Toxic: Can release toxins from her skin (contact poison, liquids, air based etc.). The toxins ignore aura, though not clothing, so the less she is wearing, the more she can give off
Jackie: Murder Phantom: May selectively transform parts of herself into a mist that can phase through objects. If she turns back while inside the object, it is displaced with extreme force. The denser the object the more aura is consumes to turn back inside it. Can transform her whole body for short periods of time at great aura costs.
Ayane: Momentum: Can absorb the kinetic energy behind things and use it to enhance the power of her blows
Beverly: Misplacement: When targeted, enemies will perceive her to be in a slightly different position than she truly is, consequently causing targeted attacks to miss
Catrin: Data Interface: Can directly mentally connect to digital technology, gathering information directly with her mind and manipulating it via thoughts
Kayden: Punishing Light: Can emit a beam of light that deals damage according to how wronged she feels by what it hits
Cherie: Eros: Can consume aura to become physically stronger based positive emotions nearby people feel towards her
Riley: Bad Kids Are Punished: Can inflict uneasiness/nausea/pain/insanity on anyone in the vicinity that is rude or unpleasant, especially if deliberately so, in exchange for aura
Mimi: Focused Fire: Can absorb heat and fire to release it in a single explosion, consuming an increasing amount of aura the longer she keeps on absorbing and holding the charge.
Paige: Earworm: Can use aura to cause sounds she makes to resonate in the minds of everyone that hears them, length of the effect related to aura consumed.
"Come on, you have a free spot, right? I wanna do a clinical trial and stuff and nobody gonna miss people there, right?" Mayhaps it could have been a mild mistake to let Cupcake know about the circumstances of your next dimensional trip, but now that she's here already...
"Okay, give me the full rundown of why you want to go, then," you ask.
"Uh, duh, there's a bunch of people and I want a bunch of test subjects nobody will miss," the pint-sized chemist lays out. "... I can also mess around with biochemistry with the mutated stuff out there I guess?"
"Eh, sure, whatever," you shrug and pat her head. "But everyone gets to call you more cutesy nicknames and you aren't allowed to complain."
"That's not fair!" The diminutive woman pouts up at you, raising both hands in mock outrage.
"The world ain't fair and neither am I. You know my terms." You do enjoy this, just a little, you'll admit.
"Muuugh, fine!" Cupcake stomps her foot and turns away from you with crossed arms, still letting you pat her head.
You repress the mild chuckle at her display.
Hey Vicky, Amy, you two up for some brunch together? You think at the Dallon sisters, quite fed up with endless semblance testing at this point. Most of it was just you asking everyone a series of questions on whether they noticed some changes to their mental processes and similar down to instinctive urges they might've missed or ignored without being prompted and going from there, but the dozens of people involved means that you've just spent way too much time on this whole circus.
We can't, Vicky is the first to respond, despondently so. We're kind of grounded because of those tinkertech drinks that gave us powers.
Superpower cancer, Amy corrects her.
Yeah, that. We didn't tell anyone, but we used the new powers when Leviathan came.
Well, that sure is a pickle. You suppose.
Alright, gimme a bit to talk to your mom, you send at them.
... By deal with do you mean you're going to fuck her? Amy asks to gagging thoughts from Vicky's direction.
Maybe, maybe not, you bluntly admit. Probably. Now go do whatever it is you do when you're just sitting around all day.
Can we watch?
Amy!
What? It'd be hot. You get the distinct feeling that the girls have a separate discussion between each other without your input.
... Okay, yeah, it would be, Vicky eventually agrees. Even if it's kind of a weird thing.
Whatever you say, princess, you send as a last amused swipe, already getting ready to have a talk with Carol- which you were planning to already at some point, really, this is a perfectly fine opportunity when you think about it.
Still, time to get started, so you pull out your phone, rarely used as it is, and write a message.
It is with record speed that you get a response, short and snippish as it is, and so you soon have arranged for a meeting.
Your casual mobility around Brockton Bay being as it is, you can easily and quietly teleport over to the external safehouse you have kind of taken to using for New Wave business of all kinds and get started on preparing.
That is, preparing some food! Because while you're doing this already, you're doing it right and that means you're grilling some steak for both of you with some of these flat, wide fries to go with it. There's a trick to it, of course, but with the sheer amount of people inside your soul that have handled meat like this before you aren't too worried about getting the timing right.
Plus some peas and carrots you're making on the side. You have to make sure your humans have a well-balanced diet, after all, how else will they last in the long term?
So it is that when Carol arrives, angrily striding through the door you've left unlocked for her, she does so to the scent of fresh steak wafting off the plates and through the repurposed warehouse, yourself already sitting and waiting for her.
"Hello Carol, how have you been these past few days?"
"Cain," she growls.
"Please, please, hold your applause for after the meal, at least," you ask with a small grin. "I'm sure you'll love it, I made it myself of course."
"If you think I will let you get away with this, you should have thought again."
Carol glowered at the despicable villain she had to admit she was attracted to, carefully taking another bite of incredibly delicious steak. This was beyond the level most restaurants could offer and she would be damned if she accepted it as it was.
The villainous steak aside, she would not accept the villain sitting opposite of herself right this very moment!
"See, I was a little worried when I heard New Wave was in the middle of that fight, you know how I lost sight of Leviathan a couple of times." The sheer casual disregard the Endbringer was being mentioned with would have struck Carol as unseemly from anyone else, but if one man had earned the right to do so, it was Cain.
"As I am sure you know we all made it through fine," she spat out, drilling holes into him with her eyes.
Then she took a bite of the vegetable side dishes steamed to perfection.
"Yes, and I am quite glad for it." The bastard didn't even have the decency to be obviously lying. "So would I be mistaken if you noticed your daughters having had a few... upgrades, lately?"
Carol cut another piece off her steak, savoring the meat cross and flavorful on the outside, but soft and mellow on the inside. Only then did she point out the fork like a judge's gavel. "We all know the Crypts are the only source of Trump powers like that in town. Will you talk around it all day or get to the point already?"
The awful, sexy bastard had the gall to look amused. As though all that Carol amounted to was someone for him to play with on the side.
Even if that was right.
"That's right, I did arrange for your daughters to get additional powers. Just in case they got into any dangerous situations."
"We had a deal," Carol hissed, knowing how venomous she was sounding but not caring. "I do what you want and-"
"And I don't sell off artwork featuring you or your family to whoever pays the most, yes, I remember," came a dry answer, Cain taking a bite himself.
(Privately, Carol wondered whether this was his real face and if so, how dare he be such a handsome young man.)
"I just..." She slumped, taking a deep breath. "I am doing this to keep my family save from you."
"And if your daughters are happy to spend time with me, that is their prerogative, not yours," he pointed out, for all the world seeming as reasonable as they came. "Let's face it, them having a few extra tricks did contribute to their safety during the fight, so in a way, aren't I doing you a favor here?"
"Don't try to twist this around on me," Carol said. "Just don't."
"And here I thought a lawyer would appreciate the thought I'm putting into this." Cain smirked, the expression looking far too at home on someone with a criminal background.
"My profession just highlights the dangers of letting my daughters within a two mile radius of someone like you," Carol said, glaring at him even knowing how this was going to end.
"Well I'm sure you'll be delighted to hear I'm not making your daughters to do anything against their will in any case," he shrugged, unconcerned despite how little of a reassurance that was. "They certainly need much less convincing than you do."
Carol's eyes narrowed to slits. "I swear, Cain, if you so much as touch a hair on their shoulders-"
"Please." The word was laden with so much smugness she could almost physically feel it. "We both know that isn't what this is about. You're angry because your daughters knowingly, at some point, interacted with me and you didn't know anything about it so you came to me to vent."
"That is a very daring interpretation," she let him know.
"If I wanted to hurt your daughters in any way, you would be entirely powerless to stop me," he bluntly continued talking over her. "Good thing for you I have no real possible reason to, isn't it?"
"That is not what I wanted to hear, Cain."
"Mhm, I can imagine what you might want to hear instead." He got up and it was only now that Carol realized both their meals were finished, almost as if they were only a dream. A small pang of loss overcame her.
She still had to focus on the man coming around the table. And also stripping, shrugging off his clothes one piece at a time. "Kneel," he commanded with a smile just barely honest enough she didn't immediately cuss him out.
Instead, she... Instead Carol looked at him, taking in the fit young man before her with his chiseled chest and abs, barely tamed hair and confident expression on his handsome face as he kick his pants off, revealing his large, almost intimidating penis.
It was just as she remembered it, shaped to be both aesthetically pleasing and mind-meltingly pleasurable. She looked him in the eyes again, searching out the absolute certainty that she would be getting on her knees and working for her dessert.
She found it and so she did, barely believing herself. A part of her brain was still thinking, talking to herself even as she acted almost on autopilot.
She was such a slut, wasn't she, to do a villain's bidding not because of her family or any deals or agreements like she used to tell herself, but rather because it simply turned her on, because it was hot to debase herself like this, sliding off the chair to settle on the ground and wrap a hand around the majestic cock of the man that'd manipulated her into this.
He still hadn't broken eye contact, so neither did she as she felt the pulsing, veiny rod under her fingers, lifting it up to let her lips brush against the soft, but hard tip and breathing in the musky scent.
She couldn't believe herself. She should be fighting this man to the death instead of meekly obeying his every order.
Cain brought a hand around her head, fisting her hair and pulling her closer. Carol let it happen (she shouldn't), tasting his manliness when his rod entered her mouth, lips creating a seal around it.
"Imagine your daughters could see you like this," Cain said, heavy gaze pinning her down. "Using them as an excuse to suck cock. I wonder how they would feel, would they be disgusted or would they... punish you?"
She knew they should be disgusted. Likely would be. She also wished they'd-
"Maybe they'd join in outright, too, bet you'd enjoy it, even."
Carol closed her eyes, breathing through her nose as she voluntarily took him deeper into her mouth, tongue rubbing along the underside of his manhood as she prepared to gag on his cock like a whore.
(She was such a whore. Disgusting.)
Elsewhere, a pair of (adoptive) sisters had convened in Vicky's room, watching and feeling everything going on from Gabriel's perspective with baited breath. They'd experimented together quite a bit, but even so the times they connected to him like this were among the most intense and memorable ones they shared.
"Ngh! Ugh!"
Which was how it came that Amy Dallon was on her knees, mirroring her (adoptive) mother in fellating a cock. In this case, one grown on Vicky like she'd done before, with lots of extra sensitive nerves right where she needed them to be to just overload her sister with pleasure.
"Amyyy!" She took it to the hilt under her sister's grasp, milking yet another delicious load from her. Drinking up and suckling for any leftover fluid, she soon kissed and nibbled the tip as she looked up at Vicky who was breathing heavily.
"You like having me be your cocksucker?" She asked, referring to the discussion they'd had on the casual use of her power for the purpose of sex. They didn't always do this kind of thing, but there was no reason not to have fun like this at all.
"You're the... best... Amy..." Vicky panted, falling over backwards onto her bed. "This is exhausting, though. How isn't Gabriel coming at all?"
"Probably practice. Or he's just wired differently." And didn't receive dozens of times the usual pleasure, a fact she wasn't going to mention.
Instead, she shifted closer to her sister, pushing Vicky's soft, muscled thighs apart to let her eat her out, fingering her sodden pussy and kissing her swollen clit. "Oh!"
Whose sensitivity she was also just slightly elevating. Vicky wasn't allowed to come down as long as she was working on her.
"Hah, hah, Amy..." Her sister's arms stretched out, so she climbed onto her to receive a hug. And a wet kiss, rubbing her body against the soft, pliable, horny blonde that could still benchpress her wth ease.
Once done, she sat up, rubbing her butt against the phallus now behind her. "Look, they're moving on..." She smiled wickedly.
"Amy, about..."
"About Carol? About her maybe joining in?"
"Yeah. That- Are you sure?"
"Mm, I wouldn't mind," Amy said, hotdogging her sister's cock a little longer, letting its heat warm her cheeks. "Imagine both of you with big honking dicks double teaming me while I choke on Gabriel on top."
"Fuuuck," Vicky whispered, twitching against Amy. A good sign.
But now she wanted to get fucked herself, so she adjusted her height, grabbing Vicky's cock... And paused, a wicked gleam in her eye as she beheld what Gabriel was doing in real time.
She adjusted her angle again.
Carol bit her lip, chest lying flat on the table as Cain groped her buttocks. His cock was still just as hard and large as before, like it usually was (and that there was a usual was just one sign for how disgustingly deviant she was), ready to drill into her and leave her a drooling mess.
Something fluttered inside her stomach in anticipation.
"You want this, don't you?" Cain whispered smugly, pulling her cheeks apart to reveal her privates like some perverse evaluation. "It's been all you've been thinking about ever since I messaged you."
"Yeees," she moaned. Like some bitch in heat. "Please fuck meee..."
Why was she like this every time she was with him? Like some needy slut?
Cain's response was to take one had away- and bring it back in a smack, making her edge forward on the table and grit her teeth. "What a bad mother you are," he told her. "You deserve to be punished."
"I do," she nodded breathlessly. "I'm the worst."
She really, really did deserve to be punished.
"Such." Slap. "A." Slap. "Bad." Slap. "Mother." Slap.
Again and again Cain spanked her, surely making for quite the sight. There she was, heroine, mother, wife, bent over for a stranger that had made her submit with nary but a few words and obediently receiving her spanking. Her butt had to be looking red and swollen.
Worse, he was a villain. Surely, she could sink no lower than this- but then Cain stopped, one thumb sliding over sensitive, stinging flesh. "Pull yourself apart," he demanded.
With shivering hands, Carol did, reaching backwards and resting her breasts against the table's surface to let him see everything.
She was such a horny, useless slut. She couldn't even resist this.
"Oh, imagine your daughters were seeing this," he murmured loud enough for her to hear, making her turn her head to glance at him where she lay. "Ready to take cock like a good girl. Or is it a bad mother, after all?"
She was silent, but her wet, needy eyes said it all, she thought.
Cain grabbed her hips around her arms, his impressive tool not plunging deep between her folds like she was expecting but instead evenly pushing against her asshole, her tight ring relaxing quickly and easily after the thorough cleaning she'd done before coming. Because she was a disgusting pervert and there was no point in denying it anymore.
She groaned as she felt him conquer her anus once again, confidently pressing forward; she was his in this moment, her ass merely a tool for his pleasure. Every time he pushed, her brain was melting out her ears; every time he pulled back her backdoor was trying to pull him back in.
She was sensitive and already riled up from when he'd made her worship his cock, so it took little time for her to peak despite doing nothing but staying in position as her ass was ravaged, wordlessly moaning out her sick pleasure into the villain's lair. He did not let up despite how much bigger he felt, Carol's ass surely tightening up- if anything, he was speeding up, rapidly pistoning into her poor anus.
Carol's tongue lolled out, only retracted with great effort as she lost the illusion of control over her body. Reduced to a receptacle for Cain's bottomless lust, she let him take her ass over and over again until, finally, after untold climaxes she could never get anywhere else, he came, burying his immense length into her whole, a wet squelching sound echoing from his balls slapping against her poor, unfucked pussy.
The heroine went cross-eyed as Cain deposited his load inside of her, legs twitching as she received all of it as deeply as her rectum could. One heavy spurt of his seed after the other filled her, making her feel wet and dirty in a good (bad) way.
"That's a good girl," Cain whispered after her sobbing cries of release subsided. "Taking all of my cum before your daughters can."
And like that, he went right back to it, making Carol scream out in unbridled lust at being used like this.
She would not stay awake long enough to feel him slip out of her well-lubricated asshole, slick with his semen by the time he stopped inflicting all the pleasure he wished upon her.
Okay then, with Carol tuckered out and resting in one of the rooms inside this place meant precisely for this kind of thing, you move on to the next step- which isn't going to get Vicky and Amy for that brunch turned lunch date, after all.
Sorry girls, but I have an appointment I need to get to soon-ish, you telepath at the both of them. You mind meeting up in a couple hours instead, make it an early dinner?
Sure, if you're making it, Amy shamelessly demands. Thanks for beaming us the second-hand taste testing early, by the way.
No problem, you reply with a small grin. Also, what's up with Vicky? Why's she on radio silence?
I think I broke her a little.
Say no more. You know exactly what situation the brunette public cape is in from long experience with the phenomenon.
Anyway, with that done, you quickly get everything ready for that appointment you mentioned. It's not much- just throwing on some loose clothing and grabbing some fabric produced by Taylor's forays into producing spider silk in greater amounts.
It's still mostly completely normal silk, largely gained from black widows she's controlling instead of golden orb weavers who are still taking a bit to build up a proper population inside of the part of the base now dedicated to housing her collection of insects… And Nolac is taking a while to get results of the project you gave them.
For some reason, the spiders tend to either die or horribly mutate and require immediate purging most of the time they're subjected to the temporary FEV lest a new species of arm-length giant spiders that fart fire and are venomous enough to kill a human with a single bite spread throughout the Bay.
Anyway, you only really want some basic, low-down clothing, so this standard spider silk will do just fine. And it is thus that you show up with sheets of it under one arm, coming inside the workshop space spontaneously rented just for this.
Parian is already waiting for you, dressed up in her cape costume and crossing her arms upon seeing you. "When I got that message I wasn't sure whether to accept a commission so soon after you woke me up in the middle of the night," she grumbles in your general direction.
"I'm sure the promise of a couple grand helped," you wave her off. "Anyway, here's the material as promised- spider silk, should be workable as is though you may want to dye it."
"There was something about a dress, but I'll need measurements," the fashion-interested cape says, stretching out a hand to receive the cloth. "Either those or I'll measure the recipient myself. Speaking of, what-"
Her voice is stuck in her throat when she looks back at you, the shifting features and figure catching her off guard. You smile, deciding to make full use of your now much fuller lips. "Why, you can measure me all you want, dearie," you say, a finger stretched out to slide across the bottom of her mask. "I'll even let you touch wherever you need to…"
Parian swallows heavily.
"You- you really don't need to- do that." Parian's speech seems to be suffering from some minor malfunctions, the cape dressed as some Victorian doll stumbling over her words as you dress down.
"Oh, but I want to," you growl at her, confidently throwing off your shirt to let your tits breathe. You really understand the thing Kate always has about enjoying it when she can go topless in moments like this.
"I, uh, I just don't think you should do this? This is a business thing and I'm into women, so this is really just making this weird and-"
"Nonsense, how else will you get accurate measurements?" You ask, unbuttoning your pants. "We both want to achieve the best possible fit, don't we?"
"You're doing this to mess with me, aren't you?"
"A little," you admit, shimmying your hips out of their confines, too and stepping out of your clothing. "Now do you want to get your hands on this or not?"
Parian snorts, fingers twitching. "You wanted this."
She takes up a measuring band, coming closer to wrap it around your waist. You also get the distinct impression she's staring at your breasts behind her mask.
"Like 'em?"
"They're big boobies, of course I like them."
That's a fair point, actually. Can't argue with it.
You let her proceed to measure your female body, taking the circumferences of your waist in several places, your upper and ower arms, your neck and your thighs.
In fact, she spends a lot of time on your thighs, fondling and touching them to her heart's content, fingers infinitely close, but never quite touching your privates as you stand with one leg forwards to give her all the access she could want.
Finally, she gets up again, eyeing the silk she's been splitting up into threads with her power to have it telekinetically dye itself black on the side. It's some fast-acting stuff, too, drying quickly and letting her wave it over without isues.
"Let's be honest here, with your power, there's no real use in measuring when you could just use it to custom-make clothing on the spot, isn't it?" You ask as you feel the threads settle around you and under your hair, slowly weaving themselves into a simple pattern.
"There is actual use for your measurements in case you need adjustments or more clothes later on and you aren't there in person," Parian replies, evidently concentrating as she uses her power. It's apparently not completely intuitive for this kind of thing- but then, parahuman powers do have that nasty tendency to be a bitch to work with outside of specific parameters no matter what.
Honestly, the fact Parian is so proficient at this she can construct a dress around your body is already a sign of extensive training, you'd say.
More importantly, the dress itself. Which, as it turns out, is quickly becoming a minidress, shoulderless and only coming up to your chest- which is sparsely covered itself with panes of cloth drawn over them to hide your nipples at least.
"Oh, someone has been thinking about me, haven't they?" You smile, shaking yourself a little to see how well it fits. "I wonder if I should make you tell me all about what you're thinking," you whisper as you throw your hair back with one hand.
"… Do you really want to know?" Parian asks, taking a threatening step towards you.
"Yes, please." You respond by taking a step towards her yourself.
All of a sudden, a dark-skinned hand is pushing into your chest, making you cry out in both amusement and (mild) surprise. "Ah!"
"They're so big…" Parian dully notes, fingers digging into the sensitive flesh of your breast as her other hand holds your arm in place. "You just give her big, vulnerable eyes in response.
"Fuck, you're so hot." Parian may or may not be in full control of her faculties, but at least she's honest. "I want to put you into latex and fuck you with my special toys all day."
"Oh, I wouldn't have thought you'd be a top. What with Okita."
"She's a special case." Snapped out of her lust, Parian shakes her head. "Anyway, this will do as a base to work off of. I refuse to hide any more of your thighs than this."
A hand lands on the insides of said thighs, thumb just barely tracing upwards as she apparently can't get enough of touching you.
"If you want to play around a little, just say the word… Though I'm not letting you dom without a fight," you whisper into her ears.
"… No. This is a business transaction and I'm not a hooker, so if I'm being paid I'm not messing around like that," she (surprisingly) declines. "Though if you ever want to hit me up as a woman, please, please do."
"Mhm." Guess you got another fan, after all.
When Amy and Vicky come into the warehouse whose address you went and texted them again just to make sure they'd find it, you've had a couple hours to work with inside the small kitchen you put into it more as a little curiosity back when you had it renovated for casual use.
Well, you're actually making some pretty decent use out of it now, at least. Getting fresh ingredients delivered via teleportation is just as convenient as you've gotten used to (and probably spoiled by), so the rest is all just a matter of preparing them just right.
And you do. Not to toot your own horn too much, but you do have a certain intrinsic understanding of how to cook thanks to all the (thousands of) people you ate to steal their skills and this, combined with yourself putting some actual thought and effort into this, means you can make some damn fine food.
You're even using the requisite outfit to make it work, to boot. You aren't wearing your new dress in the kitchen, because fuck getting it dirty and wrinkled for no reason, but you do have it on hand for once the dinner actually starts.
What you're making is a recipe that you've found by looking through your internal library of memories until you got something that seemed good, in this case a healthy helping of dumplings together with various vegetables (carrots, peas, broccoli, corn and similar) and lots of chicken fried to either be slices as soft as can be with a golden-brown color to them or a little crispier, smaller chunks.
The whole dish is served with plenty of sauce and a few additional condiments for anyone that wants to add some, though you haven't been shy about adding the amounts needed where they belong.
Of course you also need some side dishes and dessert, which is why you take a bit to mix some dough you quickly knead, divide into two bowls and use for separate types by adding a certain ingredient, finally forming it into square-shaped tubes you stack up and then cut into thick cookies-to-be.
That's right baby, the checkerboard cookies are back… with a vengeance! Also, it's really easy to forget you have a kitchen with all the tools you could want imaginable when your hands work just as well as any mixer you could want.
While the cookies are in the oven, then, sliced into thick forms by your claws, you switch your attention to the side dish. By which you mean you looked up how to make sushi and whether or not you have the ingredients you need for it in storage down in your bunker.
You do, so that's exactly what you try making.
Fast forward to your guests showing up, Carol Dallon, whom you've had sleeping in one of the side rooms until now, has awoken, most likely roused from her slumber by the scents filling the safehouse from your activities, slowly getting up and letting her sore body get used to moving again after the reaming she received up her ass at your hands.
You, on the other hand, are busy setting the table. With bowls full of cookies, because knowing what comes after the meal is just as important as the meal itself.
Though the sisters seem to be focusing on a different aspect of this situation altogether.
"Gabriel? Is… is that you? As a woman wearing nothing but an apron?" Vicky asks, blinking.
"I must have died and went to weeb heaven." At least Amy seems properly appreciative.
"Do you like it? I was in this form already and I didn't want to mess up my new dress." You turn around yourself to give both of the girls a little show, culminating with a kiss and a smile thrown at them.
That's when Carol stumbles out of the guest room, still naked and sweaty from earlier with your cum leaking out of her ass, her own fluids completing the look of a woman that was fucked up the ass a couple dozen times a few hours ago. Still half-asleep, she blinks at her daughters.
"Oh, Vicky, Amy."
"… Hey mom," Vicky says, wiggling her eyebrows at the sight of her mother. "Are you, uh, joining us for dinner?"
"Dinner sounds lovely right now…"
"You must've had a lot of exercise earlier," Amy joins in on the fun. "Can we…?"
"Go ahead, I made enough for everyone," you say, waving all of them closer to the table. "I hope you like sushi, by the way, I tried my hand at making some on the side."
"Oooh, I love sushi!" Vicky exclaims, literally flying closer to take a seat.
Amy almost groaned in pleasure as she shoveled more food into her mouth. She couldn't get enough, it was just so damn tasty, the sauce combining perfectly with the dumplings soaking in it and the meat made even more tender and tasty- or having its crisp, flavorful chunks softened just the right amount by it.
She downright forgot what was going on around her as well as what she was planning to say about her mother and the absolute state they'd found her in; she couldn't spare any attention for anything that wasn't eating as much of all of this stuff as possible.
Even the vegetables were delicious and she wasn't normally a veggie girl.
Vicky squealed in happiness, her mouth closed only so she wouldn't lose any of the sushi was was eating. She didn't often get any, but Brockton Bay had a pretty big Asian refugee population so every now and then, she could get her mom to take them to a nice restaurant serving one of her favorite dishes in the world.
But this stuff was somehow even better than that. The seasonings, the raw fish cut just right, even the sticky rice was freaking delicious. She hardly even got to eat the main dish, so busy she was 'sampling' every bit of sushi laid out.
Not that Ames seemed to mind. Her sis was getting her third bowl of seconds already and not slowing down in the least.
Carol Dallon was in a daze, long years of experience in keeping herself under control the only thing saving her from running out of the room in utter shame as the realization of the reality of her situation dawned on her.
She was sitting on the dinner table with her girls… Entirely naked, bearing the marks of herself and Cain earlier that day on her skin clear as day. She swallowed, and not only due to the unfairly delicious food served for this perverse feast.
Cain, sitting with them as a female and showing off in a dress, occasionally reaching over to let long, slender fingers draw across her body. Vicky and Amy, called to further shame her no doubt, were greedily eating everything in sight, nowhere near as reserved as herself and only stealing a few glances at her on occasion.
She could still feel the villain's seed in her… in her ass, pooling on her chair and making her squirm in a mixture of remaining arousal and awkwardness. And for all that she wished she could cover herself… To do so now would be to acknowledge the situation she was in.
So she continued eating instead, quietly relishing the taste she was escaping toward.
"Make sure you leave some space for dessert everyone, I made a lot of cookies for this." Cain's announcement was met with furious nodding from her daughters.
Carol quietly wondered, furiously thinking rather than gesticulating, about how she would explain this to her daughters.
You smile, happy to see everyone likes your cooking. All three of your guests were kind of lost in eating earlier, too busy to stuff themselves to make much conversation, but now it's time for cookies.
"The sweet, crumbling taste is spreading through my mouth with every bite I take, the well-baked dough like sand when ground between my teeth but even tastier when mixed with saliva into a homogenous mass, the soft vanilla and delicious chocolate finally combined in a dance of flavor indescribable without having a bite for yourself."
Amy is kind of narrating to herself, but she's been doing that since earlier, so you don't pay it any mind. Vicky, however, groans in satisfaction with every cookie she eats, giving you big puppy dog eyes. "Gaaabe, can we take a few of these home? I don't think we'll eat all of them right away and cookies are best fresh."
"Sure, I'll pack some up for you in a bit. You guys want some of the other stuff too, I made sure we'd have enough no matter how much everyone wanted to eat?"
Amy pulls herself out of her momentary trance. "Oh god, can I have another bowl?"
"Young lady, you've eaten enough to feed two families by now," Carol chides her gently. "Just take some leftovers to eat tomorrow."
"Yeah, about that mom, want me to give you a checkup just in case ingesting that much sperm through the ass is unhealthy?" The brunette girl asks sweetly.
"…" Her mother stays silent.
Smoothing out the length of your dress, you go through a few octaves of your voice, even knowing you can always peak and sing at your best as your throat isn't affected by all the mortal foibles that may require clearing it. You've been staying in female form for a bit longer than usual today, but it doesn't seem to have made any impact on your mentality, as opposed to what happens when you let loose and make use of your strongest forms.
Which is great. It would've sucked if it affected your orientation a bunch anytime you kept on to the twin wonders on your chest for a bit.
Not that it matters all that much, you just like actually having a clear idea of who and what you're into and who and what now. For now, though, you shall get ready to sing.
"Hello everyone, welcome to Lilith's Lullabies," you greet the camera when the timer is down, having kept count of the seconds in your head. "I've been wanting to see you ever since that dreadful fight against the wettest blanket in Brockton Bay, but I had to delay a few days because things were just so busy for a while… Ah, but don't let me bore you with my stories, let's get straight to the a'singin'! If you have any requests, please make sure to drop them in the community poll, I'll definitely have a listen to any that make it there myself."
You're trying to make this particular stream as personable and 'nice' as you can to make full use of your womanly charms, speaking warmly and trying to address your listeners as directly as possible.
"Let's get right to it, then; what did you lovely listeners pick out for me this week?"
Alexandria, or Rebecca Costa-Brown as she was in her identity of the Chief-Director of the PRT, glanced over the reports she had accessed in preparation for the next meeting she would be participating in in a different dimension entirely, summing up her thoughts and writing down a bullet list of points she would be bringing up as theories to be presented.
Sometimes, she felt she shouldn't be doing this- messing with David and making up wild, half-baked ideas about how their latest big problem case functioned while trying to hit upon the one that actually came close to the truth, being who she was and having done the things she did. Poisoning thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands, to death in the name of advancing their understanding of the entity's agents. Orchestrating more atrocities as an executive member of Cauldron (and, truthfully, one of its few members after the Simurgh caused too many deaths and the risk of losing data to it was deemed too huge), knowingly condemning the entirety of Earth Bet to a slow societal collapse in the hopes of buying time with its death throes.
All in order to stave off the destruction of humanity across dimensions, knowing there was a second entity out there, somewhere, and the sacrifices they were making of others may not even be enough to achieve a goal that, sometimes, felt so distant and unreachable that perhaps it wasn't really worth it, after all.
And yet there she was, collating random suggestions based on the music choices of a villain that may or may not actually be genuinely leaving them up to a random audience for fun.
That summed things up nicely, actually. She was having… fun. Was this truly something she could allow herself as someone putting everything on the line? And everyone?
Alexandria glanced at the page.
The Pretender:
Rebellion against authority?
'Keep you in the dark', 'what if I say I'm not like the others, what if I say I'm not just another one of your plays'- Not actually a parahuman, different in nature entirely
'You're the Pretender- Doesn't matter what. May refer to Cauldron or Scion?
I'm finished making sense, done pleading ignorance-Victory against Leviathan means he doesn't need to hold back?
Get Jinxed:
???
The Man With the Hand Instead Of A Gun:
'And he's gonna undo whatever you've done', 'Messing your Master Plan before you've barely begun!'- Simurgh? Simurgh. Otherwise, Thinkers, may also refer to Cauldron
'What I lack in competence I compensate with confidence, A consummate connoisseur of compiling my own compliments, Complaints are confidential, so no one knows my abilities, Are limited to lying, I'm a living liability'
Cain has no powers, just makes others believe he does?
Cain has powers, but only those others believe he has?
Cain is not real
Most of it was just random thoughts indeed, she could get the same by logging onto PHO or looking over reports from Watchdog, but it would do as a base for her next go at befuddling David so much he just gave up.
Alexandria sighed, leaning back and closing her eyes as she thought back on her perfect recollection of everything that had happened ever since she connected to her Agent. Perhaps having a bit of fun every now and then wasn't too bad, even if it felt she was spitting on the sacrifices made by each and every of their test subjects, clients and victims, whether directly or indirectly.
Hobbies were supposed to be important for a good work-life balance, weren't they?
She shook her head and pulled up the reports from Brockton Bay, the PRT ENE's every move being under immense scrutiny due to Cain's placement.
Director Piggot had dropped a new document on Canary's disappearance on the way to the birdcage, or the Canary Incident, as it was coming to be known among her circles. Glancing over it, one paragraph caught her eye in particular.
'It is therefore likely, assuming theories regarding Cain's Trump capabilities are true, that the vocal sound-based powers demonstrated indicate a connection between the disappearance of Bad Canary and the LSC's operations in the sector ENE.'
She wasn't wasting any time on using Cain's presence to excuse as many perceived failings of her department as she could, was she? Not that she could be blamed; having to suddenly wrangle the next best thing to Scion except with a sense of humour in her city was more important than explaining certain irregularities.
The same could be said for Shadow Stalker's disappearance. Normally, a Ward being abducted by the Elite like that, even an outlier like Bastard Son, would be a call for punitive measures, but provoking the Elite unnecessarily at this juncture was not only unwise, it would also most likely not produce any results whatsoever.
No cape on the East Coast that recently appeared had any power that could be passed for Shadow Stalker's. Human trafficking was tricky business and doing so with parahumans was just asking to be blindsided, so it wasn't feasible on any large scale. The Elite preferred big business transactions to many smaller ones when they could get away with it and this level of escalation was entirely out of the norm for their modus operandi.
In short, it probbaly wasn't the Elite. If it was, Cauldron would know about the level of internal dissent necessary for a splinter faction involving Bastard Son to orchestrate something like this, despite the separate, cell-like structure the organization preferred.
If she had to go with her gut, then Alexandria would suspect the Lord Street Crypts, but provoking Cain was, if anything, even less wise than sizing up the Elite. The latter could be managed, while the former… Having another Endbringer running around would be counter to all their goals.
Shadow Stalker would be considered MIA indefinitely unless circumstances forced their hands to investigate, something that was looking increasingly unlikely as time went on.
Amy Dallon sat at the table, her fingers intertwined as her chin rested upon her hands. Beside her, Vicky was eyeing the bowl of cookies she'd poured herself, but the atmosphere was too awkward for her to just steal some away with their mother sitting opposite the two girls.
It was still a little weird to think of mom as a woman that had sex with Gabriel, but she'd had enough time to get used to it by now. And if there was any doubt as to the fact of the matter, well, she'd seen the cum pooling out of her mother's ass.
Which was hot. She wasn't gonna lie about that. In the first place, there was a lot of familial resemblance between Vicky and Carol and since Amy had already decided she'd embrace being a disgusting degenerate anyway…
"So… Guess the cat's out of the bag now," she said to drive away the cloying silence hanging over the three of them with the bluntness of a brick hitting a store window. "Does that make riding the Cain Train a family tradition?"
"Amy!" Carol's ire was as quick to rouse as it was to disappear, in this moment, her mom taking a quick breath to calm herself down. "Yes, it looks like Cain approached everyone at this table and propositioned us for sex, and it seems we all agreed for one reason or another."
"Which is kinda fucked up, mom," Vicky said, quiet. "I didn't want to get into it before, but… What about dad?"
"Your father and I have a… We haven't consummated our marriage for years now. You know his mental state is keeping him from doing and enjoying many things."
Amy considered the viability of permanently boosting hormone production in a human body for a moment before swearing off the idea for good. Too much potential to screw the person she did it on over too badly. "So you were having a dry spell and decided Gabe was good enough to break it?"
"I will have you know I was blackmailed into having an affair with him," Carol sniffed. How close to reality that take was was another matter entirely.
"Huh," Vicky made. "Guess you learned to enjoy it after a while at least. Don't worry about it, both of us also get knocked out with pleasure pretty much every time."
"Stupid real-world ahegao machine," Amy muttered under her breath, recalling her own last time with Gabriel. She was still mainly into girls, but she'd make an exception for him and his stupid bullshit she could hardly copy even with her power.
Then she cleared her throat. "I think what we should be worrying about is where to go now that all the cards are on the table."
"What'cha mean, Ames?" Vicky was just trying to distract her, of course. Pinching her, Amy used her power to make her sister feel it through her forcefield, making her yelp and drop the cookie she was trying to sneak by her watchful eyes, right into Amy's palm.
She raised it to her mouth. "I mean how do we, as a family, stand towards hot lesbian incest and whether we should instate a schedule on who spends how much time getting railed silly by Gabriel."
She bit into it, keeping the sweet between her lips. "AMY DALL-"
She leaned forward to shove it into her mom's mouth with her own, turning it into a kiss. Surprised, Carol froze in place, giving her the time to use the contact between their lips to play with her body and create more nerves to turn her into putty with.
Then she bit the cookie in two, leaving half of it with her mom and sitting back down. "Begause shay what you want," she said, chewing and swallowing a little, "but I think that would be a great idea."
"… That's pretty hardcore, Ames."
Yes. Yes, she was. And going by Carol's alarmed look, she just realized both her daughters were freaky little perverts that wanted into her pants, too. Maybe Vicky needed a bit more persuasion, but she would join in.
Time to go full hentai on this. There were too many genres involved here to decide on which kind, but it was time.
Taylor Hebert watched, transfixed, as she felt her aura drain, being consumed in the usage of her 'semblance'.
From what she had been able to gather, a semblance was a kind of superpower derived from one's aura which in turn was derived from one's 'soul' (a concept Gabriel had assured her was proven, not that William Manton could disagree when she'd interrogated his), arising from one's personality and experiences as a person.
In other words, it was a power that was defined by one's individual personality. So what did that say about her?
What did it say that the most sincere expression of herself was to rot and ruin everything she touched?
Taylor observed the brick she was holding, absently noting the missing feedback of exactly how much aura she was consuming beyond the vague idea that she was doing so. She might need to measure her consumption and find out differing rates.
If she wanted to, she could speed up the decomposition of the material she was holding onto, presumably using more aura to fuel the effect.
She closed her eyes. The stone crumbled to bleached sand between her fingers. Like everything 'good' she ever had in her life, it was reduced to nothing but bitter ashes and refuse.
First her mom had the accident, then Emma decided to turn her back on Taylor and target her, then she just… She mishandled everything as her life went to shit, she had to admit in retrospect, from the bullying to the powers to… Well, everything.
It took Cain himself to descend from the heavens (or ascend from hell, depending on who you asked) to show her the way, and wasn't that hilarious? That she needed the mass-murdering inhuman monster to point out ways to improve her life? Or rather, convince her that there was no need for any such thing as morality in her actions.
Same thing, in the end.
And now Taylor was taking the girls that had tortured her for so long and forcing her will onto them after abducting them one after the other, breaking them and using what remained as a base to create something else. She hadn't been home in what felt like weeks, but was probably more just a few days, and…
And she really was destroying everything she touched, unmaking it and turning it into nothing. Even the sand she'd caught earlier was now becoming lesser, as though ground away by itself, until only dust remained in her hand. Dust and memories, both of which would soon fade.
So this was her. Taylor Anne Hebert, the girl that fucked up everything good so hard people went hysterical and panicked if she so much as showed up. It was just official now, she supposed.
… She wondered if this wouldn't hit quite so hard once she went with Cain and became a vampire.
Now then, after singing in front of a camera to your heart's content, you don't have many pressing things to do in the hours before you can make your jump, so you take a moment to consider what other matters you may be interested in pursuing before you leave for a bit of your relative time.
Well golly, do you have ideas! But for now, you'd best go and pay a visit to the Crypts' littlest tinker down in your little farm to see what Riley has come up with in the time since you last saw her.
Which is why you're mildly bemused when you see her climbing around on a stepladder to access a large mass of raw flesh, constructed largely of muscles and sinews sewn all across it to hold it in shape against a wall.
"Aaand the eyeballs go… here! Now you can even see again! Blink if you can."
"Been hard at work, I take it?" You ask, looking up at where she's handling a small suite of surgical and less surgical tools, depositing them inside her current project.
"Oh, Gabriel! I didn't hear coming," she says, turning around while poking a small cluster of eyeballs with a short wooden stick, making them twitch and tear up. They cannot blink, however, for they don't have any eyelids to speak of.
"It happens," you shrug. "So what are you doing to these?"
Because you're pretty sure these are several people she has sewn together after turning them inside out, all while they're still alive.
"Oh, oh, good timing actually!" Hopping down to the ground, Riley takes your hand in her own, blood-smeared hands. "I wanted to make something vampires could feed from easier and give it a few extra features, so you can test them out right away! All that's left is some extras you won't even notice in the end."
Raising an eyebrow, you take a quick look over the wall of meat, being rather more familiar with such sights than you'd wager the average person to be. As such, you quickly recognize what you shall henceforth describe as 'feeding tubes', long protuberances made from windpipes, as best you can tell, filled with blood almost glowing in your enhanced magical blood-sensitive sight.
"So do I just bite into this?" You ask, to Riley's nodding, so you go ahead and do it, finding your mouth flooded with a sweet aroma to accompany the usual rush of blood.
Something about this…
"Did you notice? Oh, I bet you did!" Riley claps her hands, blonde ringlets shaking in the air as she hops up and down in excitement. "I'm still not sure about the specifics, but it tastes different depending on the kind of person it comes from, right? I asked Kate to help taste test to be sure."
"Yeah, I think it's related to the taste of the soul of the person in question," you posit one of your older theories you all but confirmed through lots of practical experimentation and empirical study. "It sort of colors the blood even before you eat it, though for most it's so subtle you can't tell until afterwards. This has a lot more kick to it than any blood I've drunk non-lethally."
"Yup, there's a trick to it! You see, the brains are still thinking freely inside until you use this!" Lifting a flab of meat draping along the side of the living structure, Riley reveals a metal panel with a series of knobs, buttons and levers labeled everything from 'optimism' over 'hatred' to 'kindness'. "It's a bit roundabout, but using the controls, you can make the people I used think and feel anything you want while suppressing all other thoughts and memories, so it's like one of these machines where you can get your own soft drinks, except better!"
Huh. You know, that's actually pretty neat. "In theory, this should let us do a more thorough study of what kind of character or soul produces varying kinds of flavors and see if there's any connections or correspondences I might have missed so far," you ponder, already considering how to structure a more comprehensive study after you next return to Earth Bet.
"I can put a logbook next to it so everyone can write down their impressions to account for the subjectivity of taste?"
"A splendid idea," you nod. "Might help see where personal preferences and biases lie, too."
"Hehe!" Riley is just too happy to help, so you pat her head, making her break out a big smile and push back against your hand. Next to you, the freshly-installed eyeballs continued twitching, as though to try to tell you something, but the people in this are either former enemy mooks or random homeless, so you aren't too surprised none of them seem to know morse code or something at least.
Hence you ignore it.
There's really not much more to do and you know how you prefer to spend leisure time like this, precious as it is rare, and that i with Sarah, your dear sister sitting on your lap and taking your entire manhood as deep as it can be. Not bouncing or anything, just… there. Sharing time and sharing contact while connected as deeply as you can be on both a physical and a spiritual level.
You have your arms wrapped around her, occasionally lazily fondling her or stroking her belly, but you aren't being overly active about this, either. It's just… nice, to be together like this.
Not that the two of you are just sitting there, either, though. No, you're talking, whispering, murmuring as you also share your thoughts, doing so out loud just because you usually do it in your shared minds.
It's really, really nice.
"It's high time we vamped Taylor," your incredibly smart and insightful sister lets you know. "She was stable for a while, but lately she's started doubting herself again."
"Mhm," you make. "The semblance thing?"
"It accelerated things, but she was already thinking beforehand."
You nod. Everything on the topic is already said.
"Lots of technology I'm hoping to steal this time," you instead say. "And blood to funnel into us. We'll have to gather up some sacrifices, not many bloodbags left after we left the last time."
"It'll be fine. Concord probably has a line on some reprehensible assholes to be butchered for Taylor's resurrection." It's so nice when you don't have to even think something for her to get. "Anything in particular you're looking at?"
"Maybe laser tech, maybe get into power armor. I doubt those vertibirds are still useful at this point," you smirk.
"Yeah… With the Lutece stuff, they're completely useless, rather," she nods, then presses her head back against you. "The Minutemen?"
"Same plan as before, use them as unwitting enforcers. A friendly face to strap over the endless robot army."
"Mhm," she makes this time around. "Easy to drag them into it, too. Preston was blindly loyal the last time around."
"Exactly." You nibble on Sarah's ear a little with just your lips.
"You think we could use Sanctuary as even more of a base?" She asks after a few moments of enjoying your treatment of her earlobe. "Have prisoners brought in, use it as a 'research center' and just move everyone else to Concord?"
"Pretty sure, yes," you whisper. "Half of the people around were already in the process of moving there, shouldn't be much trouble to convince the rest."
"Good. Think we can make it our very own little fortress?"
"Of course," you almost snort as she grinds her hips a little, moving around to the feel of yourself inside her. "Can't wait to have our kids running around and learning about the world?"
"You bet I do," she breathes. "It'll be like more of both of us exists. And lots of you with everyone else's kids. Let's have a hundred each, just to be sure?"
"… Maybe in the future," you say, patting Sarah's head as you do everything you have to keep a sloppy, happy smile off your face at just how much she loves you and you love her back. "Have to make sure each and every one of our kids gets as much love as they can."
"Yeah…" Sarah's voice is dreamy, like she's only ever been when she's alone with you. "Lots of love. All the love and family."
You nuzzle her head,now stroking her hair instead. "We have all of eternity. We'll make sure of it. Let's take it one step at a time."
It's nice to have grounds to actually be optimistic on.
Finally, it is time. You look over the assembled passengers for this trip one last time, your gaze gliding over Kate, Nora, Taylor, Isabel and Cupcake (who is currently tip-toeing in an effort to reach the gun Kate is literally holding over her head). You've got pretty much everything ready, have been for a while now- your luggage capacity is kind of limited, but you packed the essentials.
You can currently pack approximately four times your own body weight into your shadow based on the last test you did with a few weights, so you have some room to work with, but while you aren't exceedingly short or light, you aren't terribly stoutly-built, either. If anything, you'd describe yourself just a little more slender than average, which really does factor into things like that- you're kinda sure the whole equation is dependent on your weight, anyway.
Look, it's magic, you don't gotta explain shit. It just works.
In this particular case, all of this means that you have everyone's respective weapons stashed inside your shadow, along with your usual loadout of miscellaneous potentially useful things that don't weigh too much. If you could, you'd stuff a fighter jet or two in there just to be sure, but that's just how life is- you always need more weaponry, you can't ever possibly bring all you'd want.
You've gotten used to it well enough. Besides, you're kind of a walking nuclear option by yourself, so the relative lack of hardware doesn't strike you as too bad.
Beside these absolute necessities, you have a few extras along, too, of course; for one, those couple of hard drives you had some of your minions fill up with all the movies, music, television series in general, various comics (or what Hack could find around the internet in terms of those, anyway, comics kind of died out after capes became mainstream) and, of course, lots and lots of porn.
Because priorities. You can't really disagree with that, to be honest.
What's more, you had a couple of your minions (the people ones, this time) put a little gardening kit together for you, by which you mean a box containing the seeds for as many plants as they could find without going too far out of their way, including pepper, potato tubers, basil, lavender, sunflowers and so on and so forth.
As well as weed, of course, but that should be expected. You are kind of a criminal organization and you have the stuff grown all over the place as a consequence of actually selling drugs on the side of your main business.
Which remains massive amounts of gun running. Can't really beat that for revenue except for abusing your Thinker interference to have Sarah do as much stock trading as she wants to and in essence print money, with the only costs involved being levied on others and therefore irrelevant to you.
In another box, specially made with a quick trip to the manufactory, you have a small collection of eggs- a few chicken and fish eggs, respectively, fertilized and just waiting to hatch. You do have to be a little careful about moving them nilly willy, but they needed protection from the effective vacuum experienced by most objects you put inside your shadow pocket hammerspace anyway, so it was hardly an issue to make it to contain them all properly and without jostling them with every move.
With any luck, you can have Nolan adapt a few of these seeds to the wasteland's environmental conditions. And of not, well, you can always just set up inside farms or something, it shouldn't be particularly hard. And maybe, just maybe, Earth Fallout will have something it hasn't had for a long, long time.
Actual, decent food that doesn't taste like a mix between a potato and a tomato eaten raw. Or fried or whatever people do to tatos, they're still kinda bad by themselves.
But that's a thought for later. Right now, you have a jump to make, so you clear your throat. "Everyone ready?"
You receive nods and affirmations, so you nod yourself, holding out your hands. "Everyone touch me somewhere so we can get started, then. It's go time."
Kate grins, sidling up to you and pushing a hand down your pants.
"Really?" You ask, eyebrow raised.
"Hey, you were asking for it," your girlfriend slash second in command chuckles as she takes a hold of your cock.
"Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you at all," you say, rolling your eyes and kissing her cheek anyway. "C'mon, guys, we don't have all day, my cooldown just ran out."
'Moving' through the not-space 'between' dimensions is still an odd experience just like before, but at the very least it seems you aren't running into anything odd this time around. Having expanded your understanding of what the hell you're even doing, you soon figure out that the metaphorical chains connecting you back to Earth Bet, serving as both the anchor letting you find your way back and the prisoner's shackles keeping you on returning your native dimension, can also latch onto dimensions you have visited before, illuminating the exact mechanism behind how returning to places you have been to even functions.
Of course the chain analogy kind of breaks down when they're reaching through both not-space and not-time to pull you back to the time and space you were last in any particular dimension, but it works well enough for general use, anyway.
This is important because you have finally figured out how to 'move' while within this not-space you've taken to use for traveling. By flexing the chains you're not-quite holding onto, you can change your trajectory in this area completely devoid of the usual laws of reality. Which is… probably a good thing.
Because see, you aren't running into anything odd because you actively avoid doing so, now. You swerve and weave, dodging several portals that open to reveal various trucks trying to slam into you from all angles once again, a couple of tentacles and tentacle-adjacent limb equivalents you can't really find the words to describe try to stretch out for you and even the Lutece Twins are around, having an upside down four-dimensional tea party right in the middle of your line of approach.
"He really needs to watch his diet one of these days."
"I believe young children are meant to eat a lot in order to grow."
"Yes, but like this he just looks like he might be getting fat."
Robert eyes you as you pass by. "It might just be the build of his bones. Or a part of his life cycle."
"Unlife cycle."
"It comes out to the same in the end, no."
"True, true. Crumpets?"
You'd wave for them, but, well- you aren't sure you really have hands or arms to do so with at the moment.