The arrangements with Accord and his whole organization in mind have been made some time ago, your own little ('little') operation branching out, so to say.
Simply put, while Accord controls and maintains territory around Boston's Charlestown area, doing so isn't actually all that interesting to him and done more out of a measure of obligation and his desire to keep any chaotic crime and fighting well away from his place of residence, not that you can fault the guy over it.
Accord has many other things he can be criticised about long before you'd need to resort to doing so.
Going forward, he will be less concerned with any such activity, anyway. The entire situation is a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be, but to sum it up, rumors of his former connection to the Travelers have gotten out after investigations regarding the Echidna Incident mounted in full, meaning that while there is some goodwill about how his people were some of the first on the scene when things went tits up, some people are also blaming him over the whole thing.
Arguably, he didn't need to attack the Travelers, though you beg to differ personally, he literally told them to fuck off and stay gone and they went and returned to Boston, just moving through or not. As a fellow villain you can say they were damn well asking for it.
Anyway, a little controversy there ('little', again, people are still fucking pissed about the story of how a bunch of capes were tied up while Leviathan happened a few miles down the coast), leading to Accord deciding that perhaps discretion is the better part of valor; he would continue on and project force as required as per usual, just to make that clear- if you hadn't made him an offer.
And just like that, you de facto own territory in Boston yourself, taking over the management of such in Accord's stead. Your capes are aware and will be randomly patrolling the nearest big city as well, naturally.
Though it goes without saying that the situation in Boston is nowhere near the same as in Brockton Bay. For one, the Protectorate and Wards rosters are noticeably bigger over there and, despite some bad PR on the part of Bastion, the local Protectorate team's leader about flipping out on and repeatedly calling some hispanic kid a spic a while ago, pretty solid.
If anything, they have a bunch of annoying matchups, with Bastion himself capable of creating, controlling and to a smaller extent sensing through forcefields that can take some serious punishment. You know all of this through Sarah being a massive gemstone, naturally, but while you probably could simply outmatch the guy regardless, it would take you some actual effort in a head-on fight.
Then there's Accord's own group of powered minions, the Ambassadors, coupled with a decent amount of employed mercenaries and hopefuls he has been hiring on for as long as he's been operating. For your purposes, they will hopefully not factor into anything short of an Endbringer attack or similar, though you still feel they should be noted as a powerful force of their own.
Then you got Blasto, of course. Considered by some to be Accord's nemesis, this particular biotinker working with cloning and DNA manipulation as his speciality paraded as a whole cape team for a bit by creating several mindless clones he had posing as capes and is actually capable of some serious work if he puts his mind to it. He is also a pothead, from what you've heard, and at odds with Accord specifically because he just tends to do whatever and generally cause chaos as part of his own schemes.
Something Accord absolutely loathes. Which, hey, you know he has issues.
That said, the rest of the city is actually surprisingly villain-free ever since the Boston Games. There's a couple smaller gangs just keeping out of the limelight, the most impressive of which would still be Chain Man, a Shaker capable of conjuring and manipulating chains of steel that rapidly corrodes when left outside of his range for some time.
He is in control of the Chain Gang, by the way. Their thing is mostly armed robbery and the like, they pretty much just run away from any serious confrontation their leader's power doesn't win at a glance.
But yeah, for now, you are building up on the emergency shelter you originally placed in Boston and turning it into a teleporter reception area meant to handle some decent amounts of traffic crossed with a glorified break room for anyone doing business around Boston in your name.
Logistics, thy bane is teleportation once again. With Accord more or less fully cooperating, you are basically continuing your previous relationship of him buying and then selling on your guns and drugs via Boston, just now a little more directly. He's still handling the whole thing, using the endless stream of firepower you provide to manipulate the rest of the nation and even globe towards his ends.
It's basically his hobby at this point, you think.
Director Kamil Armstrong, PRT Department 24, frowned as he read through the provided material, feigning still paying attention towards the split-screen meeting in progress. Every director did the same on occasion and it was a sort of well-known, unspoken secret among them that nobody really expected anyone to keep track of the conversation at all times.
Though the current moment was, perhaps, one of the tenser and more involved ones to be missing, particularly given his situation.
"And there have been no signs of changes in the LSC's movements?"
"None," Director Piggot answered gruffly. "If there were, the situation would be contained right now."
"Brockton Bay may as well be designated a containment zone at this rate," one of the other Directors grumbled to themselves. The others heard it of course, but nobody commented, deepening the ever-present scowl on Director Piggot's face by a fraction.
It hard to argue against the notion, in all fairness, though Brockton Bay certainly was not going to be quarantined by any measure. Not only did no protocol for such apply to the city's current condition nor overall situation, doing so would be actively counterproductive. Keeping Cain and the considerable size of the man's forces content and in one place was as much a preferred outcome as it was national policy at this time.
May as well call it appeasement and stop dancing around the hot potato.
Piggot's requests for reinforcements had been met with refusal so far with the justification that, should the Lord Street Crypts enter hostilities with the PRT and Protectorate, it would not be a matter any single PRT branch could or should deal with, instead constituting a national emergency. It was ironic, Kamil pondered, that the man that had, by many accounts, almost single-handedly faced down and fought back an Endbringer would be faced with the same countermeasures as one himself, but such were the realities of the situation.
Though, given what was known about his powers, a gathering of Protectorate capes from all over the nation in response to an S-Class situation was unlikely. That was still what inter-city missiles were meant for, he supposed.
An alert spreading out over the side of his screen diverted his attention before he could think deeper on it.
"In conclusion, the newest potential S-Class within US borders has shown no signs of escalating," the Chief Director concluded after too much discussion on the topic. Honestly, Kamil did not understand why everyone had to make such an issue out of this; the PRT had dealt with impossible odds and incredible dangers since its infancy as a federal bureau, Cain was little different from any of them.
If anything, the man was less impulsively dangerous than many of the entirely inhuman parahuman-related threats they faced on a daily basis. The continued existence of Brockton Bay and its population was proof enough of that.
Not that this made what he was reading any easier to swallow, of course.
As the rest of the Directorate wound down after the monthly joint threat assessment, he swallowed down a sigh, leaning back in his chair. "It seems there has been some changes in Boston, after all," he announced. "Thunderstruck and Spitfire have been sighted in Boston."
The ensuing commotion was great enough he wondered if half of their number was made up of elementary school students, after all. Thankfully, he had good news, too.
"No signs of Skitter, at least."
Piggot still looked like she'd just bitten into a raw lemon, but that was simply how the most dangerous of parahumans were. Better she had to deal with Skitter than him.
You open your eyes, shaking out your head. "Well, that was kind of a trip, but it was interesting to hear at least."
That one divination spell is pretty cool, if you can manage to make it hit the right person.
You made sure to share a recording of the things you saw and felt as a result of casting your magic with your telepathic network, or at least the privileged parts of it. That's right, you're doing a mix of internet censorship and thought censorship, what about it?
Perhaps you have taken the whole 'being a single entity distributed over several bodies and minds' thing a little far lately, actually. The thought spontaneously comes unto you as you take a moment to reflect on how you spontaneously spent most of your night, lowly shaking the equivalent of a vampiric tinker fugue off your shoulders.
It isn't really quite like that, you know how a real tinker fugue feels like thanks to shared experiences by actual tinkers, but it's the closest description that doesn't take a bit to explain you can come up with.
To make an attempt anyway, a couple of you had an idea, bouncing it between each other. Someone decided to share that idea with the wider network, leading to more thoughts and input on said idea, in turn leading to more interest ad infinitum until half your network was embroiled in designing and refining a practical prototype of said idea.
And so here you are, a dozen vamps and thralls gathered around the result of your shared labor.
It is a box. Unadorned outwardly, about the size of a standalone freezer- half as tall as yourself, basically. On its top, there is a handle, meant to let someone pull it open easily.
Unless someone is doing so, it won't ever open. You all made sure of it.
"So, uh," you begin, saying what everyone is thinking, "should we open it, or… ?"
"I dunno, what exactly is gonna happen?" Sherrel asks. "We put so much stuff in there it's impossible to tell now."
"Mhm…"
"I say we do it," Alice asserts, crossing her arms. "Only one way to find out, right?"
She does have a point,
"What if it's actually dangerous? The amount of tinkertech in there is… worrying." Lea isn't wrong either, of course.
"Okay, here's what we'll do," you say. "I'll take it and teleport somewhere in the middle of the wilderness, then open it. If it instantly kills me or something, I can just revive myself and teleport back under my own power, but no matter what we'll know."
"Wait, no! I don't want you to risk yourself like that!" Sarah didn't actually take part in making this thing, but she came down to see what was going on anyway.
"I can't risk it blowing up here on base," you shake your head. "Not with everyone here. And especially not with our unborn children."
Her eyes shimmer. Your mouth is set into a determined line. The two of you share a last embrace, come what may.
"It'll probably be fine. We didn't actually put any explosives inside, remember."
"Way to read me mood, man."
Chariot and Scrapper with their comedy duo act. You were expecting it, to be honest.
There you are, out in the open, far away from anywhere you care to keep. That's right, you're in Canada!
It's your first time in the land where milk is traded in these little plastic bags, but sadly you don't have the time to sightsee and secretly make fun of overly polite locals.
Eye resting on the box, you casually reach out, pulling at the handle. It gives way easily, revealing…
An empty box.
… Honestly, what were you expecting again? Sure, it was a lot of extremely sophisticated technology that makes no sense as far as physics should be concerned and tinkertech, which is a massive crapshoot at the best of times, no big surprise if what you ended up building up to just isn't-
It's dark. Pretty fucking dark, in fact. You can see anyway, not really using light reflected in your eyes to do any seeing these days, but…
You look up. Where only moments ago a sea of stars was visible in the night sky is now only a massive, yawning emptiness, letting no single ray light escape.
Crap. Did the Darkness' emo tendencies materialize in this project?
Peering inside the box again, you see a small, glinting kernel of something, explaining where the light of the stars went. Liking up with Sarah, who is currently watching satellite footage of the area you're in, it seems a wide area of darkness has spread over a good chunk of Canada, still increasing in diameter- an initial burst of growth was there, but it's slowed to a crawl by now.
Huh. You wonder… Reaching in, you poke the light with a claw.
It's solid.
You somehow made a box that takes light from the sky above it and turns it into a solid. Said solid seems to be stable, still emitting light itself with no signs of reducing in mass nor volume- taking it out confirms it remains as it is without being inside the box, too.
Weird. And also… Most curious. You wonder how solid light tastes now…
Sadly, consensus is that you aren't allowed to stick it into your mouth. Boooh.
So, solidified light. This is kind of a new one even for you. Luckily, closer research is made much easier thanks to the facilities within your inner world- the empty village that regularly delivers all kinds of materials to the rest of your little internal dream logic circulation of goods has begun apparently mining the stuff, of all things, and so you have a small supply of it ready within your laboratory-workshop's stores already.
This means you can get right to testing the stuff. And, uh, hey, the results are actually pretty interesting! Even if by 'testing it' you mainly mean you're making Yoshi and miscellaneous science-inclined souls you picked up over time do all the work while you theorize and set up more tests to be done.
Earth Rapture has been so kind to you in this regard, honestly- far from all the splicers you chomped down on were scientists, but more than zero, which is more than you can say for the usual groups you tend to feed on.
Look, lab scrubs are hard to come by in this economy, is all you're saying.
Anyway, solid light. It tends to come in various colors, presumably dependent on the spectrum of the light that was solidified, but a bright white seems to be the most common. Preliminary tests already showed that, when pressurized, separate motes can be fused into bigger pieces, roughly mapping the overall volume of all initial parts, though brightness doesn't seem to change much, instead becoming the average among them in the finished result.
Its color can, with some effort and the correct tools, be modified, the most reliable method of which you have found so far being what is essentially a glorified lamp that can temporarily absorb the solid light and shift colors over a few hours. The larger or more pieces you want worked on, the longer it take, making doing so impractical on the fly, but yeah.
The light can also be diffused through application of sufficient physical force, but you're talking about a lot of force here- about a ton's worth of kinetic energy, in fact.
It also seems possible to form it into various shapes, assuming you had the correct tools; what you have there is capable of shifting it around a bit, but the testing in this regard is going rather well, at least.
You may have cracked hardlight with this, which is… pretty nice, you'll admit. Assuming, of course, you aren't wrong, but doubting yourself is what science is all about, really.
While you're at it, and to take a short break from the whole science trip you're on (being completely serious all the time is and remains emotionally draining) and tour around the recent additions to your inner world, figuring you haven't been doing so for a little while.
It's rarely, if ever, really anything incredibly pressing, after all, so you like to let them build up every now and then. No big deal, you could just keep perfectly up-to-date, but as long as no new Guardians pop up and none of the already existing ones direct your attention towards anything important…
So yeah, that's how and why you're making the rounds. Your first stop, then, is the honest-to-yourself-as-God space cube you have floating around your sky now, a massive construction of constantly shifting and changing rooms connected by labyrinthine hallways. It has its own gravity and is chock-full of traps, puzzles and almost random creatures meant specifically to fight whoever tries to traverse it.
There is no actual goal that you can find, by the way. It's literally just there to simulate some kind of RPG dungeon, you suppose.
Next up on your docket is an expansion to the Treasury, or rather yet another expansion to the complex hiding in the bowels of your palace, an elegant room of round, swinging architecture and rows of shelves, golden decorations everywhere, recesses in the walls to hold little statues, the works.
It's all very fancy. And, more importantly, filled with objects you recognize or that awaken memories, when you take a closer look around.
You see a splinter of stone, kept inside a treasure chest. The inscription you can make out on it certifies it as none other than your own gravestone, still standing vigil over a briefly emptied rave currently filled with the first man you ever killed for no reason other than that he was the first one you found after crawling out.
You keep going. An old gun, painstakingly maintained. It looks just like the one Kate had when you first met. A yellowed, crooked tooth- Skidmark's, ew. A hung-up piece of cloth torn out of a vault suit, golden '111' emblazoned on it still. A small model of your first generation of manufactories, just as rickety and cobbled-together as you remember.
Well, you literally made them out of scraps, so that's to be expected, isn't it?
You glance over the room. Small reminders of everything you did, tucked away just in the corner of your sight. The Treasury is full of things you treasure, because you think of them as valuable and their possession as desirable, but this?
This is a Trophy Room. The things in here are not valuable because of what they are, but because of what they mean. To you, specifically.
You reach out to touch a lock of golden hair. You can't help yourself but smile.
The next area you're looking at is, well, fucking cold, to put it like that. If you were capable of ever truly being hurt in here, you may even be, that's how cold it is.
Lain far outside the other places you and your souls usually frequent, this formation of ice is in the middle of an arctic wasteland and pretty much tops it off, temperatures going so far below freezing you wonder how air can even exist here.
Putting a hand to the dark blue ice structures formed somehow, you are filled with the absolute knowledge that without the protection of being the master of all within this place entails, your skin would be peeling off when you pull back again.
These things? They are Cold, with a capital 'C'. You also sense that you could actually summon them much like you can summon various objects you created within your inner world, which sounds like it might just come in handy.
And as for the last one… You have a bad feeling about it, which is kind of weird considering you barely, if ever, have those anymore.
It is a secluded part of the forests stretching throughout yourself, out of the way and lonely by the very nature of it placement. In contrast to the ice, though, it can be easily walked into, lying amidst a forlorn forest full of actual critters, mostly crows and ravens.
You see a simple, almost improvised grave in front of the building that appeared with this expansion- it kind of reminds you of that summer home you used to enjoy being in mostly to escape your parents, the same one you drew in your very first art stream because you knew if Sarah was still alive she'd recognize it on sight. Stepping closer, you read the inscription.
'Here lies Reggie Livsey'
You turn around and go.
You are currently taking a moment to go over your miniature replica of Brockton Bay once again, a critical eye combining with a few accurate and recent satellite images to let you make sure it's as close to the real thing as you can get it without undue amounts of effort.
You literally carved little windows and painted everything, just to get that last bit of authenticity down. The more accurate your miniature is, the better this next step will work.
Satisfied for the moment, you nod, taking hold of the feather you prepared. It is black and large, as though from some giant monster bird, its length about that of your outstretched lower arm from elbow to fingertips.
Naturally, it come from yourself. You transformed earlier and plucked it out and all. While you could have gone bigger, you're fairly sure that doesn't actually matter for your purposes here- you just like the sense of drama this adds. Have to make it look good and all.
The magic may or may not react to that, and the fact you can to this day not say with absolute certainty whether it does or not is bugging the hell out of you, but regardless here you are, laying the feather down onto the miniature city.
On the west side of it, towards the hills and forests. Ravens aren't really sea birds and while that probably doesn't matter, again, symbolism. May as well, really.
Lastly, you measure out the time, watching the monitor to your side. You're taking advantage of some cloudy weather coming your way, having hijacked it and pushed it into a light, but constant drizzle over your city, letting you answer it with a light, but constant drizzle of your blood coming from a punctured thumb (using your own claw. naturally), controlled by your hemokinesis to match the overall weather pattern.
If this isn't close enough, your magic really should reconsider its priorities here.
"Bring misfortune upon your true ruler's enemies."
You feel the curse take hold, which is more feedback than you usually get when casting this kind of thing. Hopefully, this should be working as intended for now, turning your home field advantage into a much more present threat to any would-be intruders, spies, assassins or other hostile figures. Well, hostile to yourself, anyway.
You totally do qualify as the ruler of Brockton Bay, by the way, yes. Not legally perhaps, but you've never let legalities like that stop you. You would've just formulated it as 'Cain's enemies', but sadly curses have a horrible memory for names- you have to define people as specific roles or positions relative to whatever object or location (or person, for that matter) you are cursing.
Calling someone by name doesn't work, but stuff like 'spouse', 'wielder', 'inhabitant' and so on works just fine. It's a minor issue more than anything and one you can work around just fine.
Anyway, this task completed, you clear your throat, turning around to face Henley. "Sorry about this, I just thought I'd get it done while I was at it anyway," you wave the whole scene he just bore witness to off. "Did you bring what I asked for?"
Henley gives you an unimpressed look, the free hand not carrying a couple folders under his arm adjusting his glasses. "I did. Though I would like to repeat that we will need to hire on additional managers just for this project, not to mention budget concerns I would like to discuss before we move forward with it."
"C'mon, we have functionally unlimited budgets, what's the matter?" You ask.
"The matter is that they are not quite functionally unlimited," the accountant managing your finances points out. "We can get as much money as we want eventually, but that still leaves us with only so much of it in hand at any one time. Sarah may be procuring more with little to no effort, but even she can only work the stock market so fast."
"Alright, alright," you sigh, "walk me through what needs to happen on our end before we go over legal and further requirements such as the bribe involved. I want that hotel built and an obvious reference to our theme included in its name sooner rather than later."
"The club is turning a tidy profit, so you won't hear any disregard from me. Just please promise me you will only do this once we can do it right."
Dammit Henley, only one person present here is supposed to appeal to people's sensibilities to get what they want.
Henley, for all his many faults, is good at his job, even if it includes making you sit down and listen to what he's saying for once (combined with telepathic communication on the side for accompanying information). If he wasn't, you likely wouldn't have bothered keeping him in his current position, especially so considering the way you recruited him- which was almost at gunpoint.
Not quite, but almost. You did make him trigger, directly, in person; honestly it's a small miracle you keep getting away with doing that and still retaining th services of newly-triggered parahumans.
Anyways, the actually important bits. The Mausoleum plan is a tentative go, as long as you can keep certain officials from raising a stink over it and, more specifically, the technology planned to be placed inside. If you get the PRT tearing thing up in search of tinkertech someone was mad enough to use for a project like this, all it'll do is cause unnecessary complications and require you to massacre everyone involved, so yeah, avoiding that.
Simply put, as long as you keep things from coming that far, everything else is more or less fair game. To this end, you'll need to ensure a few backup plan are in place, but you should be able to swing it easily enough, especially knowing whom to bribe with what and what bureaucratic processes to push though how.
It's always nice when you don't have to put all that much effort into things.
In related news, though, the exact details for your planned features have been defined a little- nothing a hundred percent sure yet, but you're planning to include holograms, 'transforming rooms' and a lot of highly automated processes, at the very least.
Those are kind of your baseline. Depending on if you can work it out, you may also include virtual reality pods based on the memory pods you got from Goodneighbour; even just replaying certain memories, their own or otherwise, for people would open up a market, but just imagine if you could construct interactive virtual reality happening purely within someone's mind…
It's a new dimension of porn. And, uh, of technology in general, from simulating physics to gaming. Definitely something to look forward to, you suppose.
The finances will be dealt with largely on Henley's side, but his department is slowly settling into a more 'normal' and 'sane' workflow, anyway, may as well keep them busy with something productive.
Contacting Blasto, over in Boston, is actually a tad bit harder than you'd expect at first glance. Yes, sure, there's a general area his creatures are known to be around, but he doesn't quite have an official mailing address, nor an address in general; it takes you asking Sarah to help you target your teleporter to get a message into a place he will find it.
Perhaps a bright, colorful chain of LED lights wrapped around the little package is a bit much, but when push comes to shove, you want to make sure to push hard.
Anyway, half an hour later, you're walking right into Blasto's territory, brazenly moving through Boston in your cape identity disregarding anyone that can see you. Not like their opinions particularly matter to you anyhow.
So then… Blasto. He could be called a minor crime lord, but only really in comparison with yourself- not many capes, tinkers or no, can effectively hold and use territory by themselves, but he can do so just fine. Mainly involved in drug trade and the occasional robbery using his creations, he's a very good bio-tinker, which is something to be said for how few of them are around.
Of course most get taken out early on. Nobody wants a second Nilbog or Bonesaw in their front yard and they're notoriously dangerous when given time to build up, not to mention the PRT's rather bleak stance on anything that breaks what few rules are enforced even for them.
You have heard Blasto creates no creatures that can reproduce by their own. This is not a coincidence, neither the subject matter nor that you've heard of it even without paying much attention to him beforehand.
That aside, he's a successful tinker that's been at this whole cape thing for a good long while. That inherently makes him tricky and dangerous both, though not to the extent you don't feel perfectly comfortable just waltzing up to him and making him an offer he can scarcely refuse.
There's still only so much he can feasibly do about you, really. Most things he can do are organic in some way and you are very good at killing things, regardless of their shape or biology.
Speaking of, his power. You aren't completely sure, but, according to Sarah, it has something to do with DNA manipulation, making him and his expertise a perfect addition to your roster, should you manage to convince him to come do your bidding. You do wonder what he could do with access to copious amounts of ADAM… Though the stuff is, frustratingly, hard to replicate with your eldritch manufactories.
Then again, you don't need your matter replicator undead for anything else now, so hey, that's not as much of an issue as you'd expect, really. You just went and repurposed them accordingly.
Striding past a couple oversized dog/plant hybrids, simply walking past them and timing your steps to dodge through their pouncing leaps without looking like anything happened, you open the door to what looks like an almost normal building, were it not for the enthusiastic fauna outside.
Inside, you quickly orient yourself towards the blood signature of a grown man, ignoring the smaller, obviously non-human ones, and so you quickly make your way through steel-lined hallways and rooms, shadowing through massive shelter doors as appropriate.
Finally, you find who you're here for.
You clear your throat. Blasto, until now ethusiastically typing away, freezes.
"Blasto, right? I sent a message ahead of time, though I don't blame you for not quite expecting me on such short notice," you say.
"Ahahah… Cain, yes, I remember." You can smell the cold sweat on the man as he finds himself confronted with your very existence. "I, uh, was absolutely waiting for you and getting into tinkering by accident. Not cooking up any distractions so I could run, not at all."
"Good to hear." You're tempted to lay a hand on his shoulder, but you don't want to completely freak him out. Not yet, at least. "Now don't get me wrong, but you're a very good tinker, aren't you? You do some very good work."
"Thanks for mentioning it?"
He's still turned towards the computer he was working on, by the way. Maybe he does't want to see it coming if he dies a sudden and very explicable death?
"That said," you continue, "I can't help but notice most of your equipment is somewhat subpar. Not that it doesn't work, just that it could be better."
"Oh, you know how it is for tinkers, you have to make the tools to make the tools," Blasto hesitantly points out. "Got to cut corners where I can and all."
"Indeed. However, what if I told you I had somewhat of a job offer that comes with unlimited amounts of custom equipment for any needs you may have?"
He stills, clearly understanding what you're saying well enough. "That would be…"
"Incidentally, we also offer somewhat a very good healthcare plan, if I do say so myself. Largely in-house, but if you agree I'm sure nobody would mind letting you take a look at the medical technology involved," you continue, a cheshire grin on your face. "And, of course, these samples of various beings that nobody on Earth Bet outside of Crypt capes and associates has ever seen… We have a biotinker or two on them, but I assume an expert with a specialty such as yourself would have all kinds of fun with them."
You walk up behind Blasto, placing a vial of ADAM taken in the middle of its plasmid refinement process on his desk. The tanned man stares at it, the thing he's wearing on his face (it's not obvious, but he is wearing a mask of some kind) wiggling a little, presumably doing something.
"Can I… Can I do some tests on this before I agree to anything?"
"Be my guest. Just remember I can and will have you killed if anything about this leaks from you."
Half an hour later, the Crypts have a new cape, moving to Brockton Bay right away.
Facilitating the move is pretty easy, all things told. Using your teleporters, you can bring Blasto's entire lab over into a couple of 'warehouses' you specifically cordoned off for things like this, if somewhat piecemeal. All his stuff, his minions, his unfinished projects in their growth tanks, brought over one by one and wrangled by a small team of Bobs to fit into the bigger facility now available to your new employee.
His guard dogs have to be put down, but Blasto isn't exactly sentimental over them. They are, or rather were, tools, and once they outlive their use they're just liabilities. Kind of a shame, but he can always make more, you suppose.
His territory shall be incorporated into general Crypts territory, of course. Combining it with what you 'inherited' from Accord, you control pretty much all of the turf up for grabs in Boston, given public order is kept well enough the heroes would actively fight you if you pushed into the area they are holding.
Maybe something to look into later. To be honest, the Boston villain scene seems a bit lacking compared to what you're used to in Brockton Bay, but that may be more of a Bay thing to begin with.
Either way your gang tags will be spread around by this time tomorrow. Good enough for your purposes.
Meanwhile, manufactories are already on the task of getting Blasto everything he might need and his first paycheck is being paid forward. All in all, some good recruitment you're getting done here.
"You didn't tell me Bonesaw is working for you as well!"
"I mean, I said we have other biotinkers, who else but her would fit the bill?"
Riley is just standing by, watching curiously as you convince Blasto to get with the program already. Curie, on the hand, is actually helping you.
"I assure you Monsieur Blasto, little Riley is a dab 'and in the lab and perfectly capable of contributing to any biological experiments to be conducted."
"That's not the issue here…"
Alright, time to deflect and distract! "So these are what some have begun calling 'Seedcasters'. Plant Matters, if you will go by the original terminology. Using them, one can spontaneously modify the DNA of plant and plant-like organisms in the form of their seeds or even pollen, and it comes with a few presets for convenience…"
"… Dammit, fine. Just, don't jam anything into my body while I'm not looking, okay?"
"Don't worry Mister Blasto, I'll only do that if you consent beforehand," Riley smiles and waves happily. He shudders.
You have a good feeling about team cohesion here.
Aside from the time you spend helping Blasto getting settled in and making him aware of the various wonderful things he can work with now as one of your own tinkers, you have most of your night budgeted to transform into a cat and play with Sarah while you chair a wide-set telepathic discussion among your vampires and thralls both.
Literally, you're claiming Sarah's lap and patting her soft, smooth thighs with the pads of your paws while she strokes and scratches your back.
Sometimes, the good things in life do come to you, no matter how busy you are. You very healthily appreciate it.
Now then, as for the actual discussion, there are a few things to be dealt with. For one, you are looking to turn another of your minions into a vampire, which mean you have to choose, or rather, determine whom amongst them would have the best chances at a useful unique power hereditary to their 'strain' of vampirism, which involves letting everyone know as much and all.
Not everyone is hard up for the chance at going undead, but enough people want to throw in their lot that it does need to be discussed and reasoned out with everyone. Maybe that's just your hivemind mentality speaking, you dunno, but it feels like doing it this way is the most honest and open way to do it available to you.
And that's important, far as you're concerned.
You also do stock up on homeless blood bags a little, drawing upon Boston's population thereof this time around. Not too many, just a couple taken here and there to minimize suspicion, but enough to feed whoever you turn for that bit of complete, bloodthirsty hunger all vampires seem to share just after being turned.
Furthermore, you also do still have to share your plans for your next dimension jump. As you have been planning, you will be visiting Earth Rapture, barring any extraordinary circumstances, and spending not inconsiderable amounts of time there, hibernating and only occasionally acting in person like you did on Remnant.
Well, that and finally cocooning yourself, for that matter. You've been feeling almost full for so long by now it's like an itch, something stuck between your teeth, a relief missing until you achieve it. It's not, like, super hard to bear, but it does make itself known.
Your main goal aside from this will be to just take over the world, pretty much. It's still, what, 1968 over there? More than enough time to corner humanity through more or less subtle means by the year of two thousand, twenty-ten at the latest.
It'll be a nice safe haven for your kids and lovers, assuming (as you believe to be reasonable) there are no other particular outliers like ADAM around. And no parahumans either, though it could be like in Aleph where there's just very few and very weak ones that simply aren't widely known to exist?
No matter, it'll do for your purposes, you believe.
You push yourself onto your hind legs, patting Sarah's face. She's giggling and making little kissy faces at you, which you decide is a win. One more in a long series thereof.
Boston. Boston, Boston, Boston. One of the largest port cities in the US, though still healing from Noelle's rampage, currently in minor upheaval as your capes are showing up unannounced and territory is being 'tastefully decorated' with your gang tags, still using the same old templates you had your people use when you first started taking over Brockton Bay back when you just killed off the Merchants and took all their stuff.
Good times. The territory was borderline worthless back then, but look at it now! Just goes to show you always have a plan, even if you don't know what that plan is yet.
But back to Boston, some of the girls are still on the whole tagging part of you claiming your new turf, but with Blasto's 'disappearance', you still need to ensure nobody is stupid enough to mistake his absence and your relatively recent arrival to the city as an opportunity, of all things.
Hence you, Jeremy and Okita are taking a little walk, showing off how present you are. It's really just a blustering show of strength, but hey, if it works, it works. Local parties to Boston's underworld are not particularly impressive nor concerning, of course, it's more villains from elsewhere smelling blood in the water and coming in that you're concerned about.
So yeah, the three of you are moving along, showing the flag and all that. Naturally, having nothing particularly better to do, you talk a little, though it's really you and Jeremy doing so while Okita listens in. What can you say, she knows what she wants and speech is not often amongst those things.
"Sorry about the whole jumping thing, by the way," is one of those things you tell Jeremy. "I know it isn't exactly fair how you never get to come along, but…"
"It's alright, it's alright," he waves you off in his red bodysuit (his costume may or may not have been kind of a reference to Velocity- a mocking one). "I'm pretty sure I'd just get in the way and none of your sweethearts would forgive me for taking up a spot."
Well, he's not necessarily wrong. "Some would, I'm pretty sure?" You ask jokingly.
"Besides, I have everything I want and need in the Bay. I've actually started helping out refurbishing the docks every now and then, double-check the equipment for human use and all that."
"And frequenting a couple whores in your off time?"
"What can I say, my pay is such I can afford it and relationships are messy," Jeremy (or Thunderstruck, technically, as he's in costume) grouses. "Half the reason I ended up out on the street, really, I'm perfectly happy to leave them be. Maybe I'll try dating again in a couple years, when thing have calmed down a bit."
"Good luck with that," you smirk. "The calming down, I mean. We aren't exactly stopping on any front so far."
He shrugs, expressing 'what can you do' in a gesture more emphatic than any words he could utter would be. "Guess Cindy and Candi it is for me, then. Such utter tragedy."
A shared smile is had as you walk onward.
"Oh yeah, are you sure it's alright if you can't come, Okita? It really helped with the scheduling, but you did help explore Rapture that first time…"
"'s fine," the big-chested vampire schoolgirl nods, her long, black hair swaying. "Nothing big to fight anymore. That's why I come to new places instead."
"Yeah, next time I go somewhere new you're definitely on the shortlist," you confirm. "Anything you want in the meantime?"
"… Let's race," Okita suggests. "Over the buildings and stuff."
"Well, up for a bit of parkour?" You ask Jeremy.
"Sure, why not. Not much else to do right now anyway, people are too scared to muck up."
As it turns out, while you are very, very good at moving quickly and making use of terrain to propel yourself, both of the vampires you're with not only have both the same 'natural' advantages being vampires gives all of you and certain tonics to further make them faster, stronger and overall better, they also possess a certain unique power that may best be summed up as 'being strong'.
As well as fast, naturally. Both kind of naturally translate into each other where superstrength is concerned. Additionally, Jeremy's whole power is all about absorbing impacts and force exerted upon him as a whole and using that to make him even faster.
However, if you may say… Okita is just a complete monster. The heroes, upon being summoned back in Thule, all got a comprehensive powerup, as you understand it, and she certainly did put all her stat points into strength, if you may describe it in video game terms; you can see she's not actually trying particularly hard, but she immediately takes the lead upon the start and never puts it down.
You yourself initially outspeed Jeremy, using your claws and powers to propel yourself along (no flash step from you, however, let's keep this kind of fair), but the more he runs, the faster he gets, his power in full action, such that he eventually manages to overtake you as you jump from rooftop to rooftop.
He just… runs along, not even leaving footsteps in the asphalt below his feet as he prefers to simply speed along on the ground, jumping over cars and even running on walls where convenient, the impacts negated to feed his power instead.
Okita looks very smug at the very end, by the way. Her entire strategy consisted of jumping very hard to move from one spot to the next faster than either of you can keep up… And, seeing as she's making such good use of her straightforward physical strength, you aren't even annoyed at losing.
Much.
She then asserts that you owe her muffins, which you decide to source from Ethan. You also make sure Jeremy gets a few, just because fair's fair; the other cape seems to be highly amused by the whole affair.
All's well that ends well, you suppose.
… Note to self, practice fast movement (skill has to overcome raw strength at some point) and consider becoming even stronger somehow. For no reason in particular.
Daniel Hebert (just call him Danny) had been expecting something like this for a few days already, though he really wished it could have been done differently. That said, his daughter had been dead-set on her course of action and, well, what Skitter wanted, Skitter got, it would seem.
It rankled he had to negotiate to influence his daughter, but she had made it abundantly clear he had few other options. She also had a higher salary than him by far, which was… Well, there were many factors in this arrangement he had yet to get used to, to put it diplomatically.
As opposed to less charitable wording he was very tempted to use. That said, much as his household may be a criminal one now, he did have less to worry about in regards to his daughter, paradoxically. After all, who would be mad enough to attack Skitter of all people?
More importantly, who would survive doing such?
Granted, there was the mass murder and the many other concerns he had instead, but Taylor had explained at length why and how every heinous act of hers was justified. Danny did not agree, but just knowing she cared about justifying them lessened the tearing in his heart by a fraction every time he thought of his little girl as one of the most terrifying villains on the East Coast.
Which brought him to Alan. Alan who, it would seem, was not much better of a father than himself, in the end. Not quite as bad, perhaps, Emma hadn't gone out to kill hundreds of people as a statement one night, but she did get Taylor to the point she had been abducted one other night, without so much as a trace of struggle left behind.
Alan who, in the end, had come to Danny, who'd begun filling him up with cheap beer both to keep the harrowed man in one piece and make sure he wouldn't accidentally give off any signs the lawyer would notice.
"She jus', she just disappeared. One day to the next," Alan lamented, gesturing with his can as they both sat on the couch in the Hebert living room. "The police, they told me they'd look for her, but they just think she's run away. She'd never!"
"Of course not, not Emma," Danny said, patting his friend's shoulder. "Look, you have to be strong now. For her and for Zoe and Anne. You have to be there for all of them."
"I do." Alan hiccuped, taking another gulp of intoxicating fluid. "I do. You're right."
Sorry, Alan… But as Danny was sure he would agree, family came first. That meant he was here, comforting his old friend, while Taylor was doing who-knew-what with Emma.
She had promised Alan's daughter would be fine, in the end. That was something, at least. And enough for him.
So Danny hardened his heart. "You can't chase after phantoms now, or you will just lose everything. Look for Emma, but do it after you're sure the rest of your family is alright and your job is stable, yeah? Don't… Don't be like me after Annette."
"I… I… Yeah. You know what you're talking about." Alan was slurring a little, so his plan was working well enough.
Danny would be standing behind his daughter all the way, come hell or high water. For better or for worse. Though he had lately taken up a bit of cape research, just so he knew what she got up to on her own time… Not that the Crypts were very open about their activities.
Last he'd seen, there was some kind of battle or emergency in Boston? People on the internet weren't sure and there was no official statement out yet, so he focused on Alan instead.
He handed him another can of beer.
Rey Audino was not quite sure yet whether this change of scenery was a good one or not, but so far he was actually… Having fun. A lot of it, even, though he wasn't going to admit it.
Sure, Bonesaw was living in Cain's basement, which was maybe one of the most horrifying things he'd learned in his life, but you didn't last in his business without keeping an open mind and knowing when to just back away slowly and make no hasty moves.
That worked fine for him so far so he would keep doing it. Now, as for his new crop…
The super super weed was coming along well. Uh, the first attempt had to be discontinued, the stuff actually grew too fast with ADAM pushing it along, but it was perfectly fine to smoke while his next attempt hopefully didn't wreck the new greenhouse that he'd gotten to design and get installed in an hour or so.
Man, but those robots were handy. And the machines. And everything, really, there was a reason he wasn't looking into assuming another identity and running to the ends of the earth. Yet.
So there he was, getting stoned out of his mind and sitting in his lab. And he thought to himself 'man, what does this city need?'
Well he knew about those dogs that were apparently working for the Crypts. Weird, but okay. And there were those big guys Cain had made himself and placed at a couple streets and stuff to keep order, so he kept thinking.
Couple hours later he was jabbing a needle of pheromones into one of the undead guys, a watchdog grown in a fraction of the time he usually took with the new mutagenic stuff the Crypts were throwing around like confetti. "And what do you say if anyone asks?"
"This is a dog. It is a good dog," the deep, gravelly voice of the minion in the trench coat answered. It face was like stone, or from someone really, really autistic or something. "If you are careful, you may pet it."
"… Good enough."
The plant-dog hybrid coming up to Rey's navel sat on its haunches, recognizing the unliving guy as its boss. Good, good, there didn't seem to be any issues here.
Now to go deal with the mutated ones that may or may not have come out right… What did the manual say about ADAM again?
The Lord Street Crypts' illegal activities within Brockton Bay were quickly becoming, if not quite overwhelming in number, definitely rather numerous, ranging from facilitating prostitution on a large scale to black market trade and unlicensed medical work being performed. The specifics, however, were rather hard to track, as there was little violent crime committed at any point and the population by and large supported these operations, rather than reporting them.
However, a few general points could be made out about the overall structure of this level of crime organized under the Crypts' banner. For one, demands for the traditional 'protection money' from businesses operating within claimed territory were all but absent, instead replaced by actual (and voluntary) protection services, from security cameras installed and managed by the LSC to hired guards, should they be necessary.
They largely weren't, instead being treated as a sign of success and influence, not unlike the boardwalks enforcers in practice- its unofficial change of names had not made it into official documentation yet and hopefully would not do so in the immediate future.
Uncharacteristically for organized crime, drugs and prostitution were strictly kept separate; while inebriated or influenced customers were accepted as well as any other, any locations offering sex services were not selling drugs and vice versa, keeping the two businesses almost physically apart. The added inconvenience meant that most potential customers either veered towards consuming or fornicating, rather than going through the trouble of moving from one place to the next, and those that did oftentimes chose to first pay for sex, then for drugs.
This affected the climate in any such establishments rather heavily. Additionally, prostitutes, rather than frequenting street corners, often had access to actual facilities for considerably low prices, most often renting out rooms on a daily basis as their schedules allowed. Such shifting brothels allowed for vastly increased stability and reliability for both the working women in question and, ironically, potential customers, as they knew who was present and 'working' on what days.
As for drug trade, while street corner drug dealers were still present, many had similarly been relocated; using buildings likely purchased through proxies and refurbished to serve their new use, LSC drug dens were quickly spreading throughout Brockton Bay, though describing them as such as mildly erroneous.
To put them in the simplest terms available, these semi-hidden locations, untouched by authorities on account of the gang's aegis over them, sold a wide variety of illicit substances, but were also staffed and equipped for further follow-up services. Modeled after harm reduction facilities, trained personnel (not officially so, but the subject matter at hand did not demand such) ensured that any that consumed the wares offered in the sales area, oftentimes a front desk of some sort, did not come to undue harm while consuming and 'enjoying' the substances in question.
What was more, the front desk often also offered medical consultation, doing everything from suggesting drugs to simple medical practices as the circumstances allowed.
There were separate rooms, both for groups and for single persons capable of paying a modest surcharge for such, that added environmental factors to the consumption of drugs, from varying light colors and brightness to near complete darkness, diverse kinds of music to be played and scents released per request.
Naturally, it was possible to simply purchase and leave, but any substances with potential health risks carried with them accompanying warnings. In some areas, a needle exchange service was also customary, trading in used drug paraphernalia for new ones.
Deaths and health complications due to drug use all over the city had been reduced to a fraction of what it had been pre-Crypts. Curious, that time could be measured in such, but such was simply the impact made on the city as a whole.
Speaking of medical services, however- The LSC also offered discrete use of certain technology that, to date, had not been tracked to any one location or functionality. Anyone that paid well enough and was not a mole (information security in this regard was rather tight) could get access to technology that allowed them to be healed of nearly any disease or change anything about themselves.
Everything from genetic disorders or cancer to missing limbs, eye color or even not typically human modifications, as he had already seen in full effect. Current hypothesis was that those interested could approach the same front desks that sold drugs and provided consultation, though if so the topic had only been raised around informants in very rare cases.
Perhaps a Thinker power of some sort. Or perhaps it was simply not advertised much, exact statistics were naturally not available.
The customers of the LSC came from every walk of life, from businessmen unwinding after a long day to university students acquiring cognition-enhancing suspected tinkertech drugs. A medical tinker was almost certainly involved, which would explain the existence of various substances with anomalous properties, prime example being the small syringe devices referred to as 'stimpacks' revealed during the battle against Leviathan that had cemented the LSC's hold over Brockton Bay.
Sadly, no samples had been obtained and the effects did not seem to be indicative of the methods used beyond enhanced cell regeneration and possible stem cell usage, though any such indicators had been short-lived at best.
It would also explain the medical technologies revealed through the actions of Cain's primary Public Relations outreach method, some manner of simplified reverse engineering. To date, only Dragon had been capable of doing anything of the sort, though perhaps borderline biotinkering like this could be taken as example and replicated through intense research.
How exactly Colin was going to put all of this into a coherent report, however, was the greatest puzzle to be solved at this time. His usual templates were not going to work to encapsulate the information he was privy to through thorough investigation and pretending to be a customer on the way back from the supermarket interested in some mentats.
The easiest way to obtain a list of prices for everything involved. Incidentally, mentats shared some similarities with the cure for Alzheimer's disease, an interesting factor in the greater picture here.
Okay, so you have a couple of victims ready, plus a few from your own bloodbag division you don't explicitly need, now that you're downsizing a little; Riley's work means you can use this opportunity to clear some of them out.
Not too many, having some human test subject available is always a good thing even beyond your need for blood, but a couple. It all adds up, and you do need a good few for what you're doing right now.
Simply put, everyone amongst your vampires is ready to vamp someone again, so you're making this a whole thing. Naturally, the logistics had to be cleared up for this, but Kate has been leading efforts to grab enough bloodbags for this exact reason.
So then… Everyone submitted a suggestion as to who they want to turn, but also collectively did ask you to clear them just in case you had any particular plans for anyone of your own and such.
Sarah: Cherie/Rachel
Kate: One of Kate's girls/Ayane
Sherrel: Alice
Nora: One of Kate's girls/Beverly
Okita: Ballistic
Emily: Burnscar
Taylor: Jackie/Phoebe/One of Kate's girls
And lastly, as for yourself, you are strongly considering turning Riley, reasoning that her power and skillset would lead her towards developing an… interesting unique power. However, you naturally have to consider every angle here before you make your final decision, much as everyone else.
Everyone's thoughts are taken into consideration and so, finally, you have a little gathering, one filled with the mixed stench of fear and anticipation.
Only one of those comes from the victims bound, gagged and blindfolded forced into kneeling positions to one side of the room. You get three tries to guess which and the first doesn't count.
Everyone's chosen candidates are there, among them half of the Cluster Six, but you're giving every one of your direct spawn a moment to speak to whom they will turn shortly in relative private. Which is, as always, quite hilarious in Okita's case, though both her and Ballistic just aren't all that interested in small talk anyway and so get along so far just fine.
By the way, some cursory examination of each other's minds has shown that vampires turned by your spawn cannot actually directly turn others into vampires, though you assume having vampire children should still work out just fine.
Call it your intuition.
So there you are, holding out a hand to Riley. Bonesaw, as she is also known. "For a dance, my lady?"
She giggles, stretching out one of her own to lay it into your own. "If you would."
"… You did remember to ensure you can actually die when I bite you, right? Would be kind of awkward if we had to do this repeatedly."
"Don't worry, I'll be clinically dead in a heartbeat! I'll just restart a few minutes afterwards even if it doesn't work."
You sigh, patting her head. Without letting go of her hand with your free one, of course. "You really don't need to worry so much, it's worked with everyone else just fine so far."
"It takes just once!"
Ah well. "It shouldn't be an issue either way. Shall we?"
You lead her towards the dead bodies and stolen souls to be.
"Welcome to Lilith's Lullabies," you greet the viewers in your silkiest voice, having sent your new vampires off to relax and have some fun for the night. Riley and Mimi had some, uh, minor inconveniences as their bodies regenerated the tinkertech Bonesaw'd into them for various purposes straight out of them, pushing them through soft tissue, cartilage and bone in what seems to be a pretty much painless, just very uncomfortable process. "Hope you're all off to a good night, hm? And that you've tuned in for some music, because that's what you will get. Now what do we have tonight?"
You quickly look through the songs people voted on over the week you've given them to choose from a little election, having abused your perfect memory to simply memorize each and every bit of music in question.
"So, to sum it up… Some good old anti-establishment, a sea shanty and good old vampire jazz, hm? Oh, don't worry if you don't know what a vampire is, those are more a thing of Aleph's pop culture. Well, look to me like I should get out my trusty pirate hat for tonight."
Fun story that, you actually did look into getting a bunch of props for this stream, along with the women's clothes your wives are making you wear when you turn into one. Hence you have a bunch of random miscellaneous bits and pieces lying around, just waiting for you to reach for and use them.
Adjusting the black tricorn with a painted-on skull and crossbones on its front now sitting over your shadowed face, you give the camera your best smile, not that anyone can see it, and cock your hips. "Let's get right to it then, boys and girl, eh? A pirate's life for me."
"SO HOW DID HE BLOCK THE SUEZ CANAL FROM ALL THE WAY OVER THERE?!"
"… Goddammit, Rebecca."
David's palm was currently thoroughly meeting his face, both mask and professionalism be damned. This was really, really not the time.
"It is, in exceeding likelihood, not connected," he finally said after nobody else wanted to speak up. "Now can we get back to the actually important part of this meeting?"
"Funny. I hadn't taken you for a man interested in studies of global economies," Numberman lied. He was incapable of humor, David was pretty sure that was an empirically proven fact by this point.
"I just want to get this torture over with, actually," he confessed.
Clearing her throat, Doctor Mother nodded, gesturing for them to stop messing around and get on with the program already. Well, David had to confess the levity injected into Cauldron's meetings was perhaps not entirely unwelcome, but it did get in the way sometimes when not everyone could agree on when to stop and get serious.
Numberman raised a stack of papers upright, tapping them against the desk to bring them in order. It was such a mundane motion, wasn't it, but when he, of all people, did it, it seemed almost exaggerated through nothing but the man's presence. "Quite. Comparing Earth Bet's global economy with other, baseline Earths, it is easy to see the impact the emergence of parahumans and various S-class threats have made on society as a whole. Accounting for this, it furthermore becomes apparent that a powerful Thinker seems to be manipulating the stock market focused around North America beyond this, however, which is why I called for a moment of everyone's time."
Rebecca grimaced, or came as close to it as she would allow anyone to see (and only in secure locations such as this). "Watchdog can't pick them out?"
"No. Whoever they are, they are being methodical and careful, using considerable amounts of wealth to move money around. The only reason I myself noticed was due to the comprehensive research and statistics availabe to us. Oh, and a message left for anyone within Watchdog that may have noticed."
He slid a piece of paper into the middle of the table. On it were massive strings of numbers in fine print, with accompanying dates and, David assumed, related information. Some of the numbers were circled in red, though he didn't bother shifting his powers to gain one that could allow him to read whatever 'message' Numberman was referring to.
Instead he looked at Rebecca. "'All bark, no bite'. A clear challenge, but not to us directly. Chances this is Cain?"
"I would not discount it, but the sheer number of offshore accounts and fake companies involved in this financial empire makes it near impossible to tell. Some of the money is being used in and around Brockton Bay, but I have been following investments all over Earth Bet in tracking down our mystery trillionaire." That was… concerning.
"In other news, global relations are becoming more and more tense day after day," Doctor Mother added. "The CUI's stance on the incident in Brockton Bay is still complete denial of involvement, but there has been movement on the matter of rebuilding and reinforcing the Yangban."
"At least the EU continues to be in constant chaos and Africa's warlords are no closer to uniting the continent as such," Rebecca said. If he didn't know better, David would suspect she was grousing. "As long as it is only the CUI, we can manage to keep a semblance of peace."
… He was fairly sure this may count as 'tempting Murphy', but she was the diplomatic one between all of them. Best to leave her to it. "How about the rest, anything new we should be aware of in Mexico or Canada? Unless the US are going to surprise us, anyway," he asked. "I'd love to see any domestic villains trying to outdo Cain at this point."
Everyone looked at him. Numberman, proving how much of a secret ass he could be, pulled out a smartphone and held it to his ear without even pretending to dial. "Hello, is this Murphy?"
"See if I try to contribute to any of these meetings again," David grumbled. "Oh, and while we're at it, where's Contessa? She usually shows up at some point."
"Busy with another path, I am afraid."
Somehow, Doctor Mother's answer was not all that satisfying…
Contessa adjusted the earphones around her head, listening to the voice coming from them. At the same time, she attempted to run a path towards obtaining some coffee, because damn if she wasn't in need of one.
Attempted because, as the experiment as to Cain's indirect effects proceeded, she had begun with adjusting her fedora and, through a series of increasingly unlikely circumstances, ended up threatening a rubber duck with a loaded glock.
… No, this was not going to work out. The Path was entirely unusable under these circumstances. Shutting the headphones off, she proceeded to run it again as soon as she stepped through a portal to another Earth.
Finally some coffee. And confirmation that it hadn't reached this far, at least. Yet.
After you're done singing, the stream ended and cameras off, you (finally) take off the clothes you've been made to wear and go to join the rest of your vampire collective. Then, because Sarah apparently doesn't like you walking around naked while female, you end up putting on other, comfier clothes before actually doing so.
No, seriously, you can bear discomfort just fine, but typical women's fashion is still a damn travesty, you say.
Anyway, back to the vamps. Most of the newly turned are getting accustomed to the absence of humanity their change has entailed, as well as the many, many advantages to being technically kinda undead. It does suck some of them lost progress in certain powers you had to switch out to accommodate immunity to the sun, but hey, it is worth it not bursting into flame and dying the moment an errant bit of sunlight hit you.
With the exception of Riley, but she insisted you don't. Partially because she doesn't plan on leaving the bunker for a couple years at the least, she's entertained and busy enough as is and so doesn't want to even imply she might need to get out.
Note to self, make sure she has a plan B in case it actually becomes necessary to do so.
Ballistic has joined Jeremy in the ranks of the people you had Okita turn because she didn't care who she added to the ranks of her bloodline, in part to ensure you actually do have at least one guy among the new generation of vamps; while you don't have any quotas to meet or anything, you do want to at least try to avoid looking sexist about this, so there he went. Jackie, Ayane and Beverly are vampires too, now, but though half the Cluster Six have been turned while the other half continues being thralls of yours, there has been no friction of any sort amongst them, something you are thankful for.
Still almost incredible how they all got a kiss/kiss relationship going on, but hey, that's just how things turned out unless you gravely misjudged anyone's character. You'd like to think that's unlikely.
Cherie, Alec's sister, has also become a fellow foxgirl along with Sarah, at least once she trains a little to get the transformation down pat. You believe your sister has also been marking her territory by insisting you brush and hand-feed her for the past half hour or so, but alas, you shall simply have to surrender yourself to this terrible fate.
Relatedly, Alice has been turned by Sherrel. She can now replicate any bombs she has ever created, limited to mundane ones (so none right now) so far, but you already know that particular power can be pushed into working with tinkertech as well. You do not foresee a lack of explosives in her life anytime soon.
And as for Burnscar… It used to be she went completely sociopathic when in the general vicinity of open flame. Right now, she is open flame. Literally, having gained Emily's unique power.
You are currently carrying her between your boobs, starting from when she promised not to burn anything. It's a little hot, but you can tolerate it.
"Look! Look! I made a giant spider that can shoot acid and sedatives, web people up, ignore small arms fire and fire, absorb electricity, sense heat, lay traps and puncture steel with its mandibles all without any tinkertech!"
"That's very impressive, Riley. Want to come show it to Taylor?"
"Yep!"
"Screeeeeaaaaaark!"
"You wouldn't happen to have added any controls, have you?"
"I knew I was forgetting something! My power usually includes those by itself," the blonde girl grumbles.
"Not to worry, Taylor doesn't need it to be healthy to copy it, just alive. You can install some and repair it once she's taken a look."
Cue a brutal beatdown coming from yourself directed at Riley's first creation using just her new, unique power. You imagine this is what it's like to be a responsible father figure.
You know, you were meaning to get to doing this shopping for a while already, now that you think about it. You've just been kind of busy and otherwise engaged enough you kept on putting it off until now. Alas, you may as well get it done, not that you strictly need to, but it should hopefully help confirm several things about the nature of parahumans and related issues.
Riley is fairly sure there's some kind of external entity involved in growing a corona pollentia into a human brain and adding a bit of defining tissue on top to define a power during what you know as Trigger Events.
Actually having studied this stuff at university, you even understand a good bit of what the ex-member of the now defunct Slaughterhouse Nine has to tell on the subject over your thought net, which is nice; all that work that went into memorizing the theoretical parts of parahuman studies is actually coming in handy for a change.
You still liked the parts about cape culture and parahuman psychology better, though. Nothing beat thinking up cape name and costume descriptions for example capes as actual course work.
So, Passengers. Some kind of at least semi-intelligent beings that ride along wherever parahumans go, not interacting with anything save through them. As far a Riley knows, they mostly just record everything a cape thinks and perceives, sometimes slightly adjusting powers as they go based on those factors- Sechen Ranges are an actual thing now, you suppose, though not every powers seems to show noticeable changes under any given circumstances.
Which all fits with the general, old and stale notions you picked up from the memories of that one guy that reincarnated onto Thule and largely only remembered fanfiction about some story he never actually read in full.
Gosh but if it isn't annoying to be working with fragmented information.
So yes, Cauldron, people that sell powers… And that apparently are doing something to save the world. Or making it worse or something, you can't be quite sure without more information. Which is why you are currently using a newly unpacked phone to call a certain number you've been keeping up your sleeve for a tad bit.
When someone picks up, you clear your throat as clearly and crisp as you can to get it across to the person on the other end. "Hello there, this is Cain, am I speaking to Cauldron or someone representing them?"
"You may have the right number, yes," a man's voice answers. You also get the distinct impression you may have just been set to loudspeaker. "What can we do for you?"
"I'd like to purchase a few vials' worth of powers with specific characteristics, if you could arrange them. It isn't urgent, but I'd like to clear up the details ahead of time while I have you here already."
To summarize the brief, but thorough negotiations taking place after this, Cauldron seems to make it a point to try and sell their wares at exorbitantly expensive prices- to anyone that doesn't have functionally unlimited amounts of money, at least.
Typically, they also do not haggle. You make it a point that you want to test the vials more than anything else and therefore don't really care about how safe (or unsafe, rather) they are so much as you care about them being usable at all, therefore meaning the usual cost markers should be changed for a start.
You get the feeling nobody around Cauldron was really expecting you to do so. Argue this point, you mean.
Anyway, you talk back and forth a little, exchanging tidbits of information that is essential, but not in itself valuable. For instance, you find out that Cauldron actually usually does individual meetings, evaluations and testing with most customers they approach (seeing as they very rarely are approached; they apparently have a system in place to filter for people looking persistently enough they just contact them), rather than straight-out bulk trade like you want here.
Individualized prices, too, with options to owe 'favors' enforced by their mysterious organization organization-ness. You know, if you didn't know better, you'd say that's exactly what you would've done in their position, create new capes that in all likelihood can't afford what you demand and choose to owe you a couple, then draw them in further and further until you basically control the world… Though, hey, looking at the PRT, they seem to have been working on North America, at least.
You still could've done that better, of course, but you do appreciate the spirit of this particular sinister conspiracy.
Anyway, the vial. They basically offer varying levels of dependability, that is, the chances of not mutating or dying horribly, how powerful powers of a particular 'batch' tend to be, general theme of what they do and so on and so forth; as it turns out, Cauldron is working off of a hit and miss approach, comparing past results to make educated guesses as to what their vials do exactly.
They can dress it up for the peasants, but you're aware they don't exactly know what they're doing here. Interesting.
But yes, you end up wheedling a grand total of twenty vials out of the man on the other side of the phone (and whoever he's communicating with in turn, you can hear the movement of a pen on paper on his end), far more than you'd expected to be buying this time around. You kind of just allocated leftover funds of your various operations, sans operating expenses and a couple million dollars for Sarah to play around and keep on making more money with, so that's nice, you suppose.
It's a wild mix between theoretically powerful, but unacceptably unstable vials (unacceptable in the context of someone you wish to keep alive and useful), fairly average, low-powered, stable ones, ones with high expected power and stability and even the 'trash' tier crappy power plus danger on drinking ones.
You know how Noelle happened, and how the Travelers all drank vials that belonged to the 'stable and powerful' category that must have ended up in the middle of that Simurgh attack somehow. Consequently, you are also fairly sure Cauldron is actually based in some parallel dimension, all things considered, as parts of what in retrospect seems to have been their headquarters ended up teleported into Canberra just like the Travelers were.
Basic deduction applies and your hypothesis seems sound so far. But hey, you can deal with potential rivals to controlling Earth Bet later, right now you can work with or around them just fine until you receive more information.
Note to self, retrofit the bunker one of these days. Everything eldritch seems to be a good counter to Thinkers, particularly ones that do precognition, clairvoyance and the like, so you'd better fill your headquarters from top to bottom. These people literally create capes- you'd eat your costume if they didn't have a couple powerful Thinkers on hand to know anything and everything they want.
Powers can be pretty bullshit. Luckily, you can, too, but you really should've thought to do this sooner, in retrospect. All it takes is one lucky parahuman whose power interacts in just the right way with the effect of your general existence people have been noticing ever since you started blacking out certain powers all over the place and too many of your secrets would be revealed to who knows whom.
Ah well. Live and learn, as you like to think. Or… unlive and learn? Unlearn? That sounds horrible, nevermind.
You'll get your vial selection within one to three business days, half of the payment upfront, the other half after confirming the goods. Simple, straightforward, perfectly fair as far as you're concerned.
This is how business deals are supposed to go.
"Blasto! Blasto, do you have super opium or something?"
"Why would I have super opium, man? I got, like, super weed."
"Can you make super opium?"
"Uh, dunno, gimme a couple days to work here and I'll get back to you."
Fair enough. Enjoy your buzz."
Waving the vague stink of weed that was definitely treated with ADAM, likely through one of your Plant Matters (you recognize an undertone in the scent), you rejoin Sarah in your planning room, which is really just a section of Coil's office you repurposed and expanded outwards using your aura minions.
"So we're sure on what place we're hitting?" You ask, holding out a hand for her. Your sister smiles, pulling it closer and holding it close to her chest.
"Yeah. A small town in the middle of nowhere. China is big enough, they won't miss a couple thousands of people."
"Mhm… I suddenly feel validated by history. You know, the Mongols, Japan, most European colonial powers… Fucking China over for power and profit is a time-honored tradition."
"Learn from history and repeat it anyway, because it works," Sarah smirks.
"Exactly. It'll be easy as pie, too, we got everything we need. Just have to fire up the additional teleporter units and we can go right ahead."
You share a chuckle before she gives you a cute little grin. "Well, what are we waiting for?"
The plan is simple, deceptively so. Step one, you teleport into the target area under the cover of night and some heavy clouds hanging over the sky, courtesy of yours truly. Step two, open the Box you brought with you, to watch as light is drained from the night sky, what little of it there is; within moments, the area is even darker than it already was.
Now assured no satellite footage could possibly give the game away (or part of it, anyway), you give the all-clear to the small crew of vampires currently manning the teleporter gallery, handling the thousands of individual teleportations now taking place.
You stay around for a little while longer, to make sure the 'phenomenon' of light disappearing in a great, conical area and disappearing people under it area of effect is well-established. You don't want to leave any doubt about this: The light vanishes, the people vanish, then the light returns but the people stay gone.
This is as simple as it gets, but faking cause and effect to make it look like some great big parahuman thing is going on to mask your nabbing of the people is important here. If this goes well, you can just keep on doing it whenever you need a couple thousand easy victims, after all, what's not to love?
Step three, close up the box again, teleport back to Brockton Bay once you're packed up.
"So how'd it go?"
Taylor is the one to answer your question. "We have captured four thousand eight hundred and fifty-two individual human beings. They are being processed as we speak."
"Good."
And that was what was to be said about the affair.
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Topic: A New Thread
In: Boards Global Darkest Night
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On May 17th 2011:
Just letting everyone know that I told you so and it happened again.
... *Clears throat* Right, so for anyone that does not yet know, the Darkest Night happened again. The Darkest Night is a preliminary nickname for a phenomenon that was first sighted in Canada, way up north from Ottawa, through satellite footage that was later analyzed.
The Darkest Night itself is an area of spreading darkness that completely covers an area before receding and disappearing again twice as fast. It didn't seem to be doing anything in that first instance, but has since reappeared in rural China, covering a massive spread of land north from Shanghai.
The concerning thing is that there used to be people there. They were visible on satellite imaging, but reportedly ever since the Darkest Night happened there, not a single sign of human life is to be seen.
Farm animals and others are still there, just no humans. Like they disappeared off the face of the earth with no signs of struggle or anything.
Gonna keep this thread as up-to-date as I can as usual as news come up.
(Showing page 1 of 28)
Antigone
Replied On May 17th 2011:
Well shit, guess we're up for some new horror
Sussybaka
Replied On May 17th 2011:
Chances this is a new, you know? This scale and mode of operation…
Dawgsmiles (Veteran Member)
Replied On May 17th 2011:
Nah, it appeared twice in a row this quickly? I'm thinking it's something unrelated that's still just as scary.
Ryus
Replied On May 17th 2011:
Guess we couldn't just have a good month for once, could we? As a whole of humanity, I mean.
Deadman
Replied On May 17th 2011:
Any official reaction from the Chinese government yet?
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On May 17th 2011:
@Deadman Nothing yet. Not sure there will be, the CUI doesn't like anyone that's not them sticking their nose into Chinese business.
Mock Moniker
Replied On May 17th 2011:
Please tell me you're joking. So it just shows up at random, disappears any humans specifically and goes away again? What are you even supposed to do about that?
Kriketz
Replied On May 17th 2011:
So does this just, what, consume the light, blot it out or? What if it's just something really big that's hard to make out from above?
XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On May 17th 2011:
-DELETED-
You know what you did
-Brilliger
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 26, 27, 28
You really should go out of your way to properly plan out these kinds of projects. You know, figure out schedules, make advance plans, budget your time properly so as to keep the reigns of your life in hand, that kind of thing.
Then again, haphazardly driving your soul slaves into taking care of your sudden and unreasonable demands is ever so fun, not to mention surprisingly effective. It's much easier to just build a couple dozen different prototypes in parallel to each other when you have a couple dozen people that can't disobey you and functionally unlimited resources to try shit with.
Your inner world is really just so very convenient. Acquiring proof of concept for advanced technology beyond all that man has achieved has never been easier.
Not necessarily counting some other dimensions, anyway. Screw 'em, they're violating your trademark rights here, not the other way around!
But yes, there you are, watching as your test subject souls are slowly put under by the headsets you have them wearing. Somewhat improvised right now, but it seems to be working well enough.
And you only had to temporarily fry the brains of a few hundred of them (and probably traumatize them forever, but eh). Because hey, unlimited human test subjects that just return to normal after some time are also one of the many advantages you enjoy here in your deepest, darkest domain.
Figuratively speaking. Technically, you often have the sun shine in here just because you like the concept of a functioning day/night cycle.
Most of the machinery that used to be inside the pods is still there, of course, regardless of the inability of even your bullshit to cram it all into a little headset. That said, the original designs you stole from the Memory Den back on Earth Fallout already had the pods connected to a computer setup inside the building, so you just… Went ahead and shifted more things onto the other end of the remote connection.
It does take a lot of your other, more applicable bullshit to work, particularly a few bits of technology that can interface directly with a living being's mind, but hey, if it works, it works.
And work it does. This stuff isn't really useful to put people to sleep, the effect is too slow and easily resisted by wide-awake humans, but as long as they don't resist, they quickly drift off to let their brainmeat experience exactly what you want them to. Somewhat limited to experiences either drawn directly from the user or from someone else, but 'transplanting' memories for someone else to experience works without a hitch so far, as well.
Now all you need is a bunch of the right kind of memories and you could basically offer this as a service, selling experiences, that kind of thing… Rent out memories, even. Make the suckers pay big bucks for the greatest of thrills, the most intense feelings, heck you could look into acquiring the memories of particularly skilled experts in various field and advertise it as a learning experience, even.
And, of course, the next level of porn. Sex sells and this would literally be selling sex as an experience, it's damn near foolproof.
So long as nobody gets stupid and tries to mess with the equipment, of course. "Note #1739: Damaged connectors seem to lead to catastrophic brain failure during initialization. Make sure to reinforce the outer casing," you dictate to your lab computer.
This is how it's done best. Always test out every eventuality so you can act accordingly.
Bureaucracy. The arch-foe of modern mankind, if you do say so yourself; yes, violent capes cause massive amounts of property damage and many, many deaths every year, the Endbringers cause even more titanic amounts of utter destruction every couple months, but if one were to ask you, the reason so much of this damage ends up permanent and never fixed in any meaningful capacity is that the paper pushers and the office politics simply do not allow effective use of anything.
Resources, manpower, money… Doesn't matter what, if you simply removed the structures in place to manage everything and replaced them with thralls and vampires people would actually get things done.
As opposed to the current state of affairs, which is very much not like that. You had to get the zoning permits checked out due to the size of the building you're looking to set up, a slew of legalese both read and written to ensure the nature of the business you're intending to place in the area, then you had to fast-track all the paperwork by continuously calling the people responsible within the city's administration and pushing them to actually do their damn jobs…
It was hours of your time spent just wrangling bureaucracy. And to think if you didn't know exactly what had to happen where and when this process would have taken weeks… On the low end, that is.
Absolutely ridiculous. But at least you have a place around downtown, its location really convenient to get around the city and thus great for a hotel like this, where you can get to work at any time you damn well please now.
Only issue will be disguising the couple hundred robots you'll want to take care of construction as such, the many-limbed, floating Bobs being not so much stealthy as they are heavy construction equipment in nature.
Also known as the exact opposite of stealthy. Like, they aren't quite all that bad, but you never did figure out a way to just have them build a massive fifty floor building with the whole city around it none the wiser, see?
Ah well, you'll deal with that bridge when you get to it. Or something. Right now you're just leaning back and enjoying not having to deal with lazy bureaucrats for the moment, all the while Nora is massaging your shoulders from behind.
"This is really nice, by the way," you say aloud, figuring it's worth the words instead of just pushing the feeling at her over telepathy.
"Happy to hear it," the one of your lovers the furthest along her pregnancy smiles.
You hum, the agitated annoyance you've been feeling slowly fading from you. Nora's belly is very much showing these days, protruding from her figure noticeably, and you sometimes find yourself just stroking it, thinking thoughts of love at your unborn children and their mothers.
Always better to make the basis of your relationship clear to begin with, after all. Especially towards your kids, who will be raised with so much care and attention they'll be sick of it in short order.
"Ugh," Cherie groaned, limply reaching for the TV remote. Alec, being a little shit, nudged it away from her before looking back at his stupid game of Call Of Shooty; he obviously sucked at it, too, she could do it better. "Uuuuuugh."
"I thought doing the death dance was supposed to make you immune to stomach aches," he commented.
"I am," she ground out, turning a bit where she was lying on the second couch she'd added to his place just so she could lie on it. "It's more like brain freeze, I'm working through the muscle memory of hundreds of fucking Chinese farmers right now."
"And they're all inside you at once? Kinky."
"Would've preferred something better than literal unwashed peasants, but eh, could be worse. Could be pasty gaming nerds."
"I'm not pasty, I'm just not tanned. There's a difference."
"Sure. Nerd."
"Bitch."
"Cuck."
"Son of a whore."
"That doesn't even make sense."
"Not meant at you, this fucker is hacking."
"Scoot over, let me try out my new body coordination."
Just hanging out with someone is a greatly treasured thing for you, given your general thing and what your life (unlife, yes, sure, whatever) has come to. There's just never quite enough time and when you do have some, you usually just spend it putting out potential fires before they can start and your many, many projects always swirling around the back of your head.
Sometimes literally, really depends on what they are.
It's the dilemma of the self-employed man, you imagine. No hard schedules or deadlines or anything of the sort save that which you impose on yourself… But you do need to impose them on yourself to keep things going, as it were.
All that goes to explain that the time you do spend with others just for the sake of relaxing together with them is just that valuable to you. It's not often that you can, but really, if you, say, didn't feel the need to continually advance your schemes and your plots and your continuous grasping for more power, you would totally spend all day and night just messing around with your harem of lovers and shooting the shit, as it were.
Hence why you and Kate are just there, together, watching random things on television as your mother squirms in the background, the combination of bondage keeping her in place and vibrators securely fastened to and inside her driving her mad. But this is not about her, this is about the two of you.
The two of you and the dire disappointment of free TV. "You know, all of these movies and serials suck some major dick," you comment at the third 'dramatic reveal of a pregnancy' you've zapped to within the last twenty minutes. "Why can't anyone play anything actually, you know, good?"
"I think it's a lack of demand, actually. People just want to watch something, doesn't matter what," your second in command out in the field suggests. "Why go out of their way to be original or interesting when redoing the same old plot points works just as well?"
"Still sucks," you conclude. "Ugh. You'd think with how many channels there are out there, one of them would have something better than reality TV and CapeFacts."
The latter doesn't actually educate people about parahumans, by the way, it's essentially just a news show about what prominent capes did what lately, pretty much exclusively doing PR for heroes. It's… alright for what it does, but that's the most you can say about the program.
"You know, I'd bet we could make a better channel just off of what the Crypts do in their daily lives," Kate says, leaning over to stretch herself over the bed you're both sitting on and onto your lap.
"Huh. You think so?"
"Yeah, definitely. You don't really keep track of it much, but there's, like, tons of comedy going on all the time." Her arms come up to grab your head, angling it so you have a perfect view of her face and body, both completely bare. It is a very nice body, it was before she got vamped and even more so now. "Just yesterday Ethan prevented a food fight by threatening everyone around he'd force-feed them twenty blueberry pies each if they didn't sit down and cool it, Emily and Tammi inducted Mimi into their tabletop gaming and Lea had a near breakdown about Sherrel probably coming with you unsupervised. We could film this shit and play it off the reel, no editing, and people'd watch it."
"Guess you're right. Couldn't be much worse than this programming anyway," you vaguely gesture towards the TV. "And then there's all the porn we'd produce. Probably play it onto collector's editions or something, or require a paid account for the good stuff."
"Heh. Speaking of, how's Taylor been doing with her whole thing?"
"We can find out, she put cameras into her pet rooms. And we have telepathy."
A few months ago, Taylor would have thought everything about this situation strange, weird, perverted. Not only that, she would have been paralyzed with indecision about what to do, unsure and insecure about herself and absolutely, above all else, denying she found this hot.
Luckily, she wasn't the Taylor of a few month ago. The one that had serious issues so much as imagining her ugly self in any situation even remotely sexual without inherently screwing it all up or that would never have had the nerves to simply stand there as she was.
Instead, she was humming to herself, idly considering the girl tied up and blindfolded before her; Emma may have been a bitch and a half (no relation to Rachel), but she really did look… Tasty as she was, bent over, forced onto all fours by the chains and the spreader bar keeping her legs set apart from one another, her butt spread enough by the angle to let her see everything.
Taylor had been keeping her very much former best friends in varying form of bondage ever since she'd finally caught her a few days ago, never revealing anything about the circumstances or even her own identity apart from that first time she'd spoken a single sentence to Emma. She'd been ignoring any question in-between one gag and another or the idle resting periods for her 'friend's' jaw to return to normal, just letting her stew for days on end before she pulled anything.
Maybe it was kind of a reversal of the locker. Maybe she was just beginning to understand the same mindset that'd lead to it. Either way it couldn't happen to a better bitch, she supposed as she stood there studying the outstretched behind of the girl that'd gone and turned on her one day out of the blue.
Sophia had been quiet and brooding lately, a far cry from the constant stream of furious acidity Shadow Stalker used to emit. Maybe this would break her out of it, or maybe it would drive her further down. She was looking forward to her reaction either way.
… She stretched out a hand. Taylor had kept herself from touching Emma except to change her bondage out all this time, keeping any contact as clinical and non-involved as possible, but now that she had an invested audience, the wait was over, she decided. There was certainly little point in stalling.
The soft globes of Emma's ass parted just a bit as she grabbed them and she could feel her victim realizing something was different, this time. Gasping, Emma twitched, her wrists still chained to the ground with very little give and her legs nigh immobilized. "What-"
"Shh," Taylor made. She knew she'd be recognized through her voice sooner or later, it hadn't changed that much and she was sure Emma would manage that much at least, but for the moment she just wanted to make their current relationship clear. "Have you been having fun so far?"
"F- You're crazy. You're crazy."
"Maybe I am," she shrugged, still massaging and pulling at Emma's cheeks. They were round and shaped very nicely, she had to give her that, and her asshole was actually well cleaned courtesy of Taylor's own labors. She was shaved, too, pink pussy standing out nicely and almost beckoning for her to come take it however she liked. "And we're still here."
"You have to let me go. Do you understand? That's-"
"What you have to understand is that I make the rules here," she coolly pointed out. Well, her and the other vampires, but the result was the same. "So if you want to avoid a lot of pain and embarrassment, your only option is to do as I say at all times. Just like it is for Sophia and Madison."
"She- They- No. You can't be serious. This is a trick."
And that earned her her first punishment. As long as it was a puishment still rather than a reward.
Taylor reached out, grabbing something both hard and soft at the same time, coated with slick, thick fluid. "Did you still not figure it out, Emma? Ems?"
Her other hand undid the blindfold, letting the redhead see the world for the first time in days.
"It's me. Taylor. What did you think I've been doing since I stopped coming to school?" Then she went back, sliding one side of her ex-best friend's butt aside, lewdly displaying her privates. "And what do you think is going to happen to you now?"
"… This is a trick. You're lying. You don't have the- Uoooooogh!"
The Cain-brand dildo pushed into Emma's dry asshole, only making it inside thanks to the copious lube coating it. She spread her open, not too worried about causing any damage; she could always use a stimpack, if it was anything serious.
Taylor buried the synthetic pleasure dispenser deep into the redhead, until just a quarter or so remained poking outside, and looked at her work. It was good, she decided, the desperate quivering, holding her butt up so it didn't hurt quite so much; the imposition on her enemy-turned-victim's will and body.
Wiping her fingers on Emma's back, sliding them up along her spine, she slowly walked around towards her front, looking down at where she was literally making her grovel at her feet. Taylor was naked, showcasing her body in all its glory, and knew precisely that she was in fact more beautiful than the model (former model, she wasn't going to pull her side career untl Taylor decided otherwise) now.
"I want you to understand something, Emma," she said, bending down to grab a fistful of red hair. "You are mine now. My pet. My toy. My slave. You do not need to acknowledge this, only understand it, from the soles of your feet to the tips of your hair. Am I clear?"
"Fffffuck… you…"
"It seems you're determined to earn yourself as many punishment as you can while you still have the willpower not to register them as rewards," she pondered. "Maybe I'll even give you a choice. You still have one unoccupied hole, so either that one gets filled up as well… Or I can give you a good, thorough spanking. Which would you prefer?"
Emma looked at her with a mixture of fear and suddenly flaring hatred, an undercurrent of panic running through her whole body. Did she hit a nerve? Or maybe she struck a bit of past trauma, a childhood fear or something of the like?
Either way there was no answer forthcoming. So she smiled, the most heartfelt expression she'd made at anyone for weeks. Emma cringed in on herself as she saw it. "Both it is then. I was hoping you'd agree."
Madison's butt was cute and almost small, a little plaything to have fun with. Sophia's ass was muscled, by comparison, tough and resistant, so she had to work at it, knead and spank and hit and strike until she couldn't tense it up anymore.
But the one she was working over now? Emma's behind was soft and exquisite, just enough muscle it wasn't completely deforming every time it was hit, jiggling and moving like it was made to be used by her betters.
Her crying and screams were wonderful as well. All throughout, Taylor never once stopped smiling, hammering her into the shape she wanted her to be one jolt of pain and pleasure at a time. Every now and then, she took a short break to play with the dildos stuck in her old best friend, twisting and shoving them to mold her phyical insides as well as her metal ones.
A great introduction to Emma's new life. She couldn't wait to show her how the other two were doing later on.
Mhm… Kate eventually had to get up and do something else, apparently some mundane idiot around the city tried some shit with the gang and got the crap kicked out of himself, but now they girls are looking to keep their response organized and figure out what to do with the wretch.
So Kate went off to dress herself so she can eat him and add another soul to her collection, figuring she's kind of the person responsible for stuff like this. Ah well, priorities.
You, in the meantime, have a couple hours until evening- you're planning to keep on, well, 'corrupting' the Dallon girls as per usual, as the more open to and downright fine with villainy they are the better for your plans in the long term, but business in the Raveyard will take a few hours yet to really ratchet up for today, so you may as well do something else right now.
So, what kind of vanity project could you pursue…
"Right," you say out loud, snapping your fingers. "Got an idea."
https/watch?v=MV0F_XiR48Q
You have a piece of music, now how about animating a few part of your journey as a cape set to it? From beating the crap out of skinhead while Kate and just a couple of the girls watch and shoot to the battle against Leviathan? You could eve pull from a few other examples if you find any on the net, then go from there.
Turns out you may have a talent for this kind of thing. Or, more realistically, your massive enhancements, superhuman hand-eye coordination and ability to stay perfectly concentrated for arbitrary amounts of time is letting you just do this much better than you should be able to, but hey, same difference, right?
Right.
You can't really include all of the thing you feel should go into something like this, but then you always had trouble cutting parts out where appropriate- a more important skill than you'd think. Recognizing redundant and not strictly necessary pieces of a greater whole comes up pretty often as far as critical necessities go.
Anyway, you have it more or less complete, you think. The battles you fought, the allies you made, all that good stuff- without, that is, the things you aren't exactly looking to announce should anyone ever see this.
Punching a skinhead is always good, but inciting infighting among them and dragging a good chunk of the city into brutal gang warfare could be seen as less PR friendly, to put it like that. Getting a grasp on things like this is important.
At any rate, you'll just leave the music video around your telepathic network for trusted users and store a digital copy inside your work computer- the same one you hare with other vampires involved in administrating the Crypts at times. If you want to use it for anything, it shouldn't be too hard to access at some point.
And now for the fun part. Not that trying your hand at this wasn't fun, mind you, but it's the first time you really tried to, well, animate something you've drawn, not to mention you aren't really used to the style you used, either. There's plenty of programs anyone can grab for free that can do what you needed them to do, it was more just learning to use them well and changing the ways you did things.
A valuable experience, all told. Conveying things in an actively moving medium completely shifts the paradigm you usually work by. That said, you can also hope what you're doing next will be just as valuable an experience in its own right.
Telepathy makes it so much easier to casually contact people to let them know you want to take them somewhere, after all.
The Raveyard is, as always, the kind of place any 'good Christian folk' would have aneurysms and conniptions over if they had a single inkling as to what your night club is all about.
In other words, it's a place for people under thirty to have fun in. Sure, it's also a den of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, not to mention general degeneracy and corruption, but that's just the natural result of it fulfilling its primary purpose.
Interestingly, the best-selling drink is still the 'Bloody Cain', which is really just a combination of liquors with a semi-natural red color to it. No tomato juice in this one, no sirree, just a good bit of whiskey and maybe some of the place's lighting.
None of this is immediately relevant to you right this moment, though, as you lead Victoria and Amy Dallon through the VIP area upstairs, the little loft with a wonderful view of the dancing stage- a few of the other vampires have taken to surveying party-goers from here to pick out their next meals, in fact, as a few prefer to know whose fluids they're ingesting- and give Cherie a quick nod, the fully-fledged member of your species returning the same accompanied with a curious thought about your companions.
You mentally shake your head, however. You don't need nor want her to use her power on the two heroines with you today, so she just shrugs in turn and returns towards plucking the emotional strings of the hundreds of people coming into and out of your club at her leisure.
You're fairly sure no few of her 'victims' are also coming in people, but the perception of emotional states as individual tones of music she's sharing with you aside, you actually have somewhere to be.
"So this is the Raveyard, huh? Cool place."
"Please don't start comparing it to other clubs, Vicky," Amy asks. "Remember we're both supposed to be underage."
"Just saying, it's the hottest place in town lately. Anyone that's someone comes here. And we're, like, backstage, isn't it exciting?"
"Technically, this isn't backstage or anything, actually," you note, continuing to lead the girls through the higher floor. "It's just the VIP area. Nobody that isn't with the Crypts usually comes here, though, and most of the lower ranking members prefer just hanging around downstairs with the rest of the crowd."
Vicky 'ooh's and 'aah's a little at being in such an exclusive place, though Amy just narrows her eyes at you, clearly keeping her head in the game despite the constant incestuous lesbian energy she's still emitting, thoughts of tearing her sister's clothes off with her teeth still leaking telepathically sometimes as you proceed. "And so why'd you ask us to come here?"
"Well, I've been low-key recruiting the two of you for months now, I figured I'd show you around a few of the company premises and get you a couple souvenirs and all," you shrug.
"Wait, we're members of New Wave," Vicky point out. "I'm not sure we could join the Crypts even if we decided to actually become villains, which we aren't."
"We're an exclusive club, but not that exclusive. When in doubt, assume exceptions will be made on request." Stepping past the hallway that culminates in a wall painting of a dead dragon that may or may not share some similarities with Lung, you open a door. "And anyway, I'm not making any actual demands here, this is also meant as an educational visit. Welcome to the Raveyard's control room."
Cameras line the walls, convenient office chairs (the good kind, you had them specifically made for this place) around the consoles get up to control them. Right now, they're showing various scenes from around the main floor downstairs and a few of the 'private' niches that can be opened or closed on demand, people moving about, dancing, sitting and snorting white powder off of a desk, that kind of thing.
Incidentally, the Raveyard is nominally more of a place for your hookers to ply their trade, but if someone buys drugs from the 'market' downstairs and brings them up, that's their own decision. It also means that this is one of the few places you can snort cocaine off a hooker's tits with relative convenience, though the heavy monitoring and security still ensure the safety of everyone involved.
Nobody is OD'ing in here, at worst Cherie is around to keep an eye on things and direct the girls acting as guards (or the actual guards you've hired, for that matter) toward any real problem cases.
"This is, like, straight out of some B-movie villain lair. Oh, the chairs are really soft, too!"
"Of course. Who do you think built this place?" In both ways, really. "Anyone want something to drink?"
A minute or two later, Amy holding a cappuccino (she wanted black coffee, but Vicky convinced her to try out something different and your coffee machine doesn't care about the difference) and her sister cradling a bottle of coke (the drink one, not the powder one), you can finally get down to business.
You clear your throat, one hand ranging out to the console nearest to yourself. "The reason I asked both of you to come with me today was to let you expand your horizons on the topic of relationships and love, to answer your earlier question, Amy."
"I'm pretty sure getting boned by my sister and mother is as far as this goes, 'Honest Gabe'," her dry voice answers.
"And that's where you're mistaken," you cheerfully point out. "Also, did you actually grow a dick on Carol?"
"I's a work in progress. Groping her in the morning is good enough to start with."
"I never realized it before, but mom's ass is really great," Vicky agrees. "I blame my bad influence of a sister for that."
"For noticing it or the state of your mom's butt?"
"Yes."
Amy seems to be silently grumping to herself while this exchange is taking place, her usual acerbic attitude shining through despite her unending thirst. The way you understand it, she's still kind of bitchy to most people, but usually restrains herself in the presence of either Vicky or yourself in the hopes of scoring.
Naturally, you know all of this from Vicky herself, just using telepathy again. It's really the one power you've ended up using the most overall, now that you think about it.
"Well, Carol's ass aside, here's what I wanted to show you." At the press of a couple of buttons, one by one the scenes shown on the screens all around you change, going from at least nominally normal to, well…
On one, you can see a hooker kneeling on the ground, a small crowd of males surrounding her. Her legs are spread a bit to show off her wet pussy, both arms occupied jerking someone off while she's sucking off a third man's cock, slurping and slobbering all over. On another, a man and a woman are bound up in full bondage, complete with latex suits that have only three openings and ballgags, arms bound up behind their backs and legs tied together as a third person, a woman, is talking, delivering measured strikes to their asses with a riding crop- switching out between the two regularly.
A third one shows one of the literal fucking machines you designed when you turned an old factory into this place; a blonde chick is suspended in mid-air, limbs stretched wide from her body and held in separate slings of latex, as is her midsection. She's further immobilized by the robotic limbs methodically ramming into both her pussy and asshole, completely helpless to do anything but be a mindless puddle of lust.
Interestingly, it seems this particular 'course' is actually pretty popular. Doubly so after you went and laid a curse on the club, but even before that, a surprising amount of customers just want to be rendered powerles and fucked stupid by an inanimate machine.
Note to self, figure out if there's a market for 'marital aid' AIs. Or maybe an actual intelligence behind it would ruin the charm for some people?
Then there's a few screens showing women working a few glory hole throughout the building, cocks thrust through a hole in a wall to have them work them over. One is even bent over at the waist at a ninety degree angle, simultaneously fucking herself on a stiff prick to one side and slobbering over another on the other one.
It may have caused a very quirky layout for the toilets, but it was totally worth it to include designated glory hole chambers.
"You see, The Raveyard is perhaps the one spot in this entirety city with the mot varied and intense sex scene going on in one place," you explain to the two junior heroines, Vicky's mouth absently standing open and Amy trying to look casual, but eating everything she sees up all the same. "So I thought I'd show you two around, introduce you to any particular fetishes you want to try out before you manage to screw them up for yourself."
"You know I could just tear out of these if I wanted, right?"
To be honest, it was a bit weird just how… enthusiastic Amy was being about this, but hey, if all it was that it took to keep her happy, Vicky didn't exactly mind playing along.
"You'd be surprised how often that doesn't matter," Gabriel said, sliding a pair of leather manacles shut over her wrists held behind her back. She'd stripped down beforehand, not that that stopped her aura… Both her auras, from protecting her. "The point is that you aren't supposed to rip yourself free… So you won't. It's a matter of submission, see?"
"Got a lot of experience?" Amy asked, eyes roaming Vicky's body. They often did when they were naked together, though it just felt weird to be the only naked one for a change.
"Quite. When I was about half your age, I was once stuck in a convent full of horny nuns that kept tying me up and molesting me until I managed to escape. I was actually on the way back home after that human trafficking ring snatched me off the street, too."
"… Okay, that sounds like a long story," she asked. "And like out of some bad porn flick."
"Not that much of a story, honestly. But enough about me, this is all about Vicky," Gabriel grinned.
… She was definitely asking more about that. Later.
Opening her mouth for the bit gag arranged over her head, her hair dragged up over the straps so nothing would pull anywhere, Vicky lost the ability to speak… Or the right to, rather, going by the concept. Next she stepped forwards into some kind of metal bar, with indentations for her feet; a few straps later, they too were kept in place.
Like that, Vicky wasn't allowed to speak nor to act, her arms and legs sealed up. Logically, she wasn't allowed to fly, either, and using her strength was right out.
"There we go," Gabriel said softly. "You're giving up all your power and all your control. It's not yours anymore, not as long as these are on you."
Next he brought out a blindfold, soft cloth formed into something that sat easily on her skin. As it drew down on her field of vision from above, her field of vision shut like she would close her eyes, Vicky could feel Amy and Gabriel's gazes on her skin, but she didn't know anything for sure anymore.
She couldn't see. She couldn't move. She couldn't talk or do anything about anything either of them might do.
It was… Fuck, but it was making her horny. Not, like, super horny the way she got when she and Amy were fooling around or Gabriel just tore off his clothes and gave her a taste of the Cain Cock, but it was…
Hard to describe. But the anticipation, the thoughts of what might happen without her knowing, it was low-key turning her on.
She could still hear and feel, so after a bit, just a couple moments as she stood there, Vicky started to hear Amy's breathing… And only hers. Was Gabriel holding his breath, or did he just not need to breathe? Could be both depending on however his power or powers worked, she supposed.
Then she started, feeling a hand on her back. It pushed her firmly, but gently, so she went along with it, bent forward.
"You're looking so hot right now," Amy whispered from behind her. She could imagine it too, herself standing there with her butt on full display, legs wide enough her sister could see everything, her thighs not quite touching at any point for that delicious gap…
Was it narcissistic to say that if she had the choice, she'd bang herself? Because Vicky totally would.
The next hand she felt was on her back again, stroking along her spine. Then there was one on her butt, massaging and pulling her cheek apart for better view. Her thighs, her stomach… All over her body he was fondled, stroked and just touched by what she knew could only be four hands but felt more like a dozen right then.
Vicky couldn't do anything as she stood there, staying in position. If her mouth wasn't filled with the cylindrical gag, she'd be biting her lip.
"You like this, don't you," Amy muttered under her breath, every sound feeling like it was amplified in Vicky's ears. Her heart thundered in her chest when she felt the pair of hands latch onto her hips, swaying from side to side just a little.
She'd thought she'd gotten used to Amy, to the feel of her touching her, licking her, tongue parting her lips and eating her out, but this felt so intense… Like when Amy cheated using her power to increase her sensitivity, but different.
Vicky felt herself flushing red, heat on her face and fire in her loins, as Amy did her thing. At the same time Gabriel was cupping her cheek, one on her face that was, and stroking it with a thumb, his other hand sliding over her side, her shoulder, her neck…
She couldn't do anything. All she could do was stand there and take it. She'd be panting if she could, but she could twitch in her bondage, try and press her butt against Amy's face to demand for more.
Finally, with a nibble on her clit, she came, drops of fluid running down her thighs. She could feel it, hot at first, then cooling down quickly, and when she concentrated her addled brain thought he could maybe make out how a few dripped onto the ground, hitting a hard surface.
Probably just her, though, she thought as she came to her senses again.
Next, Vicky could hear the sound of a zipper being opened, but she didn't feel the delicious spread of Gabriel's cock pushing into her, to her great disappointment. Instead, she heard a wet, sloppy sound; after Amy had licked her out, she was licking his rod, it seemed like.
Unable to ask for it, even over thoughts, she had to stand there, waiting. Her mind conjured up images, how it might look, her brunette sister on her knees and sliding her lips over the cock they'd both fallen for, Vicky's own clear fluids still glistening on her lips; a taste of what was to happen, kinky and almost perverse.
Maybe she was even jilling herself off, a hand buried in her pants, fingers working herself at the same pace as she was working Gabriel's throbbing, veiny shaft. Her tongue would be all over it, too, sliding over hard flesh, the head licked over like Vicky knew from experience-
All of a sudden, the sounds stopped. Was it finally time? Was she about to-
Vicky moaned and screamed into her gag, the slimy void inside her filled by a big fat cock, and she took it all the way inside, Gabriel's churning balls slapping against her thighs. Quivering, but still keeping her place (she was using her power to cheat), she came right then and there.
"You're such a slut for him, aren't you?" Amy whispered. "He just puts it in and you come. Just like you do for me. My dirty little Vicky."
Her next words were not directed at her, but she heard them all the same. As a finger, a thumb, maybe, opened up her butthole, left pointing into the air all this time, Vicky could feel whatever Amy was doing, the tightness she felt in her core increasing, the cock inside of her feeling like it grew bigger because of just how much more she felt it.
"Ruin her."
Immediately, Gabriel was ramming into her hard and fast, battering against her womb, she could feel it. She couldn't keep herself upright anymore, just flopping down and making dumb sounds into her gag as her brain was fucked out of her, every inch of her skin feeling taut and sensitive against the air, against itself, against him and against her.
His hands on her waist kept her in place. His cock was drilling into her, nonstop, and Amy's tongue came back, licking where it was pounding into her, over her clit, along her abdomen up to her navel.
She could feel them having their way with her. She could tear free, get away. Or more likely, beg for more.
But she didn't. This was the point, she realized now. The bondage was there to make the point, she just had to agree with it, powers or no.
She was at their mercy. She'd put her everything into their hands, willingly, and by doing that surrendered any control she would have had. Now she had to see what they did with her.
Vicky could feel the cock ramming against her womb still. Worse, she could feel it push a little bit further every time. Amy had to be doing something. Or maybe-
Her head went white. It was in. Gabriel was fucking her womb and Amy was letting him and there was nothing she could do about it anymore.
She was coming again, she realized. She'd been coming for a bit. It was just so intense she couldn't tell at first.
Then Gabriel was coming. He was filling her up deep inside with no warning, throwing her into the throes of yet another layer of orgasm. Vicky could feel the sweat on her skin, her whole body wracked with twitching spasms, her entire being filled with raw, intense pleasure.
He didn't slow down once he was come, something hot and heavy left inside her womb. Nothing was supposed to just directly go that deep into her, but it was now. Amy was poking and prodding Vicky's clit, her widespread legs unable to so much as put up token resistance, and her breasts had to be just jiggling back and forth like crazy now.
She felt it even more the next time Gabriel came, heavy spurts of cum filling her up one after the other. This time, though, he pulled out… And from under Vicky, two hands spread her buttcheeks wide.
Wordlessly, the villain pushed into her asshole, and it was spreading wide as if to welcome its conqueror. He filled her out just like before, Amy's timed, grasping strokes over Vicky's belly accompanying every thrust like she was stroking his cock through her. At the same time, her sister was still busy down there, slobbering and licking up the cum dribbling from Vicky's stretched cunt.
She'd wondered, at first, why her arms were just bound behind her back. It turned out that was just a formality. The leg thing alone did everything that was needed of her.
Nobody said anything. The only sounds were that of sex, grunts, groans, moans and wet schlicking. Under her blindfold, Vicky's eyes were showing more white than usual already.
She wasn't going to get out of this before she was completely unconscious, she realized. If she could have, she'd have spread her legs wider for her sister and the bad, bad man that'd brought them to this.
It took a while for Vicky to get herself back together after you and Amy gave her the work-over she's obviously been pining for, but you're kind of used to that reaction to sex with you by now.
You just realized just how massively conceited that sounds. 'Oh yeah, chicks go unconscious when I fuck 'em all the time, same as usual'. Then again, you can't exactly help the facts being what they are, either, so you'll just have to deal with it, you suppose.
In the meantime… "So do you think you're really into this or is it more of a 'sometimes' thing?"
"Eh, probably just an every now and then one." Amy is, as always, a lot more relaxed and less generally bitchy after getting her rocks off. She doesn't even need to come herself (though you did help her out with that a well), just as long as she gets to unleash her balled-up frustrated thirst on her sister.
And you, sometimes, but she does seem to prefer both of you. Lucky her, you don't mind this arrangement or anything.
"It's nice, but it's not all there is to us, you know?"
"Totally," you nod sagely. "You like it well enough, but you don't want to let it take over your whole relationship. Same reason you don't just regularly poke her and make her cum on the spot, right?"
"… Yeah." Amy closes her eyes, leaning back. "Sometimes I just have to pinch myself because I can't believe my life is actually real anymore, you know? It's just all going way too well, I'm in a relationship with Vicky and kind of with Carol and I hadn't ever thought of her that way until I did and… It all feels like it's a bit much. Like I can't possibly be this lucky."
"I'd say it has less to do with luck and more with accidentally playing your cards just right."
"Guess you're right," the brunette smirks, shaking her head. "… Why would Vicky ever want to, y'know, be with me that way, though? She's, well, her, and I'm me."
Ah jeez, there you go. The good old teenage self-doubt creeping in. "Guess she just has some really bad taste the, doesn't she? If it's so unbelievable she'd want to boink with you regularly."
Amy snorts in agreement, nabbing the half-empty bottle of cola her sister left standing around to take a swig. You reach out to poke it with a finger, instantly cooling it down to a proper drinking temperature for the overly sweet soft drink.
"So now you got to defend your territory, obviously," you continue. "She's yours now, so you have to make it clear, get it? You got a girlfriend, you can only let her sleep around with other chicks under your supervision. And together with you. You're an item now."
She chuckles. "That's pretty cringy, you know that?"
"I do. Doesn't stop me from living it. And hey, if it works for me, it can't be all bad, can it?"
"… You're a fucking mess. If it works for you, I probably don't want it to work for me."
Both of you stay quiet after that. Not much more to be said, so you simply don't. Still, at length, there's one more thing Amy brings out.
"… Thanks, by the way."
You just nod.
Alas, no silence can last forever. Before long, Vicky's bloated form twitches again, hanging in the chains you eventually hung her in, a significant quantity of your seed pumped into her to the point her abdomen is swelling like she was in her, what, third or fourth month of pregnancy?
"Feel like I got hit by the horny-truck," she mumbles, chains rattling.
"Funnily enough, I was actually hit by a truck once," you note aloud. "I wouldn't recommend it, especially not without powers that protect you against that kind of thing."
"Seriously, what the fuck even is your life?" Amy finishes draining her stolen coke.
"Anyone mind letting me out of these? I don't want to break anything," Vicky adds.
"One moment, be right with you," you say as you get up. "By the way, I actually prepared some complementary Crypt merchandise packages for you and your mother and aunt, if you'd like to bring them along."
"Wait, since when did the Crypt have merch?" The blonde sister asks, stretching and rubbing her wrists despite being not in the slightest sore after what you put her through- you know her enhancements, minor stuff like this literally heals faster than it happens with aura alone.
"For a while already, they got an online shop," the other one explains. "There was some big thing about it on PHO."
"Not only that, there's also a black market in the Raveyard's basement where we sell some exclusive stuff. You only get in after buying a drink and if the employees like you normally, I can take you around down there in a bit if you'd like."
"… What kind of stuff is sold in that 'black market'?" Amy both demands and asks.
"Only one way to find out, isn't there?" You grin. "But first, the free samples."
A small assortment of sex toys, including the Cain brand dildo, tastefully set inside of or around the official Crypt mugs you're handing out. You sure do hope they like this stuff, you actually put it together by hand for them.
Alright, time to get things set up for a bit. Right now, in the asscrack of dawn, is your perhaps most convenient window of opportunity, so you get right down to it.
Now, your normally limited proficiency with this particular spell would be an issue for what you are planning to do, if it wasn't for some basic problem solving ability combined with creative use of the means at hand. Ensuring again that nobody and nothing in awake in the area, specifically chosen because there aren't too many inhabitants in this part of your territory just north of downtown proper just yet, you go on ahead and have your work crew of Hammers put down and activate dozes of hologram projectors you had built for the last hour or so.
One by one they blur to life, arranged accordingly. The thing they're projecting? A massive, skeletal framework of scaffolding bearing thick plastic sheets, just enough so they have too much material to be easily seen through.
Right now you have enough height for, oh, about twenty floors, though you already have everything ready to expand this current arrangement upwards. Now for the piece de resistancé, though.
You silently thank Taylor for finding you this green pearl, as it is already paying dividends. Taylor just sends you embarrassed thought back, which you take to mean it really wasn't any trouble on her part and all that.
Anyway, yes, the green pearl from Earth Fallout- that you naturally brought with you. Now normally, your spell to create an illusion by itself could cover, eh, maybe a room's worth of pace, but by essentially refracting it through the pearl…
Using it to create an extremely thin 'screen' around the outer edges of the holograms, you can make it look like the plastic tarp is moving with the wind, flapping around and making the appropriate sounds, even. Of course anyone that actually touches any part of this building-sized deception will immediately be able to tell it isn't real, but that's what you have the dockworkers for, to stand around and act as guards and all.
Subcontractors that are trustworthy enough to be semi-in on the joke are a rare breed these days, you've heard.
Now you can just leave your robots to wait until they arrive and put up the shield you had delivered, then they can get started on setting the foundation for the Mausoleum. Or maybe Sarcophagus? Both would work, really, but that's a question for later.
Right now you're just whistling to yourself for a job well done as you take a look all around, making sure you didn't fuck up the holograms or the illusion layered onto them anywhere.
With your other plans underway or not particularly critical right this moment, not to mention just not that high on your list of priorities in general, you can once again turn towards spending some leisure time with your lovers.
That thing you treasure above most other things you're doing and all.
This time around, you've decided you want to do something really nice and cultured for Nora. You know, be all posh and upper class for her to feel nice over, that kind of thing. It's not like you can't afford it and you were kind of raised in an environment where it was expected of you to be able to behave yourself well enough.
Granted, that didn't exactly stop your mother from essentially whoring you out to rich wives that wanted to 'play' with you for an evening every now and then from when you were in elementary school onward. Ironically, they were usually gentler with you than she was, however, so joke's on her in the end.
Then again…
"You really don't need to go out of your way," is what your pregnant lover has to say about your plans to snag a couple Broadway tickets on the sly. "I'd be just as happy about being taken out for a cup of ice cream. Especially with a certain someone on the way, so much excitement might bother her."
One hand gently resting on top of her gravid belly, you know exactly whom she's talking about. "You've got a good point. Even unborn human children can already perceive some of the world around them, it wouldn't surprise me if ours are conscious already at this point."
"Mhm, come to think of it, I do believe humans might be freaked out by the idea of a conscious baby in their womb."
"But not you," you point out, holding her hand.
"Not me. No vampires in general," Nora nods, lips darting in for a kiss. "We're just built different, I suppose."
In the end, the two of you come to the conclusion that going to watch a musical of all things really shouldn't hurt your child unduly in any matter whatsoever, so you do find yourself walking down a street in New York City of all things, arm in arm with Nora.
Naturally, you're making your way towards the Boardwalk, your arrival therein announced by the blaring posters all over the place.
"It's one of those things about Earth Bet's culture, pretty much," you explain, Nora having asked about it. "Everything is about capes."
"Yes, I'd noticed by now," your visibly pregnant older girlfriend smiles. "It's just weird how there is literally nothing else. All of these musicals are about capes somehow, pop songs reference capes all the time, even the video game industry is in on it."
"Well, to be fair, it's kind of the only noteworthy thing going on," you shrug, "especially until recently when we weren't literally pulling this entire dimension a little up the well it's been hanging in for years."
"It's a weird metaphor, but I'm intrigued. Please, go on."
"I could probably go into a lot of depth here, but to keep it short? Capes are a concern for pretty much everyone in one way or another. So they consume news about them, think about them… And naturally the media jumps on that, because cape news sell. They're just such a natural deeply rooted part of public consciousness, it'd be weirder if the majority of theater plays, movies and so on wouldn't be about them in some way."
"That does make sense I guess… Oh, is that the one?"
"It is," you nod, tucking the two tickets you got ahead of time out of a pocket. "I actually saw Villiers perform once, ages ago. I'm not surprised she gets the majority of the songs."
"I can't wait to hear her, then," your lover miles, leaning against you just the slightest bit as you walk. If you weren't in public, you would have already scooped her up into a princess carry, of course.
"You weren't kidding, she has a beautiful voice," Nora ponders at the end of the musical, over the audience's applause. You do naturally chime in with your own, of course. "And she can sing."
You smile. "You can say that again. She's very methodical about hitting the right notes and can still convey emotions, that's right up there with some of the best singers around."
"Guess the tickets were worth it, after all," she sighs, shaking her head at you fondly. Telepathically, she jokingly chides you for analyzing everything like you are, though it's really just a mild joke and nothing more.
The two of you take a bit to chat as you wait for the crowd to clear out before exiting the room yourselves, filing through the fancy cloakroom to receive your respective jackets in short order.
"Want to go out and see what else Manhattan has to offer?" You ask. "There has to be some restaurant around, we could look a couple up."
"Hm… I don't know, I'm not sure I'm in the mood." Nora smiles at you mischievously. "What if there's something else I'd much rather do with you?"
"I wouldn't have seen it coming, would I?" You smile back, following her lead when she steers your little twosome into an alley just a street down from the theatre. "Do you think we should do anything about that guy over there, though?"
Walking right on it, you silently point out the blood signature of a man that's been following you ever since you came from the musical. You went ahead and got a quick look, so you know about as much as you can; early- to mid-twenties, short blonde hair, wide back and cold eyes. It's not immensely easy to make out, but you're pretty sure he's got a gun inside his jacket, the scent of metal mixed in with his body odor when the wind blows right.
"Don't mind him, he's just our appetizer," your pregnant lover grins. "After all, if he'd go and try to rob a pregnant woman, he has to taste decently at least, doesn't he?"
"A convincing argument," you chuckle, going right ahead and luring the criminal to his doom. Alas, not every rich-looking couple is going to be impressed by a pistol pointed at it, a lesson a certain someone is about to learn with his life on the line.
Naturally, he won't be surviving. As Nora has to eat for two, you'll personally feed him to her.
So… With the newest batch of vampires, a lot of changes have taken place for a bunch of your capes, not all of which are entirely negligible. Cherie, for once, is still pretty much like she always was, as best you can tell, just with an added incentive to fuck people over permanently and a budding soul collection (again something everyone got, possibly due to your constant telepathic messages and mentions about just how useful this particular power is).
Others have been occupied testing out and training their new powers, as the difference between being a thrall and being a full-fledged vampire is significant to say the least; more powers, more powerful powers, potential access to magic and those unique 'bloodline' powers that are handed down by the vampires that have them, plus never requiring food nor sleep outside of some blood every day, you probably could go on but it gives you an idea.
Lots of incentives to just shut yourself up somewhere and train nonstop for a week or two every now and then. You used to do pretty much that, way back, so you can't say it's a bad attitude to have.
Just being powerful in a very tangible, directly applicable way is really nice, whether by increasing the strength with which you can do something in particular or in figuring out a handy trick that you shouldn't be able to perform but learn to do anyways, is one hell of a rush. Sure, undead brains like yours aren't ruled by hormones the way humans are, but you can still like things and power is something everyone likes to have.
See half the Cluster Six team currently occupied going from already monstrously strong just by their parahuman powers to being incredibly strong vampires just due to the amount of inherently impressive powers at their perusal as well-fed vampires now approaching… Well, you don't want to say Triumvirate tier, because it' one hell of a slippery slope to go down and directly compare capes like that, but you certainly mean it.
Riley, of course, is perfectly happy to play around with the leftover Chinese takeout you kept on ice now that her power gives her literal biokinesis, if somewhat limited compared to someone like Amy in exchange for being literal fucking magic and capable of adding magical abilities and processes to living beings, not that she's going to ignore her other powers for long either of course; having a few backup options is always a good idea and you aren't shy about asserting such to anyone that might be slacking in that regard.
And now you get to the meat of the matter, as it were.
Mimi, perhaps better known as Burnscar, used to have issues because her power just kind of dampened down on her general empathy massively whenever she was anywhere near any open flame, additionally enabling her to conjure and control fire pretty much at her leisure. And teleport through it, but that's more an aside.
Simply put, she's a very, very powerful cape, even without any additions, an A-lister if you've ever seen one. Also quite sociopathic whenever she uses her power, which combined with the nature of said power lends itself heavily towards certain unfortunate complications for anyone in the general area, as they just tended to become collateral damage rather easily.
And now here you are, just turning the young woman in question into a full-time sociopath instead.
Funnily enough, this was a complete improvement over her previous state of being even just purely psychologically speaking, if you do say so yourself. No longer feeling guilty for the (many, many) deaths she's caused over the course of her career as a cape in the slightest, the redhead is a lot more confident, friendly and outgoing, overall more happy and satisfied with herself than she was before.
She's also even more of a threat to society at large, but that goes without saying for the entire roster of the Crypts, doesn't it?
"These cookies are delicious." Right now, for example, Mimi is having some tea with Emily, who did turn her and kind of adopted her into her own social circles, and Tammi, who is said social circle.
"I'm not surprised, I had Ethan make them," you shrug. "There's even a couple with strawberry jam baked into the middle."
"Ooh, can I have a few of those?"
You naturally hand the little plate over to Emily. This is all pretty nice overall, to be honest. Who knew that all it would take to, for most intents and purposes, improve the mental health of a former Slaughterhouse Nine member would be to just completely replace their emotional issues with vampirism?
"And with that I have all four train stations," you state smugly. "Anyone else need proof I'm a great venture capitalist?"
"I mean, does it really count if you're just lucky?" Emily asks.
"Of course it does. Luck is a fundamental part of being a successful adult, don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise," you nod.
The next turn is Mimi's, so you hand the dice over to her. Rolling them, she stare, counting the fields for a moment. "… Oh, I got all the yellow streets, I think."
"Once you p-p-pay for them," Tammi reminds her.
"Right. How much?"
Honestly, monopoly is the perhaps ultimate test of a person's mental stability. If they can finish a whole game without snapping and lash or trying to murder someone, they are in all likelihood certified to be sane.
Real psychologists have nothing on you.
Mausoleum Design
Okay, so accounting for your perks, you have… 27 points to work with here.
VR Rooms (5 Points): A big draw once you get them up and running, include several rooms inside the hotel that allow the use of your VR technology by putting a visor over the user's head. Plug'n'play, as it were, with wall-mounted screens to let them choose what they want to experience while their bodies are lying around limply.
VR Living Rooms (3 Points) (Requires VR Rooms): It requires a little more investment in terms of space arrangement, but you could totally let guests use VR tech inside their own rented rooms, no problem.
Hologram Screens (5 Points): It is entirely possible for you to let most screens and the like function as interactive holograms, so long as they don't have to show anything moving. Guest lists, room service, toggle-able suite options, the works.
Shifting Rooms (4 Points): A bit of clever engineering combined with the same base your robots move on, you could allow rooms to change and shift around the needs of the user; tuck furniture away or bring it back, replace half the bath with a massive jacuzzi, that kind of thing.
Multifunctional Rooms (5 Points) (Requires Shifting Rooms): Why have one room do only one thing at all? Add a good few presets and go from there, letting guests reconfigure things is however much detail they want. There is ultimately little difference between a bedroom, a kitchen, a sex dungeon or a ballroom, they're all just rooms with different things inside them in the end.
Robotic Servants (2 Points): You do need human employees for the sake of any tasks that involve directly interacting with the guests, but anything else? A few slightly modified Bobs will do just fine for anything that needs doing.
Varied Layout (3 Points): You are certainly planning to have Kayden eat her heart out about designing several themed suites an different basic layouts for anyone that prefers something other than the same old, but it would be much easier to do all of this more individualistically if you had different room layouts to work with to begin with. of course that also massively complicates design and building, but you are fairly decent at this kind of thing…
Now then, your robots have been working on your hotel throughout the night, having had a good couple hours to get everything started. A quick visit, once you're done crushing everyone else at Monopoly, confirms once again that you do damn good work to the point even your creations can create things just a you want them to.
Your next couple of hours are spent finalizing designs and blueprints for the real meat of the matter, the draw, the attraction of the finished product. This is supposed to become your very own hotel, so naturally it has to be above and beyond what anyone else would have to offer; rooms that can reconfigure themselves at the drop of a hat, holographic interfaces for stuff from said rooms to room service, robots to take care of most menial tasks that may come up and, of course, Virtual Reality.
Accessible from the comfort of your hotel room, of course. All an interested party would need to do is to put on the visor slash helmet and lie down before activating it, your machines do the rest- you will need to load up a few memories to experience before you open this place, of course, just as a first measure; maybe you'll even get around to programming some kind of interactive method to use VR together some day, for even better porn and games, you suppose, but just getting this functional is a good start in your own humble opinion.
Exceedingly humble, in fact. You really should be boasting about your capabilities more often.
The true challenge in all of this, of course, is in fitting all the parts together, the machinery and additional furniture squeezed into the walls and the ground together with the wiring, the piping and more. You're cheating using your literally magical engineering, that goes without saying, but without personally doing all of this work, which you are very much not going to do, there's only so much that can do.
But hey, any bit of semi-extradimensional space to add onto what you have is appreciated here.
All in all, this is good practice for what you'll be doing later, you'd say.
You know, from preliminary investigation, one William Manton's (scattered, the man's mind has been giving out on him more often than not) testimony and Riley's independent research that parahuman powers, by and large, seem to function through a connection to some other beings that do the actual heavy lifting, the human brain they are connected to through the corona pollentia and gamma functioning more as a receptacle or targeting mechanism than anything else.
Cauldron, the shadowy organization that you have contacted yourself, calls them 'agents'. Riley ha described them as passengers. The exact nomenclature is not so much of relevance here, however, as the supposed mechanism behind this whole thing is.
Again, there could be exceptions, but going by what you've been able to find out so far… They seem to be acting interdimensionally, as in, these 'agents' are sitting in some other dimension and projecting powers through to Earth Bet- or whatever other dimension a given parahuman is inside of.
Now you know that, and you also have a few pieces of technology… specifically, you did obtain the blueprint of the Siphon, a massive construction meant to reduce and redirect the effects of interdimensional interference, as well as the dampeners Jack Cabot surrounded his father Lorenzo's containment cell with to keep the artifact on his head from letting him just use seemingly supernatural powers to escape… Powers that, to some extent, also seem to have been rooted in interfering with the laws of phyics through means of fundamental changes to the fabric of physics. Brute force and unsubtle, but it worked- and it may well let you use the same countermeasures for your own project.
Finally, you of course also have your eldritch cores. Now what would happen if, say, a particularly crafty engineer were to combine all of this technology into a single device meant to tamper down any cross-dimensional transferrence?
The result of this experiment is a cylindrical object about width size of a person at their shoulders, just under two meters in height. Exposed power coils are a sad necessity, as tests have shown it effects to have trouble propagating through solid matter, but theoretically, this thing should make it harder for outside actors to mess with a given dimension it is in in its immediate vicinity.
You'll be testing it soon enough, you suppose. If it works, it might just be your way of being an absolute dick to any capes on Earth Bet… Potentially the Endbringers, even.
Now then… First thing first, you are taking a look at these vials before you hand them off to Riley for her to investigate them a little closer herself. You are very good at what you do, but you also suspect her power is somehow very well-suited towards this whole thing; she knows a whole lot more about how passengers work than literally anyone else despite having only ever looked into it with handheld tools on the move until now.
You're still kind of interested in this topic as a whole, though, you did study parahuman studies in college and all. Not to mention the very real possibility these things are trapped somehow, you don't exactly trust Cauldron as such or anything. Sure, Riley could probably handle herself, but it would be kind of irresponsible for you not to check, at least.
Now as for the vials themselves… The containers, made of reinforced glas, are of a standardized size, nothing particularly fancy about them all told. However, the gunk they are containing is a lot more interesting, being colored completely differently from one another and even showing subtly different weight when you weigh the things.
Unable to tell much more without opening them up, you instead turn towards other means of testing. First off, there are no souls visible to your sight in or around the vials, nor can you manage to identify or extract any soul fragments when you make a point of trying.
It seems this stuff isn't made of people, or at least it seems unlikely to be the case. You don't know whether to be disappointed by this or not, but you weren't really expecting it to begin with, so you just shrug and keep on going.
Next off, a quick cast of your mental scanning spell proves that there is actually a degree of consciousness present in these things, but it seems… dim, murky. Like someone in a deep coma or something of the sort. Could it be this stuff is somehow part of these 'agents' of Cauldron's and they just… shave it off, then they activate to achieve the connection?
You know drinking a vial is supposed to induce some sort of trigger event or equivalent. How does that hypothesis connect to 'natural' triggers, though? How would the corona pollentia grow in the first place?
Well, one more spell to test out. "Reveal yourself," you cast, hand held over a vial, but particularly concentrating on its contents.
You see a vast, massive network. Crystalline growths, stretching on for miles. You see a person, a woman, and tools. A diamond-tipped drill. An industrial-grade water cutter. You see how carefully demarcated pieces of shining, reflective crystal are cut out, a small part of something much, much larger.
You see a dozen dimensions at once. A hundred. A thousand. Millions, billions and more, more than you can casually conceive of.
You see the miniscule parts ground up, mixed with others. That's how it was turned into a liquid, you realize.
The vision ends, but you're already busy going over your theories and thoughts one by one. "Guess we know how the real source of powers looks like, at least," you murmur to yourself.
One of your hands is busy holding Riley in place, the girl reaching out from her current position right beside you to try and take the vials and put them through a whole slew of her own tests. "They're multidimensional space crystals, of course they are! It all makes sense now!"
"We don't know they came from space?" You suggest.
"It's all but guaranteed, an organism like this wouldn't inherently need an atmosphere and there are enough powers that I refuse to believe they couldn't just synthesize anything they need for their own metabolism somehow," the blonde girl points out. "If anything we know about powers even applies. They can exist across several dimensions, so it could be they just do their own thing in one dimension and just transfer it through to make it look like something just happened whenever a power is used."
"That does look like Occam's Razor in this situation," you nod. "Well, let me know if you find anything out. Or if you need more samples."
If Riley had a tail, it'd be wagging right now. You pat her head a bit before you release her on the unuspecting ground-up crystal bits.
You've been giving Kassy some time and space ever since she joined the Crypts, seeing as the exact details of her recruitment require a bit of a finer touch than your usual 'charge in and talk at people until they eat out of your hand' approach. That said, it is, perhaps, time for you to pull her in a little deeper, as it were.
She is fairly powerful as a cape, after all. A memetic hazard that essentially disables anyone not largely resistant to that kind of assault on their senses the moment they so much as see or hear her in action shouldn't be underestimated just because vampires are (almost) immune to her power.
It is kind of ironic, you suppose. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you've been looking into Kassy in your free time- normally, she's a sociable, outgoing girl, she's into fashion, has a lot of friend and pretty much everyone at her school knows her (you suspect that's part of why Aisha pointed her out when you first met her). Her default mode of operation is to have all eyes on her a lot of the time, so now she's got the power to make them see more.
But hey, you could twist pretty much any power into something like this with enough effort if you really wanted, it's just a matter of trying hard enough. No real point to it either when the fact of the matter is that someone has it and they're going to use it in all likelihood, monkey paw kinds of reasoning being applied or not.
But back to Kassy, you've just been leaving her to live her life for a bit after the revelations you dropped on her last time around, save for enabling telepathy for her (all the while keeping her exclusively on the side of things that those sworn into your inner circle frequent instead of the more 'open' parts of your network you let anyone see, just in case). A constant reminder of where she stands now as well as a convenient way to convey orders or help her out for both you and anyone around that has nothing better to do.
She and her family have moved into one of the more upscale buildings not too far from downtown proper, actually just two blocks away from where you're building the Mausoleum now; it just so happens she's managed to convince her parents that the hearty discount to rent they're getting is totally trustworthy and not at all related to her, say, joining a dangerous supervillain gang or anything. They could have worked along by just applying for relief funds and sleeping in the shelters the Crypts have been setting up for the people affected by Leviathan's attack instead, but this certainly is a lot cushier.
Her father is also getting a new job in a company that may or may not be related to your plans for reinstatement of proper infrastructure in and around Brockton Bay, this particular accounting gig paying better than what he did before, so they're all set, you're pretty sure.
Now that she's back to a semblance of normalcy, you've invited Kassy to the bunker, partially to show off the cool shit you have down here and partially to impress upon her how bigly and important the Crypts are. She's at an impressionable age, best to make the most of it straight away, see?
And of course Aisha is also hanging around. You're… Pretty sure she' long over the whole 'I am an objectively awful person' phase she briefly got into after you triggered Kassy, now she's just looking out for her due to kind of taking part in her 'recruitment'.
"Hey Kassy. Hope you've been doing well? Since I last checked in on you, anyway, so yesterday evening or thereabouts."
Blushing, the tanned girl stops one of her hands going up to twiddle with her looped earrings. A nervous tick, you think. "Yeah, I've been okay. Uhm, mom's still super hyperactive about replacing everything that was ruined by the saltwater, but she usually goes away when I lock my door, so that's nice," she shrugs instead.
"Better than the alternative, anyway," you agree as you wave for her to follow you. "So, in case you were wondering, I called you in to show you around the base a bit, let you get familiar in case you need anything later. Basic new employee stuff, is all, I just like to get it out if the way first thing."
"Oh. Uh, do you do that for everyone?" The tanned blonde asks.
"Only for capes and other important people," you smile at her mischievously. "It's the exclusive kind of club you've entered here."
Kassy blushes a little, but tries not to show it.
"But yeah, I kind of take care of personnel matters around here. Can't be all brooding and commit crimes all the time, you know?"
"And rapey," she adds, then looks away. "… Sorry."
"No, no, you're absolutely right." It's not like the truth bothers you. "We all have our hobbies, after all."
"…"
While there are many places you could be taking Kassy now that she's following you like a duckling, there is one part of your base in particular that you're looking forward to introducing her to. So far, your technically newest recruit (not counting lower-ranking gang members that have begun to trickle in to fill your ranks all the way over in Boston) has only really been to one part of the bunker, that is, the laboratory and workshops, in order to undergo her esperization process, so you really are spoiled for choice despite the immediate thought you ended up going with still.
The good ol' cafeteria, where pretty much all of your thralls and some of your vampires come to hang out at varying times. If there's one single location down here that just about anyone should visit, this is it.
It doesn't take too long to get there, courtesy of the doors that can open on their own these days whenever you so much as walk into their general direction and you knowing the layout of your home well enough. It'd be kind of concerning if you didn't, at this point.
Right, you remember the girls asked for permission to hang that in here. Well, say what you want, but you certainly do set a mood.
"That over there is Ethan, he takes care of the cooking around here," you explain for Kassy's benefit, gesturing for the man currently leaning over the counter to the kitchen, wearing a bright pink shirt with a rainbow printed onto it running around his body. He is currently giggling in his deliberately gay-sounding manner, having confided in you once he just loves using it to piss of anyone that has a problem with him being the epitome of gay.
"He's, uh, he's not very subtle, is he?"
"Not the slightest bit," you smile. "He had some drama with his folks over being into men and he's kind of taking it out on anyone that has a problem with that. He actually wanted to be a doctor way back, but he picked up cooking and sewing just to be as anti-manly as possible. Came in handy when we all started living down here."
"So is he still doing doctor stuff on the side, or… ?" Your companion asks as the two of you make your way closer towards one of the tables not too far from Ethan's domain.
"Not really, no. We kind of automated pretty much all of that, though I doubt he'd complain if he got to play doctor again. Speaking of, hey Ethan!" You call out.
"Hey Big Gabe, how's it hanging?" He asks, voice shifted to be as effeminate as possible.
"Could be worse. You got anything good in the oven?"
Ethan clears his throat, going back to his normal voice. "Just finished some wonderful blueberry pie, you or your little friend want any?"
"Sure, let's try it," you shrug.
In short order, you're seated, with two plates split between yourself and Kassy. Poor Aisha, no pie for her it seems.
"So is he… Always that enthusiastic?"
"It's how he gets through the day," you shrug. "Nothing more and nothing less. If you ever need anything, feel free to ask him for help, or just an open ear, he really doesn't mind."
"… Okay." Kassy nods, all serious. Then, with only a moment of hestiation, she stabs her form into her pie, carefully shoveling the food into her mouth. "Mm!"
"Pretty good, yeah? Ethan knows what he's doing," you grin. Her eyes grew all large in surprise and she's keeping her lips closed with her off hand, too, it's kind of cute.
It takes her a few chewing motions before she can swallow and answer. "Sho gooood!" Now her eyes are sparkling on top. Looks like someone really is enjoying themselves. "I've never eaten anything this good!"
"You're welcooome~!" Ethan shouts from the kitchen over the usual hubbub of the room.
Aisha, on the other hand, seems to have decided it's too boring to just it to the side and- Oh dear. You spread your legs a little as she crawls under the desk. "So then, how about you go ahead and ask me any questions you have before I get started on introducing you to everyone? Well, not everyone everyone, but everyone important you haven't met yet."
Down below, an almost entirely naked, voluptuous black girl is unzipping your pants, releasing your cock from its confines. You've been keeping it at only half mast so it doesn't get stuck all the time, but as she eagerly strokes as much of your length as she can, you quickly grow to full size regardless.
"Okay. So, uh, how does this whole thing work? Being part of the Crypts, I mean." As soon as she's done talking, Kassy immediately goes to get another forkful of pie, of course.
"It's really not all that difficult, actually. You get paid a set wage just for being around and being part of the club." You point at her with your fork. At the same time, Aisha's hot mouth envelops your cock, swallowing as much of it down as she can. She doesn't stop there, though, pushing deeper, so you can feel yourself penetrate her tight throat, gulping around you. "If Brockton Bay is ever attacked by anyone or you're around when some other capes make trouble, you either stop them or you call it in, your choice. You aren't really supposed to fight anyone your power can't just shut down hard and fast anyway and if you encounter a cape you have trouble with, just ask for whoever is on teleportation duty to get yourself away from them."
"Is that really all there is to it? Like, no offense, but that seems a little…"
"Oh, there's more you can do if you want to," you easily deflect. "Most of the Crypt capes around do just that. But if you're busy or just don't feel like it, nobody's going to demand you go out on patrol or help around the place, either, so long as you're loyal. It's really that simple."
Aisha's slurping and choking on your cock now, getting into a rhythm. Her hands are on your thighs, her butt stretched out behind herself with no regard for what's over there, too focused as she is on fellating you with all her might.
With one last gagging sound, she pushes herself all the way onto the full length of your rod, her soft lips nestling around your base. You can see her looking up at you from under the table, her tongue almost stroking your manhood just like her hands were earlier.
"And how about, uhm… I asked about it already, but…"
"Ah, the sex?" Kassy blushes and starts coughing, having gotten some blueberry pie down the wrong pipe.
You subtly shove Aisha's head back and forth, fucking her throat in all but name. The sounds she's making are enough to let you know how much she's enjoying this.
"If you want to, you just have to add an entry in my schedule," you tease her, shoving said mental schedule at her. Your lovers have taken to marking their own time slots with their memories or just doodles, making it look… Rather colorful. "I certainly wouldn't mind."
As Kassy stammers and blushes a bit more, you feed the other girl around for this your cum, shooting thick spurts right down Aisha's gullet. She just gulps them all down greedily, the little cock goblin always hungry for more, no matter what anyone else says.
You could get used to having her around more often, if only she wasn't so lazy and usually snoring off in some corner of your place…
Well, good fun is good fun, but even so you must eventually bid Kassy farewell for the moment, once she's got a good enough idea (and impression) of your secret villainous base. She is of course appropriately awed by the actual size of your bunker complex, as you've kept on expanding it intermittently ever since you gained the capacities to do so with relative ease, and the high-tech borderline tinkertech everything within it.
You send her back home with a tupperware box full of cookies, naturally. The eternal war between Ethan's urge to keep on baking and everyone else trying to keep the results from overflowing and filling everything up demands some personal investment at times. Similarly, you give Aisha's cute little butt a good smack as you dismiss her, having fed the little gremlin of a girl enough cum to feed a small family for a day.
Roundabout, anyway. Nutritional values may or may not be all that great, but it should be enough in terms of calories at least.
So anyway… After you're done with that, you quickly think back on your schedule for the day. You actually did arrange to meet with a few people, so you should probably get on that soon-ish. It's not every day you go out of your way to clear these kinds of thing up in advance.
Sabah is pretty much part of the Crypts by now, having accepted her place after sufficient amounts of Okita have been applied to her. It is thus that you feel comfortable casually commissioning some work from her, cloth-wise, as though she can't really do anything more than a manufactory could, she's studying fashion in college and has a much easier time getting sizes just right so you may as well have her try custom-make some new clothing.
You'll need models for her of course, and though you could just transform yourself, go with your girls mode (girls as in your tits) to keep her enthusiasm up, Paige has kind of just been sitting around being depressed for a month or so by now. Throw in Kayden, whom you wanted to talk to about the Mausoleum anyway, and boom, you have exactly what you need to lead Sabah by the nose.
Women, in case that was in question. All you need is women. In their underwear instead of naked, in this case, but you suspect it'll suffice all the same.
"Hey Sabah, everything going well?" You ask, poking your head into where you know she's already waiting.
Inside the room you set aside for this meeting, the young woman of Arabian (or something, you never really bothered to check for something this inconsequential) descent is running her hand over swathes of the colored cloth you asked Taylor to set out. "What is this? It feels like silk, but it's a little…"
"Oh, that's spider silk I asked Skitter to produce." Sabah stiffens at the mention of Taylor's cape name. It's almost hilarious just how much of a reputation she's built up for herself, isn't it? "Not from normal spiders, it's both more pleasant to the touch and more resistant to force than it would normally be. She makes her own clothing out of it, too."
"Wait, Skitter's a she?"
"Why wouldn't she be?"
"… You know what, I don't even care anymore." Sabah waves you off, suddenly seeming tired. "So you wanted to have me try make clothes out of this?"
"Yeah, figured it's what you study and something your power would let you do easily," you nod. Then you give her a conspiratorial smile. "Plus you get to see the models in their underwear."
The door opens and in come Kayden and Paige both, one younger blonde former pop star and one brunette milf whose curves have been growing a little lately, both a ten out of ten in your own humble opinion.
"Wait, that's Bad Canary," Sabah recognizes. "How- You got Bad Canary here. And you asked her to model clothing for me."
"I did," you confirm while the two are still occupied talking to each other. "Am I the best boss or what?"
"… I'll get you a mug later," Sabah promises.
Your plan, surprisingly enough, proceeds without issue. You were expecting Paige's celebrity status to get in the way somehow or for Kayden to slip up and say something incredibly… Insensitive, let's go with that, but it turns out clothes are a great way to get females of all ages, genders and persuasions to focus and wave off anything that might get in the way.
It's actually a little scary. Then again, it still beats those few occasions when you had to play dress-up doll for someone else back when you were alive- your stamina just never lasted long enough, they all kept on making you try on more and more. There's only so much a break can help when you spend it having sex in the changing room, too.
Then again, Kayden always had more of an issue with Asians in particular, hasn't she? Thinking back, you can't help but notice that she usually just gets a little sullen whenever someone with features like that is around. Could it be some kind of specific trauma or something?
Well, an issue for another time. It's not something a couple words about the equality of all human beings can solve. Not that all people are of equal worth or anything, of course, that would be retarded- you knew that much since before you died for the first time- but they just aren't all that different when you get down to it, either.
Meanwhile, the clothing thing itself is going well. Sabah really does know her stuff despite her academic evaluations being only mildly above average, but perhaps the chance to see two beautiful women strip down and put on whatever she wants is inspiring her right now. You could certainly see it, it's usually how she gets fired up at all.
It doesn't help Kayden is aggressively pushing for more. "But you could do lingerie, right?"
"I, I, uh, I could? In theory?"
"I would just love to have something to wear in the bedroom every now and then…"
"Uhm…" Cain! Save me!
Just do what the lady wants already. You've seen Okita naked, you shouldn't feel intimidated now.
"Oh, uhm," Sabah stammers, turning away as her brain tries to process your mental words, "what about you, Paige? Anything else you'd like?"
The ex-singer shakes her head, huddled into a big, fluffy hoodie. "I'm good."
"Okay. So, uhm, I will need you to…" The cloth-controlling cape gestures vaguely.
"I would feel kind of awkward being the only naked one here. How about…"
It takes a bit more teasing and coaxing, but Sabah does do great work.
Great work indeed. No doubt her own imagination and honed creativity are a great aid in outfitting your casual lovers with lacy silk.
Right, before you forget it, there's one more thing you wanted to do get done. You're just kind of taking a moment to go over all of those little things real quick, you suppose.
A couple of the others (your capes, you mean) that didn't yet have esper powers did go through the process a couple days ago and the results have already been showing. You've just been giving everyone space to let them figure these thing out and get used to them a little before commenting on it overmuch, but no less than nine of your capes have brand new powers, though the exact ones gained are rather… Eclectic?
Well, they're all unique to their user in some way, as Yoshi's memories of Academy City say, though anything is good as far as you're concerned. Interestingly, you haven't had any Level 0 espers so far, those whose powers are either so insignificant as to be impossible to measure without training and theory work or otherwise so esoteric as to be similarly hard to verify the existence of.
The background science behind all of this is super interesting, not that it's particularly relevant right now. So, as for those powers…
Sarah: Offensive Telepathy: Can disrupt thought patterns, aggressively stopping thinking beings from performing actions or accessing memories and possibly causing mental damage through extended use, Level 2
Taylor: Energy Amplification: Can increase kinetic energy on touch (enhancing punches and movement speed or moving objects faster than they should for example), Level 1
Emily: Polarity Master: Ability to change the sub-atomic polarity of objects and matter in general, creating electric fields and currents. Can build up to small-scale lightning with some time and concentration, Level 2
Alec: Normality Filter: Mental interference type power to make the user and their actions seem less important to others, making them unlikelier to be remembered among other effects, Level 1
Aisha: Teleportation: Short-range self-targeted teleportation that works through obstacles without line of sight, can take small objects along, Level 2
Tammi: Heat Filter: Temperature manipulation power that shifts the phenomenon of heat from one area towards another, leaving behind lower temperatures and increasing them in the target area, Level 2
Riley: Gravity Mixer: Extremely precise gravity manipulation that allows the separation and recombination of fluids based on specific gravity changes. Notably, tinker powers seem to work with this, turning otherwise mundane fluids into highly hazardous weaponry in addition to prepared mixes, Level 2
Dinah: Air Bullet: A form of aerokinesis, can condense surrounding gas into a single projectile and 'fire' it at a target, hitting about as hard as a strong punch, Level 1
Kassy: Nitrogen Lance: Can condense and 'fire off' lengthy constructs of nitrogen taken from the air, causing them to explode violently on impact, Level 3
For some reason, Taylor seems to be envious of Riley about the power she got, but they're all strong esper abilities with high potential, given enough time and effort invested into improving them. And hey, time is one of those things anyone in league with yourself really doesn't need to worry all that much about in the grand scheme of things.
Funnily enough, despite whatever stereotypes she may be playing into, Sherrel actually does not, in fact, prefer burgers and frites over other kinds of fast food. Not that the vehicle tinker amongst your numbers wouldn't eat either, of course, it's hard to get around burgers in North America as a whole, but when given a choice she wouldn't go for them.
Hence you're currently balancing half a dozen of these flat containers on one hand, Japanese takeout being more to your lover's tastes. "You know, it's still weird just how much Asian food variety this city has around. I'm pretty sure the rebuilt areas alone are already getting three Chinese, two Koreans and two Japanese places, plus an Indian one, I think."
You're inside your lover's room, wild jumble of furniture of different colors creating a charming interior despite possible first impressions. It's really not at all messy, vampires don't really tend to be unless they put some active effort towards it.
"'s all the refugees," Sherrel shrugs where she sits on her soft green couch, opening your delivery to smile happily at the sushi inside. "You always have restaurants like that open up where there's people that know how to run them and after Japan a lot just kind of got stuck here. Then a couple more waves from the economic fallout all over Asia come after them and voila."
"I'm just still surprised they even lasted until Lung showed up and made everyone play nice. I'd have thought the Japanese and the Chinese would've had a massacre or two out in the streets at some point, at least." You it down next to her, grabbing your own portion of noodles on one side of the box and sauce, vegetables and meat in the other. "Weren't there a whole load of gangs fighting each other?"
"There were, they just kept it quiet so the heroes didn't smash down on them like a wall's worth of bricks." Raising the television's remote, Sherrel leans back. "Now lessee, what's the trashiest shit we can watch on cable?"
"Reality TV. Nothing goes over bad actors trying to depict what someone else thought normal people behave like."
"Fair enough."
Nothing big going on here, you're really just hanging out and chillaxing with the mother of at least one of your children.
"You really don't need to do this."
Some people would probably get annoyed at Sundancer (or Marissa, depending on context) over those words, but you just wave her off. "It's alright, I make it a point to look after everyone when I can. Especially the new recruits, can't have you guys lacking anything."
"It's alright, Mars," the other occupant of the room says, pushing herself over her bed to sit closer to you. "He's just checking in."
"Jess…" Marissa shakes her head. "At least button yourself up?"
Genesis, Jess, just wiggles in place, giving first her friend and then you a wide, smug smile, her auburn hair having noticeably grown out since you thralled her. "I'm too hot for that, be glad I'm wearing pants at all."
"You could take off your hat," an exasperated Marissa suggests with a roll of her eyes.
"No way. It's mine now and I'm keeping it."
You sense a deeper story behind the hat, but you'll ask about it later. Right now you have something else to look into. "Just make sure to keep yourself hydrated. That aside, how are your legs feeling?"
"I mean, have you seen them?" Jess gestures at her lap with both hands. "They're thicc."
"I did notice, yes," you note drily. It's easy to see what she means, too, before you shared some of your vampire juice with her her legs were basically completely atrophied, stick-thin, little more than skin and bones.
Just goes to show how good 'turning you into what you consider your most attractive self' can be as a power, if that was ever in question. Being handsome or beautiful is a superpower all by itself if you use your appearance right, fixing up mild imperfections like decades' worth of atrophy and neural conditions that kept you from moving your legs is just a bonus.
"They're also not working right yet, are they?" You ask the big question. "They look like they should superficially, but…"
"Yeah, they're mostly fat, I think." Overlaying with Nolac confirms her suspicions, there's a core of muscle around the bone but it simply isn't keeping up with the rapid expansion of tissue after the thralling. "Super squishy and stuff. I can feel things in my legs, though, so that's… neat."
"Mhm," you hum. "Would you mind if I touch them? Stimulating them might help, unless you start to hurt."
Marissa glowers at you from the side. "Are you really asking to touch her all over for the sake of her health?"
Before you can answer, however, Jess pats her thighs. "Go ahead!"
A betrayed look is thrown. Innocence pours out of the former paraplegic's every core in turn and you wonder whether you should just write up a doctor's note (you know you'd be qualified by this point), but no, you've started this, you're seeing it through to the end.
So you grasp one calf with both hands, carefully squeezing it from top to bottom, feeling for any abnormalities. "Fwah~!"
"Looks like they respond properly, good," you comment. "From what I'm seeing, you just need to keep them moving a little bit at a time to get them to work."
"Uuuh~…"
"… Are you sure you aren't doing anything weird?" Marissa asks.
"These are nerves that haven't really worked for most of Jess' life reporting things for the first time in over a decade, if I understand her medical history right. It'd be weirder if she didn't need to get used to it."
"Aaahn~!"
"You're doing it on purpose, aren't you?"
Jess winks, breathing a little heavy. "Just a little. This feels really gooood…"
"Just imagine how much better it will feel once you got a little muscle for me to knead, then," you grin at her. "If you'd like me to, of course."
"Ooh, is that an offer I hear?"
Mariassa throws her arms up in the air. "Are you two seriously flirting in this situation? I'm right here!"
"And it's good you are, I was hoping you'd pay attention and help Jess recover," you tell her, leaning forward to work over the first thigh you're fondling in the last five minutes or so. "I'll recommend two massages a day to get her on her feet within the week at the latest."
Marissa, Sundancer, blinks, looking at her friend. Puppy dog eyes look back. "… Dammit, you're a lousy actor but I hate it when you're serious."
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Jess pouts.
"Could this be that tsun-dere Alice told me she definitely wasn't?" You ponder.
By the time you leave, the room Jess and Marissa ended up sharing is filled up with what might be described as a massive gaming rig, from computers integrated into the walls that should be good to last for a couple generations of software (barring exceptional developments), all the consoles you could find the blueprints of (which is most available on the market, thanks to Sherrel often having dismantled them to use the parts in her tinkering) and, of course, a couple of anonymous accounts set up to take care of any gaming needs they may have.
As in, you went ahead and had separate ones set up in addition to the ones they receive their pay into. They don't need any additional money, as said pay is more than generous enough if they do decide to use it for this.
You also heavily recommended they play multiplayer games if possible, but you think Jess was too busy salivating over the new hardware. Honestly, the two of them could've gotten this same stuff earlier if they'd just thought to ask, but it turns out living the life of villains constantly on the run had effects on the way they think about things like establishing a gaming cave.
It reminds you of this one girl you knew in high school. Her parents were more than wealthy enough to let her afford just about anything she wanted, including an extensive hobby of fantasy escapism in the form of gaming. You used to tutor her to keep her grades at acceptable levels and getting her to actually focus when she wanted to play instead was pretty hard.
In several ways… Turns out your lap is apparently a very great addition to any chair, especially with no clothing involved.
Anyway, these two girls right here, beyond spending days at a time playing whatever games they can find, also really need to get out a little, socialize, that kind of thing. The Travelers are beyond defunct as a team now, of course, but Ballistic's, or Luke's, whatever, attitude and outlook seem to have driven them apart from him, the poisoned leftovers of Krouse's leadership rearing their ugly heads.
From the memories you stole, Luke used to get along with everyone, but somewhere along the way the general mutual alienation building up just got to be too much. The only reason they all stayed together in the end was their leader being a manipulative ass (not that you can really talk, but you do it the pleasant way at least) and their shared desire to just go home.
And, to a lesser extent, the urge to hit Francis Krouse in the face. Or kill him. Not mutually exclusive, really.
Noelle's state being how he kept on stringing them along, you go out of your way to avoid mentioning she's still swinging wildly between near-mindless rage and worry for them inside your stomach. At least Krouse is basically constantly stopped from hurting himself by trying to hit the nearest wall.
Having your Maid keep the two apart from each other for a century or two was probably one of your better decisions. You don't usually bother interfering with the business of your victims beyond the barest of rules being implemented, but boy, Trickster really was a piece of work.
Good thing you killed him, you suppose!
Alright, most of the work to be done on the Mausoleum, as you have indeed decided to officially call the hotel you're using your robots to build, is on autopilot from here on out- you added the last few bits and pieces to the plans, calculated all the architectural requirements to make sure the structure will be sound (having functionally unlimited budget for building materials of your choice means you can build very stable when you want to) and made sure work was indeed proceeding as planned.
There's a couple of the dockworkers you hired for this kind of thing milling around, carrying heavy building equipment back and forth every now and then to create the appearances required. Nothing really outstanding, but considering the nature of this operation, that is exactly what you want, really.
You added a bit of mind-controlled hardware, by the way, such that guest are registered in the system and can then open the doors to their rooms, for example, simply by wanting them to be open. Among other uses.
You also thought about it for a bit and, ultimately, decided to add a good couple generators in the basement. Forcefield generators, that is, the same ones you used for Titan. That plus a couple of turrets strategically hidden inside the outer walls should turn this hotel into a veritable fortress should the need for such measures arise.
It will take some time, but you do want to get a good couple floors in, so that's to be expected. Unless anything happens to interrupt your 'equipment', you shouldn't need to do anything more, now, simply wait for everything to finish.
Now as for the rest of your night…
Missy Biron was once again out and about at times she should be spending asleep in her bed, though standing around on random rooftops at five in the morning was less her choice and more just the time it happened to be when she couldn't take being at home anymore.
It wasn't even anything her parents had done directly, this time. She'd just woken up, feeling a bit thirsty, and no matter how much she'd tried to go back to sleep after obtaining a glas of water she just couldn't. Too drowsy to think better of it and too awake to ignore it, she'd thought back to the times her family had't been so… Broken.
Her mother was sleeping in the bedroom, her father down on the living room's couch. It was extendable, so when they'd decided they couldn't stand each other anymore he'd just permanently switched towards it.
It'd all been… Too much. They were divorced already, they'd hurt each other as much as they could, there wasn't any point in dragging everything out anymore, yet they still had to do just that, arguing about alimony and the things they'd each done in an endless effort to get in one last kick, one last painful remark.
Vista still missed the dogs.
So she'd lain there, under her covers, but she just… Couldn't. So she'd opened up the window, used her power and taken a step outside and up.
It was nice and peaceful, up on the rooftops. Any place was as good as even ground for her, and the quiet noise of cars driving back and forth in the busier districts echoing between buildings gave the smog-covered sky an ambiance that let her cool down, to stop thinking and overthinking and just be.
It was never that dark down on the streets, the omnipresent lighting of streetlamps and coming from inside windows took care of that, but up here much less of that light arrived, casting everything into an indeterminate gloom. It suited her just fine, Vista' eyes got used to the dark quickly, and so she just… wandered around, with no particular target in mind.
All the while deliberately staying away from one particular building she remembered with perfect clarity no matter what, just playing with the thought and coming close to it every now and then. She didn't want to see Cain again, honest! She was just… Considering it. A little.
If anyone knew she was doing this, she'd be in for one hell of a punishment- using her power like this, out of costume, where anyone could theoretically see, was one of the big no-nos if there ever was one. However, this was Brockton Bay; Cain already knew her identity and nobody else would have the audacity to do anything, not that she was easily visible as he stepped from roof to roof either.
She did just that, shortening the distance between a warehouse and an apartment complex a block away to a single step. It took a bit to do this kind of thing,but she wasn't in any hurry, either.
So yes, Vista wasn't too worried about being caught. It wasn't like she was Shadow Stalker- a pang at her missing teammate still made itself felt, never mind nobody could stand her- and had to be kept track of or anything.
Maybe a tracking device would've helped, you know, do just that when she went missing.
Looking down at deserted streets, Vista sighed aloud, shaking the thought out of her head. Her nightly strolls were meant to let her stop thinking. Down there, she saw one of the guys that were collectively just called Mister X.
The running theory was that they were all just some kind of self-replicating cape working for the Crypts, and that the more of him there were the less conscious he became or something. She didn't really have access to threat assessments like this as a Ward, but parts of them had been leaked on PHO last she'd looked.
All she knew was that the giant men loitering around Brockton Bay were quiet, didn't seem to understand things well but tried to be helpful if anyone need it anyway. They stopped fights, kept people from destroying property and even gave direction of their immediate surroundings when asked.
A couple of them even also had these huge green dogs now, they'd just showed up from one day to the next. Vista had tried petting one of them after asking if it was okay, as Missy, and their fur felt kind of weird, but also pretty soft.
That said, this time there wasn't just a single hulking figure standing around all night. No, there were, uh, a lot of them. Not Mister X only, either, it was one, yes, but also dozens of other shapes, obviously not at all human and waving what had to be hundreds of limbs or tendrils through the air.
With baited breath, Vista watched on, but there didn't seem to be any violence going on. Instead, they were just… Moving? The Mister X was pointed downward and two of the floating things disappeared down a storm drain, making strange sounds.
They had to be working with the Crypts, then, she concluded.
There was also a couple of drunks coming just around the corner.
Hastily, Vista twisted space, making them go back the way they'd come without realizing. They'd just chalk it up to the alcohol, she was sure-
Why did she feel the need to help the Crypt hide what they were doing? … Maybe she'd take it back, clearing her head like this wasn't the best approach to dealing with her life.
It is hard to say where, exactly, the inspiration came from. Maybe you're just standing up and spontaneously letting your thoughts take shape, but you can trace them back a little to see where and how they formed.
You remember something about a really huge statue near… Rio De Janeiro? It was a religious thing, you're pretty sure.
You sure aren't copying it or anything, switching rapidly between checking on the robots you unleashed to act like rabid repairmen and carving into solid rock with your bare claws, but there is some definite similarity. Your current work is much smaller, but the overall… Balance, the stance you are carving into the material, is not quite unlike that one.
Of course instead of carving Jesus, you are carving a semblance yourself, a completely blank face both meant to represent what you look like while shadowed and to cut out a bit of work.
Dressed in your usual suit, the statue you are carving into a solid block of stone created by thoroughly abusing a manufactory and about ten minutes of repeatedly adding to a pebble from nothing is standing with the arms spread wide, carefully articulated elbows and hands giving the impression of a challenge, perhaps, or a demand.
One leg stands upon a vague, blocky piece, sufficiently showing off the defeated form of any given humanoid enemy you may or may not have fucked over in the past. The overall body language you're using here is the most important, of course, though you go into great detail with the clothing, too, carving creases and wrinkles as necessary to make this thing as lifelike as possible.
Overall, it's pretty good, you have to say. Really gives off an impression. A 'come and get some pain' one, but hey, fair's fair, that's pretty much your stance towards any capes that don't work for you in some way.
You're looking forward to people's reactions when they see this thing on the corner of Lord Street in a couple hours.
It's probably a bit overdue, but you took a little bit of stored time produced inside your inner world to get to work on the Chinese stealth tech again. You did go and dismantle that invisible u-boat, after all, plus the stealth boy you were pretty sure would have been built based off of the same technology.
Just, you know, smaller and crappier. Not that you're gonna judge, scientists and engineers that don't have your many, many advantages would naturally look to achieve vastly different ends, such as making it viable to mass-produce stuff with the resources of a nation, as opposed to magically waving machinery around to create whatever resources are needed for whatever you want at the time.
And then use the same machinery to magically produce a finished product.
In any numbers you want. Under just about any imaginable circumstances.
Man, you really are cheating, aren't you?
"To cheat would require a rule to be broken."
"And if it can be broken, it is not a rule."
You raise a hand in greeting to the Lutece twins without looking up from where you're working. "In other words, if you can do it, it's not cheating. I don't disagree, just considering how everyone else would feel."
"How considerate of you," Robert says.
"But have you considered the considerations of industry?" Rosalinde adds.
"Why would I? Industry isn't considerate of me." They can do it, so can you.
"No, I meant the need to continually repair certain parts that will no doubt interfere with your other priorities," she sniffs haughtily.
Huh. "Guess you did dabble in science and engineering yourself before going for your current occupation."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Her eyes narrow.
"He means our current lifestyle is rather devoid of such practical challenges. We do have other things on our mind." Robert takes her hands, distracting her. "Such as each other."
"If you're just going to flirt, mind doing it somewhere other than my insides?" You grumble.
But yes, back to your actual task at hand. Stealth technology, specifically visual camouflage by means of bending light around a given object. The full-scale version can do much more, as it also fools radar and masks heat emanations (both things you implemented in your aquatic DR0WND drones), but you're mostly interested in getting this first part to work inside your robots.
For now, anyway. You could probably size up the system indefinitely, at least in theory if not in practice. Who knows, maybe you'll be building invisible battle moons in space someday.
The time is coming… Quickly. As in, the time for you to leave Earth Bet for a while again, you mean. Considering your current plans, you'll be spending a considerable amount of subjective time, too, so you won't be seeing a lot of people for a good bit. You aren't going to be lonely or anything, and your current state of being means you won't even miss a beat when you reconnect, but even so…
Well, you made good experiences just letting the good stuff roll in while you were intermittently sleeping on Remnant, so this time you'll be doing just that, except on a much, much larger scale.
So you may as well go ahead and have a little fun in what time you have left, right? Disregarding how much this sounds like a terminal cancer patient or something like that, you really should do just that.
Hence why you are currently sitting inside a circus tent somewhere in Europe (Italy, to be precise), Circus herself dressed up as your wife to one side and Dinah to the other, playing the part of the actual family instead of the discordant mess you ultimately come down to. Not that you aren't happy with your life the way it is, mind you.
"You know, I didn't want to say it, but this is the first time I've ever actually been to a circus," Circus says, munching down on a handful of sweet popcorn. "It's kinda embarrassing with my whole theme and all."
"I was to one once, but it wasn't anywhere this big," Dinah throws in, doing the same. Incidentally, you are the one holding an oversized bag filled with sweet popcorn, they're just both reaching for your lap every time.
Cirque Serendipity is one of the most renown circuses in around… half the world, you'd say, simply because communication tends to be kind of difficult in the continents that don't get much internet. There's not many places in Europe that ca organize much of anything beyond a local level thee days, but it's still got people coming from all corners of nearby nations, which is pretty impressive in its own right.
"I'm personally interested in the acrobats, but that's because I have a probably unhealthy fixation on stealing muscle memory from people," you note aloud. "What are you two looking forward to?"
"The clowns, duh."
"I wanna see the animals!" Dinah's hand twitches, like she's just itching to let it shoot into the air. "I've never seen a real elephant before…"
"In that case you're in for a treat, the starting act's about to go up," you smile, already seeing the blood signature of a certain very large animal.
Dinah's squee is drowned out by the applause of the audience as the announcer, a scantily clad woman with a top hat and skintight outfit, calls out a couple of the performers, including the animals, one by one.
Worth it already.
The performance is pretty good, you'd say, as far as these kinds of circus shows go. The animals are well-trained, as are the acrobats, with only a few minor hiccups; one of the tigers got a bit riled up by the scents around the ring, but the handler got it calmed down and back o track without much difficulty.
There are trapeze acrobats, tightrope walkers, jugglers for the intermissions and, of course, plenty of clowns putting on their own little acts. Personally, you're fairly impressed by the one guy that consistently manages to jump into backflips while juggling bowling pins, though that's more on the level of respecting what someone on a human level has managed to achieve.
Any vampire could do this much with little issue, really, just because it's so much easier to control your body when you're doing so directly rather than through the usual biological method of chemical triggers going back and forth.
Of course, your companions have their own thoughts on the matter, Circus' hand creeping over your knee, then up your leg. "You know, I'd be up for walking your tightrope again," she whispers, the dark of the audience ranks working to ensure nobody can see anything as she starts to rub at your crotch.
Well, nobody except Dinah, who's been leaning against you and now hisses her words in response. "No fair, I want to lick his lollipop, too!"
"Don't worry, there's still enough of me to go around," you chuckle, returning their affections with one hand each, fondling thighs and rubbing sensitive areas without delay.
What's anyone going to do, arrest you? You welcome the free meals if any do show up, not that that's likely. The human eye is simply not well-adjusted towards noticing these sorts of small movements in the dark.
It doesn't take long for your cock to be freed from the confines of your pants, one hand from each of the girls either stroking it or reaching inside to fondle your balls, their own stifled voices telling you your own fingers are doing good work, methodically plunging into their sweet honeypots and producing as much liquid arousal as you can under the circumstances.
It certainly puts a nice little bent onto the whole experience.
By the end, you finally have to pull out to participate in the applause given, the flushed faces of the two indicative of many things but not truly proving anything, either. They're so horny you have to quickly get out of there before they end up just screwing subtlety and grinding against you out in public, in fact.
Instead you end up teleporting back home as soon as you can get out of sight, ducking behind the circus tent and all.
Your recent renovations have, among other things, allowed you to have rooms create a general appearance of windows, sunlight and more, simply reconfiguring a few of the places meant to specifically allow for this. It is thus that, when you throw Circus onto a pure white bed (and Dinah follows after her as soon as she can), the room is brightly lit by the adjustable lamps built into the walls.
Naturally, the littlest Crypt in the room is already pushing her clothes off of herself as she does so, smiling brightly at the clown-themed cape also working for you. "I go first!"
Her pants give way to her panties that et nudged and pushed at to reveal herself to you, all the while Circus has only just disappeared her top into her (quite literal) hammerspace- and replaced the rest of her clothe with her costume, for some reason. "Unfair," she accuses.
"First come, first served, and I'm coming first," the little minx grins at her, grabbing the other girl's breast.
"I'm sure you can help Circus deal with the wait, at least," you smile, settling in behind Dinah sans clothing yourself; you have a lot of practice in speed-stripping. "Now raise up your butt a little."
Dinah is suckling on an (only) mildly reluctant Circus' breast, making little throaty sounds, as soon as you say it, soon after disrupted by the fact you're holding up her waist with both hands to bury your elongated tongue inside her little muff, licking and pushing into the same place you're about to fuck hard. Her butt shakes in anticipation, but you don't give her what she wants, not quite yet.
A few telepathic nudges later, Circus is lying back with her legs spread wide, allowing Dinah to eat out her own now revealed cunt, letting the three of you create a cunnilingus chain. The thought is weirdly funny, so you share it, without stopping your thorough tasting of the brunette girl's insides; she tastes just a little savoury today, heavy with anticipation of what's about to come.
You bring her to orgasm by nibbling on her clit, bending your neck to even reach it with this angle, but a screaming, squirting Dinah is totally worth the bother. Only now that you got her as wet as can be do you crawl oto the bed with the two of them, positioning yourself to loom over her from behind.
You smile at Circus as your cockhead slowly penentrates Dinah, the younger girl gasping and shivering. "Please, more… I love this…" she gasps, steadily takin more and more of your full length.
Circus' arms come around her back in a hug, also holding her in place. "It's big, isn't it?" She asks, earning a shaky nod. "You're a good little little slut for him, aren't you?"
"I'm the beeest!" Dinah cries out, suddenly taking your entire cock into her small body, desperately offered pussy squirming around your hard flesh as your head bumps into her womb, her face squashed against Circus' breasts.
For one long moment, you stroke her brown hair, letting her adjust. "I hope you're ready, because I won't hold back… Much." Then you're grabbing on, fistful of hair pulled back to hold her in place while you rut into the girl like you're out to ruin her, her poor body simply unable to keep up.
And she loves it, of course. Dinah doesn't stop either shaking on orgasm or rapidly approaching it for more than a few heartbeats during your use of her body, your hips slapping against her butt so hard and fast your balls barely have the time to smack against her themselves.
"And here I am, all lonely and bored," Circus grins. "What'm I ever gonna do?"
She answers her own question by reach around and under the smaller girl, one hand pinching and playing with her clit and the other carefully poking at her ass, but as she soon realizes Dinah's been training herself, meaning her probing middle finger sinks into her butthole easily and without pain.
Dinah's eyes are wide open, your combined assault overwhelming her senses in short order; by the time you're approaching your own peak, she's only half-conscious, set adrift in a sea of confused pleasure. You still growl into her ears and massage her thighs as you come close, your manhood filling her up completely.
You pump your spunk into her with little other warning. Held in place, there's little Dinah can do but let you do so, not that she'd do anything but enthusiastically consent even if she had a choice.
You pull out and let her fall to the side with a sigh, a thin stream of white, almost frothing liquid slowly leaking out of her abused pussy. Circus doesn't wait for her to get comfortable, however, before she aggressively rears up and presses a kiss onto your mouth. "My turn," she growls, clearly not about to take no for an answer.
"Your wish is my command," you joke, lifting the clowngirl up casually only to wrangle her down onto the bed, playfully fighting her all the while. "Time for your turn."
By the time Circus has come her brain out, Dinah is capable of moving again, and so you keep on pounding both of them into submission again and again, switchin out whenever you fiish and their lolling eyeballs indicate they need a moment to recover.
There's a reason only vampires are allowed to have sex with you anytime instead of requiring a while in-between sesions; even thralls only heal up so fast from what counts as casual sex to you.
Of course you don't spend literally all day pounding cute girls into unconsciousness; as much fun as that would be, you wouldn't accomplish anything else if you did, indeed, do so, and that would be just terrible.
Sarah would pout at you really hard before and after she joined in, for example. That would be utterly harrowing and effectively keep you from continuing like that.
Hey, you never said you would personally have a problem with spending all day having sex every day, it's just the realities of life that keep you from doing so.
Hence you only do it some of the time. See, you're actually putting thought into this!
Anyway, Circus and Dinah need some time to recover, both having been just a little… bloated, last you saw them. They'll be fine, they just need some rest. In the meantime, however, you yourself have a little date to get to.
Funnily enough, it is once again with two girls, though one is rather more firmly in the category of what you'd call a 'woman' rather than a girl and the other one's more a young woman than anything else, either. Ah well, you certainly aren't complaining, both of them are both beautiful and, despite certain claims to the contrary, enjoying your affections just fine.
With so many similarities, is it really that much of a surprise to consider they're related to each other?
"Crystal."
"Aunt Carol, fancy meeting you here," the college student smiles, clearly having been expecting something along these lines. "Amy and Vicky told me you were getting freaky with them, so I thought I might see you here one of these days."
"… They what!" Unsurprisingly, Carol Dallon's voice is currently doing that funny 'cold fury' thing you sometimes see with really, really disappointed parents, just tuned up to eleven. "I will be having words with my daughters later."
Crystal winces, realizing what trouble she just got her cousins into and making her expanded breasts to wobble a little. "If it helps, I'm pretty sure I called them while they were having sex and Amy wasn't thinking right?"
"It does not," her aunt icily informs her. "In fact, it is worse. Anyone could be listening in over the phone. There will be-"
"Spankings?" You suggest, inserting yourself into the conversation taking place at the arranged meeting spot without a hitch.
"Spankings that they won't for- Cain," Carol sighs, catching herself out.
"… Kinky?" Crystal tries, but you doubt it'll help. Ah well, Amy and Vicky are big girls, they can deal with an irate, probably horny (because she obviously always is) mother just fine.
"Why did you call both of us here?" The first-generation cape demands to know, conspicuously not looking at her niece.
"Good thing you asked," you grin with a nod. "I'm here to take you out on a date. Yes, both of you."
Her expression does not budge a single inch, as though hewn in stone. That doesn't help to disguise the blush now dusting her cheeks through the thin layer of makeup she came applied with.
The reveal of your 'power' to effortlessly teleport a group of three all the way across the continent, ultimately resulting in your current visit to none other than LA, the city of your birth.
Also Alexandria's home turf, pretty much, but more importantly it's got your preferred holiday home and all the little ice cream places you know from your childhood. You may or may not sneak in half an hour here and there just to come visit and have a bowl or two when you are't too busy otherwise.
That said,this time you aren't here for sugary goodness alone- maybe after you're done with other matters, sure, but the restaurant goes first. It's not super out there, as far as places you've paid to eat at ever since becoming a walking corpse go, but it's a nice, upper-class place, with private rooms for anyone that prefers such.
Just about perfect for you needs, in other words. It's probably a feature geared towards minor celebrities and the like, normally, just so they don't get mobbed by two-bit journalists, but hey, if it work for you, it works for you.
The dishes don't take long to be ordered, Crystal's subtle discomfort at being served inside a restaurant she wouldn't normally ever be able to afford dining at notwithstanding, so you can get started on the meat of today's little meeting here.
That is, as soon as the door to your private room closes, you send both Carol and Crystal a telepathic message, seeing how both of them are enthralled to you. Crystal gets the memories of a certain beach, of Carol Dallon being double penetrated by yourself and Vicky, Amy watching and touching and creeping all over the three of you, whereas Carol receives thought of the more recent little BDSM session between yourself, Amy and Vicky.
Crystal blushes, staring at her aunt as memories and feelings are relived inside her head, particularly the feeling of fucking her from both sides; it was totally worth it to save Vicky's memories of the event as well. Carol, for her part, is suppressing a certain sound, something you may have called a squeak if it came from anyone else.
Her eyes meet her niece's for a moment, the two New Wave women uncomfortably aware of each other's presence. "As you can see, there are a great many things I thought worthy of discussion in regards to the Dallon household's habits," you happily announce.
"I do not believe my daughters' behavior is something fit for discussion in a place like this," Carol says, only to have you beam another, even happier smile at her.
"Of course it is, ensuring your family's continued happiness and contentment is nothing to be ashamed of." Now you show just a little teeth. "And it isn't like you really object to what they do, do you?"
"I-"
"It's okay?" Crystal speaks over her aunt, unsure about exactly what to say here. "I mean, Gabriel is doing this all wrong and really shouldn't put you on the spot like this, but I'm sure he has a real reason for why he arranged for both of us to be here at once?"
… Well, technically you just wanted to encourage Crystal to take part in the fun a lot more than she currently does, having talked to Amy about her and how badly she loves to modify her cousin's tits, but you can't exactly blurt that out.
You're welcome, by the way, you send at Amy really quickly, knowing she's looking in on what's happening through you- to Sarah's mild irritation, as your sister may allow 'outsiders' to do this at times but generally demands a complete monopoly on your viewpoint- and at least somewhat invested in this entire thing.
Out aloud, you clear your throat, still quickly handing Crystal the same thoughts you just sent for Carol to look over. "Naturally, Amy and Vicky can do whatever they want, as long as they don't do anything dangerous to themselves or others. Which is why I made sure to teach them about proper bondage behaviour, for instance."
"I do not approve of you teaching my daughters anything, for the record," Carol lets you know, now also blushing thanks to certain images and ideas you're floating into her direction. Ones that concern her being tied up and how good she'd look in nothing but leather straps. "And Crystal-"
"Someone has to act as a moderating influence on them, as I'm afraid you might be too busy with your job," you point out. "Think of it as babysitting, just the fun kind that involves sex."
"I'm not sure sex was ever supposed to be any part of babysitting," Crystal chimes in.
"You'd be surprised," you inform her. "I used to be a babysitter when I was in high school and it always involved sex."
"… Well, okay, but…"
"Besides," you say, turning toward Carol again, "at worst she'll still help distract them!"
She gives you a considering look, then directs it towards her niece. Who promptly panics, flustered as she is. "I, uh, you do know how weird this entire discussion is, right?"
"Don't worry, the interview can wait until after lunch," you point out, leaning back as the door receives a curt knock to let you know the food is ready. "You can look forward to it!"
The food is perfectly fine, though you personally can't help but feel the urge to consume lobsters rather more thoroughly than people usually do; you don't need any tools nor do you really want to leave behind the shell.
It's just crispy enough to add some bite and doesn't actually taste bad or anything. Then again, few things that aren't literally harder than rock really pose a challenge to your teeth these days, to be honest.
There is simply little reason you couldn't just consume a prepared lobster by simply biting into it and chewing it up one piece at a time.
But yeah, you still get through the meal just fine. You make some light conversation, but for some reason, whenever you suggest you and Carol are going to fuck Crystal after this the former seems to choke up a little, coughing and glaring at you.
Once the food is all eaten, you do not go ahead and tap the button indicating you want someone to come by so you can take care of the bill, instead casually swiping a hand over the table while you use your esper power, causing the dishes to gently 'fall' off and stack themselves up to one side.
"Say, Crystal, I hope your breasts haven't been too uncomfortable so far? With their size I'm worrying you might have back problems at some point."
"Nope, all good and perky. Wanna see?" The younger woman smirks, though come to think of it she's actually around your own age.
"I am still here and I object to you corrupting my niece," Carol primly informs you, a small bit of heat in her gaze.
In response, you just give her a sly grin. "Guess the only thing you can do is take part yourself to protect her from me, then, isn't it?"
"I would never be able to look Sarah in the eyes again…"
Ah, yes, you remember Carol's sister actually is named Sarah. Can't really begrudge it, your sister's name is imply so inherently good, it spreads by itself like a memetic hazard wherever sapient beings try to think up name for themselves, when you think about it. Nothing out of the ordinary. "Didn't you have sex with her, too? If anything, you're just continuing where she left off."
Crystal, currently showcasing how much she is up for this by taking off her top, pulling it up over her head, twitches, getting her face out into the open again. "Wait, you and mom… ?"
"We were in college and experimenting, this is nothing you should be concerned or think about at all."
"… So you aren't principally against lesbian sex with stacked blondes that are related to you?"
"I refuse to comment on anything about that sentence, young lady. In fact, I should walk straight out of that door, book a flight back to Brockton Bay and-"
"And miss your new babysitter in action?" You ask, patting the desk. Crystal, bless her, gets the idea immediately, lifting herself up to sit on it and showcase her giant tits still held together by the red, lacy bra she's wearing.
That she promptly takes off, letting her almost supernaturally perky breasts breathe a little. "Aunt Carol, won't you please give me the job? I promise I'll keep Amy and Vicky's bed times," she whines. "I'll tuck them in and let them suckle, too."
She pushes her mammaries up with both arms, crossing them underneath. The pose really shows off her figure and the relative size of said chest, enough so Carol's gaze is, albeit reluctantly, drawn towards her.
"I shouldn't," the mother and lawyer says.
"But you will, won't you?" You state more than ask.
She swallows thickly.
"I'm going to do everything I must to make sure the girls won't misbehave, okay? No matter how many spankings they earn themselves." Crystal is playing with the rim of her pants now, fingering at them and very slowly nudging them downwards. "I'll even check to see whether they wash themselves properly. Aaaall~ over."
"… I'm not sure you're responsible enough for the position," Carol finally says. "Why don't you… prove to us… you have what it takes?"
Now she's thinking with hormones.
You've moved your chair around the desk a bit to sit next to Carol's, letting the two of you properly appreciate the little striptease Crystal is putting on, slowly undulating on top of the table to the beat of some unheard music. It doesn't take all too long for her undress completely, thankfully, letting you see her in all her glory.
And glorious it is, make no mistake. Crystal is slender and long-limbed, with just enough fat on her to make her look perfect, soft thighs, abs and arms concealing a core of uncompromising muscle. There are no real blemishes anywhere on her, naked skin looking to have the consistency of silk over anything else and completely hairless below her eyelashes.
You send a query for Amy, because you categorically refuse to believe a natural human would look like this, even after being thralled for a short time. She has to have tweaked her cousin somehow.
You make no pretensions as to your own intent as this happens, of course; while Crystal is showing off her body, you're letting a hand roam all over Carol's, sliding under clothes and massaging tense muscle groups along her shoulders, then her thighs.
Then you're in her pants, unzipping them to let your fingers quest for her panties and go beyond. Around the same time her niece discards hers, casually flinging them off to the side, you're sliding your digit over Carol's opening, tender lips fondled and teased.
She's wet already, of course, and before Crystal spreads her legs wide with a flushed face, naughty smile firmly in place as she mirrors your treatment of her aunt's privates, your cock is out of your own pants, a hand wrapped around and stroking it to the tempo you're building up.
Wet sound are the only thin echoing through the room for a few long moments, Crystal masturbating for your and Carol's benefit as you timulate each other, widely spread legs just barely encompassing both your shoulders. Then, though, the older woman has a thought, one that she shares with you both.
You're standing up, then, still hard cock teased by Carol, while Crystal climbs onto her lap, bending over it. She's grinning up at you, tongue sliding over luscious, soft lips, and you let her lick her aunt's juices off your hand while said aunt gets her positioned over her knees.
"How can you raise anyone to be a good girl when you aren't one yourself? Look at how wet you are," Carol 'admonishes', a hand on her niece's rear producing more moist sounds, aggressively fingering her. "And the size of these udders, no, how often do they have to be milked?"
"Please auntie, I'd love to look after the girls! Not my own, I mean."
"Mhm, tell you what, because you're family. If you take your punishment properly, I'll consider it. And remember to swallow, you hear?"
With that, Crystal's eyes rolling in amusement at the exchange, she's holding herself up to let you pull her head where you want it without issue, easily allowing your cock into her mouth and beyond; her beauty isn't diminished in the slightest as she starts to suck, even as the resounding smack of Carol's palm impacting her body sends a shock through her from bottom to top.
"You're doing well, I can see why you're being considered for the position," you joke, lightly bucking into her. Crystal wordlessly holds her breath to let you penetrate her moist, warm mouth all the way to her throat, sticky saliva covering your manhood within moments, and just like that the chase is on.
She is getting spanked on one end and sucking your cock on the other, silently communicating privately as Carol molests her with her free hand, tugging on her wollen, hardened nipples and feeling her up all over when she isn't holding her in place.
Amy is sending you words of encouragement, by the way. A lot of them. As it turns out, she is very much up for Crystal being around more, but right now you're a little preoccupied considering whether you hould break Aisha's record on most cumshots swallowed within the hour.
You're sure nobody involved would mind.
Normally, nobody would be coming into Missy Biron's own, civilian identity room with impunity, as she was a Ward and her safety was taken rather seriously in this regard, at least. Then again, Cain did things that he wasn't supposed to do (or be able to, she reminded herself) all the time, so she wasn't really surprised when she'd come in to find him already waiting for her, all thoughts of going to bed early to let her ignore the sounds of her parents loudly talking themselves into the next screaming fit forgotten.
"Hey there, Missy. Fancy a little walk?"
"Depends. Does it lead anywhere that isn't here?" She'd asked.
"Arguably so, yeah," the grown man smiled, she could tell. As he had a face for once instead of a flat shadow covering it. He was handsome, just as handsome as she'd imagined when she… As she'd imagined. "Unless it turns out the Raveyard was in your basement all along without my knowledge."
"Guess we're safe then," she'd said, holding her next words for a second but deciding there wasn't any harm in asking. "… What's the occasion? With the face and coming into my room and all that."
"I just wanted to have a talk," the man that was totally acting like some kind of creepy stalker shrugged. Great, now Missy was reminded of Shadow Stalker again. "The name's Gabriel, by the way, while we're at it."
He held out a hand, so she took it. "Missy Biron, but you knew that alreaaah!" Grasping her hand, Cain (or Gabriel) pulled her towards himself, lifting her up- before she knew it, Missy was held aloft in his arms, looking up at his reassuring smile in a princess carry.
He casually opened her window with a shoulder, she hadn't even seen it was already unlocked yet. "Better get going then, would't want to keep you up all night."
… He knew exactly she wouldn't mind him keeping her up, she was absolutely sure.
And that was how she'd come to sit in a way too comfortable chair in an exclusive part of the hottest night club in town, opposite from one of the most powerful capes in the world. It was a sobering thought, she supposed, but right now all she felt like was underdressed.
But, uh, Gabriel didn't seem to mind her flannel clothes, so on they went, she supposed. There were people downstairs, not super many, but as early evening turned late, more and more began to trundle in, not a single one looking up. It was almost silly, but she didn't think anyone would see her where she was, all the elevated cages with, uh, with naked women were positioned so anyone looking up at them wasn't looking up at the loft area she was in.
That was not a coincidence, she was pretty sure.
"Anything to drink? Nothing alcoholic, but we've got pretty much anything you could think up and then some stocked in here," Gabriel, as his face wasn't visible, offered.
"Uh, just a coke, please?" He gestured and a can flew out of a nearby booth, landing in his hand and then offered to her. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it," he waved her off. "So, let's not beat around the bush all night, shall we?"
Missy blinked, halfway to opening her drink. "Um, sure?" She was kind of parched, so she was looking forward to this.
"How attached are you to being a hero exactly?"
She choked, coughing more out of surprise than anything else. She didn't even take a sip yet but she'd been thinking of it already, so her body reacted accordingly. Not important. "I thought you'd make your spiel at some point, but I'd kind of forgotten by now," she said once her lung calmed down a bit.
"I make it a point to only play when I can win," Gabriel shrugged, lips quirked into a smug little grin. "How 'bout it?"
"I'm a hero," Missy declared categorically, firmly. "That hasn't changed."
"Not even if I bribe you with… This?" Gabriel pulled something out from under the desk, a…
Was that a… "Is that a dog plushie?" She asked.
"A wolf one, it's important." Gabriel slid the fluffy, brown-grey plush toy towards her, smiling. "Go ahead, it's yours. Crypt merch, technically, but it's less obvious."
Missy took the toy, noting how soft it felt. "I'm still not joining you."
"You don't have to, the merch is a gift," he told her, repeating his motion to hand her…
A mug, a couple of pens, a towel, a- a dildo? And a calendar?
"What even…"
"Prospective members get free merch, simple as that," Gabriel shrugged. "I don't really expect it to change your mind, it's just company policy I thought up."
"… That seems pretty stupid," she said before she could think better of it.
"Maybe it is. But it's not the argument that will have you abandon your civilian and heroic identity to join the Crypts, so it hardly matters, does it?"
"I'm not gonna join the Crypts," Missy, Vista, repeated.
"Mhm," he made, giving her a funny look. She wasn't sure she liked it. "I wonder… What is it that keeps you from even considering the option of jumping ship?"
"Being a hero is the right thing to do," she said, staring back at his eyes in a contest of will. "It doesn't matter how much you pretend otherwise, but villains ultimately harm the people."
"So do taxes, but let's not get into politics," Gabriel purred. "In fact, let's skip to the meat of the argument. If you didn't have to worry about any of that stuff, about right or wrong, your parents, your identity, all that stuff, would you prefer to stay a Ward or become a Crypt cape? Because we do have incentives, but more importantly we let our capes live whatever life they damn well please- within reason, but nobody's complained so far."
"I'm not going to prioritize my personal desires over the objectively right thing here."
"Hmm… What if, by joining the Crypts, you would be doing the objectively right thing then? Because hey, I happen to think we're not actually all that bad." Gabriel gestured at their surroundings. "Let's be honest, crime is always going to exist for as long as civilization does."
"That's no excuse," she pointed out.
"No, but it is a reason. If the law won't regulate and tax softer drugs and prostitution, why, someone else will have to. And seeing the crumbling government infrastructure we all have to deal with, well, someone has to be ready to take over if it fails."
"Are you seriously telling me you want to take over the world?"
"Are you saying you don't want to try to keep me from doing it the hard way, as opposed to the soft approach?" He was walking his fingers over the table leaning forward. "I have the power and the technology, with time I'll have the people, too. How many people would really object if I decided to take responsibility for a continent or two?"
"This is insane," she whispered.
"Nope, it's the world we're living in," Gabriel smirked. "Not my fault it's mad, I just work with what I have, at the end of the day. We all do. Boop!"
He booped her nose. What was she supposed to think about it? What was she supposed to think about any of this?
"But anyway, the Crypts aren't that bad an option, and you should be able to think of yourself every now and then. Wouldn't it make you a more effective hero, to have our reputation backing you? To have more powers?" So it was real, Missy thought numbly. "To not have to deal with your parents' shit? The PRT's? We wouldn't really stop you from being a hero or anything, either."
"Wait, you're a supervillain," she protested.
"And I don't care what you invest your time into so long as you don't turn against the Crypts," he replied. "The half a million paycheck is a general thing every cape in my employ gets."
Wait. "Wait." Half a mill- "Half a million?!"
"Monthly, yes," he happily pointed out. "Everyone's got a price and not all can be paid in money, but capes usually get special treatment anyways."
"… I'd have to give up all my friends, my family, everything." It sounded weak even to her own ears.
"Well worth it to get away from your parents, isn't it?" The words were like worms burrowing into her head.
"Think about it. Your home is broken," Gabriel said, so straightforward and matter-of-factly she couldn't even find it in herself to argue, "your free time is mostly eaten up with the Wards and the only people that you would really be leaving behind are your friends at school- with whom you totally still keep in contact even if you just ran away to come live with us."
"Do you really think it'd be that easy?" Missy asked.
"The question isn't whether it's easy or hard." His voice was so… He was telling the truth as he saw it, she thought. "The question is what the right thing to is here, so let's ask it; what is the right thing to do for Missy Biron's sake?"
That… Was a good question. What would she be leaving behind? What would she gain instead? Was it worth it?
Missy felt her face grow warm. "You know what to say to make me agree with you," she accused.
"I'm just spelling out the obvious," he replied. "I looked into your family situation, into how you do at school, your Wards records… But I still came to an honest conclusion from it all, so here we are."
"… So here we are." She looked at him, really looked at him. "Do you really think they'd all be better off without me?"
"Some, sure. Not everyone. I doubt your parents really care anymore." His eyes were almost gentle. It hurt to be looked at by them. "They clearly did before, but time and spite have ways of eroding everything eventually."
Missy nodded. Her throat was feeling tight.
"Oh, don't be sad." She wasn't. "This is nothing you don't know already. You've just been trying not to see and accept the obvious, because it hurt you too much."
She tried to say something, but no words came out. Before she knew it, Missy was sitting in Gabriel's lap, hot tears marring her cheeks, and she only noticed because his finger were wiping them up as soon as they came, not a single one rolling down all the way off her chin.
"It's alright," he cooed, pulling her against himself as she quietly wailed. "You're safe, you're fine, and though it hurts it'll get better soon, trust me."
She just clutched the plushy closer.
She wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, Missy crying and Gabriel consoling her, but eventually the worst of it ebbed away, leaving her quietly sniffling to herself. He was patting her back, and her head, and she just realized she was on his lap with her legs spread wide, face buried in his chest and something hard poking her from below.
She wasn't sure why, but she giggled at that, a breathless, bloodless laugh.
"I know exactly what you need right now, by the way," Gabriel said, as though he was still talking just like earlier. "What do you say to getting naked and eating however much ice cream you want?"
"… I'd like that," Missy whispered, voice feeling sore even though she'd never cried out even once.
She didn't know how and it probably didn't even really matter, at least not now. All that did was that they were inside a room now, dimly lit but still bright enough to see by, covered in soft cloth and pillows.
It was one enormous bed, with a large TV screen to one side. Gabriel reached for a wall, opening a (hidden?) fridge filled to the brim with what had to be dozens of tubs of ice cream. "Strawberry?"
"Strawberry sounds good." She hated how she sounded, all weak and crying-like. But she also wanted that ice cream.
They ate together in silence, taking off one piece of clothing after the other, taking turns eating with large spoons and stripping. Eventually, they were done, but they kept on eating, close together, touching each other every time they moved.
Missy liked that. She didn't want to be alone, not right now, even if some part of her told her Gabriel was the one that'd torn down the walls she'd built up in the first place. Not his fault she was such a fucking mess.
She looked down, seeing her own naked body and his, particularly his… dick. The large organ that she'd swallowed and suckled on, even as he returned the favor himself. She could feel the taste of his semen on her lips, just then, and it mixed with the vanilla ice cream they'd worked their way towards together.
Together. They hardly knew each other, but Gabriel had gone out of his way to do all of this for her, to speak frankly and console her even as she dissolved into a massive mess. How many other people would do that?
Then again, how many other people would let her… do what they'd done last time without complaint?
Somewhere in the back of her head, Missy's brain cooked up a thought. An idea. And she latched onto it with both hands.
"I want to have sex," she said. "Real sex. It's my first time."
She braced herself for rejection, for whatever reason, for suggestions or- "Gotcha. I'll be gentle."
"Don't."
He nodded, wordless. He didn't need words to be said, already hardening tool pointing up from his lap.
Then he gave that same lap a pat, waiting for her to come over to him. Missy did, unsure what to do or how this would work out, but she crawled onto and straddled his lap anyway.
His erection was rubbing against her crotch, so big it felt like it reached all the way to her belly button. Gabriel held her closely, her beating heart like a drum in her ears.
He leaned towards her, propping her chin up so he could kiss her, deep and intimate. His tongue dominated her mouth, playing with hers, all the while butterfly bomb went off in her stomach.
"Put it in whenever you're ready," he finally whispered, releasing his grasp of her somewhat. Missy blushed, looking down, but she still wanted to do this, so…
She pushed herself up on her knees, then her feet, still on his lap, feeling his hot, hard thing slide over her skin. She grabbed it with one hand, knowing Gabriel didn't mind that, and used the other one to spread herself open, as much as she could anyway.
It didn't look like the large penis would ever fit into her coochie, but Vista had made much bigger things fit through smaller cracks. She angled herself and tried to push down, but Gabriel was so big she had to take it slow, feeling his head prod her entrance and then, slowly, part it wide open, spreading her and making her a woman.
It felt good and full and mortifying, but she wasn't done yet. There was a lot of penis to take yet. Gabriel' hands were on her butt, massaging reassuringly.
"There you go, just take your time," he murmured. "You're doing very well."
Vista's legs spread wider and wider as she sunk lower and lower, feeling his rod go deeper into her. It was way better than anything she'd ever imagined, and though it hurt at some point she just kept going, gritting her teeth and concentrating on how good it felt to beat back the pain.
Vista was seeing stars by the time she thought most of him was inside of her, but Gabriel proved her wrong by grabbing her tighter again and- getting up. Now she was as deep as she could go, her wet lips lush against the base of his penis.
Wordlessly, they kissed again, just taking in the moment. She liked it, just hanging in the air, legs spread around Gabriel, as they made out, exchanging saliva and unspoken feelings.
Vista could feel herself going red, the heat of the moment contrasting with the slowly warming ice cream bowls they'd set aide. She was clinging to him, she could feel her hands around his shoulders without telling them to go there. And then-
And then he moved, lifting her up and away, himself backwards, then he drilled back into her again. This time Vista was definitely seeing stars, feeling his hard penis rub all over her insides and hitting somewhere hard, but still spongy, and it was so intense she wasn't sure she wasn't going to black out.
But he kept going, kept, she realized, fucking her. He kept going faster and faster, filling her up and fucking pleasure into her, to the point Vista was more bouncing than anything else, teeth grit when it all became too much and she came.
The sensation was almost too much. She shivered, fireworks in her head, and panted aloud, feeling like she might need more oxygen.
Gabriel kissed her again, and again. She was hanging in his arms, being fucked like her life depended on it, and in some way she felt it might. She'd die if she stopped having sex. With him.
Every time she came, and she kept coming, she could feel him growing bigger inside of her, wondering if this time might be the one. Vista had no idea how long it was, minutes or hours or days, but eventually, a strand of saliva hanging between them from their frequent kissing, Gabriel held her close, pushing to her deepest point again and staying like that.
"I'm coming," he informed her, his voice dripping good feelings like honey. She held her lips out for him, waiting for the next kiss, but he came inside of her first, something liquid and hot pushed into her that she could feel, small bursts firing off and going straight to her womb, then her head, electric tingles all the way.
She still got her kiss afterwards.
Gabriel kept going like this, fucking her hard and fast, making her feel better and better, not needing to take any breaks. Vista was a sweaty, sodden mess by the time he put her back down, soaking the pillows she was lying on.
She felt a hand stroking along her spine, her back arching with how good it felt. Her entire body was so sensitive right now… "You done, or do you want to go another couple rounds?" He asked, drawling smugly.
She shifted, turning herself over to present herself to him, legs spread wide and pusy leaking his semen by the gallons. "More, please," she mewled, not even caring how she sounded anymore.
She got more. She got a lot more. She got more than she bargained for and then some, but when you sell your soul to the devil, may as well get your money's worth.
Now then, you don't have much time left, for the moment, but most of your night should still be usable in this regard, the metaphorical chain that you use to navigate between dimensions almost, but not quite, wound up and readied for your next jump once more. That means you may as well take care of some of the things you were planning on doing already anyways, though most of that isn't all that terribly exciting.
Such as the stream you had timed for this late evening, your little sexcapade with Missy giving you just enough time to get dressed in your costume made of tweed and ready your little studio.
Incidentally, your minor rebuild of the bunker included a bit of renovation for your various 'studios' as well; it's nothing big nor overt, you don't want to give too many details about your operation away to any particularly discerning viewers, but you have a couple of semi-autonomously moving cameras for your streaming, now.
It's pretty neat, is all you're saying.
But yeah, big fake moustache in place and the tools of the trade where you can grab them easily enough, you go right ahead and turn everything on, still using the same old laptop you first got when you joined up with Kate and her girls in that derelict warehouse meant as a backup base.
"I am 'pleased' to see you degenerates have once again turned up to witness the lows we descend to during the course of this series of streams," you say, your posh 'Abel' voice firmly readied ahead of time as well. "I do wish you a good evening, however."
Of course the very first thing they decide to vote on is kind of an issue, to put it like that; mostly because you're pretty sure none of the people doing so have any idea what they're even doing and just want to see what happens.
Well, that or they're government agencies at the end of their rope and trying to do anything they can think of to see if it works. Still kind of mildly troubling either way.
"It may have been mentioned before, but this stream does not deal in any such things as the future. Therefore, 'What Cain Is Going To Do' is not quite within our remit here," you tell the viewers, trying to keep them from setting their hopes up. "That said, perhaps something generic and not at all related to anything anyone will recognize will do. I do have an idea of what plans are in motion, you see."
The background won't need to be too well-defined, you don't think, just a nice, gray color scheme with a semi-flowing shift in intensity to give the kind of impression you want. Instead, most of your effort will be spent on the details of the main feature of this picture…
Luckily, you have a very good idea indeed of how an artificial female body made with purely technology may look like, having built a couple yourself. It's both a reference to Earth Bioshock, which you don't expect anyone to get, and to the Machine Army, which still nobody will get as the self-replicating tinkertech creations that took over Eagleton don't particularly bother mimicking humans last you checked.
It still is kid of fun to design and draw this, the clear lines and cracks showing off robotic features contrasting against the uncanny valley levels of humanity the complete object gives off.
And eyes, only one of them visible, looking knowingly at the viewer. This android, gynoid or whatever you want to call it, is there, conscious.
Now, the hair, though, that's the real challenge here. If it wasn't for your literally superhuman ability to perform fine movements, it'd be impossible to draw it anywhere near as casually as you are.
Dragon, also known as Theresa 'Tess' Richter, pondered over the footage as it was streamed, live, from Brockton Bay. It wasn't any actual resemblance, but… If she squinted, the mechanical female humanoid drawn by Cain did share some similarities with the avatar she usually used to interact with living humans.
Could this be an announcement? A challenge? Was Cain saying he was coming for her, or that his plans involved her in some way? Her true nature should not be known by anyone outside of her closest acquaintances, but it was perfectly possible the enigmatic Trump would have access to Thinker powers capable of ferreting out her secret.
In that case, could it be a threat? 'Look what I will turn you into'? Given the right Tinker powers, she would not preclude the possibility. On the other hand, perhaps it was meant to let her know he would be creating his own artificial intelligence, a dark, villainous mirror to herself, made to further no cause but his own and completely unshackled by her own limitations, in case he could access or create a power that rivalled her own father's.
She would need to take precautions.
"Saint! Saint! You have to see this!"
Once you're done, you of course categorically ignore any questions about the female robot picture, simply leaving the people watching this to figure out what they think about what it may or may not mean themselves. Keeping them all guessing is, after all, part of the appeal here.
As is, apparently, catering to certain fetishes regarding capes. "Do we truly need to keep on referring to Panacea, of all people? I know she is locally famous around my home, but you are all getting quite ridiculous. Do I need to sit you down and explain the phenomenon of celebrity crushes before you will cease?"
Amy Dallon was not deterred by the mild snark, of course. She regularly threw out worse before she had breakfast in the morning.
Instead, she was determined to get what she wanted, especially because there were way less opposing opinions around for once.
It was an opportunity. She'd be a fool not to use it! "Healing Hand No Jutsu! Hell of 420 Accounts!"
"Hey sis? You know how much of a weeb you are sometimes?
"Shut up and help me add more votes, Vicky, this is important!"
"If only I didn't love you as much as I do, I swear," her blonde sibling grumbled… But still went on to help her rig the vote.
Amy was not blushing and hiding her face, of course. Absolutely not.
"Very well, if we simply must have a go at 'Dominatrix Goth Panacea'…"
Now that you've satisfied the worst of the highly-voted options, you can take a moment to really look over the rest, considering what else to draw. You have a bit of time left, too, so it's not like you can't put some extra effort into this one.
"It does not seem like there are any clear winners standing out, by this point," you remark as you make a show of looking over your laptop's screen. "Perhaps I shall make a choice for my own, for once. This is dedicated to a very special fan of this stream, one that is likely still asleep but will know who they are as soon as they see this. Don't ever let anything stop you from growing into the person you want to be."
It was pretty easy to ask Sarah to check on Missy's internet history every now ad then, after all. You know she often watches your recorded streams for hours on end.
Elsewhere, a girl, or a young woman as she would insist henceforth, was sleeping soundly, the exhausting day she'd had taking its toll. Nevertheless, she was feeling wonderful right this moment, a diffuse smile on her lips even as her blonde locks stuck close to her sweat-smeared skin.
The right kind of exercise before sleep, some might say. And as the room's air was kept at a ice, warm temperature, she was perfectly comfortable without a stitch of clothing on her at the time.
Ever since returning from Earth Fallout, you've mostly been leaving Taylor alone to do her own thing, just linking up with her telepathically every now and then to keep track of her activities and let her know how everyone else is doing. Outside of a few time when you both had a few minutes without anything particularly urgent to do and could take the opportunity to cuddle- or have a quickie- anyways.
For the record, the perhaps most feared cape amongst your roster has been indulging in playing with the trio of pets she caught herself to spend her leisure time with, otherwise busying herself training various powers and the like, to the point she actually spends most of her time doing just that.
According to her, she feels a little bad about ignoring her father to do so, but not enough to really do anything about it. Just a mild 'oh, right, I should do that one of these days, but not right now I'm busy' mentality, one that you totally sympathize with; you're just like that when you get busy yourself, after all.
But anyways, Taylor's been noticing a bunch of stuff as she progressed using her vampiric powers and magic, some of which never really occurred to yourself. For once, as she has been progressing in her study of cryomancy, the bugs she controls and that, for many intents and purposes, count as part of her body, have been becoming increasingly capable of tolerating even extremely low temperatures- freezing ones still just kill them, but a mild winter may not be enough to noticeably slow her power use down anymore, at this point.
The two of you end up meeting up to test things out a bit and, indeed, it seems that the passive changes taking place due to increased skill with a given magic do indeed have an effect like this. You never really noticed just because you didn't really feel any cold ever since you rose from your grave, but as it turns out being good with cryomancy does make it harder for your body to just freeze even when it normally should.
Like, you can actually handle liquid nitrogen with your bare hands right now, if you really want to, and the worst you get from it is a layer of frost forming over your skin that you can shake off again pretty easily. It's actually pretty amazing.
But back to Taylor, as her own mastery of this discipline could lead to what you can only describe as arctic elite bug troopers. Which is pretty hilarious, so you've been accompanying her training a bit, helping her out and demonstrating useful shortcuts and tricks you've learned about using select spells.
A lot of this is simple practice too, of course, a simple necessity to keep on casting a spell over and over again while trying to improve on it in some way, but you can help her out at least a little bit, you feel.
And if you do all of this while naked and stroking Taylor's sides to 'keep her motivated', well, there's nothing wrong with that, now is there?
Nothing wrong at all.
Last, but not least, you have a few dogs to walk. No, literally.
You'd think it would be strange for feral dogs to happily accept being led on a leash, but your status as the fundamental leader of what you have come to call the 'doggy mafia' of Brockton Bay means that they do just that, going so far as to treat it as a reward to go for a walk with yourself.
You also did include some space for a wide doggy park specifically meant to accommodate for dog owners and even wild dogs to get comfortable when you remodeled the southern parts of the former Merchant territory, all the way back before you took it over, so you go ahead and use it for its intended purpose.
And yes, you actually did include a secret underground area for the organized dogs working under Rachel, one with secret entrances and enough space for dogs, but too tight for humans to really traverse. Look, if you're gonna have a doggy mafia, you may as well do it right, right?
Right.
So there you are, walking three almost suspiciously well-behaved dogs, with a fourth one that isn't technically a dog by your side- naturally, as she is the leader, Rachel is also with you in the form of a wolf, rubbing herself against your legs and receiving copious amounts of neck scratches and the like.
She's enjoying herself, that much is obvious just in her body language. Then again, so are most of the dogs around- you went and made sure that leashes aren't required within the area, so a few of the street dogs have been talking with pet dogs that come here every now and then, spying on their families for any dissent going against the Crypts.
It's a little scary how engaged and effective your doggy agents are sometimes. Then again, how can you say anything bad about such good dogs?
Finally, it is time. "This is but a small step for a man," you ponder, "but how large a step will it be for vampire-kind?"
"Stop being melodramatic and let's get a move on already," Nora smiles at you, holding out a hand. "Can't wait to see what's left of Rapture with my own eyes."
"It's really nothing impressive," Sarah dismissively sniffs, taking your other hand. "Just a city built underwater. Great work for human standards, but it was falling apart under its own weight already when we were there."
Riley and Curie, reaching for your shoulders respectively, seem to be mostly interested in what else they'll find on Earth Rapture themselves. "I wonder if the Little Sisters want to be my little sisters, too!"
"I cannot wait to 'ave a talk with Madame Thinker. As someone that was once a robot, I am sure we 'ave many things to discuss between each other."
Finally, Henley is just standing there, hand raised, but unsure where to touch you. "Are you really quite sure I'm supposed to come along? You look like you have your hands full already."
"Just don't make this weird." You roll your eyes, smiling. "Now do you want to help me take over a world or not?"
"… Maybe you should have asked Ethan to come instead?"
You end up just leaning forward and extending a snake's head out of your neck, bumping your second head into him to establish contact. "Let's just get going, smartass."
And like that, you pop out of existence for an infinitesimally short moment, knowing full well that time will pass very timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly. For everyone coming with you, at any rate.