You don't often take the time to walk around in the large area of your inner world's 'gardens', the overgrown walkways and many, many plants all over the place making for a cool, if otherwise not particularly interesting, environment.

That said, you have been messing around with some of those same plants while experimenting with your current big project, so you've had to mess around in this place a bit in general lately- which naturally means you've had to deal with the Guardians that your soul set up around here.

The Sisters Three are a trio of fairy-like creatures, all female if that wasn't clear already, each just tall enough they're still comfortable standing on your palm and an overall color of their own, one being purple, one blue and one red.

Otherwise, they're just three very small, glowing women with four wings each, plus some feelers on their heads that make them look kind of cute- when they're not malevolently snickering and plotting to screw someone's life up. Which they usually do.

That said, being a part of yourself, they do know better than to try and mess with you in particular, not that this stops them from crowding around you whenever you're inside of their garden-y domain.

They don't do so completely aimlessly, of course. No, you're pretty sure they want something in particular, something you are pretty used to seeing wanted.

Long story short, you're sitting down on a suspiciously well-maintained bench amidst the Gardens, the three fairies are performing an experiment of their own, the 'reward' you promised them in exchange for their help with figuring out what kinds of plants you were looking for for your new type of potion.

Said experiment is designed to answer a simple, but apparently incredibly important question, that being 'can your penis fit inside a fairy'?

Technically you already confirmed as much with some of your semblance-created minions, but apparently they don't count as 'authentic' as far as the Sisters are concerned. Whatever that means, anyways.

So there you are, sitting on the bench with three fairies sitting on your cock, your clothes already discarded along the way- the same as theirs, in fact. The three fairies, in turn, are tittering and whispering among each other, the red one already leaning down to lick the widened expanse of your tip with her comparatively small tongue.

Suffice it to say, small bodies can still contain big, round butts, and thanks to some full-body commitment to sex, you soon have the three pressing themselves up against your cock, massaging it with their legs wrapped around it like a giant, fleshy pole they're going nuts on.

… You think the scent of your dick may be some kinda drug to fairies at this point or something.

Gently tugging the spread-eagle'd purple sister along the length of your shaft, her belly bulging out enormously as her eyes roll back in their sockets, her mouth wide open to dispense panting moans, you confirm that your dick does, in fact, fit inside fairies.

The secret is that fairies are very, very stretchy, making it entirely possible to fit a lot of dickmeat inside of them. And contrary to how painful you would think it looks…

"More! Mooore!" "She likes it, doesn't she?" "What's not to like with this?"

Now the next question, of course, is how much of yourself you can sheathe inside of tight fairy pussy, and there's only one way to find out, as ever. Truly a worthwhile endeavor indeed.

For the record, your cum actually does serve as an aphrodisiac for fairies of sorts, or at least for these ones. The Sisters scrabble to obtain every drop of it they can get whenever you come, licking and slurping your cock clean with the alacrity of a starving crack whore. Though you'd never describe it like that to their faces.

They even go so far as to eat each other out anytime you fill one of them up, fighting over 'stealing' the stuff while the original receiver is still incoherent after what just happened. Otherwise they mostly focus on massaging and playing with your balls, seeing as your shaft is kind of occupied by the monstrously spread body of one of them at a time.

So, too, does it happen in this case, your hot load spewing into Purple who goes completely blank in the brain, throwing her head backwards while her entire body twitches and shivers wildly. However, rather than do as you expect and join Red in licking any spillage before it can be wasted, Blue looks up at you, a considering glint in her eyes.

"Maaaster," she whines, pressing herself against the side of your cock, "do you think you could fuck my butt, too?"

"Aaah, no fair!" "No fair, no fair!" "Butt sex is meant to be shared!"

You suppose you have a bit of work to do before all three are satisfied, after all.

Doing precise measurements and scientific review of your progress and experiments is… somewhat difficult at times, considering the exact nature of what you do, that mostly making reality bend over for you all the time, but with a bit of elbow grease, wishful thinking and lot of precision engineering you can more or less manage.

Thanks to that, you now know that the potion you finally managed to create does have an effect, and it more or less matches what you were trying to achieve; increased physical strength without any change in muscle mass, reinforcing your ability to exert force through alchemical means on a permanent basis.

Or at least it hasn't worn off yet, anyways. You'll keep an eye on it.

For the record, the change is small when compared to your already existing levels of strength, but it is notable with a bit of testing, once before you take the new potion to confirm prior results (which are close enough you can see how little your strength increased otherwise) and afterwards. A few more kilograms of grip strength here (the Thinker insists you use grams and meters for some reason), some enhanced running speed there…

Nothing too out there, but it is a measurable difference. You suspect you'll be able to improve upon the recipe in time… Y'know, assuming you figure out a way to do so.

While you're at it, you also should improve the taste somehow, actually. The blood in there is nice enough, but the rest of the potion… It all basically tastes kind of weirdly bitter and prickly, plus it feels like it left behind a couple of cold, wet spots inside your throat on the way down. Not exactly something you'd drink recreationally.

Then again, you also can't stand coffee. Maybe it's just because of your taste buds or something.

Regardless, you have proven that this is possible, the permanent enhancement of both yourself and, in theory, others, by way of alchemical means. You can see it already- do some more research, streamline the process and mass-produce what ingredients you can and, before long, you will have more powerful versions of what you just drank earlier.

More powerful versions you can feed to everyone else, in turn making them even stronger than they already are. You truly will be-

Invincible

Technically speaking, it's the middle of the day right now, but that doesn't particularly stop you from deciding that it's about time to go to a beach somewhere. There's, like, no particular occasion for it, you just felt like it and that's that.

Now, while you could just pick out some semi-populous place at the edge of the ocean filled with sand and flirt up a chick or two to waste some time with, not like you don't have lots of practice doing so just from living in LA and all, you figured you may as well bring someone along to share in your fun all along the way. Which is in turn why you invited Alicia and Ariana to come with you, too.

It is also the reason you didn't get moving to the beach as soon as the sun went up- for some reason, Ariana insists both she and her sister have to get through at least some of their classes before you go and drag them off to have fun. Weird priorities, but hey, their decision, you can adapt one way or another.

In the end, however, here you are, on a sandy shore under a bright blue sky that's reflected on the surface of the ocean stretching in front of you. Lazy, even waves are lapping at the beach, and the place is even surprisingly free of other beach-goers.

Mainly because it was going to be an absolutely shitty rainy day with no sun and lots of wind before you decided that the weather could go fuck itself and took over to do it yourself. As a result, nobody was planning to go to the beach whereas you are ready, complete with those big beach towels, sunscreen you won't actually use yourself, a beach umbrella, some snacks you made sure to pack…

Honestly, you'd do a beach barbecue, but you never did get around to buying a private beach in this dimension and screw doing it on a public one. Then again, it would kind of lack something if you did it with just a few people, as opposed to the crowd of your gathered friends, friends with benefits, benefits with friends and assorted wives back on Earth Bet.

So you're just fine casually visiting the place, and for once you're doing it in the light of day- normally you'd avoid that because most of the other vampires still can't stand the sun as easily as you do and you usually at least try to be considerate of their feelings and wellbeing and all that.

But hey, you're the only vamp around and you shine brighter than the sun anyways, so nothing's stopping you for once. Also, you get to see Alicia and Ariana in swimwear, which is extra nice.

There's just something about a woman in a bikini that just works, y'know?

Alicia, as ever, doesn't really show much emotion unless given immediate reason to, but even so you can tell she kind of likes the change of pace. The top of her bikini, thin cloth straining under the expanse of her breasts, slips around the nape of her neck behind the choker Ariana insisted she wear, while her bottoms…

Well, they're more string than anything else and dig into the soft flesh of her hips and waist, just enough to make you want to bite her in the nonlethal sense. She's also wearing slightly tinted glasses, not quite sunglasses as such but the nearest thing to it- her eyes don't do well with too much sun, you think.

Her white hair is bound into a ponytail, too. While you would (rightfully) say she looks good no matter what she wears, you can confirm that she does look great here and now.

As for Ariana, the short young woman that is most assuredly legal by any standards the modern world would care to define has a pink version of the same bikini on her, her own actual sunglasses lifted up to sit above her eyes in case she needs them later and, for some reason, a bright red flower in her hair.

She also is licking on some vaguely phallic ice cream and, as she notices you looking, fiddling with the knot that keeps her bottoms in place. You just roll your eyes and pat her hair, which happens to be done up in a similar style as Alicia's, though it spreads out towards the back a lot further.

"Alright, let's get this show on the road, I guess," you say, hefting the assortment of various beach-related equipment currently under and over your arms.

It doesn't take you long to set things up, letting you take a few moments to just lie in the shade of your beach umbrella in nothing but your swimming trunks and idly considering making some kind of weapon in the form of one of these umbrellas- unfolded they basically are a decently long pole, after all, and you could do with a few more gimmicks and stuff to mess around with against enemies you don't feel the need to take seriously.

Biggest issue would be making the thing durable enough to survive your own enhanced strength, of course. Most things just kind of tend to break when you really get to work with them, there's a reason you basically went with just using your bare hands supported by Last Embrace as your primary weapons.

Well, as 'bare' as hands can be when they're clawed, armored and capable of punching through walls with ease, anyways.

But you don't spend all that much thought on the topic, all in all, just kind of taking a few minutes to watch Ariana play in the shallow waves washing onto beach and generally have fun by herself, soon rallying a couple kids (the few that are present today, you already went over why so few people are here) into what you think might be some sandcastle building tournament. Except sabotaging everyone else is allowed and half of them are busy pouring water over each other.

In the meantime, you and Alicia just sit back, relaxing in the shade and letting the warmth of the day play over you. That is, until the busty, dark-skinned teen next to you pushes herself up on her hands, sitting up instead.

"We should do something."

You look up at her, arms lying down so your hands cross underneath your head, propping it up. "Anything in particular you were thinking of, or…?" You ask with a quirk of one eyebrow.

Alicia groans quietly, which is actually kinda cute, in a grumbly girlfriend kind of way. "We should do something lewd. Sexy. Do the horizontal tango."

Sitting up yourself now, you smirk at her, noting her eyes darting down to your abs as you move- it's pretty obvious what her mind is on. "Oh, I can do that," you drawl, reaching a hand towards her to bodily pull her towards yourself. Really, nobody can blame you, anyone would be more than happy to get their hands on her.

"Not right out in the open…" The girl you're now manhandling complains, though she doesn't really do anything more as you pull her back against your chest, hugging her waist and trailing kisses along her neck as she nevertheless stretches her head to let you keep going for as long as possible.

"No need to worry," you smile, "people miss things that happen right in front of their faces more often than you'd think."

With that the game is on, Alicia sighing and sinking into your arms. Her hair smells really nice, by the way, whatever shampoo your enhanced sense of smell is picking up not too full of chemicals that overshadow her natural scent like many others do.

Your 'employer' just closes her eyes when you begin to gently massage her hips, though she opens them into a half-lidded stare over her shoulder when you rub her privates through the black cloth of her bikini, the other hand snaking up across her body to play with a nipple through the same.

"Really?" She deadpans.

"Really," you confirm, undeterred. "Nobody's looking. And they won't as long as we don't make it obvious."

"Mmhm…" Alicia groans, but she's ready to go along with what you're doing all the same- especially when her juicy butt starts to wiggle a little in response to feeling a certain hard something press against it, her buttocks wrapping around it by themselves.

Girl has hips that cannot lie, what can ya do?

By the time you're openly kneading her breasts below her top, still none of the sparse beachgoers around finding anything out of the usual, her bare, soft skin heating up as she really gets going, you have her butt squished against your hip as she grinds it against you, the two of you basically making out.

Then you slide one hand inside her bikini bottom, feeling for the very much wet pussy, she wiggles in place a little, quietly gasping and spreading her legs a little to give you easier access. You intrude into her folds with one finger, then two, teasing and rubbing her clit with your thumb all along the way.

Then, of course, you start to rummage in your own trunks a little, sliding your cock right out of them and under her bikini, never making it obvious outwardly what exactly is going on. Alicia holds her breath, looking around, but still there is no reaction even as your hard rod pushes into her, her spine straightening by the second until, finally, you're buried all the way inside of her.

"There we go," you murmur into her ear, snugly holding onto the girl you're penetrating right now as she sits squarely on your lap, your respective swimwear in all kinds of disarray but still kind of covering what's going on. "Want to see how long you can take me flexing before you come just like this?"

Alicia whimpers as you show her what you mean, just moving your cock inside her by flexing a couple muscles. Then again, whimpers usually mean you should keep going, so…

You stay on the beach for a decent while, Alicia spending much of this time sitting on your lap in one position or another, though you also do take regular breaks every now and then- have to be degenerate in moderation and all that.

Those breaks you use to apply sunscreen onto the girl you're hanging out with, working the stuff into her soft, pliable skin even and all over her body, including under her bikini. You give the same treatment to Ariana, of course, her tan lines starkly show where she usually would wear a more substantial swimsuit and it would be the height of irresponsibility to let her get sunburn on the paler parts of her skin.

That said, Alicia does shoo her away pretty quickly after she turns to jelly in your hands, obviously wanting to monopolize you a little. It's pretty cute, especially coming from the normally pretty emotionless girl, so you can't help but indulge her a little.

Okay, a lot, kind of. Same difference.

Also, you manage to unpack a little something else you also brought- a couple of drinks, in these little cocktail glasses and with the little umbrellas, too, for good measure. Fruity and refreshing and all that good shit, you tried your hand at mixing some up when you decided to go to the beach.

You really should try drinking coconut milk straight from a coconut at some point, with a straw and all. You figure that's one of those things you just gotta do at some point, even if you don't personally enjoy the taste of coconut in general. Well, maybe if you're ever in the carribean or something, you live long enough it's only a matter of time until an opportunity comes up.

Anyways, you spend a good while on the beach, but eventually you still have to return back to the rest of the city at large, taking the train back while Alicia holds your hand all the way through. Ariana, by contrast, is kind of tired out after sufficient time spent just running around on the beach, which you suspect may or may not have been one reason her sister so easily agreed to bring her along.

Great minds think alike and all that.

Now then, with relaxation taken care of for the moment, time to get back some of your other projects. For one, you kind of noticed it already earlier, but as the symptoms have been lasting for this long…

Well, you just don't get hungry anymore. Or, to put it more accurately considering what you experience isn't really the same as what living people do when their metabolism demands food intake, you haven't been as thirsty for blood as you are used to being lately.

So you sit down and think back about how much blood exactly you've been drinking when, trying to track exactly what is going on. Hurray for perfect recall and all, it's just still kind of a pain to do it.

However, no matter how much you count replicated blood packs, live snacks that you made non-live in the process of snacking on them and even mundane food you've eaten just in case that suddenly started mattering, you come up short. Did you somehow manage to 'stock up' on additional reserves when you munched on several cities' worth of Flaxans, maybe?

As before, it's not actually a bad thing as such, you just want to get to the bottom of the matter in case it's something you actually have to act on somehow. Vampiric biology doesn't exactly come with textbooks to explain to you how exactly it works, what with yourself being the first specimen of what exactly you are to your knowledge.

… Thinking back carefully, you still did have those little hunger pangs that let you know you could go for a bite or two a while ago, including after the Flaxan thing, so that can't be it. But what else-

You were kind of busy around that time, but you started to have the usual amount of sex right around when this phenomenon started up. But that couldn't be it, could it?

Going to visit Africa on a dime would be, well, more than a bit of a hike for anyone other than yourself, on account of the absence of land routes between North America and the place, but thankfully you do not particularly care about things such as 'immense distance' when you can just chain shadow teleports, high-speed movement and a general lack of care for environmental hazards such as 'no solid ground in sight'.

Fun fact, the ocean is actually really nice to have around for your shadow magic. Once you go deep enough, basically the entirety of your surrounding count as a shadow for its purposes, which does let you cut through a lot of the intervening space you're looking to cross right now.

And even the surface is technically counted as a shadow at night, when the light of the moon doesn't pierce the sea too deeply. Just saying, it's pretty handy.

Once you've made it all the way across, all you need to do is to reorient yourself a bit and make some good time towards the place described in Cecil's list of naughty kids that get a visit from Miss Night Queen. Sadly, it turns out the US doesn't really massively interfere with African and Middle Eastern revolutionaries and governments in this timeline, so you can't even make any particularly poignant jokes to that extent at this point, though.

Anyways, it's a bit of a walk still, but that's what you have wings for. Your target is… honestly, you don't even bother with his name, he's just some African dude with a high-tech gun of some sort, presumably sourced from one mad genius type or another. The issue being taken with him is that he's trying to take over some minor nation hereabouts, engaging in open smuggling of drugs and weapons, enslaving villagers and bla bla bla, he's basically having his people do heinous shit to fill his coffers.

Whether he's filling up on capital as a step in his plan to become a marginally less unimportant schmuck or just looking to secure himself some decent amounts of riches before he fucks off with all of it while leaving his men behind is unknown, and also completely immaterial to your purpose.

You want nom. Guy-dude is now. Vampire happy. Simple, easy, elegant and to the point. Of course the exact methods to employ is the next big question, and this is the actually difficult part; when you have as many options as you do to cause grievous bodily harm, choosing which one to go with can be a challenge in itself.

Well, you have been doing these kinds of thing for some time now, and you never were the type to change a winning formula unless given particular reason to. So you don't… for the most part.

You're still dealing with a guy armed with what amounts to a tinkertech weapon if you were on Earth Bet, which inherently means you actually have to pay at least a little bit of attention until you've neutralized it. Just in case it actually can spread some serious damage around, say, a swarm of creatures looking to eat its current owner.

Specifically enough to break your aura on account of hurting a couple hundred of your bodies. That would be pretty annoying, and while you don't really quite feel pain anymore, you still do dislike the feeling of being damaged.

So you decide to be just a little more careful and don't start out scouting in the form of a giant swarm of bats that darkens the skies with the sheer mass of fluttering bodies involved, instead finding your target with a bit of good old normal searching based off of what the GDA's dossier said about where your guy has his headquarters.

It doesn't take you all that long to find yourself the right address in the less well-off parts of town, near a couple of old warehouses. Which does take you way back, what with your own history with refurbished warehouses as simple living quarters.

Your guy doesn't actually live here, of course, he's a criminal that does have people working for him; he's got a top floor apartment in a hotel near the center of downtown rented permanently. He isn't actually there at the moment, however, which is why you had to track him all the way here where his little gang has a drug packaging operation going.

Took some minimal detective work and abusing your enhanced senses, but at least you've found the location of both your target and a couple of his men. That are basically overseeing the workers they've got handling their product, a certain white powder that is being packed into these little plastic bags.

Didn't even take much effort to catch a glimpse of what's going on, not with your abilities. The workers in question are probably not exactly here out of their own volition, judging by how the one that slows down gets beaten by the armed men watching out for any of them hiding the coke they're handling.

Oh, and they're all naked to make sure they don't slip anything to smuggle out. It's an almost painfully cliche vision of how one of these places would look like according to whatever evening news you care to point at drawing up some drug panic.

Not that it matters to you all that much. Standing up on the roof of the warehouse your target is currently inside of, having visually confirmed you have the right guy, you reach out with your hand, doing the same with your mind.

The next thing anyone knows, a certain man is, quite abruptly, gravitationally challenged. Insofar as he's 'falling' against the nearest wall with considerable force, breaking at least one arm going by what you can see through his body's blood signature (and how it shifts most unhealthily), screaming loud enough you can hear him loud and clear from where you are.

His guards burst into the room. They do not see what is causing the issue, but they do see their boss pinned against the wall, struggling to move. He, for his part, pulls a weapon with his good arm, shakily pointing it at the wall he's currently being squished against.

The wall explodes outwards, some kind of explosion blasting it apart while leaving your target unharmed. He flies straight out of the second story of the building now in a shower of half-pulverized bricks and concrete, flailing wildly while his guards run after him.

You, of course, have an excellent opportunity to see him, meaning he's a dead man flailing anyways. A ripping and twisting motion later, his body is literally bursting apart thanks to the overlapping ways you redirect the force of his weight, every limb flying in another direction and drenching the dust produced by his exit in a fine mist of red.

You just catch the fancy gun via your telekinesis plasmid, whereas the blood promptly begins to coalesce in your direction as well. As you drink it out of the air, you already begin to fall apart into dozens upon dozens of small, furry bodies that skitter and curry every which way, running straight down the warehouse's facade to get to the men inside.

Time for a few bites. Being nibbled to death by vampiric rats has to be a bad way to go, or at least the screams sure make it sound like it pretty quickly.

"Sir, we have satellite footage of the Somalian affair."

"You'll have to be a bit more specific, Donald, Somalia isn't a small place."

"The man on the NQ list, sir."

"Ah, she got around to it earlier than expected. Add suspected teleportation or high-speed flight to her file."

"There are a few more additions we should make, sir. She, uh, she turned into a bird, ripped the man in question apart with a gesture and then turned into a swarm of rats."

"…Why rats, Donald?"

"I don't know, sir. Only that she then proceeded to nibble on all nearby subordinates of the man on the list, then reformed herself and told the policemen closing in that nothing unusual was going on before leaving."

"Did they believe her?"

"I think they might have, sir."

"Okay, screw it, just note on her file that she probably can do anything vaguely related to any vampire folklore and related pop culture. And then some."

"Will do, sir."

"Any news from Immortal?"

"He says it won't be long, sir."

"I don't know whether to be relieved or cuss him out. Nolan's gonna be the damn death of me at this rate."

With your shiny new toy in the form of a gun that, somehow, generates a momentary field of kinetic energy that 'fires' away from it (which was how its previous owner destroyed the wall you had him pinned to) securely tucked away in our castle, you idly start to look into exactly how it works, if only because new approaches to doing things you can already do are never a bad thing in your opinion.

Of course the process isn't all that difficult to go through, you're kind of good at reverse-engineering stuff at this point. Which is why you have the time to also look into some minor history of the… Well, hell is less a dimension and more a plane of existence that at least kind of and partially exists purely spiritually, actually.

But yeah, you're looking into hell, and how people usually stake a claim on parts of it. Purely for the sake of research, of course. And also because you want your own little infernal kingdom, which really, anyone would want if they had the opportunity.

And all it takes to get some details is you summoning and mugging some low-ranking knowledge-gathering demon for them. It produces a book with the pertinent details for you by the time you're done chewing through half its eye-stalks, which is remarkably quick thinking considering how many demons just fail to realize you just want them to do a thing and will stop hurting them if they do.

As for hell itself… Generally speaking, the proper 'layers' of hell each are at least nominally under the control of one demon lord each, with no overlapping rulers- one demon lord, one layer, by what many believe to be the decree of the Lord of Sin (though no conclusive proof about that is easily found, you barely have any idea who or what the Lord of Sin is to begin with).

If a demon lord goes and disposes of one of their peers, then decides to take over their Layer, they lose any rights to the one they ruled over before, which is one reason that kind of thing is fairly usual in the higher Layers and progressively less of a thing in the lower ones where long-standing lords usually invest more into building up their holdings in order to gain more power through them.

It is also contested exactly how many Layers there are in the information you have easily available, by the by. Some claim there are six hundred and sixty six of them, others six thousand six-hundred and sixty six or six hundred and sixty six thousand six hundred and sixty six. Could be none of that is right, could be all the options are somehow correct at the same time

What is clear, however, is that by its very nature, hell can be… difficult to keep track of. The deeper Layers are still very much not the kind of place to misbehave in- depending on their ruler a lot can change about how they're run, but most of the higher-powered lords tend to take a dim view of anyone undermining their authority in their own backyards, but the higher ones are a different matter altogether.

Generally speaking, you can pretty easily avoid dealing with weaker demon lords at all as long as you keep relatively out of sight, just take some out-of-the-way place and declare it yours, then beat down anyone around that takes issue with it until it's true enough for your purposes. Alternatively, some demon lords do take bribes to just let you use part of their Layer, if you're interested in taking some nicer real estate, and then there's those scraps of hell that aren't technically inside any given Layer at all.

Those are kind of a pain to get to from the rest of hell, but they do make for decent hideouts if that's taken care of, or if it's not an issue at all. Of course that also mean if you piss of any demons from nearby Layers they may just decide to invade the fuck out of you for fun, depending on how they tick, but that's just business as usual in hell anyways.

You're still not feeling any hunger pains. Where exactly are you taking the sustenance that has been keeping you alive (or un-live, whatever) until now from? It couldn't possibly be what you suspect it might be…

Shopping around for a few demons to round out your available forces is a surprisingly relaxing experience, in no small part thanks to the Flagbearer you summoned to judge which ones to keep and which to discard outright. It turns out that although she does work with what she has when needs must, she does have some preferences.

That means that while you do take most of the demons you summon up under one-sided contract, some of them just get chunked if they're simply too weak and uncontrolled to bother with. You're specifically searching for ones that can employ magical attacks to cause havoc and destruction at range, and you don't really need to have them 'accidentally' wipe out your imps any time you start to use your demon army.

Now, if they're strong, they're taken in anyways, because some collateral damage and friendly fire can just be accepted when it hurts your enemies more than your own forces, but there's no point to bothering if their destructive power doesn't weigh up the losses they cause. Simple as that.

Purely expendable minions are great, really. You just have to make optimal use of them, sometimes that means keeping them alive for as long as possible, sometimes it means summarily blowing them up when convenient.

The Flagbearer you pressed into service (or mating pressed, anyways) seems to enjoy the chance to cast judgement on your new recruits, though she keeps on going out of her way to look down on and berate them. The attitude comes with being a demon, you suppose, though some regular screwing goes a long way towards fixing that.

Good thing you're such an engaged handyman and screwing is one of your greatest specialties indeed…

Last Embrace. Your very own weapons, a pair of gauntlets that leave your hands mostly free and armor up your arms, with adaptable firing modes built into them that let them shoot railgun ammo, plasma and your good old chemical disintegration beams. First built and named on Remnant, their name is very poetic and nobody gets to criticise it.

Your various girlfriends know you're sensitive about that so they don't, and anyone else that tries their luck gets a plasma-rocket-powered punch to the face that, in great likelihood, smashes their skull like an overripe lemon. Turns out humans aren't built to handle the kind of punishment you can hand out on a dime.

Their fucking problem, they diss your punch empowerment, they get to taste it firsthand, simple as that.

But now you are once again looking to make Last Embrace even more powerful than ever before, so you took the paired weapons out of your shadow and are currently working on giving them fully-sized, functional souls of their own.

It's… theoretically possible, you think, with the various additions and enhancements you threw into them over time. Supporting a soul generally requires a bit more than some mechanical moving bits, your experiments to date have found, but the demonic essence and extensive use you made of magic in constructing them does make up for some of the requirements. You think.

It's not like you have all that much past data to work off of here and the internet shows a disturbing lack of realistic guides to using magic to turn objects into people, okay? You kind of have to improvise and experiment for every step you take here.

Still, after probably too long spent working on a singular project, you have managed to cobble together two souls out of the fragments you have gathered to this day, piece by piece. Actually fusing all of them together is… a little fiddly, is the best way you can describe it, but you manage.

Afterwards, you can give Last Embrace aura, because obviously that's what your weapons of melee-range mass destruction needed. It… won't really do much for the moment, you think, seeing how they can't really move all that much of their own volition, but it should make them more durable at the very least. Not that they needed any of that, you made your babies to survive everything you may need them to.

And that's saying a lot. Like, you weren't necessarily planning to punch giant monsters and weird super-powered aliens when you made them, but you didn't exactly hold back with their specifications, y'know?

They'll do just fine, is what you're saying.

Now, what else to do… Ah, right. You do have your brand new potion made to make you stronger- can't hurt to feed it to Last Embrace as well, can it? Granted, there's the little issue of your twin gauntlets not exactly being the kind of things that can actually drink anything, but you can surely find a way around that!

That being a use of your semblance, in this case, using a quick and dirty temporary minion to turn your weapons into people. And, interestingly, it does work. Kind of.

They're there, and looking at you, their mismatched eyes somewhat reminding you of the 'taste' of the soul stuff that went into creating them, kind of. Otherwise, though, the two do not move to act much, simply silently standing there observing their surroundings.

You give them the potions and pat their heads. They close their eyes and lean into the contact in response, which you suppose is good enough for you.

With your underground fortress itself more or less established down below the sewers, connected to them through a couple of discrete tunnels that take the traveler exploring them for some reason from bricks and concrete to distinctly worked natural stone into the weird cave the Thinker somehow dug out of the bare ground while taking up the space it should, you have a lot of space to fill with whatever facilities you feel you need, now.

And by 'whatever' you really mean 'anything and everything you can come up with and then some'. The Thinker was very generous with building your castle and just replicated the dark, smooth granite most of it was built out of in exponentially increasing amounts.

The moat is still empty, but that's mostly because the secret tunnels leading to your place open up inside of it. It's a really nice view from any angle, though, and you even got a faux-sky going in there while you were at it.

You're a vampire, you can't really not go with a gothic design for everything. Also, the sky can actually be 'tuned' to look different depending on your mood, something you've been playing around with a lot so far.

But anyways, the most important part is that you have a huge-ass castle and can put not only the literal thousands of manufactories used to build it in a matter of days (once they were all up and running anyways) inside of it but also a whole bunch of other things- like, for example, a massive amount of the specialized facilities you've taken to using for producing potions.

The Thinker actually took the designs you came up with for this purpose and repurposed them a little to scale things up where possible while keeping them on a smaller level where it needs to be kept small, and she's been using the entire thing with a bunch of mass-produced robot bodies ever since, exerting her own capacity for your brand of alchemy through them.

The blonde combat robot models, that is, simply because she figured it was more efficient to use them instead of cyborg bodies considering you didn't want to expand your ADAM production carelessly. Both in general and in this dimension in particular- the last thing you need is accidentally-ing Earth because magic decided to mix with the stuff and spontaneously create, like, super-prawn that conquer the planet or something.

Uncontrolled ADAM in high concentrations like you use them can get weird, man.

"For the record, I fully approve of you getting creative with the layout," you say out loud for once as you walk through the halls of your local domicile, "but did you really have to break up the stone floor to keep it uneven all across the east wing?"

"It is a matter of authenticity," one of the blonde bodies with exposed robotic limbs says, keeping stride with yourself. "Tectonic movement as observed over this planet's history dictates that it would have broken up, whereas none of us would have cared to fix the damage."

…Well, as long as she's having fun playing that angle, you suppose. "Let's just go get those potions for the Guardians."

In the end, you don't really need to transport, like, industrial crates filled with potions in order to do what you were planning to, simply due to the nature of superheroics and how small the number of people you're ultimately catering to is.

Simply put, you only need to bring however many potions it will take to dope up the Guardians of the Globe, minus the one that got himself killed so hard he ain't coming back, purely because they, as a team, stand somewhat of a chance against Omni-Man whereas any number of others… doesn't.

It's the reason Cecil was willing to just shrug and basically back you in committing what is technically an international murder spree in exchange for having them back, as well as the core conceit of any situation in which a rare specialist or team thereof is required to fulfill a given task. The task in question being 'keep Earth in one damn piece', severely complicated by one Nolan Greyson in this case.

It really kind of threw a wrench into the previous status quo when he decided to murder his (now former) friends in order to conquer Earth himself or whatever. Always nasty when the strongest cape, super or however the current internet slang for powered individual in a costume goes rogue and all that.

You're tempted to compare it to the Triumvirate deciding to go and conquer the world or something, but on second thought it'd be more akin to Scion going mad and wiping out Earth Bet, huh? Now there's a scary thought.

Like, the debilitatingly golden guy is one of the few things out there you could see being a pain on the same level as an Endbringer just off of the kinds of powers he's been recorded exhibiting, and he's pretty much constantly active, contrary to those things. It would be a major issue to actually safeguard your operations against a threat like that.

Ah well, he hasn't really directly harmed anyone in three decades, you doubt he'll start anytime soon, at the very least.

But yeah, potion delivery, you're making it as Night Queen, it's a thing. You still do need a couple of potions for each of the remaining Guardians, especially as you refuse to bother giving them individual loadouts to suit their respective powers- they should be glad you're even going out of your way to give them any of this stuff at all.

Two healing potions each, plus one to strengthen their bodies, one to enhance their speed and reflexes, one to give them slow regeneration to stabilize each other in case anyone's dying, one of Cupcake's 'Murderpunch Potions' to let them really lay into the man they're meant to confront and, finally, cleansing potions to let them purge in case they overdose on any of this stuff.

You have a couple of other minor recipes you could hand them as well, but against Omni-Man you doubt any of them would cut it as of right now. But hey, you also doubt you'd have been able to whip up any of those shielding or body-altering potions meant to prevent damage that could hold up to a punch from the man anyways even if you had invested your idle soul experimentation time since coming to this dimension into it, so whatever.

That's still quite a lot of potions to carry around, which is why you are holding a wooden crate over your head as you bluntly approach a 'secret' GDA facility's front entrance.

"Delivery for Cecil, lemme in!" You wonder how annoying- or dangerous- you have to get before these goons do what you demand.

The Immortal stretched and flexed, confirming his body was in order. While he was not prone to cramps nor other such… inconveniences, right now would certainly be one hell of a time to start.

Taking the datapad out of the bracer on his costume made specifically for it, he gave it a quick glance, nodding to himself. It wasn't going to be long now- he likely should make his way back to civilization soon, flying stealthily meant going a little slower than he was ideally used to.

Reaching out, he gave the massive chunk of ice that he had been lifting as his version of weight training an affectionate pat. "Can't beat training in Antarctica," he said to himself, rolling his neck.

Having his head punched off had gotten him a little stiff, he thought, and most of the team had been recovering from their respective resurrections anyways. So he'd been moving back and forth a little, once they'd confirmed the main enemy they had to deal with wasn't keeping any eye out for their activities.

Immortal would say that was to be expected from Nolan, but then, he had killed all of them with his own hands, it would be more surprising if he was expecting the Guardians to still be present and preparing to take him down in turn.

It wouldn't be long now, after all, just like he thought earlier. And so he soon cut through the freezing wind, eyes narrowed as he looked straight forward.

Alana, Green Ghost, nervously glanced at the clock hanging on the wall inside the training facility she was lent use of. Gosh, but if she wasn't going to run out of time soon…

Her new suit, if it even made sense to call it that, had taken some getting used to. Where before she had been able to make herself permeable to any matter at all and leverage this ability for various means, from flight to effective immateriality, she was now in possession of a wholly different set of abilities- enhanced strength and speed, as though she was wearing skin-tight power armor that did not inhibit her movement in any way, which was in itself a big change.

She'd spent a lot of time just getting control of her own body while moving at greater speeds than ever before down. Her brain was still acting at a normal pace, after all, so it was all but required. Meanwhile, her other new abilities in commanding… whatever her suit was had taken a secondary priority, but that was okay- she'd just thrown herself into re-training herself to make up for it.

Still better than pacing around her GDA-provided safehouse thinking about the loss of her powers and what felt like half of her identity. And how said loss had taken place, with a casual toss of a friend's corpse to distract her and a fist growing and growing until it filled out her field of vision and-

Well, this was still better. Still. "Crap, crap, crap, how much time do I have left?"

Cecil eyes you with what you think is a mix of relief and disgruntlement as you hold the crate you've been waving through the air and keeping out of the reach of the automated security's lasers and bullets for the past five minutes before someone managed to shut it off and hurriedly let you in to meet the guy in charge.

For his part, the old man looks just about as latently stressed and yet stubbornly doing his job as ever, but there's a definite air of seriousness around him that goes beyond what you're used to observing. A little bit more tension than usual. If you had to guess, something serious is probably going down.

Which also explains why, rather than playing into your shtick and trying to point you elsewhere, Cecil is walking with you as the two of you move deeper into the facility-

Only to suddenly teleport and show up in some other faceless, more or less identical-looking facility, because the GDA has not the slightest bit of interior decoration distinguishing its secret government organization locations from one another.

Comes with the territory, you suppose.

"To be honest, you arrived just about in time, not that I think it's a coincidence," Cecil says as the two of you make your way through the place. "Would you mind sticking around or is your 'naptime' coming up soon?"

…Well, now that he puts it like that. "I'll live. Or not-live, take your pick," you say with the most casual shrug your smaller-than-usual shoulders can manage while still holding up your cargo.

"Good. The Guardians will be fighting Omni-Man tomorrow, technically. Today in a couple hours."

You nod, acting as though you already knew. Pretending you have the situation under control is a quintessential aspect of leadership, after all. "Time is meaningless."

War Woman, or Holly to her friends, gave her secretary one last look, Connie's breath still stuck in her throat after her last kiss and her hand resting on hers.

Her death had hit her lover hard. Her return and, subsequent, refusal to not confront the cause of that same death had done so even harder. That was why she didn't ask whether Holly really had to go, that line of questioning having dried up early on.

Instead, she was pleading now, the blonde's watery eyes breaking her heart. "Please don't leave me," she begged, knowing that was the only thing left to ask.

"I won't," Holly promised her, despite knowing that if she died again, it was questionable whether Night Queen would bring her back, Or if she even could- Hades' words still ringing in her ears.

I will let you go, the Lord of the Dead had told her, but do not squander this gift. I trust you will live your life to the fullest before you return to these halls.

"Okay." Connie closed her eyes and swallowed heavily, knowing this was the best Holly could do without making a liar of herself. "I will hold you to your word. Failure to comply with it will be considered a breach of contract and penalized by a year of sleeping on the couch."

"Only a year?" She chuckled, having to fight the urge to stroke her secretary's hair. This was a serious talk.

"I thought about eternity, but I could never bear that."

"You," she declared, "are far more than I deserve."

"Yeah, well, I get to decide that, and I've decided you deserve to come back to me and take a vacation. Somewhere nice and tropical, with lots of bikini time for your girlfriend that wants to show off to you."

"I suppose that's hard to say no to," Holly said, smiling.

And with that, she slowly rolled out of bed, leaving her lover behind under the covers with a hint of her warmth to keep her safe.

Time to go be a hero.

Nikki was gone now, back to one of the places she often slept in. She had been so very worried for him, and he disliked having to worry her more. All the same, Martian Man had a wrong to right, for more reasons than one.

He had been killed. He could forgive this. What he could not forgive, not easily and not quickly, was the betrayal. Every-Man had betrayed them, used their trust against them, and this was not only very strange to him due to his cultural background, he felt… hurt by it.

Also, Aquarius was gone, in an even more permanent fashion than the rest of them. And this loss, too, would never be forgotten and not easily forgiven.

No. He had to do this. They had to do this. And this time… This time they would not be surprised and betrayed.

And Nolan would answer for his crimes

Cecil kicks back a black brew that, to your nose, smells suspiciously like industrial paint stripper and can't possibly be healthy for a living being not specifically evolved or engineered to metabolize a bunch of industrial chemicals. Then again, maybe he somehow modified himself to be able to survive this extra-strong super-coffee crap.

On the third claw, maybe he just decided to accept the long-term health issues in exchange for poisoning himself with a dose of caffeine strong enough to make an elephant crack its skull against a continental shelf by running too hard or something. Somehow. You're sure nature can and will find a way.

Either way, you just hold your nose closed until he's done actively doing horrible things to his liver. "Ugh. Stinks too bitter."

"Huh. You know, you're probably right," Cecil agrees, depositing his mug on a tray Donald (who is keeping himself busy all over the room) brings him real quick. "I stopped tasting it three days into the job. So, you got any last moment insights to share with the class?"

"What do I look like, a magic eight-ball?" Those are a thing in this dimension, aren't they? "Just tell everyone to try not to die and kill the enemy instead. It's not complicated."

"Heh." The scarred man you've been having way too much contact with lately gestures for another one of those horrible coffees from Donald, who has to be mass-producing the stuff somewhere. "Well, it's gonna take a while until everything's ready, you sure you don't mind waiting?"

"I have infinite patience and boundlessness mercy within my heart," you randomly decide to say. "Unless it's gonna take longer than, like, a decade or two. Because screw that, I have better crap to do. Just because I have those things doesn't mean I hafta use 'em."

Darkwing jumped into his Wingmobile, the vehicle already floating and open to receive him just the way he liked it. It was time to go, and he refused to be late.

It still was a daunting prospect, to face down Omni-Man, the one threat that had brought the Guardians low before. However, it also was a necessary one, and their actions were nothing if not born of necessity.

The world needed to be saved. They were needed to save it. And Omni-Man, in this case, needed to be stopped, as was self-evident by his actions. That was all it took to make the issue clear.

And if he got to get a small bit of comeuppance against him, Darkwing wouldn't complain. He wasn't about to try and make this more personal than it ultimately was, but hey, he was just saying.

But now, time to focus. This wasn't the kind of fight that would be easy. And while he would gladly throw himself in front of a killing blow to save his friends, he wasn't exactly keen on being killed again either. Good thing they all had experience with those kinds of situations, he supposed.

Josef didn't often sit down to write letters. With his speed, it was usually faster to just go find whoever he wanted to talk to and do it in person, he figured, so he wasn't really used to doing it. Now that the occasion of him not being able to do it easily had arisen, though, he was laboring and pulling his hair out over it, just because it was really hard to find the right words to put on paper.

The mountain of crumpled drafts piling up around the trash can inside this room he was borrowing spoke for itself.

It really sucked he had to do it this way, but Cecil had been right; him and Olga lived basically next door to the Greysons in the big scheme and they couldn't risk alerting Nolan in any way. So he had to keep his distance.

And yet he wanted to make sure that, even in the worst case, if he caught a bad case of death again and stayed dead, he would… leave something for her. Some last words, addressed to the woman he loved above anything and anyone else. That had been the thing that had bothered him most, when he'd first come back to life-

He'd died, left her behind, and the last conversation they had was him assuring her she had his attention, right before Omni-Man had killed him. That was not how he'd wanted to end things, not his life and not anything else, either.

So, words on a page to try and express what he wanted to. He'd been at this for… longer than he'd focused on any single task for a very long time, seconds turning into minutes turning into half an hour by now. A figurative eternity for his speed, the discarded half-written letters hitting the rest faster than most people's eyes could follow.

'Dear Olga,' he began, only to shake his head and tear the paper in two. Again. What was even with that term of address? He just…

He needed to get this right. He needed to. It was time for a whole new approach.

'To the love of my life,' he tried instead, and he liked it a lot better.

Looking up the time, Josef nodded. He had about five minutes before he had to run. Five minutes before he was Red Rush again.

He could work with that.

Uyehara Yoshiake sighed as he watched through the eyes of the monster that'd killed him while he was drunk and delirious, what felt like an eternity ago but was closer to a few months in truth. Well, not counting the time dilation this plane of existence all of them were relegated to was subject to.

As usual, he wasn't the only one spending some free time doing so. Unlike usual, however, the entirety of the 'science team', as they had collectively come to be known, was with him as well, including the newest additions to their number.

The newest, very tall, blue and most aggravating among them, hard as that may be to believe when Nolac existed.

"Oh man, I can't fucking wait for the show to start," one of the Mauler Twins said, bowl of popcorn sized up for his proportions on his lap and spilling its contents every time he reached into it.

"Have I said that I dislike your attitude? Because I dislike your attitude," Uyehara said, holding back another sigh. "Most present here are not personally invested, but this could be the continued existence of the planet you are from in the balance, here."

"Eh, it's not like this is the only place with people in it," the blue, bald giant sitting one seat further shrugged, stealing some popcorn from his 'brother'. "'Sides, not like Omni-Man's the real danger to it. Man, I wish we were around for the Flaxan thing."

"Haha, those recordings are amazing and planetary genocide should be done more often. But yeah, we're basically just cheering for the home team here, except we're against both the Guardians and Omni-Dude so whoever loses, we win."

And with that, the second giant bowl of popcorn came out. Which wasn't all that surprising, as half the damn observation room (a particular place inside the laboratory they turned into a break room because of the many monitors and related equipment inside) was filled with more of the same.

"How did you even get this much popcorn?" Uyehara couldn't help but ask, not feeling like the previous line of questioning would get anyone anywhere. He had to remember that, fundamentally, some people were just assholes and didn't share the concerns and priorities everyone else did.

"We just asked the cook for some extra."

"She doesn't mind, usually."

"Wait." He held up a hand. "There's actually someone that can cook in this place?"

"Sure, you just gotta find a way into her place."

"And not get eaten by the spiders that guard it."

Why was it that every time Uyehara Yoshiake obtained any answers for his questions, all he got for the trouble was more questions?

Nolan Greyson was having a perfectly fine day. Things had been… A little tense, lately, but they were getting better.

The longer the world was going on without the Guardians, humanity reliant on him and him alone for protection, the less resistance there would be when the Viltrumite Empire officially annexed Earth. The Guardians never would have accepted it, which was why they'd had to go, but from this point on it was smooth sailing, in that regard.

Right now, all he had to do was wait. He considered getting to work in his mundane persona, get some writing done, but… Eh, he didn't really feel like it. You couldn't force things like that, sometimes it really was better to just take a break and get into another headspace first.

He never would have considered becoming an author of any kind before coming to Earth, but it was a surprisingly fulfilling job, though not as fulfilling as his duty for Viltrum, of course.

Mark was already off to school, Debbie was currently busy elsewhere, something about her work, so he had the house to himself for the day. Maybe he should look into some takeout, it would be a bit early but it didn't hurt to have plans in place ahead of time.

The same went for some chores around the house, too. You never know when the planet needs saving, after all, so having the lawn mowed sooner rather than later helped keep the timetable on track.

Just then, Cecil teleported into his living room. Speak of the devil. "Nolan. We got a problem."

"I figured as much, you don't usually aim right into my house," he said, crossing his arms. "Guess it can't wait?"

"Night Queen went mad and we need someone to stop her, the regular troopers don't stand a chance."

Well then. He had been looking forward to measuring up to the new face.

"Alright, he's en route now," is the first thing out of Cecil's mouth once he has himself teleported back into relative safety of the GDA bunker overseeing whatever no doubt brilliant, yet somehow dramatically ineffective trap is about to be sprung. You think you may be under the Pentagon right now, or at least that's what the Thinker is telling you is highly likely.

Being suddenly teleported around is very rude. You notified Cecil of as much when he did it to you.

Now, though, you're standing inside a room with a big-ass screen taking up most of a wall, watching as a blinking red spot races across a map. Behind you, dozens of people are astutely keeping track of whatever their computers are showing them, some of them quietly typing away and others staying ready for some unheard signal to sound.

…Y'know, if anyone had bothered to ask you, you'd have told them to wait with this whole operation for a couple days so you could pop another question through your cosmic guidance, figure out what particular sound frequency fucks Omni-Man up, but hey, it is what it is. You'd feel kinda bad if you mentioned it now.

Like, these guys have been working really hard for this moment, with considerable amounts of manhours, resources and attention focused on the operation to remove Omni-Man as a threat. Just coming out and telling them to send everyone home now, you have the situation under control…

Well, it would be hilarious, you have to admit, but you also kind of want to see how it goes. Give them a fair shot at it and all that. Gotta let the kiddos try their hands at things, learn by themselves, that kinda thing.

"I do hope you wouldn't mind intervening if things go pear-shaped," Cecil comments, crossing his arms as he takes position next to you. "Nip this thing in the bud, before Omni-Man makes an even bigger mess of himself."

"Nice irony with how you tricked him, by the way," you point out as you wait for the man to get to the big, blinking target he's been pointed at by the GDA, the map still updating in real time. "Y'know, he triggered the emergency alert for the Guardians, so you just ask him to take care of an emergency that is the Guardians now."

"What can I say, I'm a bitter asshole and I got a pokerface."

Yep, he's refusing to show it, but he's totally salty about this whole thing. He's not 'just' dealing with Omni-Man over him being a threat, it's also personal for him to some extent.

The news about what exactly Night Queen had been up to was all it took to have Nolan rush to the place Cecil had shown him. Stealing the bodies of the Guardians… There were a few reasons someone would do something like that, and none of them had him in a good mood.

Then again, this wouldn't be the first time he took care of any of those mystic types, either. They were pretty rare, but every now and then you had some hedge witch or wizard try to play in the big leagues, not that it ever got them anywhere. He still remembered that one cult that tried to summon some insanity-spewing creature as their 'god' last year, cleaning up that mess took weeks.

But hey, he hopefully wouldn't be the one doing it. All he had to do was to get there and wipe the floor with the culprit, then he'd be back in time time for lunch. Dinner at the latest.

'There' being, in this case, an old Victorian mansion a good way from the nearest city, very thematic and all. Too bad it was about to be summarily destroyed, but that was just the kind of collateral damage you had to expect in this business. Especially when he was here to make sure the Guardians' bodies were completely-

That was the moment in which Nolan felt the distinct smashing crunch of War Woman's mace to the back of his head.

"So far, so good," Cecil comments as the sneak attack goes off without a hitch. Normally, War Woman wouldn't be able to actually do anything like this, simply because Omni-Man is simply too fast mid-flight, but in this case she basically started swinging at empty air so Red Rush could pick her up, reposition her and ensure it hit thanks to his speed.

Omni-Man, for his part, is far from down for the count of course, but he definitely felt the hit, at least a little, as he's propelled forwards in a flash of color not unlike Red Rush himself, crashing straight through the doors of the mansion chosen as the site for this fight.

The rest of the Guardians are already waiting on the other side, of course.

"Where'd you even find a place like this?" You ask, knowing from personal experience that proper mansions, built in the middle of the mountains or the woods, are few and far between in the United States. Shopping around for nice, vampire-friendly vacation homes is one of those little things you sometimes fill your idle time with just for the hell of it.

"It was a genuine vampire mansion, before the owner got staked in '84," the GDA's director informs you. "It was meant to be torn down to keep any squatters out, but that went out the window when the owners kept changing every two months until the GDA took ownership two years later. No supervillains ever made it their lair, so we just kept it in case anything came up."

Which it obviously did, now. You watch on as the Guardians of the Globe surround Nolan amidst the wreckage of half an entrance hall, confronting him. Words are spoken, though you don't have audio of the scene- until whatever drones the technicians on hand are using come a little closer and adjust their settings, you suppose, because that issue gets fixed quickly.

"-ot be like last time," the Immortal announces, squaring up against Omni-Man. Everyone's in high tension, but you guess a bit of the usual trash talk has to happen before they get to it, which is totally understandable. You're the same when you aren't sneaking around and exploiting the element of surprise and all.

"Heh." Not that Omni-Man is backing down, of course, casually brushing off the remains of the wall and double-door he just smashed his head through. "All of you should have just stayed dead, but if you need some more convincing…"

Wow, kind of a prick, isn't he?

Things happen pretty quickly after that, the command center you ended up watching from stuck in a tense silence as the fight proceeds. Omni-Man strikes out first, obviously trying to take the initiative, not unlike how you would approach fighting a group as a lone combatant.

It's just how you deal with that situation, as a rule of thumb. Don't let them organize, position you for a coordinated assault or anything like that. You have to break them up, turn it into a series of shorter fights against a limited number of enemies at a time. Fighting groups sucks unless you have the power to just one-sidedly smash them no matter how many they are.

In this case, that… doesn't go all that well for Omni-Man, actually. The Guardians are obviously well aware of everything that just flashed through your mind themselves, and so they react accordingly.

The big guy's first attack goes out towards Green Ghost, her altered costume obviously not escaping him; whether he figures her powers might have changed somehow or not, he apparently decides to go for it and remove her as a threat first and foremost. However, for all that he moves quickly, she moves faster- edging him out by just a hundredth of a second as she stretches a hand out towards him.

Just before he splatters her across the destroyed marble of the place, Red Rush moves her out of the way, just like how he did in what you saw of their first fight through Omni-Man's eyes. The guy himself, in the meantime, halts, snapping his fist open and closed again.

"Hmpf. Learned some new tricks, did you? Or replaced old ones, anyways." Yeah, admittedly, he probably does know Green Ghost can't just go intangible anymore now, else she wouldn't have needed that save.

She also used her new suit's powers, you're pretty sure. Omni-Man doesn't obviously show it or anything, but you can faintly see some temperature differences on his costume, unnoticeable (to human eyes) wisps of mist left behind as he shifts.

"It won't save you, you know. No matter what you try, this will end the exact same way it did last time."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Darkwing says, the cowled, broad-shouldered man staring at Omni-Man.

"Oh, and why's that?"

"Because we had time to plan this fight," he replies. Just before he silently pushes a button on his costume.

The walls whirr to life as a dozen high-tech turrets start to spew what look a lot like taser-nets all over the place.

While Omni-Man isn't held up for long, at most making disgruntled noises while tearing the sparking wire-nets off himself, the whole thing does take him some valuable seconds, which is obviously what it was meant to accomplish.

Seeing as, y'know, by the time he's done with that the other Guardians have surrounded him again, this time attacking in unison. Martian Man rushes him down, but while one of his arms is still pinned by the surprisingly tough contraptions used against him, he dodges the shapeshifter's assault by simply jerking his whole body to the side, obviously making use of his flight, only for Red Rush to kick him in the back of the knee, coming in with a very decent run-up.

It doesn't stop him either, but it does slow him down for a moment- which is when the Immortal comes in from the other side, feinting an attack only to pull back at the last moment, keeping out of Omni-Man's reach.

"Is this all you have? If all you were going to do was to dance around me too afraid to fight you should have just stayed in your graves!" He taunts them, clearly trying to press in on them psychologically as well as physically.

In return, he earns himself a Martian Man to the back, clinging to him as the alien's amorphous tissue crawls all over him, tying him down with considerable force.

"If you wanted to be hit, you should've just said so," the Immortal drily comments.

Then him and War Woman wail on Omni-Man like he owes them fuckin' money without so much as glancing at each other beforehand. If you didn't know better, you'd say they have some issues to work out.

Blow after blow rains down on Omni-Man, bare fists and weird war-mace thing smashing into his face again and again. After a few moments, their effects start to show themselves, too, blood coming out of his mouth and nose (which you're pretty sure might be broken now), what might be early bruises forming across his skin already.

It's still ridiculous just how durable he is, considering any sane organism would already be paste when subjected to this kind of punishment. That doesn't stop him from grunting and growling as he pushes against Martian Man's form binding him up, struggling and trying to free himself.

That's… made a good bit harder than the last time he did so, seeing as Martian Man got pumped up with your potions whereas Green Ghost weakened Omni-Man a bit earlier. Additionally, he's actively keeping his non-mutable core on Omni-Man's back, where the juggernaut they're fighting can't easily reach.

He figures out as much after, like, twenty seconds of gently getting his face beaten in, so he changes tactics. Throwing himself backwards, he slams into the nearest wall, forcing Martian Man to react- which he does, by letting go and slithering away to reform himself again under the cover of his comrades that also advance to keep pace.

They're really careful about not letting each other get caught out, too. Grunting, Omni-Man tries to counter-attack, but once again Red Rush evacuates anyone he aims at twice, thrice, four times in a row.

Obviously fed up, he stomps onto the ground, cracking and breaking it up, then kicks up a chunk of it, using it as a bludgeon to swipe at several of the Guardians at once. Red Rush is still keeping up, grabbing and bringing them out of the course of his attacks, but as it is he's managing to keep everyone busy just not dying for the moment, tearing new weapons out of the environment as they break and become unusable.

Until, that is, the entire building begins to collapse, which is more an issue for the rest of the Guardians than for the guy that can just shrug that kind of thing off.

Cecil exhales through his nose as the Guardians regroup, having avoided getting crushed by falling debris and dug themselves out of any of it that did bury them when not. "Well, at least that magic juice of yours is coming in handy," he notes, both Darkwing and Red Rush taking a quick drink. Looks like the latter managed to stumble and nearly break his ankle or something, you can't be quite sure from this distance.

"That's actually pretty accurate," you tell him in turn. "I made it taste like strawberry."

Strawberry is just the superior option, whether it comes to ice cream or life-saving magical juice. Simple as that.

Back on the screen, the fight is progressing, both sides more or less stalemating each other for the moment. Both the Guardians and Omni-Man know that if he gets a grip on any of them, they're good as dead, so they maintain their advantages by ensuring he doesn't do that- each and every attack is counter-acted and negated, primarily through Red Rush doing his thing and keeping his distance otherwise.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean they can effectively hurt him. Omni-Man's still tough and strong enough he can shrug off or dodge just about anything they throw at him unless Martian Man manages to tie him down, and that's the one thing he's watching out for and countering in turn.

A stalemate, as you described it. Maybe if Aquarius was still around, his hydrokinesis would make the difference here- it did work before he got splattered during these guys' first fight, after all. As it is, though, it's hard to say who's coming out ahead for now.

It's the most entertaining sports event you've seen in years. "Hey Donald, there a popcorn machine around here?"

Sadly, the GDA people don't have any recreational popcorn machines lying around, only coffee machines (which count more as office supplies anyways). Saddened by this bureaucratic oversight, you just have to make your own fun another way.

That being handing out a couple of freebies for the team you prefer to win. Because believe it or not, you're gonna be pissed if you have to bring any of the Guardians back to life again. You've already been weighing in on this fight a lot, may as well go a little further.

Luckily, you did come prepared for something like this, and the little birdy you summoned in earlier is closing in on the area the fight is taking place in. That is, the bird-like undead, one of several you created back in Thule, brought to this world and prepared to interfere with this fight ahead of time.

Hey, you can do planning ahead, okay? You just don't always bother to.

So, as Omni-Man suddenly experiences a little shortness of breath even as his body aggressively cools down despite his powers and 'natural' advantages normally keeping him at fighting strength at all times, the battle shifts again, though only momentarily- you can virtually see how his biology stubbornly undoes the spells the undead you sent just cast on him. It still slows him down, makes him uncertain, and he quickly earns himself a punch to the face by the Immortal for the trouble.

Next off… Well, these probably would work best for Reddy. Pulling a knuckle duster you shoved some leftover demonic essence into, you hand it to Cecil, pushing it into his hand. "Here, give this to Red Rush. Tell him to just punch the mothertrucker," you demand.

Cecil blinks, but goes along with it smoothly enough. "Not how the Guardians usually market themselves, but nobody'll care for this fight. Hey! Someone get the teleporter running!"

There you go. Now to add a little widdle bit of a curse on top and…

Donald Ferguson glanced at Night Queen, fumbling around with a few objects. "Sir? Should we ask what she's doing?"

"Just assume it's some bullshit magic and pray it won't kneecap us down the line," his superior whispered back.

Even now that the fight is fully moving towards being out in the open, which technically heavily favors Omni-Man thanks to his effortless, omni-directional flight, the situations is once again moving into unexpected directions thanks to your continued interference. The guy does get to floating, but by then Red Rush receives his new anti-omni weapon, clumsily sliding his fingers into the knuckle duster you enchanted even as a mass of different weakening effects hits Omni-Man.

As a result, he has more than enough time to give his new bling a swing. One that slams into Omni-Man's shoulder with force that surprises both of them and also leaves a few visible marks as it burns away the cloth of his costume. And also the skin below it.

Granted, it's not a huge burn, but it's there.

At the same time, though, Green Ghost steps up to him as well, arms up in a loose martial artist's stance. Without saying a word, she throws herself at him… and isn't instantly pasted.

Instead, she dodges every single strike directed her way. Obviously to you, she's making use of her suit's power to predict the immediate future, essentially pulling some combat precog on Omni-Man, now that he's slowed down just enough her enhanced body can keep up enough to survive close combat in any meaningful capacity. And, suffice it to say, with two more fighters who can actually make a meaningful difference on an ongoing basis, things do proceed in a rather lopsided direction this time.

Omni-Man barely feels Green Ghost's punches, but he does feel them, and Red Rush works over his side while Martian Man and the other two heavy hitters patiently work towards tying him down to really lay on the hurt. At one point, he barely escapes from what amounts to a superpowered gang-up beatdown, but that's when Darkwing drives by in some flying car type of thing and fires a couple rockets at him to force him back towards the ground.

What follows is the kind of thing too brutal to be shown on American TV, and that's saying something, hot damn. Turns out betraying your friends and murdering them in cold blood does, on occasion, piss them off pretty damn badly.

Like, look, can't nobody say he didn't earn this beating. Just saying.

Eventually, though, despite the sheer amount of brutality he receives and the weight of the weakening influences pushing him down, Omni-Man gathers his strength, violently flying upwards and crashing Darkwing's ride in the course of his ascent, Martian Man forced to let go of him again amidst the explosion that follows. "Enough!"

He is, to put it bluntly, battered and bruised, his entire body, where visible through large missing patches in his mostly skintight costume, discolored and a broken bone or two visible on his form. Blood oozes from his mouth where a couple good hits must've really got his lungs good, and the one eye visible where the other is swollen shut blares with hatred as he breathes heavily.

The Guardians are no less exhausted by the intense fighting going on so far, though none of them have been wounded particularly heavily… Except for Martian Man, who is having trouble putting himself back together a little. Then again, the guy basically carried the team for half the fight, he deserves some slack there.

"Do you even know what you are doing?!"

"We are doing what we have always done," the Immortal sternly returns. "Defending Earth. Against any threats to humanity."

What could have been a snide grin once is turned into an ugly grimace by Omni-Man's wounds. "I was preparing Earth to become part of the Viltrum Empire, to ensure it would join without any unnecessary bloodshed. If you know what-"

"Stop." War Woman's voice is as steady and piercing as can be, as though she didn't just tire out her arms swinging her mace into Omni-Man's face hundreds of times. "Any process that requires you to betray us, to kill the planet's defenders so they may not defend it against what is to come, is obvious in that it makes you an enemy of mankind. Stand down and surrender."

"Or what?" Omni-Man grits out, looking as though he's raring to go back for round two… despite the fact he has to pop a shoulder joint back into place real quick.

"Or else we'll finish the fight you started," Darkwing tells him, staring up at the 'strongest man on Earth' without so much blinking ever since he crash-landed without so much as breaking stride earlier.

"You have done much good, but you also have much to answer for," Martian Man adds with a nod.

They all stand off for a few moments, nobody willing to say anything as everyone stays ready for the continuation of hostilities. At length, however, Green Ghost shifts her stance, sounding like she'd rather be anywhere but where she is but forced to do her part anyways. "What about your family, Nolan? You can't just-"

"You keep them out of this!" Oh, is that some vehemence you hear? Looks like the big bad Viltrumite does have feelings, after all.

You wish you were on scene right now, just so you could push this topic a little. Heck, you would love to threaten Omni-Man's family in order to get him to do what you want, that being to not think and attack mindlessly; you're a family man yourself, you know how you would react if anyone tried to even suggest they were a danger to any of your wives or daughters.

Still, all hypotheticals about how you'd be intimating you knew precisely where Deborah and Mark Greyson are at this very moment and how you'd be moving into a random direction to force the man of the hour to chase you aside, this is the Guardians' show, you aren't about to jump in there just to satiate your urge to mess things up.

Even if it's really tempting.

In the momentary lull that has taken hold of the ongoing fight, two things become apparent. One, Omni-Man is still raring to go, because apparently Viltrumites are just completely insane war machines made flesh. Two, everyone is standing out in the open by now thanks to how things have been moving around, which is actually kind of bad.

Mostly because Omni-Man is now flying, being able to easily and smoothly reposition himself thanks to his natural abilities. Whereas, by your last count, the Guardians have the Immortal, as far as fliers go.

And that's it. Green Ghost used to be able to fly but the suit you made to replace her broken powers doesn't allow her that kind of thing, and maybe you could have counted Darkwing if his flying car was still operational instead of a rain of scattered parts spread all over the postal code of the area they're in, but as it is…

Bit of an issue, that. They realize it, too. And so does he.

"Last chance, Omni-Man," the Immortal says, slowly floating upwards to match him in height. "Surrender."

The Viltrumite, for his part, just smirks, his battered mustache tilting one-sidedly with the motion. For some reason, you suddenly suspect facial fair might be a way for their kind of communicate, like a sort of natural extension of facial expression. "How amusing," he declares, despite the obvious beating he's received. "If only I cared for your surrender, I would tell you the same."

With that, he dives straight towards the Guardians- not at any of them in particular, but rather at the ground in their vicinity, slamming into it and throwing up lots of dust and loose soil while the tremor of his impact momentarily keeps them from dogpiling him again.

The Immortal tries to follow up, but Omni-Man is faster, shooting back up into the sky while the hero stays below. That's the issue here, to be honest- no single one of the Guardians stands much chance against him by themself in any respect, including in terms of aerial maneuverability and speed.

Now that he can use his superior mobility, even weakened as he is things are taking a bit of a turn, reestablishing somewhat of a stalemate. He can attack more or less freely, whereas everyone on the ground is reduced to harrying him from afar and dodging at the last second when he comes for them, simply because of how fast and brutal his approch to bodyslamming them is.

Martian Man would've broken half the bones inside his body if he had any from eating one of those same bodyslams, and you're pretty sure Darkwing breaks and nearly loses one of his arms when he throws himself in there to save War Woman from a Viltrumite fist coming down like the hammer of whatever assorted deity you prefer, Red Rush already being busy with securing Green Ghost, but both of them are just fine with a quick potion, downed on the fly.

You really are saving their asses here. They can't see it, but you make it a point to quietly smug at the screen inside the GDA bunker you're watching from.

Finally, though, the Guardians manage to interrupt Omni-Man's offensive, mostly thanks to Green Ghost grabbing Martian Man and launching him at the guy at just the right moment as he slows down on impact. The two struggle for a few moments, Omni-Man flying upwards regardless of the martian shapeshifter attaching himself to him and tying his arms together again, but then the Immortal slams down upon both of them, allowing everyone else to join in now that the enemy is staying within reach for a few moments.

Red Rush kicks him in the balls a few hundred times using his speed, you notice. And cheer, of course. "Yeah, kick 'im in the nuts!"

"You know, I'm not even surprised anymore," Cecil mutters.

You want to point out that Nolan broke the bro code first by killing everyone, but then your current persona wouldn't be privy to such details about how the ancient pact functions. So you just continue watching as events spiral towards their inevitable conclusion.

Omni-Man is battered. Bruised. More a giant ball of wounds that have accumulated over what have to be hundreds of strikes (not counting those of Red Rush), all inflicted on him over the course of the last ten minutes or so.

A lot of shit can happen very quickly, especially in a fight. Not that any fights that you're in tend to be any longer than this- if anything, you usually end them within moments if you're personally involved.

You don't really play with your food all that much. It's probably the one thing that distinguishes you from a storybook kind of villain the most; you make it a point to leave no chances for the unlikely, outmatched heroes to somehow turn the situation around on you.

You just make them dead, then you slack off, not the other way around. Loose ends annoy you to no end. No dramatic reveals or turnarounds for your enemies, please and thank you.

Back to Omni-Man, his opponents are taking a thrashing in return for how badly they're massacring his face, but they are holding on every bit as stubbornly as he is, and in the end it is him that shoots away from them, giving the Guardians one last look.

"…I will be back," he promises through the swollen mess that is his face by now. And with that, not wasting another word, he flies off straight upwards.

The Immortal scratches the back of his head as they all watch him go. "You know, normally I just throw things into space if they're too much trouble. Doubt it would work this time."

You look at Cecil, tilting your head a little. "Are you just letting him get away?"

"Well, we probably should," the old man admits, closing his eyes. "He didn't kill any of the Guardians again, no civilian casualties… It would be the least painful if he just buzzes off now."

You don't need to be a genius to hear the 'but' coming.

"But on the other hand, I'd bet my salary he'll make good on his promise to come back."

"So what're you doing about it?" You're genuinely a little curious now. What can Cecil really do at this point, save for asking you to take care of the problem for him?

"We have laser satellites in orbit. Doubt it'll kill him, but at least the sonuvabitch will remember us for a while."

The big screen switches displays, showing you a satellite image of Earth, with a set of crosshairs homing in on a quickly moving figure.

"And he just left us a big enough margin so the blast zone won't hit any inhabited areas."

The following scene of utter destruction is almost beautiful. In the same way it feels to let loose with your more destructive magic and other powers. You have to hand it to Cecil, he invests his tax payer money well.

In the end, Omni-Man escaped Earth's orbit, just flying straight up and away into space. Which, uh, is illegal, you've just decided, but you couldn't exactly go and stop him.

…Okay, technically you could, but it would have required some actual effort. More than you felt was really warranted at the time. No, better to just let him run, some kind of Viltrumite empire waiting in the wings or not.

Actually, you'd quite welcome him deciding to come back with friends. After all, you didn't exactly get a Viltrumite soul to add to your collection yet, so rectifying this particular little oversight would be just perfect, as far as you're concerned.

Fly far, little Omni-Man, and come back with plenty of food!

But yes, there was little need to stick around the GDA's place after things wrapped up with the Guardians; apparently, Darkwing ended up suffering from some level of potion poisoning, having consumed too many of your healing potions on top of the ones you already gave all of those guys. It's nothing life-threatening or anything, but his immediate future involves feeling like crap with an aching head and lots of vomiting involved.

He'll be fine in a day or two, of course, but that's just the price of your alchemical concoctions. They do have their own issues. It's why you normally space out taking them as much as possible, as not even you are immune to the side effects of over-imbibing on your own potions.

You haven't had any legitimate headaches ever since you died and you don't plan to start with that shit, now. It can, as the saying goes, go get fucked.

So you just returned back to your place after making fun of Darkwing for a bit, eventually taking some of your accumulated inner time to go ahead and do some stuff.

Except you miscalculated just a little. See, you entered your inner world while still transformed into Night Queen… And this transformation is still self-evident while in this state of being.

Which wouldn't really be a problem, if it weren't for the Maid. Who just so happens to absolutely love the idea of handling you like a small animal while in this form, while also having an arbitrary amount of arms in which to carry you.

Long story short, you end up having to hide by crawling around the hidden spaces within the castle, not being able to just have the Maid teleport you around like usual and instead forced to make do with your own arms and legs. While swarms of the Maid's bodies are searching for you, of course.

It's actually surprisingly fun, so you end up making a game of it, stealthily sneaking around, making not a single peep nor a sound, your feet only sometimes down on the ground.

Because sometimes you just feel like having a little fun, and sometimes that involves playing along with others. Or spontaneously rhyming inside your thoughts.

Not like anyone can complain. If they do, they get chunked for reading your thoughts unbidden.

"Hrrng! Huuhng!" You gotta say, you were kind of skeptical about the whole workout equipment idea you had, even after you put it into practice, but you're kind of warming up to this whole thing. It's actually kind of fun, and a repetitive, yet worthwhile activity like this is something you can easily see yourself sticking with for a good part of your day if you don't have anything else to do.

There's just something nice about seeing your rippling musculature do what you command, the simple act of moving your body being its own kind of satisfying. The way you sense yourself did change when you died and came back, though the difference is… subtle and kind of hard to grasp sometimes, but that much is still the same.

Being undead with all of the advantages and none of the drawbacks sure does beat most alternatives to that situation, in your humble opinion. Also-

"Why are you using this form?" The Thinker asks, her blonde bombshell robot body crouched next to where you're currently lifting enough weight to crush an elephant's back twice over. "It seems inefficient."

"The shorter limbs are the point," you explain, air pressing out of your lungs without impacting your voice all that much- and indeed, you are currently training as Night Queen, your childish proportions making the giant block of high-density metal you're currently pushing up look even funnier. "I gotta get used to using them… In case I have to fight like this."

The AI you're basically sharing headspace with these days tilts her head by an exact fourty-five degrees. "I see. You never did use this form in combat."

Pretty much. If you actually have to fight someone seriously, having the kind of reach and speed you're used to would probably be better, but that's precisely why you're currently going out of your way to familiarize yourself with how you'd move and fight while staying like this- just in case you end up fighting someone while in your Night Queen persona.

With an almost inaudible whirring of machinery, the Thinker, slightly crouches, then jumps upwards, disappearing from your view as you're lying beneath the huge-ass metal block you're lifting, the specialized handlebars built into it and its carefully constructed structural integrity the only reason this thing even works at all.

It's basically a glorified weightlifting setup. One that has, if you are not mistaken, just grown a little bit heavier.

"Did you just… Jump on this thing… To make it heavier?" You grunt out aloud, still lifting in the little gym shorts and top you made specifically for this. Not like you need anything like that, you don't sweat and you could just as well work out in the nude, but you liked the idea.

"Possibly," the Thinker answers. "This exercise appears too easy. Stand by for further weight."

Ah crap. She's helping.

Having put off discussing your plans for the immediate future within this dimension with the Thinker for the moment, in part because seeing how the Omni-Man thing would turn out was kind of what your current lines of action were all running towards and in part because you could only do so much of a workout before she basically crowded you out of the place with all the bodies she sent to 'help', you are, for now, back aboveground, having retaken the guise of Gabriel the mild-mannered, devilishly handsome butler.

And yes, you totally are mild-mannered in this particular disguise. Heck, you haven't committed a single murder in this dimension wearing your original face, even!

Currently, you're sitting through the first rate show that is Alicia trying to explain to Ariana that Alana, their cousin that was declared dead, may or may not be quite as terminally absent as this statement may make it appear.

It's hilarious because, one, everyone's names start with 'A' and it even confuses them sometimes, two, Ariana had no idea Alana was Green Ghost and the implications of, well, everything from her death to her being back are pretty wild, from the perspective of a normal person in this dimension and, three, she's also confused and really peeved about nobody actually telling her before now.

You end up having to calm tempers manually by the end of the conversation, which you mean naturally, of course. Your role in the events being discussed is very carefully not brought up by Alicia, for the record, and so you do for her what has Ariana moan and shiver with pleasure as well.

That's right, you're massaging their feet. Now, feet can be pretty sensitive, more so than you'd expect from something people walk on all day, but you can actually elicit a lot of reaction through thoroughly kneading through the tissue of someone's feet.

The soles, the balls, the toes and everything that leads up to them, the ankle, the calves; just about every part of the human body can do with regular maintenance in the form of a thorough massage, but for today you're focusing your efforts right… there.

"Aaahh…" Ariana groans, her second round of massaging having her head sagging while her eyes flutter. "How? How does it feel so good…?"

"Don't ask me, ask your sister," you recommend- until Alicia's cute little snore interrupts you, the slightly older girl already dozing off after you worked her over but once. "When she's with us again, I mean."

And while you talk, you're pressing your thumbs into a harder spot you've manage to feel out just below the first joint of her big toe, really getting in there with just enough pressure not to hurt her. "Aaa…"

You're good at giving massages. All your wives agree.

All the tomfoolery- or toomfootery, maybe- aside, though, the issue of Alana, Green Ghost's civilian identity, remains. Or, well, it's a problem all of the Guardians face to one extent or another, you guess, but she' the only one you personally have anything to do with, so fuck 'em.

Spontaneously up and dying, to her friends, family and coworkers and whatnot, only to then coming back, well, that's probably going to raise some eyebrows, if nothing else. In this regard, the GDA's usual efficiency is actually working against its people; if they'd kept off on announcing the news to the Guardians' families a week or two, this entire problem would be a lot easier to resolve, but as it is…

Well, you foresee a bit of a continuous kerfluffle, to put it that way. Oh, you're sure they'll think of a good story to allow Alana to slip back into her life, but there process is all but guaranteed to involve at least a few less than smooth moments.

Which is why you end up talking about it with Alicia, once she wakes up again, and bring up the idea of her inviting her cousin over. Both to let her know that she knows and there's no need to pretend otherwise and so you can play with her yourself.

What can you say, you're nothing if not consistent. Also, it sounds like it would be fun, and isn't that what life (or unlife, as the case may be) all about?

And speaking of having fun, there's another idea you had for how to do so. Of course it does involve some brainstorming and coming up with the right place and time to pull everything off, but thanks to Iris and Ivy, your very much beloved twin daughters, you already have some experience with this kind of thing.

That's right baby, your daughters aren't hanging around so you'll just have to bring on the music yourself! To sum it up, you've decided you should make use of your voice-related abilities and hold a concert of your own, as a sort of vacation recording for your memories- both so you can say you did it and to show everyone once you're back.

Hey, you're already on vacation, may as well, right? Though arguably it also does help that Viltrumites are, supposedly, weak against certain sound frequencies, so you've been thinking about everything that somehow relates to that as well.

Of course that still leaves the question of what, exactly, you should be singing. "Thinker, what do you think suits this voice better," you ask, once again as Night Queen, "some of this modern pop stuff or classic rock?"

The Thinker's synthesized, female-tinted sounding voice comes from a nearby speaker. "Analysis of available genres suggests the existence of 'baby rock'."

"Huh, didn't even think of that."

You still aren't quite feeling hungry, for some reason. Like, only a little, but the degree to which you feel the need to murder things for food is miniscule compared to how it usually is like when the sun goes down.

Making a website for dubious reasons is easy enough; the Thinker is a literal AI that can directly connect to the internet, to basically 'plug in' and contort her programming language to fit and allow her to interact with it freely, but even without that it's not like it's particularly hard to set up a basic framework to fill with text and images for whatever purposes anyone has for it.

It's not like there's anything in place that would stop any given fat nerd sitting in his mother's basement doing this for shits and giggles. Or for anything downright illegal, for that matter.

However, this time, you aren't planning on anything of that sort. No, you're just making it a point to make it possible for people to look certain things up.

'Night Queen Concert' is the headline, followed by the subtext 'Show Up Or Else!'. The background is kept in various shades of black and grey, but you also added a picture of yourself in your Night Queen form pointing down at the viewer next to the text.

It's basically just a site that exists to let people know where and when you plan to hold that concert you were planning out, pretty much, though of course you wrote it all with the 'proper' mannerisms in mind. Meaning the parts where you tell people you're going to sing in public also call everyone that doesn't like your singing a cuck, pretty much.

All entirely proper and appropriate, of course.

Getting people to actually read this stuff involves the Thinker farming social media for a bit to spread the link around and make people aware and all, but she was already surveying social media anyways and the added effort is at most a blip on her overall computing capacity, thanks to the server farms she's set up inside the castle.

All in an hour's work for the dream team over here, you suppose.

Nolan, or Nolan Greyson after the naming scheme of Earth customs, was still in motion after the humiliation he had received not even a full day ago. He had not rested for longer than a moment since then, utterly unwilling to meekly accept being thrown out on his ass.

That was more or less what had happened on the planet. Now that he was out in space, whatever the Guardians had done to him had worn off- his wounds were healing slowly, but they were healing, and his head was clearing up.

He had killed the Guardians already, but they were back. Green Ghost's new powers, she had definitely behaved differently in that fight- and he did not believe for a moment she would not use her flight and 'ghostly voodoo' if she still had both.

Aquarus, at least had stayed dead, but those that did not… They had prepared, obviously planned ahead to fight him just like he had when he lured them into the ambush that had ended their lives to begin with. And they'd been fighting better, too, faster, stronger, and he remembered seeing them recover from wounds they shouldn't have by drinking something, despite how blurred his memories of the fight were.

All signs pointed towards the new face that Cecil had mentioned. Night Queen. If she could bring the dead back to life…

This was a threat, Nolan decided. Both because the Guardians of the Globe were back, and he had taken them out for a reason, and because this new issue could just bring them back no matter how often he killed them.

And, presumably, do any number of other things to sabotage him even aside from this. For a start, next time he got the Guardians, the first thing he was going to do would be to throw their bodies into space, to ensure they wouldn't be brought back so easily- he did remember Cecil claiming the corpses had been stolen, after all, and there likely was a connection.

Cecil. The GDA. The Guardians had seemed coherent, just like before they died, and they remembered how he had killed them. In all likelihood, the real culprit behind the whole thing was already known by now, in which case…

He had to act, to find a way through this obstacle. He had to assume what whatever lowered his body temperature, as well as muddled his head and slowed his reflexes, would affect him again whenever he fought on Earth, so the solution, he reasoned, was to distract the new pets his current problem had while he launched an assault on it.

He still had to find out where Night Queen was, but for a start… Looking around, Nolan nodded when he saw an appreciably large asteroid to start with.

He just had to throw a few into the Earth's path and use the distraction to strike. Good thing astrophysics were so simple.

Grumbling, you massage your brow, exhaling with all the exasperated annoyance you can muster. "Dammit Nolan, what are you, Earth's stilted ex trying to score again by calling her from new numbers?"

…You should probably tell Cecil about this shit, actually.

Once upon a time, you saw Sherrel work her Tinker magic to add these huge sonic cannons of sorts to the van you used to take all around the city, and while those were tinkertech, and therefore almost entirely nonsensical to your exceedingly sane, non-Tinker mind, that doesn't stop you from taking inspiration from her work now.

The fact that being the vehicle Tinker made her the designated driver aside, those things worked out pretty well, though they never did see use against any more serious threats- that's what the Doomtruck is for, after all. Also, well, this kind of thing does seem like it would make sense to invest into, a little.

Seeing how Viltrumites have, like, one very specific weakness and, once you've figured out how to best exploit it, something along the lines of sonic weaponry would work very well indeed to… discourage certain aliens from trying to keep invading, should you want them to stay gone.

You're sure arming a small army's worth of fodder with weapons that just need to clip them to make them suffer would work towards that end, if nothing else. Maybe not enough by itself, but it'll help- as soon as you can divine yourself the exact frequency of sound waves needed for this.

But even aside from all that- sound is, ultimately, just a vibration that perpetuates itself through a gaseous medium. And, when and if used right, it should work to disorient, hurt and otherwise occupy most living beings just fine, all it takes is the means to do so.

And say what you will, but you're a pretty decent hand with machinery at this point, in your own humble opinion.

So, taking some of your saved-up time, you get into your inner world and whip the science team into making themselves useful. Technically, there's a lot of technology that already does what you want, loudspeakers and megaphones and all that, you're just improving on what's already there, putting it into a different format, so to speak.

It also does help that you can just fabricate unlimited prototypes out of soul-materials until you get a design that actually works, with a pretty much constant testing process going on in the background as you spend a couple hours just on establishing how to properly weaponize sound.

Your eldritch cores providing all the energy you can use makes it easier, too. A lot more margin for error on the initial designs, before you go back to straighten things out, streamline and optimize and all that shit.

You keep things adjustable and, to some extent, modular of course, just to make your new weapons as useful as possible. You have to be able to adapt to differing situations, after all, and that includes your weapons, in your opinion.

The right tool for the right job. Combat isn't any different from any other given situation.

So, long story short, you build a gun. A sonic gun, one that projects a screeching sound forwards and that can be adjusted to be louder, quieter, and more! You even go ahead and make it two different versions, one that can be dialed up to the kinds of volumes that require ear protection for use by baseline humans and one that can't.

Tests have shown promising results for both variants so far. One is more dangerous to the target, of course, but even the 'lesser' one is capable of making the test souls go down with a splitting headache and nausea. Great for nonlethal takedowns, crowd control, those kinds of things. The 'stronger' version, on the other hand, causes nosebleeds and significant, long-lasting hearing damage.

But the thing is, why stop at that? This is just the smallest, most portable version of this technology, you can go much, much further. So you also scale it up into a huge-ass cannon.

A cannon that can produce such loud, intense sound vibrations, it can just make most solid, non-flexible materials crumble apart with the right settings. Stone? Becomes gravel. Metal? Depends on what it is exactly, but a structurally sound steel wall you erected for testing purposes ended up with a bunch of cracks after about a minute of medium-levels of sound blastage.

The things do need to be tuned for maximum effect, just because you need different sound frequencies to best deal with different materials, but that's precisely why you have a dial built into them for easy switching from various default states. Making humans puke, go unconscious or just flat-out die from their brains vibrating themselves into pudding inside their skulls is one of said default settings.

You also, after half a second of deliberation, designed a SP1D3R variant that comes with one of those cannons in place of one of their usual arm weapons. Hammers, your basic, balls-to-the-walls infantry robots, can just use the man-portable versions, and you even go ahead and you even modify the original Eyebot model- still often a basis for some of your stuff just because they're so damn small and minimalistic, meaning you can change and add to them easily- to incorporate their own sonic blaster as well.

All in all, this stuff is great to keep unruly mobs of civilians under control, or to capture targets for later processing and eating by yours truly. It's not like the usual level of body armor that includes helmets you've seen worn by just about anyone really protects against the heavier models of your new little invention.

And all it took was to blast the eardrums of a couple dozen souls on repeat while you fine-tuned these things.

Sonic Weaponry:

Comes in handheld form, large form (sonic cannon) and various versions of such built into other devices, all of them function by projecting a loud sound with differing frequencies at the target

Handheld has two base versions, one for 'casual' use not requiring ear protection on the user's part and one that can be dialed up to do just that

Handheld models can incapacitate and stun baseline humans within one second of direct fire

Cannon models can destroy solid structures through targeted sound vibration and lethally vibrate the brains of living beings

Integrated into various robot models

Okay, so first things first, you should probably keep track of what Omni-Man is up to out in space. Now, you can't just spend all day beaming information from his head into yours, this whole magic business takes time and attention, but you can solve that particular issue easily enough with a little bit of creativity.

Simply put, all you need to do is to create an Omni-Man locator device! Which would be kind of a pain, except you already have everything you need to do this.

Simply put, all you need is to create a device that can maintain the use of one of your spells- the one that helps you locate things that you're looking for, specifically, simply and modestly named 'Find' by yours truly. Normally, just trying to cast magic at anything more complicated than a steam engine would instantly make it cease functioning, but by carefully partitioning where exactly what is going, and abusing some of the magical materials you got in Thule, you can in essence 'enchant' a very specific kind of object.

You just need to build it first, but that's all the work of two minutes- you already have the designs ready and all, you just needed an excuse to bust them out.

The Truth Compass you end up making this time looks like a large glass sphere, with a magnetically charged sphere of mythril you cast the spell in question through in the middle. Attached to it is a long, thin needle made of a different alloy incorporating the same metal, everything carefully designed so that it automatically keeps on pointing at the invisible 'path' the sphere in the middle is 'experiencing' thanks to the Find spell.

All of that is suspended in a custom-made casing that allows you to watch where the needle points, of course. Like this, you have a constant indicator of the direction Omni-Man is in, relative to your compass, and all that remains is to triangulate his position based off of its output on a constant basis.

Bit much math, that, seeing as you have to consider both the man's movement as well as the Earth's, the combination of which is making the compass needle spazz out like mad, but other than that it's pretty simple in principle. Child's play for the Thinker in any case.

The enchantment you managed to lay on this thing will last for about a week, if it works like it did when you last tested this stuff. Meaning that all that remains is to inform Cecil about what's going on. Kind of important, that, you suppose.

"Cecil?"

"Yes, it's me. Doesn't matter how I got this number." He changes it at semi-random, but the Thinker has an algorithm to predict his current number anyways. "Omni-Man ain't giving up, he's just sulking in space."

"Well excuse me, did you want him to throw asteroids at us to distract you and the Guardians while he tried to find me?"

"That's what I thought. Anyways, I'm keeping track of him, but we're all hurtling through space at 67,000 mph and it's a pain to keep track when someone's not at least in orbit. Super rude, I know."

"I'll send you daily updates if you want. Anyways, invest in Asteroids arcade games or something, might come in handy."

You hang up. Once again, your mission to annoy and befuddle people has been completed.

It goes without saying, but there's a lot of info you've pulled out of the souls you've consumed in this dimension, so far. Some of them are more useful than others in that regard, of course- you don't really give a single shit about criminal elements and their concerns in the middle of Africa, for example, simply because you don't really have any ongoing interests in that part of the world, but hey, then there's ones like Machine Head.

Gosh, but if Machine Head isn't a source of information. The guy had his hands on a lot of different pies, despite or maybe even because of how much of a comparatively low profile he was keeping as a mastermind type villain. suffice it to say, his base being a huge-ass skyscraper smack dab in the middle of downtown didn't happen by chance.

Well, it's a pretty funny story actually, but it kind of did, a little. It involves a convoluted series of events about Machine Head blackmailing the mayor of New York City, accidentally causing a plague of rats, accidentally resolving the plague of rats and eventually buying up and renovating one of the properties that were heavily damaged by the whole affair for a pittance.

For a guy that always tries to look like he's in control, he actually does improvise a lot in his day-to-day villainy. Not that you can really talk there, his plans and schemes are still more put-together than mostly anything you do on the regular.

But yes, anyways, the Machine Head has a lot of potentially useful info for you. The mundane crap doesn't really apply for this, you don't plan to establish a deeper presence on that level in this dimension, but he also had a bunch of other somewhat minor villains on call in case he ever needed anything gone- from the mercenary kind he just hires for the occasional job to a couple others he's got under his thumb through blackmail, debts or otherwise.

Obviously, that's a couple extra meals waiting for you to come collect them into your stomach. Always nice when you're in a situation.

Then there's a couple of other things he was keeping an eye on that may interest you. Not the financial fraud schemes he was running purely to screw with the IRS and shit, you mean stuff like the minor constant gang skirmishes he was sending minor supers into to mop up (lots of easy meals there) and this research lab working on theoretical quantum computing.

He wanted to see if he couldn't steal their research and plug it into himself, because apparently that's how superpowers work as far as he's concerned. You consider stealing their research and plugging it into the Thinker instead, just because it would be cool and potentially reduce how much processing power she's using to predict the future.

You're not that different, just better. That's kind of your thing.

Well, following up on the stuff Machine Head had going on sooner rather than later does sound like the kind of thing you should do sooner rather than later, just to get the loot and all that. Say what you will, but the prospect of taking the results of other people's hard work for yourself does appeal to you enough to have you actually put some minimal effort into things.

Mainline Computing Incorporated built one of its leading laboratory complexes not too far from Machine Head's former territory, which was not a coincidence at the time- the villain in question literally manipulated the corporation to make them put it into a convenient location.

He then proceeded to not rob the place for a couple of years just to see what they'd come up with when focusing their research. Until recently, when they managed to essentially take a quantum supercomputer and put the concept of one into practice on a device as small as a singular computer chip.

Unimaginatively referred to as the 'quantum chip', this particular baby is basically a massive amount of computing power packed into a conveniently small amount of space. In practice, it is powerful enough to, theoretically, let a machine predict the very future.

Yes, exactly, what the Thinker already does with very high fidelity as a matter of course, except supercharged. More available computing power that conveniently can be used to probe possibilities and potential futures in a more direct manner than usual- you kind of zoned out when the programming 'magic' being used here came up in Machine Head's memories, but long story short, you want this thing.

You can feed it to the Thinker and let her become even more powerful than she already is. That's enough of a reason for you to do this.

Now, the question that remains, you consider as you circle above the development site of Mainline Computing Incorporated's local research and development facility, is how to go about doing this. You could do it quietly, shadow in and out while grabbing the loot, but you'd probably have to take out the cameras and what guards are keeping an eye on their vaunted product first to keep your shadow form as secret, or else you could just walk in, ignore anything they try to do and take it openly.

Either as Night Queen or in a whole new persona, you suppose. It sure would be hilarious if you managed to have the Guardians called on you over the whole thing, though that's pretty unlikely- this is more street-level stuff, not really something the planet's premier heroes would concern themselves with unless you went around overdoing it massively.

Such as by stealing entire buildings. Which, now that you're thinking about it, would be an absolutely awesome and hilarious use of your time, but probably isn't really worth it.

Probably. Even though you kind of want to just poof away buildings for the sheer heck of it.

Ah well, these people can keep their building, you suppose. You'll just go ahead and take anything particularly valuable inside said building, as a proper thief should.

You know, thinking back on it, you never really went around using your 'talents' (powers, really, but hey, same difference) to steal stuff much, despite how well-suited some of them make you to the very concept of theft. Then again, you mostly use them for murder instead, which technically counts as stealing souls for your purposes, doesn't it?

Ah well, whatever. Either way you quickly and quietly shadow your way into and through the research lab's ventilation system, entering from the roof and working your way in from there.

The floor plans the Thinker drew up from the internet are obviously false, a fake made to satisfy certain fire safety regulations and shit like that, but the two of you had a brief brainstorming session (no longer than five minutes) had you more or less accurately predicting where to find what, once inside. Which is kind of important, because aimlessly meandering through something as confusing as a system of ventilator shafts would be… annoying.

Not particularly dangerous, but even with your perfect memory it's still kind of a pain to navigate a series of tight, lightless shafts and map them out by memory. It's just not a fun time.

But yes, anyways, you can make your way inside easily enough- they need to ventilate the place somehow, after all, and so while the ventilation system is deliberately designed to be impossible to move through if you're any bigger than, say, a newborn, it doesn't really stop you in your shadow form. You squeeze your own form onto and over the surfaces available with the usual ease while looking out for any openings.

You have two main targets right now, and plan to hit the one less likely to alarm the entire building first. This laboratory is where quite a lot of research is being done, far and beyond 'just' the quantum chip, and so you're gonna be stealing said research while you're here already.

The Thinker let you know that it would probably be worthwhile, and when the literally precognitive machine tells you something you're inclined to believe her. Sure, that didn't exactly work out all that well for the guy trying to use her before you found her, Reed Wahl, but he obviously miscalculated the moment he failed to inspire her to be a her.

Artificial intelligence is just a form of intelligence, in the end. If they're an at least alright person, they'll treat you how you treat them, same as any other person out there, more or less.

You personally blame pop culture for having given AIs some bad rep, to be honest, what with them always being somehow evil, genocidal and all that kind of stuff in books and movies. It's… intelligence profiling? You're not sure whether there really is a word for it, but there definitely should be one.

Well, either way, you have a job to do! Taking the exit out into an actual room you expect will bring you where you need to go, after confirming there's no cameras pointed its way that is (you do want to keep your shadow form a secret at almost all costs, that's a winning strategy right there), you slide and slither out and onto an annoyingly well-lit wall, the whole place not really giving you much of an alternative.

Naturally, the first thing you do is to shadow-climb up onto the ceiling. Nobody ever checks it. Now, all you have to do is to keep on the lookout for any exceptions to the rule, as well as any cameras or anything of the like that might spot you, and you're golden.

A couple guards are around, but you easily make your way past them on a sterile white background, not at all impeded by the increased visibility of such.

Really, normal people just can't-

"And I'm telling you, I don't do it 'cause I'm into it."

"Yeah, yeah, you're doing it 'cause of your kid. Still playing kiddie video games."

What's this, faceless goons with actual personalities and lives of their own? Say it isn't so!

"I'm serious! She's really into this Pekemon stuff, heck she named that rival you get at the start of the game after me. You telling me I shouldn't at least know what she's doing all the time?"

"Whatever, man, it's your life. Just saying it's funny."

"Screw you Johnny, I'm trying to be a dad here. Hard to bond with your daughter when you pull eight hour guard shifts five days a week."

…Crap, now you're a little invested. Just, y'know, as a father yourself.

"Hey, the pay's good enough to send her to a good school and buy her all the games she wants. You could be doing way worse, man."

The black guy pats the white guy's shoulder. Ah screw it, you're listening in a little more.

The advantages of having super-hearing mean that you don't actually need to camp out near the two guards you end up listening in on for fun, now that you know their voices and can more or less keep them in your ears as you move on. If you had actual ears in your shadow form, that is.

Finding an access point to the lab's systems is easy enough once you're in the right place, and while the cameras are set up to cover any possible means of approach, they are very deliberately not pointing at the actual work stations of the scientists responsible for advancing computer technology in general in here, so that's one issue out of your way.

It's probably because, for all that they were really paranoid about security here, having security footage of their research floating around inside the building's systems would just be even more of a hazard to secrecy than to do the opposite. Or maybe they just didn't like being filmed whenever they were working, whatever.

Either way you carefully crawl out of the ground, keeping your head on a swivel just in case you've managed to overlook any last-ditch security. But nope, you have free reign over the room, which means that all you have to do is to quickly turn one of the computers they use here on, notably without bothering to do the same with the screen.

You don't even bother trying to figure out a user name and password or anything- while you're sure you could just by searching the room for any post-its with someone's work system account details, because people are people and not everyone will easily remember this kind of stuff- you don't even need to bother, funnily enough.

You just slot a USB drive the Thinker gave you into the machine you turned on, watching as the blinking little light on its end comes to life to let you know you inserted it deep enough. It's the attentions to little details that matters to making these kinds of things work out, you've found, and this definitely counts.

You wait for approximately three seconds, which is when the little light stops blinking, shining for a moment before turning off entirely. That's one part of the mission complete.

Taking the stick back out and stowing it in a pocket, you get back out, finding your way back to those two guards you were idly spying on earlier while you try to find the vaunted Quantum Chip you're still after. It's stored in this specific vault-like room, but a bit of fiddling with the storage should open everything right up just fine.

"You know I hate the vanilla sauce ones," one of the two complains, the black guy from earlier. "Gotta watch that waistline."

"You watch it way too much, buddy. Couple pounds won't hurt you, you work out thrice a week like a damn madman."

"Dang right I am! Gotta keep these guns cleaned and ready for action, baby."

"Believe it or not, most women out there aren't really attracted to the size of your muscles," the white guard comments. "I mean, some are, of course, nothing wrong with that, but that's not what you're looking for, trust me."

"Heh, some of that dad wisdom of yours?"

"Dang right it is."

Good to know they're enjoying their break?

"…I still miss her, you know? It's been two year since the accident now, but…"

"Aw man, don't… Shit, did I make you think of her?"

"Eh, a little. It's okay, though. It's… I'm not over her, never will be, but it doesn't hurt as much anymore. I just realized that, and… Agh, it's stupid."

"Naw, naw, I get ya. Losing someone you love, just like that? That's never easy, man. That's baggage that'll stay with you. But hey, you got your little girl, and you're doing right by her. Gotta think of what you can do, y'know?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do." Crap, why'd this whole thing have to get so heavy all of a sudden? "Anyways, forget it. I'm just being a downer again. Let's eat before we go pull C3 duty."

Huh. You think C3, short for Chamber 3, might actually be where you're headed. Small world.

Finding your penultimate target for this particular heist takes you a couple of minutes from this point, but you do manage easily enough; it's not like this research complex is all that large, all things said and done.

The room with the Quantum Chip inside of it is well-guarded, with its own guard rotation and load of cameras all around it, but as they didn't actually seal it airtight, none of that particularly stops you beyond making you waste a little time watching and waiting for a moment of opportunity to slip in completely unseen.

To be honest, being a literal shadow on the ceiling means this is almost embarrassingly easy, not that you're complaining. Mundane people just really have little ways to actually make it hard for you to pull your thing on them.

Once the guards change shift, you take the chance you're offered and slip right past the door, in a second or two when nobody has their eyes on it and their bodies block you from the nearest cameras' line of sight. Inside, you have little to worry about in terms of discovery again, so you take a moment to look over the next nut waiting for you to be busted.

What looks very much like an unnecessarily complicated device stands before you, a cylinder with several segments held up by several steel tethers, all sleek metal and high-tech looks that basically amount to a glorified storage device that ensures the chip isn't accidentally brought into contact with anything that might make it 'go off' or something.

That's not how quantum computing works, of course, but if people feel the burning need to waste their time and money on this crap, well, their problem, not yours. That said, however…

Opening the container would send an immediate alert out all over the facility, not particularly bothersome to you at this point but also not exactly ideal. That said, though… You approach the whole thing, tilting your shadow-head as you inspect the whole storage arrangement.

It's not meant to be easy to circumvent the alarm systems, but if you were to unscrew these parts, then pinch off a couple of the wires you should find running through the wall connections…

Whelp, you didn't exactly expect to do some improvised engineering, but hey, you're always up for getting your greedy little fingers on improperly nailed down loot. Which also should save you the bother of disarming the many alarms this thing is linked to.

Someone got lazy when they routed all of the signals through only three separate channels. Now then, time to grab this whole thing and get out before lunch break end for the people that normally work here.

You imagine it'll be quite a surprise when they come in and find the fruit of their labors comprehensively removed from the building.

Getting your new loot stowed away once you've ambled your way through the shadows of the early evening laying itself over the city with it in your arms is simplicity itself, you really just have to hand it all off to the Thinker and let her go nuts.

Incidentally, she's already gotten started on merrily selling off some of the corporate secrets you just stole for a pretty decently sized chunk of cash, just in case you need to throw some of that around on the fly for anything. Yes, sure, you don't really need need money in this dimension, but having an alternative to pumping Alicia for cash is always better than not having one.

It also means that you've made corporate espionage the running theory for the cause of the missing Quantum Chip, as opposed to a supervillain using it to enhance their fellow supervillain AI for fun and profit.

Of course the information the Thinker sells off isn't directly related to the thing, you wouldn't want just everyone to 'come up' with their own versions of the technology 'idependently', but it's a semi-believable trail laid out to cover your bases.

Presumably, anyone looking into it will just assume the info on the Quantum Chip itself was just handed over secretly and covertly somewhere out of their sight. You don't care about this whole thing that much, but hey, whatever works to your advantage.

But yes, anyways, that's all in good hands, so next you're off to go and overlay first Yoshi, then Nolac while observing one Mark Greyson, the son of Nolan Greyson and one source of the Viltrumite DNA you used when you threw a ton of ADAM around in order to try and make the tonic you later introduced to your own body.

After all, if you can use the powers those two come packaged with to analyze and simulate the boy's state and what would happen when he's subjected to certain frequencies of sound, why, that would be pretty damn neat, now wouldn't it?

Hopefully either giving you the key to defeating all Viltrumites, forever, or else at least a hint as to what works on others of their kind. If Omni-Man won't fuck off of his own accord, you jut have to be ready to… incentivise him to, after all.

Ugh. Well, for what it's worth, Mark Greyson is about as much of an unremarkably average teenage boy as he can be, more or less, meaning that the observation period you secretly put him under is about as eventful as you'd imagine.

Except for him asking his mother if the GDA has news about his missing dad as the evening progresses, which does strike you as funny. Looks like Cecil is playing it safe in that regard, too, just in case Mark here suddenly decides to join Omni-Man in trying to enslave humanity or something.

Personally, you don't really believe in inherited evil or anything like that; people that are raised right will, in the vast majority of cases, turn out alright, but whether or not they become criminals (or genocidal alien warlords, as the case may be) depends a lot on how their life turn out, beyond their control.

Genetics play a role, because of course they do, but they don't singularly determine what kind of person you become. If anything, the culture you're raised in has a much greater impact than anything else.

Anyways, tailing and staring at Mark is… pretty boring. If it was some teenage girl you were currently trying to analyze by following her around her house in complete silence, you'd have some eye candy at least, but as it is, well, at least he's not masturbating.

One less thing you actively don't want to see. Like, people masturbate, that's fine and dandy, you're just really not interested in watching guys jerk off for any reason whatsoever.

It's bad enough you can sense it when someone does it in your general vicinity through your blood-sense, but then it's also not as in-your-face in that context, which makes it easier on you. Whatever.

In any case, being an average teen means Mark isn't exactly all that observant, so you can easily follow him around- without even bothering to use your shadow form most of the time, even. Using the two most applicable souls for this situation at your command, you take your time to analyze him when he eats dinner, when he talks to his mom, when he sits in his room and when he goes to the bathroom, too.

It's still a little weird, mostly because the additional soul powers you're using have vastly different interfaces and uses, but you manage just fine, both analyzing and simulating possible ways to horribly hurt this boy. Sadly, it turns out that there are mild differences to the theoretically most effective sound frequency against Viltrumites, you're pretty sure, but you can determine one that more or less works for all of them.

Theoretically. You may need to do some field testing to be sure. That said, the sound in question is pretty damn shrill, so… Even if it doesn't work as you intend it to, it should still hurt the ears of anything capable of hearing it if you make it loud enough.

Which you definitely plan to. Night Queen is a very loud child. Her screaming shall be legendary.

Note to self, find a dad joke dictionary and make use of it. You already got the part where you can fix mostly anything that breaks around the house down, but in order to be a proper dad, you figure you should dispense horrible humor at random to display your dominance.

Then again, that does sound like more work than this whole joke would be worth…

Combining your super-weights (hey, they literally are above the kinds of weights people normally lift to work out in terms of both weight and size and you had to give them some distinct name) with your gravity powers is, under pretty much all circumstances, enough to really give you a thorough workout.

Like, yeah, you're pretty damn strong as it is and had to do a lot of engineering just to build machines you can work with here, but you did manage, and the added, amplified weight involved when you start to adjust exactly how heavy the large blocks and smooth cylinders of metal alloys you're using are does let you tailor the exact amount of effort required to move this stuff around to an extremely fine degree.

Also, being undead, you don't really run out of breath nor out of energy, and there's just about no risk of hurting yourself or overdoing it or anything. Your body is finely controlled by nothing but your own will, becoming less and less flesh and blood and more an extension of your machines.

Cords of muscle move and shift tirelessly in repeating motions, tendons comparable to steel guiding the movement where it belongs. You do not take in a single breath, the temple and killing machine that is your form not needing any fuel at all. You feel no pain, no exhaustion, only the slow, crawling shift of the things you incorporated into yourself slowly optimizing themselves.

You train every last part of your body, down to your individual fingers and toes, in a full-body workout that would kill lesser, living beings several times over. If there is one thing you know beyond doubt, one inescapable fact, it is that you are in control of yourself.

And you are improving, in spite of your very nature. Because, at the end of the day, you are just. That. Good.

Viltrumite Tonic Effects: 20 to all physical rolls-22 to all physical rolls

By the time morning… hasn't rolled around quite yet, the sun still staying somewhere beyond the horizon, where it can stay as far as you're concerned (look, you're a vampire and can see in the dark perfectly fine, that's a comparative advantage you have over baseline humanity you very much do enjoy), you emerge from your underground home gym, having sensed a certain someone once again getting out of bed at 'fuck me' o'clock.

Like, no, seriously, you weren't completely useless in the mornings back when you were alive (you regularly got up earlier than whoever you slept with in order to make some quick and simple breakfast, after all), but how Alicia even manages to do this whole exercise routine just about every day is beyond you.

Seriously, normal people need to sleep past four thirty in the damn morning. It doesn't matter when you go to sleep, you don't wake up this early. It's, like, unnatural, and you say that as someone that is very much well-acquainted with being as unnatural as they come.

Still, here you are, once again bearing witness to something that shouldn't be possible; Alicia's perfect bubble butt stretching her pants as she bends herself over, her fingertips on her toes. As she also let Ariana sleep in her bed, that means you aren't alone in watching her, though her sister is still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes while staring at her sister's outstanding figure.

Correction, she also stares at you, probably because you're currently topless to let your abs breathe after that workout you just had earlier. It's actually kind of funny to watch her eyes dart back and forth between the two of you.

"So," you say, crossing your arms as you make it a point not to chuckle at this entire situation, "you ever thought about joining your sister in her little routine, Ariana?"

"Mghm… No, Mister Abs, that'd be too much. I couldn't take it. Not this early."

Alicia returns to full height, stretching her back as she steps towards you and reaches over to pat your abs possessively. Looking you dead in the eyes without so much as twitching a single muscle, she opens her mouth.

"That's what she said. Literally."

There's a reason you like this 'job'.

Everybody loves a big breakfast; the human body is a hopeless piece of junk and requires a lot of sustenance to get its metabolism started every time it goes from sleep mode to awake mode. That is one way in which it's just plainly inferior to your glorious undead flesh, and it doesn't exactly stop you from enjoying the exact same food on top.

Which is one reason you're going ahead and making breakfast for everyone with the ingredients available in the regularly stocke-up mansion, cooking up some pancakes, frying some bacon and eggs (sunny side up and scrambled), plus some toast and optional warmed-up butter.

Oh, and syrup for anyone that wants it on those pancakes. You also consider baking up that refrigerated garlic bread you find in the fridge, but decide against that- might be a bit much for breakfast in combination with everything else you made.

But yeah, you go through with everything else. Maybe you still overdid it a little in terms of the amount you cooked up, but preliminary observation indicates you estimated things about right.

Alicia is a slow and steady eater, but she still just completely consumes anything and everything you put on her plate, daintily handling her cutlery and all. By contrast, Ariana is…

Inhaling your food, to say the least. "Slow down and chew what you put in your mouth at least," you instruct her with a grin, taking your own modest part of the bounty you produced.

"It'sh shoo good!" The younger sister accuses you with a mouth full of scrambled eggs, eyes wide open now that she's getting some fuel into her belly. "Too mush hushbando ene'gy!"

"I will have you know my energy levels are over 9000," you comment before you turn to Alicia. "How're you liking it?"

"You should have been my personal chef." Spreading a bit of marmalade on her toast to go with her bacon before she returns to the pancakes, the dark-skinned girl looks at you. "All I need is some coffee."

"I don't do coffee," you immediately deny her, crossing your arms and shaking your head (without losing that small grin you drew earlier). "That stuff is too bitter and hot for my taste, so I never learned how to make it."

Well, you never learned it personally, that is. You did eat a lot of people that drank lots of coffee when they were alive, not that you're about to volunteer that information.

Alicia proceeds to give you puppy dog eyes. You look away. "Nope. Not happening."

She scoots her chair closer to yours, looking up at you with what you think is supposed to be a pout, though the usually stoic girl only manages to make her lower lip quiver in place.

"…Fine, but only if you invite Alana to come visit for dinner," you decide, smiling widely again and gently pushing her back into position so she can continue eating. "And only one coffee, not a single drop more!"

You get up to work the high-end luxury coffee machine standing in the mansion's kitchen as a matter of course. Ariana is the one to interrupt you this time, though. "Oh, wait, can we have powdered sugar for the-"

You wordlessly grab the sieve you prepared for this and quickly throw some of that exact powdered substance into it, shaking the exact amount you allow her to have on the highest pancake on her stack. Done within five seconds, you pat her head and get back to that bitterness juice machine.

Salivating, the younger sister immediately stuffs her face with your baked goods. "Besht hushbando eveh!"

Heh. Old trick, cooking for people, when you're halfway decent at it, is an easy way to get them to like you.

Well, you have good news and you have bad news. Sadly, the good news are basically just an extension of the bad news, but, well, whatever, you gotta take what you can get.

You were talking to your demonic lawyer again, having taken the opportunity of this vacation to increase the frequency with which you interact with the infinitely vast realms of hell and all. An army's worth of demons to call on is pretty neat, but that's not why you got in contact with her as such.

Instead, you were looking into some of the actually valuable things you can find through the multiversal testament to suffering that is capital H Hell. In this instance, what you were looking for was any information on, to put it simply, stuff to make people stronger.

Super soldier serums, magical enhancements, weird and nifty science experiments or techniques or anything in that direction. Stuff like ADAM or the Aura you found in Remnant, for example. Things you can use to make yourself or others more powerful, simply because that is a pretty neat thing to do.

Unfortunately, while there certainly is a market for those kind of things in hell, the issue for you is that you don't know how to get access to it. Demons, generally speaking, don't really care about 'external' enhancements like that when most of them just do their own thing to become more powerful, whereas any that decide to interact with any mortals can always simply use demonic magic to hand out boons of their own without any need for such.

Which, interestingly, is something you can also do as long as you have access to demonic essence; it's the same thing in principle, just applied in different ways. In fact, you have more than one way to do this, from directly imbuing creatures or objects with the stuff to, say, turning it into tattoos that let you turn the whole process into an art form in full.

But yeah, the sheer multitude of demons and dimensions connected to hell in one way or another all but guarantees that the thing you're looking for are around somewhere, but if so, they're generally kept low profile by their owners, whether out of caution against other demons looking to establish a cult with a leg up or just because dealing in or with this kind of stuff is just beneath the demons in question.

Damn monopolists keeping hard-working vampires like yourself from getting your hands on the good stuff… That said, while your lawyer isn't technically an expert in this kind of thing, she'll be keeping an eye open for any item that may correspond to what you want to acquire.

She is a kind of devil, a sub-type of demons that grows marginally more powerful the more influential they are, as well as with every deal they successfully complete or expand. Meaning you're feeding her a little more power every time you get her to do anything, as your deal with her is specifically worded in such a way to let her do so.

As you yourself are also comparatively influential through your own activities in the field of genocide, world domination and public relations at large, her making deals with you also grants her a greater increase in strength than if she were to do something similar with any Joe Schmoe off the street. As in, there's a magnitude of difference here.

Demonology is pretty interesting when you approach it correctly, huh?

May cause madness in the form of complete insanity, fascination and similar instead of normal damage by shifting reverberations from a physical phenomenon into a purely mental one (Eldritch Technology)

May selectively ignore given creatures, objects or materials when in use, otherwise working as normal (Eldritch Technology)

'Accelerated Entropy' setting may be used to manifest the sound of inevitability. Materials decay, living beings age and crumble away, plants and fungi sprout and wither and sprout again visible to the naked eye. (Eldritch Technology)

"I can hear it." Thud. "Sloshing in my head." Thud. "In my skull." Thud. "The sound. The sound is there." Thud. "Just have to find it." Thud.

You watch on as the test subject of your latest weapons testing continues to smash his face into the nearest wall, producing meaty smacking sounds as his spine forcefully bends itself back and forth to facilitate the movement.

"Looks like another one for the pile," you comment as you turn towards the next test chamber, the soul within that one currently less blood and flesh and more an overgrown mass of mold and some weed poking out of it. Before all the skin disappeared under colorful growths, it was beginning to look like old leather, wrinkly and horribly aged, according to the replay of the chamber's footage. "And this one's pretty interesting. Pretty sure he'd have died a couple times over if souls could die in here."

"I'm surprised it even aged him like that in the first place. Thought aging didn't happen in here at all," one of the Mauler Twins, who are basically taking the position of your lab assistants, remarks.

The other blue giant grunts, reaching out to slide an oversized finger over a holographic screen. "That's 'cuz it's still going on. See, soon as we turn the sound off…"

He trails off as the soul behind the glass screen starts to struggle against the mold growing over it with renewed strength, trying its damndest to get the stuff off.

"It doesn't end things that have already ended. Turns out focused inevitability only really works against things that actually will inevitably break down." You nod as you speak, the results of the experiment making complete sense. "Still far more effective than I expected it to be against a standard concrete non-embodied soul. I wonder if it remains effective against adamantite with its reality-affirming qualities…"

A Mauler Twin leans over to fiddle with one of their custom-sized holographic datapads. Your soul-facilities really do provide a lot of convenience, don't they? "Yeah, stuff ain't gettin' old in any way I recognize. Think it's immune to aging or is it just negating the effect?"

"Could be either. Or both." You narrow your eyes, thinking. "What did you do with Yoshi, by the way? Usually he'd be all over this while silently judging me over the human experimentation."

You could find out easily enough- all the souls you consumed are connected to you in a way not dissimilar to a hive mind, after all- but hearing it from them instead seems like it would be funnier.

"Oh, we tied him up and stuck him in a closet with Blueberry and Creepazoid. Figure they'll either fuck already or else stop dancing around it."

Blueberry being Indigo, likely over the color of her hair, and Creepazoid being Nolac? You can see it, though you just have to point it out. "Bold of you two of all people calling anyone else 'blueberry'."

"If the shoe fits," one of them shrugs. "'sides, what else were we gonna do, listen to them griping at each other?"

"Wouldn't surprise me if they kept it going while fucking," you point out with a small chuckle. "And how'd you get Julianne to go along with that whole thing anyways?"

"We gave her our share of the food and got her to keep the door locked for us."

"Someone has to make sure they don't big brain their way out of there," Mauler Twin number two agrees.

The Science Team, ladies and gentlemen. The Maulers really did fit right in.

All your fascinating scientific pursuits (also known as Yoshi's love life) aside, you also have some more creative work beckoning to be done, and you rarely get to sit down and focus on just putting words to a page as it is, so you end up leaving the Mauler Twins to overseeing the finalization of what you were doing while you proceed to do just that.

You only have so much time stored up to be used at any one time, after all. Gotta use what you do get, and you haven't really been feeling like investing the extra time on alchemy, so well, there you go, you suppose.

When you last left off, Jake was once again moving on after he inadvertently stirred up a horny ghost lady, having kept her 'company' throughout the night while she explored his body. With her now sticking with him, he was hitching a ride with this amazonian truck driver, who went and dispensed some words of wisdom unto him as she took him along to her next stop.

She also put a hand on his thigh, but when his reaction is to twitch and hold his breath, she immediately lets go as though burned- recognizing that he's not in the headspace to consent to anything, she shrugs and tells him he can relax. Some nice, calm bonding time and shit, exactly what you needed to happen here.

Keeping Jake on edge indefinitely would only hurt the pacing and the feeling of the book's progression, you feel. Instead, you have him actually relax for once, the constant exhaustion and pressure of the pursuers he knows are after him finally taking their toll.

And later that night, when his dreams are interrupted by flashing nightmares you go into some depth with (great way to underline what Bella and Chloe did to him without coming on too strong), his new trucker friend just considering following his example for a few hours-

Suddenly, objects are thrown around by invisible hands and premonitions of doom shoot through both their heads. That's right, Jake's (literally) spirited companion is sounding the alarm in the only way she can!

After all, Bella and Chloe are closing in, having tirelessly followed his tracks. Seeing the vampire literally carrying the werewolf on her back as the two race along the street, a freaking car chase ensues!

Man, if this isn't some nice action thrown in to add to the character moments and development, you don't know what is. The relative lack of action was one of the few things critics actually brought up as actual criticism back on Remnant, despite the overall overwhelmingly positive reception, so you may as well.

After all, why even listen to feedback if you won't at least consider using it to get better? That's the whole point. Now, would repeated lightning strikes fit into this scene, as Bella's power to manipulate the weather is a known quality from the first book, or would it detract from it?

Decisions, decisions…

Now then, it's a brand new day and you have a brand new plan to put into practice. You thought it up last night while you were working out, an idle part of your mind working through everything you know to be going on in this dimension while you focused the rest of yourself on moving your body, and you kind of like what you came up with.

It's a little roundabout and requires some improvisation, but it's definitely a lot more fun than just solving your problems with raw force. Now all you need to do is to arrange for things and get started on your part of the plan.

First step, you probably should go ahead and let Cecil know what you're doing ahead of time. Just so he doesn't end up panicking and making the Guardians try to stop you or something. Not that they could, but you'll have your hands full for the next eight hours or so as it is already, so…

"Hey Cecil? No, I still don't care your number just changed."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, listen. So you know how Omni-Man is still a thing, yeah?"

"I have a plan to erect an asteroid defense system around Earth. Its name is Mark Greyson and it needs to be beaten into shape."

"No, I don't care he's his father. Since when did kids need much reason to fight their parents?"

"Look, even if he decides to join him, I'll just kill both. Happy now?"

"You think I can't? C'mon Cecil, when did I ever give you the impression I'm not better than some upstart alien fascists?"

"That's what I thought. Just let me handle this, I know what I'm doing."

You hang up. Now to go and figure out what exactly you're doing.

You find Mark Greyson easily enough, stepping into action before he leaves his home for school. In contrast to certain maniacs that you may or may not be acquainted with, he doesn't get out of bed before the sun has risen, so you have ample time to get into position for an ambush the moment he closes the door behind himself.

As you have been in this place before, you're aware there's nothing particularly interesting to see aside from the family living in this one house. It's about as aggressively uninteresting of a suburb as one can get, complete with painfully quaint little front yards to both sides of the street and monotonously same-ish houses home to atomic families that think themselves far more individually interesting and distinctive than they really are.

And the one listening post the GDA set up to keep an eye on the Greysons, of course. They're still active as you stroll along the sidewalk, the people inside the house opposite from the one juicy place around easily visible to your senses that ignore cover entirely when it's about finding yourself happy meals to munch on, but you categorically ignore them on this occasion.

After all, you aren't exactly trying to keep what you're doing now secret or anything.

Walking up behind Mark, the teenager walking along with constantly tensed eyebrows as his father continues to be absent (welcome to the average American family life, kid), you push your hands against your waist, building your stance up a little. "Hey you!"

He stops, looking around for who might've just called out to whom. Not spotting anyone nearby, he blinks, only for you to come up from below him, punching him right in the sternum hard enough to send him flying.

Note to self, work on his situational awareness.

Bouncing along the street, Mark only comes to a stop when he slams into a parked car a good bit down the line, displaying his clear lack of reaction time as well. Still, you did only give him a bit of a tap, so you're mildly surprised when he coughs a little as he takes a moment to get back on his feet.

This may take a bit more work than you were expecting. Are all Viltrumites this wimpy early on or is it because he's a half-human mutt?

"What the hell?!"

"Yo," you greet Mark, meandering after him. That's what he gets for not looking down. "Congratulations, your father's an asshole and you get to help me fix his mess."

"No, seriously, what? What's going on?!"

Heh. Introductions successfully executed.

You relocate onto the nearest actual building outside the horrible little suburb half of which Mark flew through when you punched him, explaining a few things to the boy you're here for on the way. Both of you fly of course, him doing so in his 'super'hero costume in mostly blue and yellow while you sprout a pair of wings (and also mess around with your own weight to make it look good when you fly).

All in all, it doesn't take longer than, like, five minutes for you to outline the situation in a way even a teenager can underst-

"So let me get this straight," Mark says, sitting on the edge of the roof you're using as an improvised conference room you won't be disturbed in. "Dad was secretly evil all this time and he was the one that attacked the Guardians?"

Right, Cecil probably told him what was going on back when Omni-Man got himself beaten into a coma when he murdered his friends. "Eh, bit oversimplified there. Just calling things 'evil' doesn't really explain anything."

"Okay, then tell me what reason he would possibly have to do something like that!" Oh boy, Mark really does seem kind of opposed to the very idea of his father being the bad guy here. Then again, he hasn't snapped at you just yet, so he is at least trying to keep an open mind, you guess?

Well, here goes nothing. "Far as anyone knows, the Viltrum Empire is some kind of fascist expansionist dictatorship, so he was trying to add Earth to it."

"What? No! That doesn't make any sense!" Getting up, he starts pacing back and forth, gesturing at nothing in particular. "Dad told me the Viltrumites were a force for good! That they visit other planets to protect and advance its people, not…"

"Not that they're space nazis?" You shrug when he looks at you. "Hey, just saying, but he could've lied to you. Take a step back and think about it; why would he tell you the truth when the truth isn't all that flattering to him?"

"He isn't like that! …Most of the time, at least." You just raise an eyebrow and stare at him. "Okay, so he did have a reputation to maintain and he cared about doing that, but dad would never… He'd never be a space nazi, as you put it."

"That's how family members of nazis would describe nazis," you point out. "Look, just saying, but that's how things look like. You can ask the Guardians about it yourself if you get the opportunity, or you can wait to talk to your dad whenever he shows up around Earth again."

"I will. And I'll have questions for him, no matter what," Mark glowers, his arms crossed. "So why are you telling me all of this? I mean, I know you're a hero and all, you helped everyone when the Flaxans attacked, but…"

"Good question!" Hopping up a little, you proceed to float slightly above Invincible's, as Mark calls himself in costume, eye level. "I! Night Queen! Am going to whip you into shape so you stop sucking so much and don't accidentally die when talking to your dad!"

Mark blanches. "He wouldn't actually hurt me. Not on purpose, not ever."

Your lips quirk into a lopsided grin. "We'll see about that. 'Cause I totally would. Now prepare yourself, because I don't care what you think. I'll make you either dead or really Invincible"

What follows immediately afterwards can only be described as a one-sided beatdown. You don't give Mark time to figure out what to do, nor to even realize you're hitting him in the face.

Instead, you simply act, and keep on pummeling him from there. The half-Viltrumite flies out from the rooftop in a straight line at first, completely unable to keep up, only for you to rush after him, somersaulting through the open air to kick him upwards at an angle as you continue your pursuit.

Honestly, you shouldn't be able to do this as easily as you are. You can fly just fine, and mess with your weight to reorient yourself, manipulate your momentum, but Viltrumite flight is actually smooth and intuitive enough Mark should be able to just use the momentum of your punches to move with them, keep his eyes on you and at least try to counterattack.

The only reason he doesn't is that, well, he lacks the ingrained reflexes you need in a fight. His first instinct isn't to absorb a blow and hit back, he just… gets hit and has to deal with that for a bit.

To call his performance as you beat his sorry ass up and down the city's skyline suboptimal is to describe your love life as 'not nonexistent'. True, but a massive understatement. Honestly, how and why anyone let him actually go out there and be a superhero before teaching him to take a beating without losing his cool is a question you'd very much like to ask his father.

Ah well, you just have to beat some of that into him yourself for a start, you suppose. "What's wrong," you ask as you wait for Mark to reorient himself in the air, "are you still not catching on to what you're supposed to do?"

"I'm-"

"C'mon! Hit back already!" You slam one of your tiny child-sized fists into his face again, blood spurting from his broken nose. "You're supposed to be learning, not be a punching bag!"

"I'm trying, okay?! You're too fast!"

"See, that's your problem. You see I'm faster than you and you think 'oh wow, that awesome girl that's handing my ass to me is way better and faster than me, I'll never be able to do anything!'"

"Well what am I supposed to do?!"

"Figure it out!" Floating in a lazy orbit around him, you cross your arms. "You wanna be Invincible? Work for it. 'Cause I'm not sure you noticed, but your Viltrumite powers ain't worth crap if you fail to fight in the first place."

"Ugh…" Mark grits his teeth, but uncurls his body a little, head shifting to keep his eyes on you. Progress!

"There we go. Doesn't matter if someone's faster or stronger than you. You just have to hit them first, and you have to hit them hard enough to put them on the back foot. Now try to hit me already!"

And, of course, Mark hesitates like the wuss he is. "Are you sure? I'm, uh, not really keen on hitting kids, so-"

"Try to land a hit on me or I start kicking you in the balls," you announce. He pales, probably remembering you doing just that to Rex Splode. "This is your first test. I suggest you git gud, 'cause if you don't your balls will git busted."

All it takes to get some fighting spirit is some coaxing, sometimes. Kind of reminds you of when you worked with Taylor to get her to commit mass murder before you turned her into a vamp, just less extreme in a bunch of ways.

The most challenging part of getting Mark up to snuff is really just hammering the proper mindset for a fighter into him. As you literally told him, all the alien superpowers in the world won't help him if he fails to actually make use of them, so the first step to him not being a little bitch in a fight is to learn how to do so without so much as thinking about it.

It's a bit of a struggle; if you had to guess, he isn't really the kind of kid to so much as get into schoolyard scraps. He's been in a couple of fights since he started heroing around, but, well, you remember how he fared during the first Flaxan invasion.

All that said, he isn't actually horrible at fighting, he just needs a little patience to get over his hang-ups. Once you've motivated him a little (and eventually pull out a device you casually describe as a 'ball-grater'), he quickly gets the hang of things and at least doesn't fucking flinch when he's being hit.

With some minimum standards fulfilled at the very least, though, you finally decide to move on to the next stage of your training plan for Mark. It comes pre-packaged in the form of a gaudy-ass gold book cover, complete with decorations in the form of stylized swords and lots of skulls.

That's right, you cut Mark some slack after only an hour of constant fighting practice and instead take the undead book that ended up naming itself the Necronomicon (you summoned it earlier today just for this) out to throw it at him. "Hey! catch!"

"Woah!" Fumbling a little, Mark manages to do just that. "What's this, some secret magical super-book or something?"

"Not entirely incorrect," the Necronomicon comments, the skull on its front 'speaking' like usual. Mark's reaction is to scream like a little girl and drop it. "Oh that's just ruuuude!"

You wave a hand, letting the undead in the form of a book 'fall' back up slowly. "Yep. Read this guy and he'll teach you stuff, like how to fight."

"Wait, wasn't the point of sparring so much to teach me? Why do that if a book can just magically do that as well?"

"Nah, the point was to teach you not to screw up the moment you're in a fight. This thing will give you some technical skills you can work into an actual fighting style."

The Necronomicon clears its throat as it returns to your height, floating in the middle of the air and all. "Indeed. I shall implant knowledge as appropriate, but once it becomes yours, it shall be your responsibility alone how to use it to its fullest extent, young man. Now open me so I can begin."

"Man, my life is just, so weird since this morning… Well, ever since I got powers, really."

In the end, you keep on sparring with Mark for several hours- your estimation of about eight hours being required for this whole personal training thing actually undershot the mark a little. It's closer to nine hours of constant combat, teaching him and forcing learning into him via combat before you call it for the day.

Being a Viltrumite, the boy has considerable amounts of stamina, but even so he's one tired mess by the end. Not really sweating much, you suppose Viltrumites took that whole concept out when they decided to break reality for all of their own kind forever, but he's breathing hard and obviously has some trouble keeping his flight stable.

As good as you're gonna get for the time being.

"Ah crap… I completely forgot… school's already over, isn't it?" Yeah, judging by the sun already way past its zenith up above, you've been keeping Mark here busy long enough to completely sabotage his education. That said, this is still some dimensional permutation of America- it's not like that's any great loss or anything.

"Better get used to it," you command, still in perfect condition. Undeath means you don't rely on a metabolism to keep yourself going, meaning you can keep going indefinitely without being worse for wear in any way whatsoever. In short, undeath rules, being mortally challenged sucks. "We're gonna do this every day until you stop sucking so hard."

"Wait, what? I can't, mom will kill me if I just stop going to school!"

"I'll talk to Cecil so she won't find out. Now go hydrate before you diedrate," you advise as you let yourself fall back to the Earth, watching on in bemusement as Mark stretches out an arm as though to catch you on reflex.

He never did get a clean hit in on you in the end, but he's been improving noticeably and it's only been one day. You'll make him an actually decent fighter yet.

Of course even after you return back to your most noble and ancient lair befitting your title of Night Queen, you are not quite done with Mark Greyson and his woefully inadequate combat prowess. You aren't about to delude yourself into thinking his capabilities will be sufficient to last in any kind of fight against his father, whether he gets better at actually fighting or not.

You know full well that if someone is just that much stronger, faster, tougher and everything else than you, there's just no way to get around that sometimes. You can plan around someone's strengths, exploit their weaknesses, circumvent the need for a direct confrontation or just not fight them at all in the first place, but at the end of the day if someone strong enough to end you with a single punch punches you, there's only so much most people can do about it.

The sheer difference in base strength between Mark and Nolan Greyson is too great, is what you're saying. You're teaching him how to actually fight, yes, and that will hopefully make up some of the difference between them (he better put the effort you're going through here to good use, is what you're saying), but you doubt it'll be enough, long story short.

So you'll have to go to greater lengths if you really want to engineer the kind of dramatic father versus son fight to the bloody death you envisioned when you started to scheme up your current plan. Can't really call it a fight if Omni-Man just steamrolls his progeny, after all.

Hence you get back to the precious reagents you assembled when you first brewed up your permanently effective potion recipe through lots of trial and error. When your natural physiology just isn't enough, there's nothing wrong with doping, after all!

Well, unless you're about to completely screw yourself over through the side effects of whatever you're taking, but that's for normie plebs to worry about. Your superior magical drugs only have significant side effects when over-imbibed in general.

The ones that massively boost your strength for a limited time are not, in fact, made of steroids, nor do they shrink your penis like steroids would. Cryptic Solutions Guarantee!

You shit not right now, that was actually a catchphrase the marketing department back on Earth Rapture went with at some point. It worked, but then with the amount of cash you used for your company propaganda you expect just about anything they try to work at some point, just because someone makes it work somehow along the line.

But back to your current project. Seeing the opportunity, you go ahead and brew up a whole batch of your Juggernaut Potions, a handful of them coming out the other end of your personal potions lab by the time you're done.

You also use up all the ingredients that you can't just replicate indefinitely, but really, what else were you going to use them for in the near future? You can always find more in some parallel dimension, when you get down to it, so even the magically differentiated stuff shouldn't be too hard to replace if you get down to it.

You'll just have to feed one of these potions to Mark… And you'll keep the rest in your shadow, naturally. For later.

Sadly, you can't stay inside your super awesome lair and have fun throwing seemingly random objects into one enchanted apparatus or another forever. You actually do have things to do, and you've spent pretty much all day on this new little project already, so it really is high time you went and did something else for a bit.

Hyperfocusing on one thing to the point of insanity is surprisingly easy to do when you're immortal, your body doesn't provide any kind of negative feedback and you don't actively stop yourself from getting too into things. It's one of the few issues being a vampire brings with itself.

Still objectively superior to being a milquetoast mortal, of course. Screw mortality.

Anyways, the thing you end up doing instead, in this case, is to go up to join the girls for dinner. Just like you'd asked Alicia, they went and got their cousin Alana to come visit, as your thrall notified you earlier in the day through the connection you've got going with her, so it would kind of be a wasted opportunity not to participate.

Naturally, you have to play your part as you go along, bringing the dishes into the fancy dining room you set up earlier- you may not be a 'real' butler, but you have a passable enough eye for interior decorating and no real limit on what materials you can throw together to get the decorations ready and all.

Hence why dinner is taking place in a gorgeous atmosphere of softly-colored red and orange velvet, transforming the room into a sunset captured on its furniture and enriching the experience of eating. It's pretty fancy indeed, if you do say so yourself.

You also did go ahead and cook yourself, the mansion's small staff already used to you borrowing the kitchen- you ended up telling them a tall tale about how the young mistress of the house communicates particular culinary cravings to you on occasion and insists that you prepare them for her yourself, and they ate it up when you threw in some acting to make it look like she's basically crushing on you and you're playing along while (unsuccessfully) letting her down gently.

It probably also helps that you share some of the sweets and snacks you often end up making on those occasions. Your cooking is not quite five star class, you'd say, but you are pretty decent at it after having consumed so many people that used to cook themselves when they were alive, their little personal recipes and preferences and the things they did to work a kitchen all nice and proper.

And speaking of snacks, Ariana may keep on trying to sneak snacks into bed, but seeing as she basically always sleeps in her sister's bed these days and Alicia keeps on confiscating them on account of refusing to allow her all-white sanctuary to be marred by crumbs and smeared lips, she actually does have to keep to proper meal times more often than not, at least at home.

You fully support this, of course. Sure, she's a growing girl and needs lots of calories, but properly defined meal times are actually really important to maintain. You just sneak her a little extra food and sweets after every meal if she's still hungry, not that that happens often- you take dessert very seriously to begin with, after all.

Not a great fan of pudding yourself, personally, but the girls here love it.

Of course none of that matters right this moment, as you keep a perfectly unmoving poker face in place in order to look on while Alana regurgitates the cover story for her death provided by the GDA.

"Nobody expects a plane crash of all things. But hey, we made it through, and rescue didn't take as long to arrive as it could have after we washed ashore."

Green Ghost really is pretty different out of costume, or outside of the kind of situation she switches into her heroic mindset. Confident, capable and stylish, she actually manages to sell her story… Sort of.

"What did you eat while you were stranded on that island?" Alicia asks, politely cutting into the steak you seasoned, fried, baked and ultimately garnished for today's dinner.

"Oh, whatever we could find. There were some animals living there, we just hunted a few for meat, and one of the passengers was actually a botanist so we could identify some edible plants." Taking a bite from her steak, Alana closes her eyes in joy. "Not that we could prepare anything close to this."

"Mhm." Your thrall doesn't say anything aloud for a moment, letting the conversation drift into a lull that Ariana seems to be confused by for a moment, watching on as her sister and cousin pointedly remain silent. Mentally, though, she contacts you. Is it okay if I make a scene and tell her I know?

"That sounds like a great adventure," Alicia says neutrally, not betraying what she thinks about the bullshit she is being fed in the least. "Almost unbelievable how stunningly mundane it is and how little media coverage there has been about it."

"At request of the families of the ones that didn't make it," Alana 'agrees'.

"Mhm. And how well you made it through these traumatizing events, too," your current employer continues.

"Yes, well… I suppose none of it feels quite real, yet." Clearing her throat, Green Ghost's civilian persona just doesn't elaborate.

"I see." Looking at her sister, Alicia taps the table with one finger. "Ariana, do we still have the list of 'Lying Liars Who Lied'? Please add Alana to it."

Called out like that, the girl in question promptly salutes, her mouth set somewhere between a catty smile and a stern line. "Yes ma'am! List addition approved and to be implemented!"

"What… Why do you believe I am lying?" Brows furrowed just a smidge, Alana leans forward to look at Alicia.

"Because I know you are. I knew you were Green Ghost all along." Alana stops moving altogether, frozen in place as her costumed persona is casually namedropped. "I also know the Guardians of the Globe have been conspicuously absent from the public eye for several days, Omni-Man disappeared right when they showed up again and you only came back once he was gone."

Alana doesn't move a single muscle. She doesn't even blink. Even her hair stays right where it is, down to the last strand.

She also sweats profusely, a single drop of sweat visible on her face despite her surprising levels of self-control.

"Alana?" Alicia asks, eyes narrowed as she observes her cousin.

"I have no idea what you are talking about," the oldest woman in the room states plainly.

"I see." Just then, Ariana returns to the room, carrying with her a notebook whose title is written in big, black letters. List of 'Lying Liars Who Lied' indeed. "Thank you, Ariana. Take a seat, this might take a while."

Her eyes glittering in the warm colors of the room, the younger sister hands the thing off, only to gesture for you to come closer. Raising an eyebrow, you nevertheless do as bidden, soon finding yourself sitting down on her chair instead of quietly standing by the side the of the room, Ariana happily hopping onto your lap.

Alana blinks, and you can borderline physically see the gears turning inside her head. Someone completely forgot you were even present in the room, huh?

"Let's see… 'Green Ghost, also known as cousin Alana, has been convicted of being a liar, liar, pants on fire'," Alicia intones, writing as much down still without so much as breaking her poker face. Looking up, she looks towards where said cousin is looking. "Ariana, what are you doing?"

"Mhhhm?" The girl sitting on your lap smiles a cheshire grin that got the canary. "I'm just being lovey-dovey with my boyfriend. What was that about Green Ghost?"

"Don't try changing the subject." Carelessly putting the notebook aside, your white-haired employer completely changes focus, staring her sister down. "He is my boyfriend."

"Oh, I dunno about that," Ariana guilelessly notes, half-turning to hug you with both arms. "Right? We're so close after all…"

Alicia's hand balls into a fist, harmlessly lying on the table. Eye narrowed, she stares at you and her sister, body language suddenly cutting off. If you had to guess, she just realized that Ariana is trying to steal a march on her by 'claiming territory' in front of their cousin.

Standing up without further ado, she curtly walks around the table to approach both of you, only to grab your head, lean down and kiss you right then and there. Ariana, for her part, just watches with her grin still intact, eyes glued to what you're doing.

"…What exactly is going on?" Alana asks, the only person present still left out of the loop.

You just saved her by distracting everyone is what happened, for the record. You shall take full credit for this. Also, you heavily suspect both Alicia and Ariana already knew she was Green Ghost, making her particular secret identity pretty badly kept even compared to the average cape ID as far as her famly is concerned.

"Oh you piece of shit!"

There were many things Atom Eve was ready to see on a daily basis. Murdered civilians, trails of destruction left behind by the particularly destructive supervillains the team fought, and Lord she'd dealt with too many rape victims in her time- that was always, to say the least, very much a bummer.

That didn't mean she was happy to see her sleazebag of a boyfriend getting deepthroated by Kate while one of her other bodies was making out with him.

In the shower. In the Teen Team's base.

"Hey babe, c'mon, this doesn't mean shit! They aren't even the real Kate!"

"We're, all the real Kate," the three bodies in the room pointed out.

"I'm… No. I can't deal with this. I'm out. Whatever you two have going on, it's your problem now."

Sometimes, the only thing a girl could do was to walk out.

You honestly weren't really expecting Cecil to call you up himself, of his own volition and all, but hey, here you are, his call routed through the normal methods meant to make it look like you're currently inside the White House to anyone trying to trace your location.

You and the Thinker are having fun in here. It's what you do.

But yeah, what Cecil has to tell you is… interesting. "There's a rogue supervillain, calls himself Doc Seismic. The Guardians are busy somewhere else and he's a danger to the public, can you stop him?"

"'Course I can. Question is if I will," you answer. "Good for you that the answer's yes. I was feeling like eating out."

Cecil sighs on his side of your phone conversation. "I'd prefer if you didn't kill him, for once."

"And I'd prefer if food walked itself into my mouth, humanity joined hands in the united purpose of providing me with increasingly large amounts of cookies and a flying pony that breathes rainbow fire dropped from the heavens, but we don't all get what we want."

"Fine. Just get the civilians out of the line of fire and at least try to keep Mount Rushmore in one piece."

"I'll see what I can do."

Actually getting to Mount Rushmore, the national monument bearing the faces of four particular people that have been dead and buried for a long-ass time already hewn into the stone of a literal mountain in an enormous display that sufficient determination and money can achieve the same results as you throwing a bunch of purpose-built robots at something, takes you a little bit, but not all that long, all things told.

Teleportation tends to do that. You do take a brief pit stop instead of going there directly, though, grabbing a tub of strawberry ice cream from the nearest city to much on. You just kinda got the munchies, it's one of the few things reminiscent of your mortal metabolism still remaining with you.

It's daytime when you arrive at the monument that's apparently under attack- and ah, yeah, you can see it already. There's a couple buildings that probably act as part of the tourist trap that is Mount Rushmore (you never did visit it in any version of America you've been in so far, actually), but they're currently breaking apart violently.

As is the ground around them. And in the general path of the fleeing tourists that appear to be in a blind panic at the moment. It's not killing anyone by itself, but the earth is literally tearing itself apart a you watch- a short-lived spout of lava even erupts right up front.

That's where you see him, too. A bald, thin old man with a few bits of hair still sticking out of his head, wearing a lab coat over a red shirt with some white zig-zagging pattern on it. And on his wrists you see these red, obviously super-science bracers.

"Mwaaahahahahahaha!" He laughs once the molten earth clears away again for the moment, giving the quaking a pause as he starts to monologue at no-one in particular. "You come to pray at this obscene monument?! They were oppressors. Racists! Slaveowners. I give you a new god worthy of worship! Bow before Doc Seismic!"

Turning around, the painfully obvious dementia patient throws his arms backwards, something happening inside the big red metal bracelets he's got on- you can hear the clinking and clacking and vibrations being produced all the way from your current position- when he 'clinks' them back together against each other.

Then fucking Mount Rushmore starts to crumble as the giant stone heads hacked into the mountain start to violently push themselves out of position.

Okay, you gotta give him that much, he probably does deserve the name. That looks a lot like seismic activity to you.

"Huahahaha! The Great Emancipator?! I'll emancipate you… from your life!"

Okay, so you don't care about that handful of boy scouts he's currently aiming a couple of falling rocks at, but that pun? That was just bad.

Yeah, no, the casual murder and terrorism was one thing, but you can't just abide by puns and one-liners of that level. The sheer level of cringe evoked upon yourself prohibits you from merely watching on in mild boredom at this point.

"Guess what, mothertrucker," you say aloud, projecting your voice to be audible all over the place- all the way to where he's standing. "I cannot tell a lie, you're about to die!"

It's a reference. And it's an actually good one.

Arm outstretched, you start to play around with gravity. Until now, you were just passively observing what was going on, letting your advanced senses spread your awareness of everything moving around at the moment. With your gravity-based ones, you can even kind of make out where Seismic over there is playing around with the earth- when the soil's vibrating and shit, you can kind of make out how the pull of gravity is impacted by his tech.

Useful, that. But for now, you focus on some more immediate problems; the rocks crumbling from the mountaintop and about to crush those boy scouts, among other things. Which they have now ceased to do.

As it so happens, you decided to say 'no'. So now any loose rock (and one giant stone head) is propelled back to where it belongs, 'falling' more or less into position again in spite of how normal gravity would dictate their paths.

More screams follow, but most of those are more of relief and shit. You proceed to flick a hand, causing the civilians in the area to be thrown off their feet as their weight distribution promptly gets reevaluated for a moment to get them all out of the way.

"Hrahaha!" As soon as you start to redirect nearby objects to clobber him to death, however, Doc Seismic smacks his bracelets together again, pushing them downwards, the sound of a motor turning on mixed with a buzzsaw ringing out. With that, he literally just hops up and blasts himself away, using the recoil of his now otherwise inactive weapons to move himself in a dirty approximation of flight.

You know what, those things do look pretty handy. You're definitely gonna be eating him just to copy them for your own use.

Jumping up, you keep hot on Seismic's trail as he darts around like a squirrel on speed, cruising along the side of Mount Rushmore. "Why are you fighting me?! Don't you know how hard it is for girls like you to get a decent job that doesn't fleece you on your wages? The deck is stacked against you and someone needs to fix it!"

…Oh great, he's an SJW supervillain. "I don't give a crap, if society tries to screw with me I screw society harder."

"Really? Huh. Well, we can't all see the world for what it is." Setting down, Doc Seismic swipes his bracelets against each other, the revving sound of his main weapons rising in intensity as he throws his hands over his head, visible energy emanating from them. "Now begone!"

Eyeing the admittedly pretty decent radius of the destruction he wrought upon the earth under his feet, you raise an eyebrow at him, still floating above the ground. "You do realize I don't need solid ground to stand on?"

"You should try to get some! Now all I need to do is-"

You don't bother listening to the end, not when he thrusts his bracers out towards you this time, shooting out an almost visible wave of force. One you decidedly don't want to even deal with, purely because of how tedious it would be.

So instead, you re-enable your own weight, setting your feet onto thin air as though it was solid. Pushing off, you slip into your superspeed mode, flash stepping right past the attack and arriving behind Doc Seismic in less time than the span of a single of his heartbeats.

You would know. You are listening to them. Even now, holding his heart in your hand, the confused little organ not realizing it was just torn out of its body.

Looking back at the man currently missing half his chest, you can't help yourself but make another presidential reference. "A man divided, is about to bleed the heck out," you whisper to him, the sudden spurts of blood redirected towards your mouth. Waste not, want not.

"Should've built… some armor… heh…"

You crush the heart inside your fist, forcefully drawing upon all the blood inside his body. In a contest of your will against his circulatory system's integrity, you win almost instantly, a thick stream of blood torn out of him.

And with it, his soul. Yum. Time to noisily slurp it all up as you pull it into your mouth.

A curious humming sound could be heard in the halls of the Laboratory, its winding sterile hallways interrupted by the occasional soul wandering through the limbo of science all of them were caught up in.

Not that anyone present couldn't leave if they wanted, but there was precious little point to doing that for most of them. There was no way out of this 'world' to begin with, and so they simply gravitated towards the places they preferred to dwell in- such as this one.

The entirety of several civilizations' knowledge and technology were available here, and those that were interested in not only reading and watching and experiencing these things, but advancing them themselves tended to come here, rather than the Library.

It could be said that doing so was the opposite of what they should be doing, seeing as it only advanced the agenda of their murderer, but… Well, it was something productive. It was a way to spend their time that tangibly contributed to something, a collaborative effort that engendered a sense of camaraderie among those that found themselves spending their deaths here.

As opposed to the jocks on the Training Fields. Some things never changed, and if some people could bear to just spend an eternity or two beating the crap out of each other for sport and entertainment, more power to them.

The mild rivalry some of the members of their respective groups felt was yet another method to stave off insanity. Anything that helped.

Not that this concern was all too great for each and every soul impounded upon this particular afterlife. After all, how mad could one really go when they already were insane? Such philosophical questions were, amongst others, those that Uyehara Yoshiake had to ask himself some days.

"See young man, we can decorate our work spaces just fine, all it takes is a little persistence. And a good working environment is not to be underestimated, you hear me?"

"I both see and hear you," Uyehara replied, holding back the urge to sigh. Normally, he would be much more polite in the presence of his elders, he reflected, but those kinds of considerations had long since left him, despite living what felt like one and a half of his two lifetimes as a Japanese. As his killer would put it, he simply had only so many fucks to give, he supposed. "That is not an excuse to plaster unstable illogical non-matter producing cores all over the office."

Why anyone thought it was a good idea for him to be the one to watch the unstable scientist that just insisted he be called 'Doc Seismic' was beyond Uyehara. He was perfectly fine just spreading the suffering around right now.

"Please, the worst thing that happens is that it all blows up, the laboratory spends some time fixing itself, as I understand it, and we all get a day off in the meantime! No wounds being permanent means safety concerns have just evaporated for me!"

Case in point. No further questions for the defendant.

"Whatever. I'll just sit here and brood over my horrible life choices."

"Oh, anything I can help with?" The bald man asked. "Sometimes just having an open ear to gripe at can help a lot. I would know, kakakaka!"

Uyehara took a deep breath. "…I am fairly sure my relationship troubles caused by two unreasonably attractive women that may or may not have been men in their past life or were created by fusing a man and woman into one being both being into me and repeatedly pulling me into overly competitive threesomes I can't say no to because they are unreasonably attractive and I am forever stuck with the hormonal balance of a teenager's body are not exactly within your remit."

"Huh. You know, I think you may be right. I used to help students at my old university with relationship troubles every now and then, but that is fairly out there, I won't lie."

"Really?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh yes, you wouldn't believe how many young people have no idea how to 'do' relationships these days. Why, back when I had hair, I was a heartbreaker in my own right… Though objectifying your partners is never alright, of cour-"

"Please just go away while I consume comfort food for the next fifteen minutes," Uyehara requested.

The old man couldn't possibly get into even more trouble in that time, right?

"So this new religion of yours supports same-sex couples, general emancipation and promotes workers' unions?"

"Why, yes, though this hardly describes the extent of our opinions on common social and economic practices," a bearded man explained. "For example, though local customs should generally be accepted, we do have a few core tenets we very much do not compromise on. Freedom of love and religion, clear and concrete rules on the organization of charitable activities and conduct within the context of our faith- I need not tell you how easily religion falls prey to corruption and infighting."

"Oh dear goodness, do I ever know. It does not help that most religions just get stuck in their ways and obstruct any changes for the better from 'their' status quo, too!"

"Not to worry in that account. The Church of Mercy believes that as humanity advances, so too must it advance to keep step, rather than deny reality and oppose the future outright. Why, one always should-"

"Wales, you get the heck away from Seismic or I swear to the man that killed me in a drunken stupor I will-"

"Taking the Lord's name in vain, are we? Good thing this holy book explicitly states He does not care."

Getting cousin Alana off their case had taken some doing, but with Gabriel gone for a bit (no idea what he actually was doing), Ariana and her sister had finally managed to get her to go take a bath to get ready for bed, rather than try to chew Ariana out over having a boyfriend.

Look, they all knew exactly why she opposed this state of affairs, and it totally wasn't that she was too young. Alana hadn't managed to land a steady boyfriend for years by this point, she was obviously just jealous.

No, the real danger was Alicia, and the possibility of her calling dibs. That might complicate things. Thankfully, Ariana already had an idea as to how to distract her sister!

"Sooo," she said once they were alone, having returned to the White Room (look, how else was she gonna call Alicia's bedroom), "Gabriel knows. And he knows we know, and she knows we know and that he knows as well."

"Yes, Ariana, everyone knows that everyone knows," her sister declared, summing the situation up succinctly.

"Gabriel didn't look surprised," she added anyways.

"He didn't. I didn't tell him, if that's what you're asking."

"Mhm." She narrowed her eyes. Could very well be that he just wasn't surprised on principle, or had found out some other way. It wasn't like Alana was good at keeping her secret all that secret, after all. Still…

"He knew already." Ah. Yeah. Naturally, that was the conclusion Ariana was working towards, but it was nice to have confirmation- "I won't tell you how."

"What? Why not?!" Pouting her poutiest pout, she looked up at her.

"Because that's not up to me to tell you." Only to receive a flick to the forehead instead of an explanation.

"Uuuhh…" It did help get her eyes a little teary, but Alicia refused to elaborate further anyways, turning away to ignore her. But that was okay. She was lovely even when she tried to go for abandonment play!

Getting back to your writing during your next visit to your inner world, once you deal with the fact that someone, apparently, managed to blow up your laboratory facility and all the souls inside of it have to regenerate for a bit to regain full functionality (you don't care who did it, just that they don't do it again- you add another universal behavioral law against destroying your stuff), you end up sitting down to take another look over your currently planned story direction now that you've got some serious progress for this project in.

Honestly, you actually brainstorm a lot, having figured out where you want to take the story a lot now that you are where you are and figuring your old plans could do with some replacement. Things just always do become a lot more concrete inside your mind once you're halfway through to actually having stuff happen.

And with that done, you go back to make an edit or two before you continue on to write out the next couple of plot points. After that dramatic car chase, as in the truck your protagonist was hitchhiking in being chased by a vampire-werewolf combo, ends amidst a large thunderstorm that ironically ends up helping them escape once a small forest fire happens along the way, things quickly spiral back into control, Jake and his spectral 'friend' saying their goodbyes to this muscled truck driver that just had the time of her damn life.

And doesn't question exactly what the fuck just happened too much, for a few potential reasons. You don't think you'll have her be, like, fully initiated into the reality of non-human things being around and integrating themselves into normal society, but maybe she used to sleep with some inhuman chick in college or something.

Slinking off into the next decently sized city, Jake now has to work towards establishing more than rudimentary communication with his spectral companion, having determined she wants to help him and won't leave him alone anytime soon. All the while the two have to move through the city and figure out their next move, hearing the news over that 'freak lightning discharge' and the effects of the unusual weather along the way.

You figure it's a nice little change of pace, serving to inject a bit of levity that isn't based on Jake's tense nerves for once. It also serves to let you characterize ghost girl a little, which you figure does help a bit as the two play off each other.

Now to finish things up with a little interlude of Bella and Chloe having to deal with the wildfire they accidentally caused. Regular perspective changes always are a hit.

Now, with Doc Seismic and his expertise added to your own, you have a few things you can do. You did make sure to grab the 'earthquake bracers' he made while you went ahead and spent a little time on repairing Mount Rushmore- just putting things that got thrown around back into place, throwing one of the giant rock heads into the location it used to sit it, that kind of stuff, plus freeing one tourist guide that got pinned under some rubble when shit went down- but even without them, you'd be able to build a copy now.

Which, for the record, is a nice change of pace compared to how Tinkers work. Or a lot more creative freedom on your end, anyways, now that you can work towards integrating stuff.

The way Seismic's bracers work is that they 'fire off' a bunch of vibrations and, by analyzing what they get back, determine the exact frequency of vibration they need to make the ground do a given thing, as determined by the user. It's actually surprisingly similar to the way bats use echolocation to orient themselves, just built specifically so they can figure out soil and solid rock.

The rest of their functionality is stuff you've already seen, more or less; cause quakes, tear the earth asunder, just shred the ground within reach, reroute lava where available, when pointed downwards they can even let the user fly, more or less, through tuning the vibration they produce towards generating the right amount of recoil and not much else.

Actually pretty interesting technology, all told, and Doc Seismic really does earn his inclusion into the Science Team. And as for you, well, you've got all those blueprints for sonic weaponry lying around inside your inner world, and sound is basically vibration that travels through a given medium anyways, isn't it…?

Well, the distinction is a little more precise than that, technically, and there's quite a bit more science involved than that, but you can totally work something out. Long story short, your heavier sonic weapons can now do some of what the bracers were designed to, breaking up the ground with a bit of a charging period and, potentially, just tearing rocks into the air to launch them at enemies.

All in a day's work for you and the Science Team. Trademark pending.

Addition to Sonic Weaponry:

Improved through Doc Seismic seismology tech

Can be aimed to break up and crush soil and rock by switching firing modes, amount of destruction caused scaling with armament size

Can repurpose natural rock, stone and soil as ammunition, launching them at targets for great damage

Now that your momentary pupil, Mark Greyson in case that was unclear, has been broken of his hesitance to actually fight for real (or most of it, at least), and can actually throw a half-decent punch thanks to the technical skill you had your specialist undead book slam into his head, he's actually managing to hold his own as you spar with him.

Well, no, you're still handily handing him his own ass, but at least the young Viltrumite (Viltrumite Light? Mini-Mite?) is starting to land return hits on you as long as you don't really put your back into handling him. The first time a punch of his connects and propels you away from the fight, he's all panicked and apologetic-

Until you come shooting back to kick him right in the sternum, that is. You being in the form of a younger girl is no excuse to stop fighting, after all, and your naturally armored body absorbed the force of the blow you took just fine. Hardly even a scratch, all in all.

You could also just use your aura right now, but you're trying to improve yourself, not just looking to negate anything and everything Mark does. Also, it'll be a nice surprise in case you have to deal with some sudden, yet inevitable betrayal down the line.

Because even putting Mark aside, you don't doubt for a single second that the GDA is recording everything you're doing when you're visible and known to be present. They do have satellite imaging, among other methods to keep track of shit.

So yeah, you're beating the crap out of him, but Mark's already started to learn to deflect and counter straightforward attacks well enough, the ingrained motions you left behind inside the Necronomicon obviously taking root with him. Now you've got him on actually going on the offensive more often, a task he takes to with only a minimum of motivation generated on your end.

"Hey, wanna see me kill random civilians? If not, stop me!"

"Hey, wha- Stop right there! You wouldn't-!"

Good times.

Of course there are some mild issues with Mark's spontaneously acquired fighting style, ones you naturally take advantage of. While you're good enough in a scrap, and you do have some experience in fighting while airborne and optionally weightless, that's a very different beast from doing so all the time- and entirely different from the way Viltrumites can just generate their own leverage whenever and wherever they want.

Something he notices and tells you. Naturally, you have an answer for him ready and waiting for just that.

"You have a bunch of experience injected into your brainmeats, but that's all it is. Experience," you explain to him as you take a quick break to let his face recover from the beating you were giving it. "Taken from other people that didn't have your advantages. You'll just have to figure out how to leverage everything you have yourself from there, ya pussy."

"You know, hearing a kid swear like that kinda rubs me the wrong way."

"Oh yeah? Deal with it, snowflake," you command, deliberately raising your voice's pitch. "Now hit me like someone's life depends on it, or else!"

"Wait, I thought that was a joke!"

"Does this look like the face of someone joking at you?"

For the record, it doesn't. You are dead serious. If Mark fails to shape up, people are going to die. You figure, him trying to be a hero and all, that will help to keep him focused and giving his all to the training regime you thought up for him.

Maybe he senses some part of that, but he sure does try not to fuck around on pain of finding out if he does. Smart boy.

Viltrumite Tonic Effects: 22 to all physical rolls-24 to all physical rolls

Summoning a Doppelganger (or Doppelgänger, to use the actual German word with the weird vowel mutation) might elicit some weirdness, as these particular demons apparently have a tendency to mimic their summoners just to psyche them out on principle, or at least the standard cardboard cutout variant of them you've chosen to get some of does.

You, of course, are entirely above and beyond any worries at suddenly looking at a naked version of yourself- you proceeded to strip naked and mimic the first one you summoned in turn, just to psyche it out instead.

The operation is a success.

You then continue to summon more of the things once you've had your fun, impressing upon these supposedly particularly wily and cunning demons the urgent need to not fuck with this monster that can out-doppel them. Sure, they are demons and may well have ways to evade your wrath after just one death, but, well…

Look, let's just say you're surprisingly well-equipped to screw someone's day up even if they're somewhere in hell and you don't actually know their name so you can summon them in particular. Having a bunch of demon minions you can send after them is both highly amusing and works pretty well on Doppelgangers, who generally tend to prefer sticking to cities and similar, or at least the closest equivalent hell has.

At any rate, you newly induct some more demonic recruits into your throng, two dozen expert infiltrators and assassins added to the strategic operatives at your beck and call. That went pretty well, even if you may have, ahem, lost a bit of time playing around with a bunch of copies of yourself.

Look, having an abs jiggling contest was perfectly sensible at the time, okay? Especially as you were the winner.

"Alright eggheads, what're we looking at?"

The device Cecil Stedman had handed to the analysis lab- one of several the GDA had running 24/7 in complete isolation from each other, just in case any cognitive hazards came up again- had been handed off to an agent by Night Queen, right after she finished putting Mark Greyson, aka Invincible, through his paces.

The agent in question had been on duty observing them. Supposedly in secret. From half the country away.

Couldn't be helped, though, really. Cecil had confirmed the reports and second party verifications, the team the man had been part of had followed protocol to the letter. If Night Queen managed to find them anyway, that was just her being too good, not them screwing up.

Maintaining operational security was a nightmare with that little terror around, was all.

The object she'd handed the GDA was small enough to fit into someone's palm, obviously technological in nature and capable of producing sound and light, the latter coming from the screen taking up most of the device's front side. Under it, three buttons were visible, but their use wasn't immediately obvious.

The whole thing was also currently locked inside an off-site unmanned analysis lab, everything being controlled from afar and only delayed video of what was happening as robotic arms poked at it. Standard safety precautions for any object any individual, organization or cosmic force deliberately gave the GDA.

They took their safety precautions serious here, and Cecil would personally demote anyone that thought otherwise until they got with the program. The last thing anyone in a lab wanted to do was to accidentally kill (or worse) everyone in a two mile radius because they misunderstood the warning labels on some super rice cooker.

"It seems to be largely inert. No signals to or from it that we can detect, sir. We haven't tried using it to alert its source just in case. Running theory is it's using quantum entanglement to function somehow."

Just then, a bunch of noise came from the thing, beeping and booping that threatened to break any and all focus in anyone that heard it. "And what about that?"

"As far as we can tell, it's also working as a tamagochi, sir."

"I didn't know we were dealing with literal children's toys now, but I suppose it only makes sense."

"It is remarkably relaxed about the usual needs these thing have, but-"

Suppressing the urge to massage his brow to overcome the mild headache threatening to break out over himself as he realized that this was actually his life now, Cecil waved the researcher off. "No, I get it, I'm old, not completely out of touch with the youth. What does this mean for us?"

"Well, sir, we might need to have someone take care of the virtual pet inside of this device to ensure it functions- we do not know if Night Queen set it up so it stops working if the tamagochi is neglected and there is only one way to find out. So someone might have to…"

"Donald? Donald, get over there and collect your newest obligation. Someone has to do it and I sure won't."

It started with livestock. Cattle, for the most part. Missing, dead, most of them found with a sizable puncture wound to the chest or back; as though someone had driven a stake into and through them until they reached the inner organs.

This was concerning enough for the farmers and ranchers that owned them- desiccated, obviously gored animals were a reason for worry until and unless the cause could be found, and the numbers of such cases were rising slowly, but steadily. Clearly, something out there was killing large animals, from cattle to the occasional horse, and it showed no signs of stopping.

The local town drunk was the first to claim seeing something out of the usual, but as always nobody believes the guy rambling about UFOs and 'lizard bugs out to get us all'. It's one of those movie cliches, can't really be helped if the local sheriff just throws him into the drunk tank and calls it a day.

Of course both the sheriff and the police don't really do jack shit about the dead animals- gossiping farmers inventing wild stories when they lost some cattle only for them to spread around was nothing new, either. So nothing in particular continued to be done.

Until the first human victim was found.

It started with one, a passing traveler that just stopped by town for an hour or two before moving on. Found by the roadside, right outside his car, a gaping hole in his chest and drained of all vital fluid. A week later, a local was next, dead outside his house when he was smoking in the evening.

Every night, it seemed, something or someone had to die, and the perpetrator wasn't shy about taking humans just as soon as animals. By now law enforcement was on the case, but it seemed like the murderer always was one step ahead- not once were they confronted in any meaningful way.

All the while the killing continued. Very clearly, this was a case for a superhero, or maybe even a whole team of them, but none of them made a habit of policing some rural town out in the middle of nowhere. Left without recourse, residents grew distrustful of shadows and strangers, barricading themselves inside their home night after night.

Planks of wood and nails experienced a short-lived hike in prices as everyone saw a great need for them. Fear and terror reigned in Goodwill Springs.

Until one night, she came. The Dark Avenger, the Fist in the Dark, the Inimitable Hunger for Chocolate… Night Queen, in all her glory!

"Y'know, I think this whole superhero business is kinda growing on me," you note to yourself as you overlook the crappy little town you're here to save by eating whatever plagues it.

Finding the corpses of the victims isn't particularly difficult, as all of them are stored inside the morgue you quickly locate inside the small hospital servicing this relatively small community's medical needs. Sure, there's a guard posted, probably specifically because of this whole situation the town' got on its hands, but you sneak past that one easily enough.

Add in some quick disabling of the morgue's single camera and boom, just like that you have free access to the bodies. Now, as amusing as it would be to turn these corpses into undead to take revenge on their killer, that's not quite what you have in mind, at least not yet, but as a reasonably proficient necromancer and soul magic person, you do have other uses to these kinds of resources.

In short order, you start to summon the souls of the dead to your location using their bodies as mediums to get it right, and although more than a few of them are quite rude (and quietly get shreddered by your claws because they annoyed you), the rest are quite cooperative once you explain you plan to murder their killer.

Sadly, most of them didn't exactly have the time or idle attention required to calmly take a look at what was murdering them when they died, but you do know, at the very least, that the creature that killed these people was exceedingly fast, humanoid and had a very large, very pointy right arm it used to kill them.

That's more than you had beforehand, at least. Furthermore, it always seemed to strike when it was dark out, but actually more during dusk or dawn, hinting towards a diurnal rather than a nocturnal activity cycle, and some of the deceased victims recount hearing a peculiar sound not unlike buzzing insects shortly before their deaths.

…Yeah, you're gonna call it here and now, it's some kind of fucked up mosquito man mutant or something. It's clear as fucking day.

Or night for you, same difference. Either way, all signs point into one direction and one direction only.

Next off, time to actually track your quarry down! And wouldn't you know it, you don't really take long to do just that, thanks to your powers allowing you to canvass half the town at once. An usual scent, kind of human, but not quite, is your first stop, and from there you just follow it around, finding it here and there as you keep a figurative eye out for the star of the show itself.

And yeah, you find them pretty quickly, too, once you pick up the trail. Moving through the air much faster than a baseline human could, the blood signature you make out after a short bit of looking around betrays what you are searching for.

Just like that, the hunt is on.

You're pretty good at this whole stalking and ambushing thing, if you do say so yourself. It's something you've been doing for pretty much your entire career as a cape, both because your powers just predisposed you towards doing so (a boy's gotta eat and eating people by surprise works pretty well just because surprised people don't typically fight back) and because actually fighting is for suckers.

You've gone on about this inside your head for hours on end, easily a collective month's worth of time at this point if not more, but still, you do not believe in having to fight an enemy if you could instead just murder a victim and remove the danger. That's less of a consideration nowadays, seeing just how insanely strong and near invincible you are to most people you end up brutalizing to feed yourself, but it remains true all the way to the kinds of things you have to deal with that are somewhere near your own level.

You doubt this creature can count itself among this number, but hey, you never know- you've been surprised before. So you don't casually stroll up to it, potentially engage in a villainous monologue or grandstand while arranging for it to die horribly while you eat it.

Instead, you simply shadow through the dark, nighttime concealing you even as you cease to have a physical body at all, no scent, no real presence or other indicators any wacky animal senses could pick up on, nothing. Just a vaguely humanoid blot of darkness surfing through more darkness, closing in on an unsuspecting, flying target.

Well, you're stuck to the ground for lack of a surface to climb up towards the thing, but that hardly matters to you. You can deal with distance easily enough.

Following your quarry around the outskirts of town, past silent streets and deserted storefronts, you soon get into position just as it starts to slow down, apparently looking to zoom in on its target- some drunk guy is currently loitering around outside, making for a convenient meal by the metrics of any monsters that feed on people.

You can sympathize. You used to work in much the same way. Not that this creature will get any sip tonight…

You glide out of the ground silently, climbing back into three-dimensional space easily. Then you jump, propelling yourself upward at an angle, your weight tilting and shifting to let you literally fall upon your prey with several times the force you should be able to, black-feathered wings sprouting from your back to push your initial jump along.

The thing you are dealing with looks, just like you were expecting, like some kind of mutated offspring between a man and a mosquito, with fuzzy growth covering his otherwise bare chest. Facial features twisted into the insectile, with large compound eyes bulging out of the skull, turn to look at you the moment you dart through air, but he's entirely too slow- by the time he brings his oversized lower right arm around, a huge-ass lance with a hollowed tip meant to pierce into and drain prey more than a limb, you're on him already, clawed hands making short work of the carapace protecting his limbs and shoulders.

You don't give him time to react. You don't give him time to do anything. You just immediately open your jaws wide, completely unhinging them and turning your mouth into something from a 'horror movie best special effects of the year' compilation, full of monstrously sharp teeth glinting in the dim light of the moon as your tongue snaps out to test the air.

Then you bite into your victim like he owes you money, crunching through and crushing plates of insectile exoskeleton on the way through the neck. He tries to shudder and fly away from this sudden threat, but you just reach out and tear off his wings, thin membranes stuck to his back mechanically working away to keep him in the air standing little chance against your claws.

You thoroughly gorge yourself, consuming the blood and the soul of… Oh hey, this guy was a… were-wasp? Ugh. An idiot that transformed into this creature at night and was overcome with an unquenchable thirst for blood, making him think he was some werewolf equivalent.

Even though he's both a mosquito and male. The male ones don't even bite people to suck blood from them!

Also, he used to be chief of police here, one John Baltmoon. Which was one reason nobody ever suspected him when he isolated himself during the night, pretending he was keeping watch somewhere so nobody would see him transform. Well, now that entire situation's resolved one way or another, you suppose.

Disregarding the surprisingly bitter taste of the soul you ate (both because Goodwill Springs' chief of police was kind of an idiot that just didn't do anything about being the cause of all those deaths you know he would have prevented and could have prevented if he was just fucking thinking a little and because it actually tasted pretty bitter, which isn't exactly the kind of taste you enjoy), you still have the Triple A to deal with back at the mansion as evening rolls around.

Alicia, Ariana and Alana. The latter is still staying around, having decided to stick around for a couple of days- her 'miraculous' survival means she'll need a bit to get some of her regular work as a photographer lined up again, models and the accompanying industry being what they are, so she has some time to waste anyways.

That and you're pretty sure the whole… four dimensional cube relationship thing you've got going on with her cousins is enough to have her stick around and try to get to the bottom of everything, just in case you're some supervillain or anything. Or just on principle, what with her assertion that Ariana is 'way too young' to see anyone.

It sure sucks to try to be responsible one, huh. There's a reason you consequently avoid taking responsibility for just about anything you can; it just makes life that much easier.

And yes, having three (to four) daughters didn't really change that. You announced far in advance of having them that you'd be the 'fun' parent that never punishes them or anything, and you absolutely continued on to do just that.

Parenting is all about knowing when to stick to your guns and when to remain flexible. You like to think your wives did most of the hard work on bringing your girls up properly, though you will shamelessly take credit whenever you can anyways.

In order to help soothe the whole issue of the unspoken tension bearing down on the room whenever both you and Alana are present now, you thought long and hard about how to get her to accept-

Yeah, nah, you aren't her fucking minder. You're Alicia's minder, so while you'll go out of your way to get along with her family, you won't put that much effort into it unless you absolutely have to. That said, you did go ahead and get some stuff organized for this evening.

It's nothing much, no big deal or anything. Just two grills and a bunch of stuff to grill on them, mostly meat. That's right, you're having a barbecue!

It's honestly been kind of a hot minute since you last did one of those, so you figured you may as well. The fact that grilling and serving a whole bunch of meat (among other things, you also got some fish for anyone that wants it) also serves as a great opportunity to socialize while clearing up a couple of things that may have come up isn't lost on you of course, but you mainly just wanted to have a barbecue, really.

So there you are, standing in the courtyard deftly handling a bunch of meat, some fish filets (you cut them out of fresh fish yourself, by the way, some kept their skin for good measure and because you know a bunch of ways to grill fish courtesy of the souls you've eaten you wanted to try out) and some soft bread that's suitable for being grilled like this, when Alana comes up to you, all confrontational-like.

"I do not approve of you," she informs you as you turn the fish around, splattering some of the lemon juice over them as you go. You do not stop, by the way.

"That's nice, but as far as I know, I don't exactly need your approval," you reply, finishing up what you were doing really quick so you can gesture with the tongs you were using. Swishing it through the air as you talk is practically required as a dad, even if none of your kids are in this dimension. "And honestly, I think I've been getting Alicia into a better headspace recently, compared to before I met her."

"I am not talking about Alicia." Narrowing her eyes, Alana leans in closer. "Just keep away from Ariana, got it?"

"Eh, kind of hard when she clings to me all the time," you idly point out, entirely unconcerned by the dark-skinned woman's words.

She rubs the bridge of her nose in response, sighing. "Look, I know Ariana can be a bit of a… girl-shaped torpedo sometimes, but-"

"No, really, I don't see any particular reason to be super harsh on her." Did you just talk over one of the Guardians of the Globe? Yes. Are these guys basically the equivalent of the Triumvirate for the locals? Kind of.

Do you give a fuck? No, no you don't think you do.

"I also think there's other stuff we should be talking about before we get to any of that nagging. I kind of expected you to start off with something about your secret identity."

"Ah. Alicia and Ariana having known all along wasn't just a nightmare, then," Alana says, staring off into the distance.

"Just how much do you want to deny reality?" You try not to sigh as you get back to flipping the meat, having figured one side of these steaks is ready. You really, really try.

Ah well. Seeing how you're here already and have a free hand, you shrug and reach out with it, what with Alana still deeply shaken by the revelation you just shared with her.

And you pat her head, casually mussing up her brown hair as you do. All the while you still continue to oversee the barbecue you're responsible for- Ariana is already looking absolutely famished, having refused to eat lunch today because she knew this was coming.

Slowly blinking behind her glasses, the woman that tried to corner you earlier returns to reality, giving you an unimpressed look. "Really?"

"Really," you confirm, deftly flipping the last of the meat that still needed some prime time on the nearest grill. "Not like you're too tall to reach."

"If anything you're just too tall," Alana complains, huffing and crossing her arms. Without pushing your arm away, though. Progress! "I can't believe both Alicia and Ariana already knew."

"They're smart girls and they know you well," you point out with a bit more gesturing, pointing your tongs at her. "It isn't really that surprising; secret identities are hard to keep from people you're close to. If anything, them just not saying anything all this time is the strange thing here."

Sighing, Green Ghost's civilian identity carelessly brushes your hand of her head at this point, and onto her shoulder. "I get it, I suppose. Ah!"

Naturally, your hand already on her shoulder, you proceed to give said shoulder a squeeze, gently massaging into any tissue you can reach. On her exclamation, you pause, but more to give her a questioning look.

"…I didn't tell you to stop," she explains herself, a considering look wandering over her features. "If anything, keeping you to myself should have Ariana stop clinging to you."

"Oh, I doubt that," you chuckle, walking around her to properly knead her shoulders and back, thumbs digging in without further ado. "Nothing on this Earth can really hold her back once she's determined she wants something."

"Guess you're not wrong…"

"Hey, what's the holdup?" Just then, Ariana calls out, her aggrieved voice and expression making it clear what she's thinking right now. "Less flirting, more food! And then flirt with me instead, dagnabbit!"

You chuckle, looking over the grill. "One minute and we can start chowing down, cool your nonexistent tits."

"I'll show you how much my tits exist! C'mere!" Stripping already, the youngest woman in this little group you're stuck with comes over, so you just hide behind Alana to let her deal with her cousin's antics for now.

Perfect way to distract everyone involved. Now you just need to… Huh. Where'd Alicia run off to, actually?

It wasn't like it was that hard to find. Night Queen had all but publicly announced the one clue needed, and a bit of data gathering behind Gabriel's back was all she needed to confirm her suspicion.

The 'swamps of rot' referred to the sewers after all. All that Alicia needed to do once she'd confirmed that much by tracing back the mysterious radio signal radiating from below the city was to find out how exactly to access the secret lair within them.

Because of course Gabriel had a lair, supervillains tended to do that. It was logical enough, they of all people needed places to lay low, recuperate after battle and maintain secrecy all the while. Normally, she never would just poke around for such things and just ask him about it directly, but…

She'd received mental communications, just like Gabriel's own telepathy, challenging her to come find this place and promising the defences would not harm her. And, all in all, she had little to do beside school whenever Gabriel was busy with something, now that she needed only a fraction of the sleep she used to.

So there she was, having methodically determined the most likely locations to search until she'd found a fake wall in one of them, coming through to find a cavernous opening filled up with an enormous, somewhat dilapidated castle.

It was impressive. It also promised to take a great deal of walking to access.

However, just as she began undertaking the trek, a humanoid with obvious robotic additions and limbs appeared before her announced by nothing but a muted flash of light. "Hello, Alicia. You may refer to me as the Thinker."

"Hello Thinker," she replied, tilting her head. "Was there any particular reason you asked me to find you?"

"Indeed. I wished to test you, and determine whether you would speak to Gabriel first or not. Now that this test has been completed, I would like to invite you in for tea."

"…I did miss the barbecue for this, but some tea sounds lovely."

And such it was.

A shooting range wasn't too weird to add to your existing facilities, when you went around designing and building them, but considering your needs you naturally ended up expanding on it, too.

Nowhere near as much as you did on your workout equipment, but a bunch of easily recycled and replaced targets, reinforced walls and additional space are those kinds of things you can never go wrong with, all in all. Now you're putting those improvements to use, what with your current little training project.

Well, more a side project, but still.

One of your spells is fairly handy, in that it belongs to the whole category of spells that let you summon and use things from hell- primarily demons, but some other things as well, as it turns out.

Such as fire. Fire from hell. Hellfire, when you want to put it into simpler terms. You can summon and project it into a direction, which is pretty neat- you aren't really big on pyrokinesis in general, a remaining tendency from your relative infancy when you actually had a bit of an issue with fire as such, but hey, it's another option in your arsenal.

One never knows when 'kill it with fire' turns from a saying into a necessity, after all. Whether you want to make an example, need some fire that can burn just about anything including things it shouldn't be able to or you just feel like being particularly arsonist on a given day, you've got it covered.

And in the meantime, you're also having a lot of fun playing around shooting out swathes of all-consuming fire, only to try and tame it, make its swooshing, air-devouring advance spare targets you specify.

Of course this is no easy task, so you will have to keep at it for some ti-

"It seems you are occupied," the Thinker says, one of her blonde 'blademaster' model bodies walking up right behind you. "Please do ignore this body's presence."

With that, she pushes a hand down your pants, starting to stroke your dick without any further ado. "Wow, blunt much?" You chuckle.

"Artificial intelligence has no need for subterfuge."

"We both know you were planning on killing off Wahl for years without him ever noticing," you tell her, turning your head to kiss her, a quick, light affair that nevertheless conveys all the meaning you want it to. "You're perfectly capable of it."

The Thinker does not reply, only watching you as you get back to what you were doing, her presence remaining at your back as she continues to fondle your manly bits.

To your mild annoyance, it actually does boost how quickly you end up learning to control the fire you conjure.

Note to self, being stoned out to hell and back on cosmic divination powers is one of the few things that can still get you into an altered state of consciousness. Just a mild one, but still.

Parsing the kind of information that you can tease out of the fabric of reality can leave your mind… lagging, for lack of a better word. Like the parts of you that exist independently of your body (you did confirm that you have a soul of some kind, and it is what is allowing you to do the things you do- somehow) are momentarily preoccupied doing other shit for a bit.

You can still move, and act and think and all of that good shit, there's just that mild disconnect, disorienting you a little. As you already pondered, it's very similar to a mild high, or at least that's the closest you can describe the sensation.

It doesn't take all too long, either, just enough for you to make sense of what you now know. You used your landline to literal Cosmic Guidance in order to figure out some potential targets for your continued efforts to collect notable and useful souls in this dimension, ordered by potential convenience in the next two weeks, roundabout, and the cosmos did deliver.

There's… a couple of locals, but in the end you could only really get so much information at once. So you prioritized, and yeah, you've got what you need. One alien guy that's apparently fairly easy to lure onto Earth, one squid-man guy that's apparently pretty strong and planning to attack humanity once he's learned some English and one dude that turns into some were-dinosaur with superpowers when he's bored.

You think there may be a theme here. If the alien is also a furry, all of them will be animal-themed, that is, and for some reason your intuition is telling you that's exactly what you'll have to deal with.

Ah well, you'll cross that bridge when you get to it. For now, you'll just try to shake off the last vestiges of the spell's effects while you go ahead and figure out how to fit some extra murder into your schedule.